s young again. A story is told of a gouty and crooked old
queen, who sighed with longing regret to think that her young
dancing-days were gone, so:--

"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 i