Chapter 37

In the Thüringer-wald fern is called irr-kraut (stray herb), and by some atter-kreutich (adder-herb): if you step over it without seeing it, it so bothers and bewilders you, that you no longer know your whereabouts even in the most familiar parts of the forest. To prevent or correct your straying, you must sit down and put your shoes on the wrong feet, or if a woman, untie your apron and turn it wrong side out; immediately you know your way again (Hraupt's Zeitschr. 3, 364. Bechstein's Franken pp. 269. 286.) No doubt the puzzle-seed had got into the shoe or cincture, and fell out when these were taken off. It is said also, if you have adder-herb about you, you will be pursued by adders till you have thrown it away. In some parts they call it Walburgis-kraut. Its Slavic name is Russ. páporot, Pol. paproc, O. Boh. paprut, now papradj, kapradj, Slovèn. praprat, praprot; Lith. papartis, Lett. papardi. Woycicki 1, 94 also says it blossoms exactly at midnight of St John's eve, and it is a hard matter to get hold of the flower (kwiat paproci), for the picking is attended by storm and thunder; but whoever gets possession of it becomes rich, and can prophesy (see Suppl.).

OHG. pipôz, artemisia (Graff 3, 22, but misplaced and mispelt), MHG. bîbôz (rhy. grôz), Ls. 2, 526; its corruption into our meaningless beifuss, Nethl. bivoet, is as early as Gl. Jun. 406 bifuz. The word seems pure German, formed from pôzan cudere, like anapôz incus, anvil, MHG. anebôz, our amboss; and we ought to pronounce and spell it beiboss. The meaning must be something like that of beischlag (by-blow), which in the Logau district means a bastard. In OS. it would be bîbôt, which resembles its Lett. name bihbotes. Our LG. buk, bucke seems an abbrev. dimin. of endearment (but-ke); (12) Dan. bynke, but Sw. gråbo, gray nest. Whoso hath beifuss in the house, him the devil may not harm; hangs the root over the door, the house is safe from all things evil and uncanny. On St John's day they gird themselves with beifuss, then throw it in the fire, while spells and rhymes are said (p. 618); hence the names Johannisgürtel, sonnenwend-gürtel, gürtel-kraut, Fr. herbe de S. Jean. They dig the root up solemnly, twine it into wreaths, hang it about them, and each flings it into the flame along with any griefs he may chance to have about him. He that has beifuss on him wearies not on his way (Megenberg 385, 16): this is imitated from Pliny 26, 89: 'artemisiam alligatam qui habet viator negatur lassitudinem sentire;' also the Ermhneiai palaiai (ed. Sillig p. 212): artemisian thn botanhn ei tij ecei en odw luei ton kamaton. The AS. name is mucgwyrt, Engl. mugwort, muggon: 'wið miclum gonge ofer land, þylæs he teorige, mucgwyrt nime him on hand, oððe dô on his scô þylæs he mêdige; and þonne he niman wille ær sunnan upgange, cweðe þâs word ærest: tollam te artemisia, ne lassus sim in via. gesegna hie, þonne þû upteo.' R. Chambers p. 34 gives some Scotch stories of its healing power. A girl in Galloway was near dying of consumption, and all had despaired of her recovery, when a mermaid, who often gave the people good counsel, sang:

Wad ye let the bonnie may die i' your hand,

And the mugwort flowering in the land!
They immediately plucked the herb, gave her the juice of it, and she was restored to health. Another maiden had died of the same disease, and her body was being carried past the port of Glasgow, when the mermaid raised her head above the water, and in slow accents cried:

If they wad drink nettles in March,

And eat muggons in May,

Sae mony braw maidens

Wad na gang to the clay.
Why should not the Goths already have possessed a bibáuts too? That they had significant names of their own for herbs and shrubs, is plain from Ulphilas's translations of the Greek term by a native one: batoj, rubus, becomes aíhvatundi, Mk 12, 26. Luke 6, 44. 20, 37, which apparently contains aíhvus equus, tundi fomes (tinder, OHG. zuntara); sukaminoj báinabagms, Luke 17, 6, i.e. bone-tree, and to this day we call privet (hartriegel, OHG. hartrugil, harttrugil? Graff 5, 501) bonewood. The reasons of the names are lost to us now (see Suppl.).

Hederich is not an old German word, being formed from the Latin hedera, only instead of ivy it means ground-ivy, Linné's glechoma hederacea, a weed with small blue flowers. Its native name is gunde-rebe, gundel-rebe, donner-rebe, gunder-mann, OHG. gunder-reba, 'acer' (Graff 2, 354), which cannot mean maple, for it is always classed among herbs. It was reckoned sanative, and a safeguard against sorcery; when cows are first driven out to pasture, they are milked through a wreath of gundermann, and whoever wears this on his head can tell who are witches, Sup. I, 462-3. Gund points to the ancient valkyr (p. 422); donner to the flower's blue colour, and to the Thunder-god. The Lettons too have named it pehrkones from the god Pehrkon. The Boh. ohnica (from ohen, fire) stands for the yellow hederich (hedge-mustard?) that overspreads whole fields: if you call out 'hederich' to peasant women weeding it, they scold you (see Suppl.).

One kind of scabiosa is named succissa, or morsus diaboli, Teufels-biss or –abbiss, Engl. devil's bit, Dan. diävels bid, Boh. certkus, certuw kus, Russ. diávolskoye unkushénie (and cherto-grýz, chértov ogrýzok); but also Russ. chértov pálets, devil's thumb, Pol. czartowe zebro, devil's rib. The root is stumpy at the end, as if bitten off. Oribasius says, the devil was doing such mischief with this herb, that the Mother of God took pity, and deprived him of the power; he out of spite bit the end of the root off, and it grows so to this day. The man that has it about him, neither devil nor hag has power to hurt. Some say the devil bit it off because he grudged men the use of its healing power. If dug up at midnight of St John's eve, the roots are yet unbitten, and chase the devil away. Thrown under the table, it makes guests fall out and fight (see Suppl.).

Some herbs are called by men's names. Bertram, though found even in OHG. as Perhtram (Graff 3, 349), MHG. Berchtram, Ls. 2, 526, is merely pyrethrum altered to give it a German sound. What seems more remarkable is 'herba boni Henrici' (chenopodium), or simply bonus Henricus, gut Heinrich; stolz Heinrich, proud H. (atriplex); roth Heinrich, red H., Superst. I, 1002. I account for it by the old beliefs in elves and kobolds, for whom Heinz or Heinrich was a favourite name (pp. 503-4), which was afterwards transferred to devils and witches, and to such demonic beings was ascribed the healing virtue of the herb. Even the legend of Poor Henry, whose origin has never been explored, may have to do with a herb that cured leprosy; and the 'herba boni Henrici' is said to have been used as a remedy for that very disease.

When a universal power to heal all sicknesses was attributed to a herb, the Greeks called it to panakej, h panakeia (as the Celts named the mistletoe olhiach, uileiceach), which got personified itself into a daughter of Asklepios, Panakeia. In our language we find no plant named all-heil, all-heila, but there is a selp-heila (euphrasia), Graff 4, 864, and the herbs heil-aller-welt (Achillea, millefolium), heil-aller-schaden (supercilium Veneris), as well as aller-mann-harnisch and neun-manns-kraft, 9 man power. The significance of the number nine shows itself no less in garlands being made of nine sorts of flowers. Heil-houbito, heal-head, Graff 4, 759, is hermodactylus, whatever that may be, and another name for it is hunt-louch, dog-leek 2, 143 (see Suppl.).

Two herbs commonly coupled together by alliteration are doste and doránt (origanum, antirrhinum). OHG. dosto (Graff 5, 232) is our real native word for what we now call wilde majoran, thymian (marjoram, thyme), or wolgemut (well of mood), Boh. dobrá-mysl. For doránt we have sometimes oránt; some think it is not antirrhinum, but marrubium, OHG. Got-fargezzan. Both herbs are shunned by the little-wights and nixes; hence the speeches put in their mouths: 'If ye hadn't doránt and dosten here, I'd help ye the sooner to sip that beer!' 'Up with your skirts, ye merrimen all, Lest into dost and doránd ye fall!' 'See that ye bump not against duránt, Or we sha'n't get back to our fatherland.' DS. no. 65. Jul. Schmidt p. 132. Redeker no. 45 (see Suppl.).

Along with doste, hart-heu (hypericum, St John's wort), otherwise called hart-hun (p. 1029n.), will often scare spirits away: 'Marjoram, John's wort, heather white, Put the fiend in a proper fright.' Hypericum perforatum, fuga daemonum, devil's flight (see Suppl.).

Widertân (adiantum), formed with the past part. of tuon, to do, afterwards corrupted into widerthon, widertod: the genuine form is retained by G. Frank (Schm. 4, 34). The Herbal says: Therewith be many pranks played, this we let be as foolery and devilry. 'Tis called maidenhair also, and is of fair golden hue. The old wives have many a fancy touching herbs, and say the red steinbrechlin (saxifraga) with small lentil leaves is indeed abthon, but the naked maidenhair is widerthon, and with these two they can both 'abthon' and 'widerthon' as it please them. Does this mean, remove and restore virility? in that case abetân and widertân would be opposites, like 'set on' and 'take off' on p. 1074. Frisch 1, 5b has abthon trichomanes, polytrichon, and 2, 446b widerthon lunaria, thora salutifera (see Suppl.).

Some herbs, plantago and proserpinaca, take their names from growing on the wayside (proserpere) and being exposed to the tread (plantae) of passengers: OHG. wegarih (Graff 1, 670), our wegerich; OHG. wegapreita, our wegebreit, AS. wegbrœde, Engl. waybrede (broad, not 'bread'), Dan. veibred; OHG. wegaspreiti, -spreading (Graff 6, 395). Again, OHG. wegatreta, umbitreta (Graff 5, 552), our wegetritt; OHG. wegawarta, our wegewarte (ward, watch, wait), a name also given to cichorium, succory. There are some myths about it: the herb was once a maiden that on the wayside awaited her lover (p. 828), like Sigûne in Tit. 117-8. Paracelsus observes (Opp. 1616. 2, 304), that the flowers of the wegwarte turn to the sun, and their strength is greatest in sunshine, but after seven years the root changes into the form of a bird (see Suppl.).

Lauch, OHG. louh, AS. leác (leek), ON. laukr, is a general designation of juicy herbs; some species appear to have been sacred: 'allium (gar-leek) caepasque inter deos in jurejurando habet Aegyptus.' Pliny 19, 6 [32]. When Helgi was born, and his father Sigmundr returned from battle, it is said in Sæm. 150a:

sialfr gêck vîsi or vîgrymo

ûngom fœra îtrlauk grami.
In Völs. saga cap. 8: 'Sigmundr var þâ kominn frâ orrostu, ok gekk með einum lauk îmôt syni sînum, ok hermeð gefr hann honum Helga nafn.' The îtr-laukr is allium praestans, allium victoriale: it is not clear whether the king bore it as home-returning victor, or whether it was usual to wear it in giving names. Antiquity sheds no light on either custom. (13) When the drinking-cup was blessed, a leek was thrown into it, Sæm. 195b (see Suppl.).

The sorbus or service-tree is in ON. reynir, Sw. rönn, Dan. rönne (rowan?): it is a holy shrub, for Thôrr in the river clutched it to save himself, hence it is said: 'reynir er biörg Thôrs,' sorbus auxilium Thori est, Sn. 114. In Sweden they still believe that a staff of this rönn defends you from sorcery, and on board ship the common man likes to have something made of rönn-wood, as a protection against storms and watersprites; flögrönn is of use in occult science, Afzel. 1, 19 (see Suppl.).

In Servian, samdokaz and okolchep are herbs which, put in a love-potion, compel the lover to come to his mistress. Ustuk is both a herb and the charm repeated by a sorceress to make a disease depart (ustuknuti), Vuk sub vv.

The Pol. trojziele (three-herb) is a marvellous plant with blue leaves and red flowers: it inspires love, makes you forget, and transports you whither you please (14) (see Suppl.).

In the poem of Elegast 763 seq. there occurs a nameless herb, which one need only put in the mouth to understand what the cocks crow and the dogs bark. Villemarqué says, whoever accidentally steps on the golden herb (p. 1207), falls asleep directly, and understands the speech of dogs, wolves and birds. In another case the knowledge of birds' language comes of eating a white snake (p. 982), in the Edda by eating of the dragon's heart. A fairytale makes some one be three years learning what it is that the dogs bark, the birds sing, and the frogs croak (15) (see Suppl.).




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