< !
Im'
Ii h^
■il 1 J
either for sickness or wound.” And he goes on to describe a
variety of medicinal uses for the bark, buds, berries, leaves, and
flowers; summing up the virtues of the Elder with the remark that
“ every part of the tree is useful, as may be seen at large in Block-
witzius’s anatomic thereof.” In this work is the following description
of an amulet for the use of an epileptic subjedl, which is to be
made of the Elder growing on a S a llow ;—“ I f in the month of October,
a little before the full moon, you pluck a twig of the Elder, and
cut the cane that is betwixt two of its knees, or knots, in nine pieces,
and these pieces, being bound in a piece of linen, be in a thread so
hung about the neck that they touch the spoon of the heart, or the
sword-formed cartilage; and, that they may stay more firmly in that
place, they are to be bound thereon with a linen or leather roller
wrapt about the body, till the thread break of itself. The thread
being broken, and the roller removed, the amulet is not at all to be
touched with bare hands, but it ought to be taken hold on by some
instrument, and buried in a place that nobody may touch it.”
One mode of charming warts away is to take an Elder-shoot,
and rub it on the part, then cut as many notches on the twig as
you have warts, bury it in a place where it will soon decay, and as
it rots away the warts will disappear. Another plan is to obtain a
green Elder-stick, and rub the warts well with it, after which bury
the stick to rot away in muck.
The black berries of the Elder are full of a deep violet-coloured
juice, which, according to Virgil, the god Pan had his face smeared
with, in compliance with the old Roman custom of painting their
gods on solemn occasions.
To dream of Elder-berries denotes sickness. The tree is under
the dominion of Venus.
E L E C A M P A N E .—Of the Elecampane (Inula Helenium),
Rapin writes :—
“ Elecampane, the beauteous Helen’s flower,
Mingles among the rest her silver store ;
Helen, whose charms could royal breasts inspire
With such fierce flames as set the world on fire.”
When Paris carried oif the celebrated Helen, the lovely wife of
Menelaus was said to have had in her hand a nosegay of the bright
yellow flowers of the Elecampane, which was thenceforth named
Helenium, in her honour. The Romans employed the roots of
Elecampane as an edible vegetable; the monks, who knew it as
Inula campana, considered it capable of restoring health to the
heart; and the herbalists deemed it marvellously good for many
disorders, and admirable as a pedloral medicine. Elecampane
lozenges have long been popular. Turner, in his ‘ Brittish Physician,’
calls the Inula campana, the Sun-flower, and says that the
root chewed fastens loose teeth, and preserves them from rotting,
and that the distilled water of the green leaves makes the face
fair. From its broad leaves, the Elecampane is sometimes called
the Elf-dock. It is held to be under Mercury.
E L IC H R Y S U M .—This species of everlasting flower derived
its name, according to Themistagoras, from the nymph Elichrysa,
who having adorned the goddess Diana with its blossoms, the
plant was called after her, Elichryson. Its old English name was
Golden Flower, or Golden Moth-wort, and Gerarde tells us that
the blossoms, if cut before they are quite ripe, will remain beautiful
a long time after. “ For which cause of long lasting the images
and carved gods were wont to weare garlands thereof: whereupon
some have called it ‘ God’s floure.’ For which purpose Ptolemy,
King of oEgypt, did most diligently observe them, as Pliny
writeth.”
E L M .—The ancients had a tradition that, at the first sound
of the plaintive strains which proceeded from tlie lyre of Orpheus,
when he was lamenting the death of Eurydice, there sprang up a
forest of Elms; and it was beneath an Elm that the Thracian
bard sought repose after his unavailing expedition to the infernal
regions to recover his lost love. Rapin thus tells the tale:—*
“ When wretched Orpheus left the Stygian coast,
Now hopeless since again his spouse was lost,
Beneath the preferable shade he sate
Of a tall Elm, and mourned his cruel fate:
Where Rhodope rears high her steepy brow,
While Heber’s gentle current strays below.
On his sweet lyre the skilful artist played,
Whose all-commanding strings the woods obeyed;
And crowding round him formed a hasty shade.
There Cypress, Ilex, Willows, Planes unite,
And th’ Elm, ambitious of a greater height,
Presents before his view a married Vine,
Which round her husband, Elm, did circling twine.
And warned him to indulge a second flame;
But he neglects th’ advice, and slights the dame :
By fatal coldness still condemned to prove
A victim to the rage of female love.”
The “ wedding of the Elm to the Vine,” alluded to in the above
lines, was a very favourite topic among the old Roman poets;
Virgil, indeed, seledts the juncftion of the Elm and the Vine as the
subject of one whole book of his ‘ Georgies.’ The ancients twined
their Vines round the trunks of the E lm ; and the owner of a Vineyard
tended his Elms as carefully as his Vines.——When Achilles
killed the father of Andromache, he ere(ifed in his honour a tomb,
around which nymphs came and planted E lm s.- Perhaps on
account of its longevity, or because it produces no fruit, the
Greeks and Romans considered the E lm ‘ a funereal tree: in our
own times, it is connecfled with burials, inasmuch as coffins are
generally made of its wood. The ancients called the Elm, the
tree of Oneiros, or of Morpheus, the god of sleep. As a widey—
2