Herb Of Grace

________________________________________________
Title:     Herb Of Grace
Author: Benjamin Taylor [More Titles by Taylor]

Why did Ophelia say: 'There's rue for you, and here's some for me; we may call it herb grace o' Sundays, for you must wear your rue with a difference'? For the same reason that Perdita says, in The Winter's Tale, when welcoming the guests of her reputed father and the shepherd:

'Reverend sirs,
For you there's rosemary and rue; these keep
Seeming and savour all the winter long;
Grace and remembrance be to you both,
And welcome to our shearing.'

Remembrance, as we have already seen in the last chapter, was symbolized by the rosemary, and by both Ophelia and Perdita the rue is taken as the symbol of grace. How this came to be is what we have now to consider; but perhaps Mr. Ellacombe, author of Plant-Lore of Shakespeare, is stretching rather far in suggesting that the rue was implied by Antony, when he used the word 'grace' in addressing the weeping followers (Antony and Cleopatra, Act IV., Scene 2) thus:

'Grace grow where these drops fall.'

What Ophelia said was: 'There's rosemary, that's for remembrance. Pray, love, remember. And there is pansies, that's for thought. There's fennel for you, and columbines. There's rue for you, and here's some for me. We may call it herb-grace o' Sundays. Oh! you may wear your rue with a difference.'

There was a method in her madness, and she was distributing her flowers according to the characters and moods of the recipients. Fennel, for instance, emblemised flattery, and columbine ingratitude. Rue emblemised either remorse or repentance--either sorrow or grace--so 'you may wear your rue with a difference.'

So we find the gardener in Richard II. saying, after the departure of the anxious Queen:

'Here she did fall a tear; here in this place
I'll set a bank of rue, sour herb of grace;
Rue, even for ruth, here shortly shall be seen,
In the remembrance of a weeping Queen.'

The herb was believed to be endowed with high moral and medicinal properties, yet was supposed to prosper better in one's garden if stolen from that of a neighbour. But originally it was associated with sorrow and pity. The word rue is doubtless of the same root as 'ruth,' and to rue is to be sorry for, to have remorse. Ruth is the English equivalent of the Latin ruta, and in early English appeared as 'rude.' As regret is always more or less a mark of repentance, it was the most natural thing in the world for the herb of ruth, or sorrow, to become the herb of repentance; and as repentance is a sign of grace, so rue became known as 'herb of grace.' This, in brief, is the connection, but it is worth noting in passing that rue is only once mentioned in the Bible, and then only along with a number of other bitter herbs, and without any special significance.

There is this association between rue and rosemary, that both are natives of some of the more barren coasts of the Mediterranean, and that both were very early admitted to the English herb-garden. The old herbalists make frequent mention of rue, and even in Anglo-Saxon times it seems to have been extensively used in medicine. Three peculiarities--a strong, aromatic smell, a bitter taste, and a blistering quality in the leaves--were quite sufficient to establish it in the pharmacopoeia of the herb doctors.

The curative qualities of what Spenser calls the 'ranke-smelling rue' were reputedly of a very varied sort. Most readers will remember the reference in Paradise Lost:

'Michael from Adam's eyes the film removed,
Which the false fruit which promised clearer sight
Had bred; then purged with euphraie and rue
The visual nerve, for he had much to see.'

And perhaps its most popular use was as an eyewash. The old writers have recorded some hidden virtues known only to the animal world, such as that weasels prepared themselves for a rat-fight by a diet of rue. Old Parkinson, the herbalist, says that 'without doubt it is a most wholesome herb, although bitter and strong.' He speaks of a 'bead-rowl' of the virtues of rue, but warns people of the 'too frequent or over-much use thereof.'

As both a stimulant and a narcotic the plant has even now recognised virtues, and is not without its uses in modern medicine. The Italians are said to eat the leaves in salad, but hardly of that species--Ruta montana--which botanists say it is dangerous to handle without gloves. Our garden species is Ruta graveolens and is used by the French perfumers in the manufacture of 'Thieves Vinegar,' or 'Marseilles Vinegar,' once accounted an effective protection against fevers and all infectious diseases.

A curious instance of the value of the herb in this respect occurred in 1760. In the summer of that year a rumour arose, and rapidly spread in London, that the plague had broken out in St. Thomas's Hospital. Immediately there was what would nowadays be called a 'boom' in rue, the price of which rose forty per cent. in a single day in Covent Garden. To allay the popular alarm a manifesto was issued, signed by the physicians, surgeons, and apothecaries of the hospital, certifying that there were no other than the 'usual' diseases among the patients in the wards.

Another explanation of the origin of the name 'herb of grace' has been given than that referred to above. Warburton, among others, thinks that the name was adopted because the old Romanists used the plant on Sundays in their 'exorcisms.' However this may be, rue, or the herb of grace, has been in this country long accounted an antidote of witchcraft. But then, so it was in the days of Aristotle, before it became 'herb of grace,' and when it was hung round the neck as an amulet. The fact is, however, that rue became an antidote of witchcraft because it had become a noted implement in enchantment.

Through its numerous reputed properties, rue early found its way into the magic cauldron.

'Then sprinkles she the juice of rue,
With nine drops of the midnight dew,
From lunary distilling,'

as Drayton has it. In this incantation, again, we have the association with moonwort; and the connection is further illustrated in an old oracle ascribed to Hecate: 'From a root of wild rue fashion and polish a statue; adorn it with household lizards; grind myrrh, gum, and frankincense with the same reptiles, and let the mixture stand in the air during the waning of a moon; then address your words.'

With regard to the association with moonwort, it is interesting to recall that this is one of the plants supposed to be employed by birds for opening nests and removing impediments. Thus in an anecdote gravely related to Aubrey, we find this virtue mentioned: 'Sir Bennet Hoskins told me that his keeper at his parke at Morehampton, in Herefordshire, did for experiment's sake drive an iron naile thwart the hole of a woodpecker's nest, there being a tradition that the dam will bring some leafe to open it. He layed at the bottom of the tree a cleane sheet, and before many houres passed, the naile came out, and he found a leafe lying by it on the sheete. They say the Moonwort will doe such things.'

On the same subject Coles, the botanist, writes: 'It is said, yea, and believed, that Moonwort will open the locks wherewith dwelling-houses are made fast, if it be put into the keyhole.' And Culpeper, the herbalist, writes thus: 'Moonwort is a herb which, they say, will open locks and unshoe such horses as tread upon it. This some laugh to scorn, and these no small fools neither; but country people that I know call it Unshoe-the-horse. Besides, I have heard commanders say that on White Down in Devonshire, near Tiverton, there were found thirty horseshoes pulled off from the feet of the Earl of Essex's horses, being there drawn up in a body, many of them being newly shod, and no reason known, which caused much admiration.' As well it might! This power of the moonwort is said to be still believed in in Normandy, and a similar virtue was also ascribed to the vervain and the mandrake, both associated with rue.

This curious property of moonwort it is which is referred to in Divine Weekes thus:

'Horses that, feeding on the grassy hills,
Tread upon moonwort with their hollow heels,
Though lately shod, at night go barefoot home,
Their maister musing where their shoes become.
Oh, moonwort! tell me where thou hid'st the smith,
Hammer and pinchers, thou unshodd'st them with?
Alas! what lock or iron engine is't
That can the subtle secret strength resist?
Still the best farrier cannot set a shoe
So sure but thou, so shortly, canst undo.'

The old alchemists, however, had a more profitable use for moonwort than the unshoeing of horses; they employed it for converting quicksilver into pure silver, at a time when that metal was neither 'degraded' nor 'depreciated.'

There is an old and pleasant belief, of which John Ruskin makes effective use in driving home one of his morals, that flowers always bloom best in the gardens of those who love them. One could easily find a rationalistic explanation of this sentiment, of course, but it is akin to a superstition entertained in some parts that wherever the moonwort flourishes the owner of the garden is honest.

The ingredients thrown into the mystic cauldron by European sorcerers were in close imitation of those of the ancient alchemists. Moncure Conway has pointed out that among the ingredients used by English and Scotch witches were plants gathered, as in Egypt, at certain seasons or phases of the moon. Chief among such plants were rue and vervain. The Druids called vervain the 'Holy herb,' and gathered it when the dog-star rose, placing a sacrifice of honey in the earth from which they removed it.

In old Greece and Rome vervain was sacred to the god of war, and in Scandinavia it was also sacred to Thor. It was, moreover, carried by ambassadors of peace, and was supposed to preserve from lightning any house decorated with it. In later times it was believed that a decoction of vervain and rue, mixed, had such a remarkable effect on gun-metal that anyone using a gun over which the liquid had been poured would shoot 'as straight as a die.' This may be news to our modern musketry instructors.

Had this belief, one may wonder, anything to do with the special effect on the eye always supposed to be possessed by rue? Its virtue as an eye-salve, at any rate, may explain how it came to be regarded as capable of bestowing the 'second sight.' To this day, in the Tyrol it is still believed to confer fine vision. If hallucinations were, as Moncure Conway assumes, the basis of belief in second sight, then we can understand the reputed virtues of rue in its narcotic qualities. We have seen how it came to be called 'herb of grace,' yet some think it got this name through being used in witchcraft by exorcists to try the devil.

Speculating on why herbs and roots should have been esteemed magical, Mr. Andrew Lang concludes that it is enough to remember that herbs really have medicinal properties, and that untutored people invariably confound medicine with magic. Thus it was easy to suppose that a plant possessed virtue not only when swallowed, but when carried in the hand. The same writer examines the theory that rue was the Homeric moly, which in a former chapter we identified with the mandrake. But Lang rejects that theory, and says that rue was called 'herb of grace' and was used for sprinkling holy water because in pre-Christian times it had been supposed to have effect against the powers of evil. The early Christians were thus just endeavouring to combine the old charm of rue with the new potency of holy water.

'Euphrasy and rue,' says Lang, 'were employed to purge and purify mortal eyes. Pliny is very learned about the magical virtues of rue. Just as the stolen potato is sovran for rheumatism, so "rue stolen thriveth the best." The Samoans think that their most valued vegetables were stolen from heaven by a Samoan visitor. It is remarkable that rue, according to Pliny, is killed by the touch of a woman, in the same way as, according to Josephus, the mandrake is tamed. These passages prove that the classical peoples had the same extraordinary superstitions about women as the Bushmen and Red Indians. Indeed, Pliny describes a magical manner of defending the crops from blight by aid of women, which is actually practised in America by the red-man.'

Although rue was found in the witches' cauldron, it is also to be found as a popular specific against the blight of witchcraft. Concerning this, however, Moncure Conway says that 'the only region on the Continent where any superstition concerning rue is found resembling the form it assumed in England as affecting the eye is in the Tyrol, where it is one of five plants--the others being broom-straw, agrimony, maidenhair, and ground-ivy--which are bound together, and believed, if carried about, to enable the bearer to see witches, or if laid over the door, to keep any witch who shall seek to enter fastened on the threshold.'

In Scandinavia and North Germany, St. John's wort was used in much the same way for the same purpose.

As to the vervain, which we have seen to be associated with rue, this is a plant the use of which against witchcraft was more widely distributed, just as its medical virtues were also more extensively known. The vervain, indeed, was a sacred plant among the Greeks, as well as among the Druids, who gathered it with solemn religious ceremonies, as they did the sacred mistletoe. Vervain was most esteemed, however, as a love potion, but the connection between its virtues in this respect, and its power over witches and spirits of evil, opens up a branch of inquiry away from our present purpose.

We speak of vervain in connection with rue, because it was the 'holy herb,' just as rue was the 'herb of grace.' Not only was the vervain sacred among the early Druids, but it acquired an early sanctity among Christians. Thus the legend runs:

'All hail, thou holy herb, vervain,
Growing on the ground;
On the Mount of Calvary
There wast thou found!
Thou helpest many a grief,
And staunchest many a wound;
In the name of sweet Jesu,
I lift thee from the ground.'

Mr. Thiselton-Dyer says that a wreath of vervain is now presented to newly-married brides in Germany, but whether this is a survival of the sanctity of the plant, or of its ancient reputation as a love-philtre and charm, is not very clear.

It is to be feared that vervain has sadly fallen out of favour in this country, although not many years ago a pamphlet was written to recommend the wearing of vervain tied by white satin ribbon round the neck, as preservative against evil influences and infection.

'On the Continent'--rather a wide term--Mr. Hilderic Friend says, 'the three essential plants for composing a magic wreath are rue, crane's-bill, and willow.' The crane's-bill is the Herb Robert, or Robin Hood, and the willow has always been connected with lovers. Such a wreath, then, is made by lovers when they wish to see their 'fate.' Love-sick maidens will employ such a wreath to find out how long they have yet to remain single. They walk backwards towards some selected tree, and as they walk throw the wreath over their heads until it fastens on one of the branches. Failure to 'catch on' requires another backward walk, and so on--each failure to buckle the tree counting as a year of spinsterhood. It seems rather an awkward way of getting at the future, but if not more blind than other processes of love divination, would at least require the guarantee of the absence of tight-lacing among the maidens practising it.

Aristotle mentions the use made by the Greeks of rue as a charm against evil spirits, and he accounts for it, somewhat singularly, by the habit of the Greeks in not sitting down to table with strangers. The explanation is, that when they ate with strangers they were apt to become excited and nervous, and so to eat too rapidly, with the result of flatulence and indigestion. These effects were equivalent to bewitchment, as, indeed, disorders of the digestive organs are frequently regarded by many Eastern peoples even to this day. As rue was found to be an effectual antidote to these distressing symptoms, it became a charm against enchantment.

Among many old-wife recipes for the cure of warts is the use of rue. Most people know the old folk-jingle:

'Ashen tree, ashen tree,
Pray bury these warts of me,'

which has to be accompanied by the thrust of a pin into the bark of the tree. The idea was doubtless to extract the sap, for the application of thistle-juice and the juice of the ranunculus are said to prove efficacious in removing warts. In Devonshire they use the juice of an apple, but in some parts of the country rue is preferred. Other wart-curing plants are the spurge, the poppy, the celandine, the marigold, the briony, and the crowfoot.

As old Michael Drayton remarked:

'In medicine, simples had the power
That none need then the planetary hour
To helpe their workinge, they so juiceful were.'

There is a substratum of truth in this, although it requires a wide stretch of imagination, as well as a profundity of faith, to believe that consumption can be cured by passing the body of the patient three times through a wreath of woodbine cut during the increase of the March moon. Yet to this day some French peasants believe that the curative properties of vervain are most pronounced when the plant is gathered, with proper invocations, at a certain phase of the moon.

The notion that animals are acquainted with the medical properties of plants is an old one, probably older than either Pliny or Aristotle. Our own Gerarde, the herbalist, tells that the name celandine was given to that flower (which Wordsworth loved) from a word meaning swallow, because it is used by swallows to 'restore sight to their young ones when their eyes be put out.'

Then Coles, the old botanist, also writes: 'It is known to such as have skill of Nature what wonderful care she hath of the smallest creatures, giving to them a knowledge of medicine to help themselves, if haply diseases are among them. The swallow cureth her dim eyes with Celandine: the wesell knoweth well the virtue of Herb Grace: the dove the verven: the dogge dischargeth his mawe with a kind of grass: and too long it were to reckon up all the medicines which the beasts are known to use by Nature's direction only.'

A Warwickshire proverb runs to this effect:

'Plant your sage and rue together,
The sage will grow in any weather,'

the meaning of which is not very clear--but obscurity is a common complaint of rhymed proverbs. Another rhyme, however, in which rue appears, has a more practical note:

'What savour is better, if physicke be true,
For places infected, than wormwood and rue?'

Rue, indeed, seems to have been in special request as a disinfectant long before carbolic acid was invented, or Condy heard of, yet, perhaps, containing the germ of the idea materialised in 'Sanitas.' For disinfecting purposes wormwood and rue were used sometimes together, and sometimes separately.

The connection between plants and heraldic badges is often close, and although we do not find rue frequent in heraldry, one curious instance of it is interesting. In 809 an Order was created whereof the collar was made of a design in thistles and rue--the thistle because 'being full of prickles is not to be touched without hurting the skin,' rue because it 'is good against serpents and poison.'

Here we have a suggestion of the lizards of the old oracle quoted above.

[The end]
Benjamin Taylor's essay: Herb Of Grace

________________________________________________



GO TO TOP OF SCREEN