Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 25, 1914.djvu/294

 266 Reviews.

virtues of herbs" (p. 35) may be expected to be full "of spells or charms rather than of medical recipes" (p. 36). The "proper mode of uprooting the Mandrake" is quoted (p. 36). In a subse- quent chapter reference is made to later botanists who disputed "the Mandrake superstition " (p. 103). The phrase betrays the writer. The full title of the work known as Askhains Herbal, printed in 1550, informs the reader that "at the ende of the boke . . . the best and most lucky tymes and dayes" of Herbs "with influence of certain Sterres and Constellations" are set forth (p 39). " Powdre of perles with sugre of roses " is a remedy for a weak heart given in The Grete Herball of 1526 (p. 43), but Bock, in 1552, has scornful reference to plants, — viz. verbena and artemisia, — "collected rather for })urposes of magic than for medicine" (p. 57). Bock's Herbal, therefore, would be of use to the folklorist mainly as exposing the credulity of his predecessors (p. 55).

As knowledge of herbs and their properties became more exact, the Herbals cease to offer material for our purpose, but even in 1636 Gerardes Herbal gave account of such wonders as the " Barnakle tree," and the " tree bearing Geese." The woodcut showing "The Breede of Barnakles" (p. 1 1 1) is reproduced among many others. The illustrations in fact provide as much of interest as the text, — per ex. The Mandrakes on p. 205, p, 233, and Plate v. opposite p. 34.

Chapter viii. deals entirely with the doctrine of signatures and astrological botany as set forth by such writers as Paracelsus, Giambattista Porta, William Cole, Robert Turner, and others. Turner declared "God hath imprinted upon the Plants, Herbs, and Flowers, as it were in Hieroglyphics, the very Signature of their Vertues" (p. 211). He was writing in the latter half of the seventeenth century. Porta was an earlier writer (1588). His theories of "lunar plants," and the reproduction of an illustration from his Phytognovwfiica (p. 213), should be compared with the article in Folk-Lore, vol. xvi., pp. 132-61.

The second volume before us, Unsere Pflarizen, is a praise- worthy attempt to keep alive amongst the folk the ancient plant names and lore. First issued in 1897 with the modest aim of interesting German teachers and students of botany in the folk- names and folklore of their native plants and herbs, it has grown