e North, one has but to hang a snail on a thorn,
and as the poor creature wastes away the warts will disappear. In
Leicestershire the ash is employed, and in many places the elder is
considered efficacious. Another old remedy is to prick the wart with a
gooseberry thorn passed through a wedding-ring; and according to a
Cornish belief, the first blackberry seen will banish warts. Watercress
laid against warts was formerly said to drive them away. A rustic
specific for whooping-cough in Hampshire is to drink new milk out of a
cup made of the variegated holly; while in Sussex the excrescence found
on the briar, and popularly known as "robin red-breast's cushion," is in
demand. In consumption and diseases of the lungs, St. Fabian's nettle,
the crocus, the betony, and horehound, have long been in request, and
sea-southern-wood or mugwort, occasionally corrupted into "muggons," was
once a favourite prescription in Scotland. A charming girl, whom
consumption had brought to the brink of the grave, was lamented by her
lover, whereupon a good-natured mermaid sang to him:--

"Wad ye let the bonnie May die in your hand,
And the mugwort flowering i' the land?"

Thereupon, tradition says, he administered the juice of this life-giving
plant to his fair lady-love, who "arose and blessed the bestower for the
return of health." Water in which peas have been boiled is given for
measles, and a Lincolnshire recipe for cramp is cork worn on the person.
A popular cure for ringworm in Scotland is a decoction of sun-spurge
(_Euphorbia helioscopia_), or, as it is locally termed, "mare's milk."
In the West of England to bite the first fern seen in spring is an
antidote for toothache, and in certain parts of Scotland the root of the
yellow iris chopped up and chewed is said to afford relief. Some, again,
recommend a double hazel-nut to be carried in the pocket, [22] and the
elder, as a Danish cure, has already been noticed.

Various plants were, in days gone by, used for the bites of mad dogs and
to cure hydrophobia. Angelica, madworts, and several forms of lichens
were favourite remedies. The root of balaustrium, with storax,
cypress-nuts, soot, olive-oil, and wine was the receipt, according to
Bonaventura, of Cardinal Richelieu. Among other popular remedies were
beetroot, box leaves, cabbage, cucumbers, black currants, digitalis, and
euphorbia. [23] A Russian remedy was _Genista sentoria_, and in Greece
rose-leaves were used internally and