The Romans made use of the black Elder juice as a hair dye. From the flowers a fragrant water is now distilled as a perfume; and a gently stimulating ointment is prepared with lard for dressing burns and [169] scalds. Another ointment, concocted from the green berries, with camphor and lard, is ordered by the London College as curative of piles. "The leaves of Elder boiled soft, and with a little linseed oil added thereto, if then laid upon a piece of scarlet or red cloth, and applied to piles as hot as this can be suffered, being removed when cold, and replaced by one such cloth after another upon the diseased part by the space of an hour, and in the end some bound to the place, and the patient put warm to bed. This hath not yet failed at the first dressing to cure the disease, but if the patient be dressed twice, it must needs cure them if the first fail." The Elder was named _Eldrun_ and _Burtre_ by the Anglo-Saxons. It is now called _Bourtree_ in Scotland, from the central pith in the younger branches which children bore out so as to make pop guns:-- "Bour tree--Bour tree: crooked rung, Never straight, and never strong; Ever bush, and never tree Since our Lord was nailed on thee." The Elder is specially abundant in Kent around Folkestone. By the Gauls it was called "Scovies," and by the Britons "Iscaw." This is the tree upon which the legend represents Judas as having hanged himself, or of which the cross was made at the crucifixion. In _Pier's Plowman's Vision_ it is said:-- "Judas he japed with Jewen silver, And sithen an eller hanged hymselve." Gerard says "the gelly of the Elder, otherwise called Jew's ear, taketh away inflammations of the mouth and throat if they be washed therewith, and doth in like Manner help the uvula." He refers here to a fungus [170] which grows often from the trunk of the Elder, and the shape of which resembles the human ear. Alluding to this fungus, and to the supposed fact that the berries of the Elder are poisonous to peacocks, a quaint old rhyme runs thus:-- "For the coughe take Judas' eare, With the paring of a peare, And drynke them without feare If you will have remedy." "Three syppes for the hycocke, And six more for the chycocke: Thus will my pretty pycocke Recover bye and bye."