Dwale was an old name for the nightshade, and we may infer its properties were known, as it was used to produce sleep at this period. In the Nun’s Priest’s tale we are given a receipt for bad dreams and melancholy, which gives an example of the housewife’s knowledge of the herbs and simples which grew in her garden:— “Through in this town is no apothecary, I shall myself two herbes teache you, That shall be for your health and for your prow, And in our yard the herbs shall I find, The which have of their property by kind, To purge you beneath and eke above, Sire, forget not this for Godde’s love. Ye be full coleric of complexion, Ware that the sun in his ascension, You finde not replete of humours hot, And if it do I dare well lay a groat, That ye shall have a fever tertiane, Or else an ague that may be your bane. A day or two ye shall have digestives, Of wormes, ere ye take your laxatives Of laurel, centaury, and fumetére, Or else of elderberry that groweth there, Of catapuce, or of the gaitre berries, Or herb ivy growing in our yard that merry is. Pick them right as they grow and eat them in, Be merry husband for your father’s kin. Dreade no dream. I can say you no more.” The patient seems threatened with a fever, and the good-wife, after some wholesome advice, doses him with digestives for a day or two, and afterwards with aperients. Laurel would doubtless refer to the leaves of the cherry laurel, which, infused with wine, was an old digestive tonic. Centaury, common in our fields, enjoyed a very early reputation. The herb was so called because it is said that by its virtue the centaur Chiron was healed when the poisoned arrow of Hercules had accidentally wounded his foot. Fumitory, too, was grown by the housewives, and was used as a tonic and a remedy for jaundice. The curative properties of the elder-berry are still recognised as astringent and sudorific, and take a place in domestic remedies. Catapuce is the old name for spurge, a common herb formerly used for its purgative properties; while the gaitre or dogwood-berries, and the herb ivy, were also used as laxative medicines and liver stimulants. In the Canon’s Yeoman’s tale we are introduced to a canon who practises alchemy, and whom Chaucer makes the butt for some keen satire against the followers of that science. “It seems,” says Tyrwhitt, “that some sudden resentment had determined Chaucer to interrupt the regular course of his work in order to insert a satire against the alchemists. That their pretended science was much cultivated about this time, and produced its usual evils, may fairly be inferred from the Act that was passed soon after, whereas it was made a felony to multiply gold or silver above the art of multiplication.” The description of the canon as he joined the procession is somewhat amusing:—