Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 16, 1905.djvu/162

 138 The Cimaruta :

wrote Pliny, protected their pelt with rue before hazarding themselves in combat with the serpent. At the present day in Khorasan they burn an allied odoriferous herb {Pegamun harmala) to purify the air.^

A very large proportion of the attributes of rue are shared by the class of plants which are associated with the Moon. The Botrychhnn lunaria (Moonwort),'-^ Artemisia (Southernwood and Mugwort), and Origamun dictamnus (or Cretan Dittany) are all supposed to repel serpents, thus possessing the property ascribed to the Moon in the Vedic books. The plants of the Moon have all to a greater or less degree acquired some share in the characteristics of the Moon-deity, who has been regarded as having all waters and moisture in the world under general control, and as more particularly exer- cising an influence on the diseases of the mind, on the dew of early morn which refreshes all vegetation, the sap of plants on which their growth and multiplication depends, on child-birth and the health of women. And so plants which either by experience or by the doctrine of signatures or otherwise are believed to be cures for ailments directly related to the sphere of influence of the moon, are regarded as intimately connected with the deities who were thought to personate that luminary. The Moon-Daisy and other composite flowers have become consecrated to the god- dess Lucina, who presided over the birth of children ; and there is little doubt but that the Rue, although a nostrum of wider application, belonged to the same category ; for in the fifth century B.C. it was described by Hippocrates as promoting the catamenia, and nearer our own time Boerhaave states that he employed it successfully in the treatment of several feminine complaints.^ It is therefore not surprising

^ Aitchison, Notes on the Products of W. Afghanistan, p. 149. ^Our illustration oi Lunaria (PI. XI.) is from the 15th century Bodleian MS. Add. A. 23, f. 78.

2 In the 15th century botanical MS. in the Bodleian Library (MS. Selden