"Of Croton oil plant. For hail and rough weather to turn them away. If thou hast in thy possession this wort which is named 'ricinus' and which is not a native of England, if thou hangest some seed of it in thine house or have it or its seed in any place whatsoever, it turneth away the tempestuousness of hail, and if thou hangest its seed on a ship, to that degree wonderful it is, that it smootheth every tempest. This wort thou shalt take saying thus, 'Wort ricinus I pray that thou be at my songs and that thou turn away hails and lightning bolts and all tempests through the name of Almighty God who hight thee to be produced'; and thou shalt be clean when thou pluckest this herb."--_Herb. Ap._, 176. "Against temptation of the fiend, a wort hight red niolin, red stalk, it waxeth by running water; if thou hast it on thee and under thy head and bolster and over thy house door the devil may not scathe thee within nor without."--_Leech Book_, III. 58. "To preserve swine from sudden death take the worts lupin, bishopwort, hassuck grass, tufty thorn, vipers bugloss, drive the swine to the fold, hang the worts upon the four sides and upon the door."--_Lacnunga_, 82. The herbs in commonest use as amulets were betony, vervain, peony, yarrow, mugwort and waybroad (plantain). With the exception of vervain, no herb was more highly prized than betony. The treatise on it in the _Herbarium of Apuleius_ is supposed to be an abridged copy of a treatise on the virtues of this plant written by Antonius Musa, physician to the Emperor Augustus. No fewer than twenty-nine uses of it are given, and in the Saxon translation this herb is described as being "good whether for a man's soul or his body." Vervain was one of the herbs held most sacred by the Druids and, as the herbals of Gerard and Parkinson testify, it was in high repute even as late as the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It has never been satisfactorily identified, though many authorities incline to the belief that it was verbena. In Druidical times libations of honey had to be offered to the earth from which it was dug, mystic ceremonies attended the digging of it and the plant was lifted out with the left hand. This uprooting had always to be performed at the rising of the dog star and when neither the sun nor the moon was shining. Why the humble waybroad should occupy so prominent a place in Saxon herb lore it is difficult to understand. It is one of the nine sacred herbs in the alliterative lay in the _Lacnunga_, and the epithets "mother of worts" and "open from eastwards" are applied to it. The latter curious epithet is also applied to it in _Lacnunga_ 46,--"which spreadeth open towards the East." Waybroad has certainly wonderfully curative powers, especially for bee-stings, but otherwise it has long since fallen from its high estate. Peony throughout the Middle Ages was held in high repute for