Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/728

418 of plants opens up a vista of the utmost importance both to the philologist and to the folklorist. Miss Rohde has pointed out that the Saxon Herbals contain a large number of Saxon names, but so it is also with other Herbals found among the other nations of Europe. Miss Rohde's pride in the Saxon ancestry has got the best of her, and she evidently for the time forgot that when the Saxons came in the fifth century they must have found some traces of the Roman civilisation which had lasted for some hundreds of years, not to omit the mysteries of the Druids.

A comparative study, therefore, of the names of these plants found in the books, and not a few collected from the mouths of the people, would give most surprising results, inasmuch as they would show such a close identity that they must have been derived from the same literary source. They are often nothing else but literal translations into the vernacular of the old Greek or Latin names which occurred in the original texts. How, then, could such names come into the mouths of the people but through the medium of the written book? As Miss Rohde points out, even the oldest Saxon MS., which she pats so lovingly on the back and hugs to her heart, is nothing but a translation of a Latin work of the fictitious Apuleius Madaurensis Platonicus. (By the way this name does not appear in the index, an oversight which Miss Rohde will no doubt correct in the second edition.) It thus depended entirely upon the skill and knowledge of the translator to find the most appropriate words in his own language, without thereby proving that either the name or plant really existed among the Saxons. Take e.g. the name "Bugloss," which has retained even its Greek form, but is also known in its English translation of "ox tongue." Or take the mysterious "vervain," which is the Latin "verbena" to which magical powers of no mean value have been ascribed; it is difficult to identify it with any known plant. "Rosamarina" becomes "rosemary" with its manifold wonderful virtues. Out of "ruta" we get "rue." Or again, take the mythical "mandrake," which is a popular etymology for the old mandragora; and one can easily multiply examples of direct borrowing and assimilation of such strange names of plants, which is of