Page:Notes on the folk-lore of the northern counties of England and the borders.djvu/249

 Rh about at midnight. They are also fond of hemlock, nightshade, St. John’s-wort, and vervain, and infuse their juices into the baleful draughts prepared for their enemies. This statement, however, contradicts that in St. Colne’s charm, as sung by Meg Merrilies at the birth of Harry Bertram—

It contradicts, also, the old rhyme given in the notes to the Demon Lover, in the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border:—

for here these plants appear as countercharms, protecting a maiden from the approach of a very uncannie sprite in the form of a lover.

Of the St. John’s-wort the following little notice has reached me from the Isle of Man. Peasants there say (or did say, before the incursion of visitors drove away all the individuality of the place) that, if you tread on the St. John’s-wort after sunset, a fairy horse will rise from the earth and carry you about all night, leaving you in the morning wherever you may chance to be at sunrise.

As to the vervain, we know that in all times the Druids regarded it as the cure for many ills, and a fit offering to the divinity. At the present day, in Sussex, its leaves, dried and worn in a black silk bag, are recommended for weakly children, possibly as averting witchcraft.

Mr. Wilkie maintains that the Digitalis purpurea was in high favour with the witches, who used to decorate their fingers with its largest bells, thence called “witches’ thimbles.” Hartley Coleridge has more pleasing associations with this gay wild flower. He writes of “the fays,—

and adds in a note: “Popular fancy has generally conceived a connection between the foxglove and the good people. In