Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/727

Rh collected a number of illustrations beautifully reproduced, thus adding still more beauty to a book already so attractive in its contents.

I have not been stinting in my praise of this admirable achievement of Miss Rohde, nor do I wish to detract in any way from the great value which it possesses for scholars interested in the subject, but there is now also another side which requires some consideration. Miss Rohde has allowed her enthusiasm occasionally to disturb her otherwise keen judgment. Her love for the old Saxon MSS. has had the effect which love often has, of exaggerating the value of the object of our affections, or of slightly warping our perspective. I am referring here to that part of the book which appeals most to the student of Folk-Lore, for in that respect the herbals as well as the books of leechcraft are objects of profound interest to those who try to investigate the source of the knowledge which the people possessed. Whence did they derive the knowledge of plant lore, whence that of medicine, recipes of which are found among the people, the stock in trade of the "wise man" or of "the shepherd"? How far has the oral tradition influenced the written? Or vice versa, how deep has been the influence exercised by the book upon oral folk lore? Herbals, one must remember, are not books of botany in the modern meaning of that word, books written for the purpose of telling us all that can be told of the growth of plants and flowers, the way in which they are to be classified, and everything connected with the modern science of botany. Herbals are really handbooks of medicine, the primary object of which is to tell us the virtues of the plant, or rather, its medicinal virtues and of what benefit it can be, especially for healing purposes, and there is not a single Herbal starting from Dioscorides and his successors, down to the whole mediaeval Latin literature, including to a large extent the Arabic literature of herbals and simples, which is not primarily intended to give us full descriptions of the medicinal value of the plant. These plants were often not of indigenous growth, but a large number were exotic and brought from distant lands to be used for that specific purpose. With the plants came the names, and a careful investigation of the nomenclature