Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/566

255 with the sign of the cross, let him also turn himself about as the sun goeth from East to South and West." (Leech Book I. 47.)

"Let him who will take it (adderwort) cleanse himself and let him inscribe it with gold and silver and with harts horn and with ivory and with bear's tusk and with bull's horn and let him lay thereabout fruits sweetened with honey. If anyone be in such infirmity that he be choice (in eating) then mayest thou unbind him. Take of this wort lion foot let him not look behind him."

The mystic power of Earth. Earth, of course, has always had a mystic power, and much of this old belief still remains amongst country people. In one of the Anglo-Saxon MS. herbals (MS. Harley 1585) we find this prayer, of which there is only space to quote part of Dr. Charles Singer's translation.

"Earth divine goddess Mother Nature who generatest all things and bringest forth anew the Sun which thou hast given to the nations Goddess! I adore thee as divine; I call upon thy name  whatsoever herb thy power dost produce, give I pray thee with good will to all nations to save them and grant me this my medicine."

Between the Saxon manuscripts on herbs and the first printed herbals there is a great gulf fixed. It is true that there are in the British Museum and other libraries manuscript herbals, but the majority of these are of little interest to the student of folk-lore. Amongst these MSS. there is one, however, to which reference should be made, for it contains a piece of folk-lore which is, I believe, still current in England. This MS. is one sent by the "Countess of Henawd" to her daughter Philippa, Queen of England, and in it there is recorded that rosemary "passeth not commonly in highte the highte of Criste whill he was man in Erthe," and that when the plant attains thirty-three years in age it will increase in breadth but not in height.