Of the plants which play a part in Saxon superstition, first and foremost is the fulsome garlic—not only employed against witches, but likewise regarded as a remedy in manifold illnesses and as an antidote against poison. Garlic put into the money-bag will prevent the witches from getting at it, and in the stables will keep the milk from being abstracted, while rubbed over the body it will defend a person against the pest. To the lime-tree are also attached magic qualities, and in some villages it is usual to plant a lime-tree before the house to keep witches from entering. Much prized is the lilac-bush. Its blossoms, made into tea, are good for the fever; and the bush itself is often reverently saluted with bent knee and uncovered head. Many of the formulas against sickness are directed to be recited while walking thrice round a bush of lilac. The first strawberry-blossom, if swallowed by whoever finds it, will keep him free from sickness during that year. The four-leaved shamrock here, as elsewhere, is considered to confer particular luck on the finder, but only when he carries it home without having to cross over water of any sort. Laid in the prayer-book, a four-leaved shamrock will enable its possessor to distinguish witches in church. The common houseleek, here called _donnerkraut_ (thunder-herb), will protect from lightning the roof on which it grows. Animals beaten with a switch of privet or dog-wood will die or fall sick. Larkspur hung over the stable door will keep witches from entering. The _Atropa belladonna_ (called here _buchert_) renders mad whoever tastes of it, and in his madness he will be compelled blindly to obey the will of whoever has given him of this herb to eat; therefore it is here said of a man who behaves insanely that “he must have eaten buchert.” Whoever kills an adder under a white-hazel bush, plants a pea in the head of this adder, and then buries it in the earth so that the pea can strike root, has only to gather the first flower which grows from the pea and wear it in his cap in order henceforward to have power over all witches in the neighborhood. But let him beware of the witches, who, knowing this, are ever on the lookout to catch him without the pea-flower and to do him an injury.