“Of rosmaryn she took six pownde,
  And grounde it well in a stownde,”

And then mixed it with water, in which she bathed three times a day, taking care to anoint her head with “gode balm” afterwards.  In a very short time her old flesh fell away, and she became so young, tender, and fresh, that she began to look out for a husband. [13]

The common fennel (Foeniculum vulgare) was supposed to give strength to the constitution, and was regarded as highly restorative.  Longfellow, in his “Goblet of Life,” apparently alludes to our fennel:—­

  “Above the lowly plant it towers,
  The fennel, with its yellow flowers;
  And in an earlier age than ours
  Was gifted with the wondrous powers
    Lost vision to restore.

  It gave new strength and fearless mood,
  And gladiators, fierce and rude,
  Mingled it in their daily food,
  And he who battled and subdued,
    The wreath of fennel wore.”

The lady’s-mantle, too (Alchemilla vulgaris), was once in great request, for, according to Hoffman, it had the power of “restoring feminine beauty, however faded, to its early freshness;” and the wild tansy (Tanacetum vulgare), laid to soak in buttermilk for nine days, had the reputation of “making the complexion very fair.” [14] Similarly, also, the great burnet saxifrage was said to remove freckles; and according to the old herbalists, an infusion of the common centaury (Erythroea centaurium) possessed the same property. [15] The hawthorn, too, was in repute among the fair sex, for, according to an old piece of proverbial lore:—­

  “The fair maid who, the first of May,
  Goes to the fields at break of day,
  And washes in dew from the hawthorn tree,
  Will ever after handsome be;”

And the common fumitory, “was used when gathered in wedding hours, and boiled in water, milk, and whey, as a wash for the complexion of rustic maids.” [16] In some parts of France the water-hemlock (OEnanthe crocata), known with us as the “dead-tongue,” from its paralysing effects on the organs of voice, was used to destroy moles; and the yellow toad-flax (Linaria vulgaris) is described as “cleansing the skin wonderfully of all sorts of deformity.”  Another plant of popular renown was the knotted figwort (Scrophularia nodosa), for Gerarde censures “divers who doe rashly teach that if it be hanged about the necke, or else carried about one, it keepeth a man in health.”  Coles, speaking of the mugwort (Artemisia vulgaris), says that, “if a footman take mugwort and put it in his shoes in the morning, he may go forty miles before noon and not be weary;” but as far back as the time of Pliny its remarkable properties were known, for he says, “The wayfaring man that hath the herb tied about him feeleth no weariness at all, and he can never be hurt by any poisonous medicine, by any wild beast, neither yet by the sun itself.”