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In former times it appears to have been rather highly thought of, particularly as a remedy for diarrhoea; and Dioscorides, Culpepper, and Gerarde favorably allude to it. "Having been furnished with a good supply of fresh mullein from a garden near this city, where it is extensively grown, I commenced operations. As it proved useful, subsequent supplies were procured from our drug-contractor.
The potato, however, he praises as nutritious and pleasant to the taste, yet, as Gerarde the herbalist also says, flatulent. Venner refers to a mode of sopping them in wine as existing in his time. They were sometimes roasted in the embers, and there were other ways of dressing them.
As early as the twelfth century this idea was promulgated by Giraldus Cambrensis in his "Topographia Hiberniae;" and Gerarde in his "Herball, or General History of Plants," published in the year 1597, narrates the following: "There are found in the north parts of Scotland, and the isles adjacent, called Orcades, certain trees, whereon do grow small fishes, of a white colour, tending to russet, wherein are contained little living creatures; which shells, in time of maturity, do open, and out of them grow those little living things which, falling into the water, do become fowls, whom we call barnacles, in the north of England brant-geese, and in Lancashire tree-geese; but the others that do fall upon the land perish, and do come to nothing."
Donne is one of the most fascinating, in some ways one of the most inscrutable, figures in our literature, and we may contemplate him with instruction from his first wild escapade into the Azores down to his voluntary penitence in the pulpit and the winding-sheet. THE HERBALL or General Historie of Plantes. Gathered by John Gerarde, of London, Master in Chirurgerie.
The German women used to say that 'Babies come out of the cabbage-heads. The Irish peasant ties a cabbage-leaf around the neck for sore throat. According to Gerarde, the Spartans ate watercress with their bread, firmly believing that it increased their wit and wisdom. The old proverb is, 'Eat cress to learn more wit.
Gerarde notices this curious belief, and tells us that, "the leaves of this tree are so great virtue against serpents that they dare not so much as touch the morning and evening shadows of the tree, but shun them afar off." Hence ash-sap was a German remedy for serpent bites.
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