Page:The Life of the Fields, Jefferies, 1884.djvu/166

152 of the pulp mixed with cream. They say it is efficacious. They call it "silgreen." In old English sin-green means evergreen. Silgreen and singreen seem close congeners. Possibly sil or sin may be translated "through" as much as "ever," for the leaf of the plant is thick, and green all through, if broken like a tough cake. I think I would rather use it than the tobacco juice which the mowers and reapers are now so fond of applying to the cuts they frequently get. They appear to have quite forsaken the ancient herbal remedies, as the sickle-herb, knotted figwort, and so on. Tobacco juice does not seem a nice thing for a bleeding wound; probably it gets well rather in spite of it than because of it.

If any one wanted a tonic in old farmhouses, it used to be the custom, and till quite lately, to put a nail in sherry, making an iron wine, which was believed to be very restorative. Now, one of the recent additions to the wine merchants' lists is a sherry from Australia, Tintara, which is recommended on account of its having been extracted from grapes growing on an ironstone soil. So the old things come up again in another form. There are scores of iron tonics of various kinds sold in the shops; possibly the nail in sherry was almost as good. Those who did not care to purchase sherry, put their nail in cider. A few odd names of plants may yet be heard among the labourers, such as "loving-andrews" for the blue meadow geranium; "loggerums" for the hard knapweed, and also for the scabious; "Saturday night's pepper" for the spurge, which grows wild in gardens; and there is a weed called "good-neighbour," but as to which it is I