Natural history -- Outdoor books; Nature; Nature study; Paris (France) -- Description and travel
still used for the cure of wounds and cuts. A leaf--the leaves are
rather like portions of the plant than mere leaves--is bruised to pulp,
and the juice and some of the pulp mixed with cream. They say it is
efficacious. They call it "silgreen." In old English singreen means
evergreen. Silgreen and singreen seem close congeners. Possibly sil or
sin may be translated "through" as much as "ever," for the leaf of the
plant is thick, and green all through, if broken like a tough cake. I
think I would rather use it than the tobacco juice which the mowers and
reapers are now so fond of applying to the cuts they frequently get.
They appear to have quite forsaken the ancient herbal remedies, as the
sickle-herb, knotted figwort, and so on. Tobacco juice does not seem a
nice thing for a bleeding wound; probably it gets well rather in spite
of it than because of it.
If any one wanted a tonic in old farmhouses, it used to be the custom,
and till quite lately, to put a nail in sherry, making an iron wine,
which was believed to be very restorative. Now, one of the recent
additions to the wine merchants' lists is a sherry from Australia,
Tintara, which is recommended on account of its having been extracted
from grapes growing on an ironstone soil. So the old things come up
again in another form. There are scores of iron tonics of various kinds
sold in the shops; possibly the nail in sherry was almost as good.
Those who did not care to purchase sherry, put their nail in cider. A
few odd names of plants may yet be heard among the labourers, such as
"loving-andrews" for the blue meadow geranium; "loggerums" for the hard
knapweed, and also for the scabious; "Saturday night's pepper" for the
spurge, which grows wild in gardens; and there is a weed called
"good-neighbour," but as to which it is I am ignorant. The spotted-leaf
orchis flowers, which grow in moist and shady meads, lifting their
purplish heads among the early spring grass, are called by the children
"gran'fer goslings." To express extreme lack--as of money--they will
say their purses are as bare as a toad is of feathers.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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