n, in Herefordshire,
did for experiment's sake drive an iron naile thwart the hole of a
woodpecker's nest, there being a tradition that the dam will bring some
leafe to open it. He layed at the bottom of the tree a cleane sheet, and
before many houres passed, the naile came out, and he found a leafe
lying by it on the sheete. They say the Moonwort will doe such things.'

On the same subject Coles, the botanist, writes: 'It is said, yea, and
believed, that Moonwort will open the locks wherewith dwelling-houses
are made fast, if it be put into the keyhole.' And Culpeper, the
herbalist, writes thus: 'Moonwort is a herb which, they say, will open
locks and unshoe such horses as tread upon it. This some laugh to scorn,
and these no small fools neither; but country people that I know call it
Unshoe-the-horse. Besides, I have heard commanders say that on White
Down in Devonshire, near Tiverton, there were found thirty horseshoes
pulled off from the feet of the Earl of Essex's horses, being there
drawn up in a body, many of them being newly shod, and no reason known,
which caused much admiration.' As well it might! This power of the
moonwort is said to be still believed in in Normandy, and a similar
virtue was also ascribed to the vervain and the mandrake, both
associated with rue.

This curious property of moonwort it is which is referred to in Divine
Weekes thus:

'Horses that, feeding on the grassy hills,
Tread upon moonwort with their hollow heels,
Though lately shod, at night go barefoot home,
Their maister musing where their shoes become.
Oh, moonwort! tell me where thou hid'st the smith,
Hammer and pinchers, thou unshodd'st them with?
Alas! what lock or iron engine is't
That can the subtle secret strength resist?
Still the best farrier cannot set a shoe
So sure but thou, so shortly, canst undo.'

The old alchemists, however, had a more profitable use for moonwort than
the unshoeing of horses; they employed it for converting quicksilver
into pure silver, at a time when that metal was neither 'degraded' nor
'depreciated.'

There is an old and pleasant belief, of which John Ruskin makes
effective use in driving home one of his morals, that flowers always
bloom best in the gardens of those who love them. One could easily find
a rationalistic explanation of this sentiment, of course, but it is akin
to a superstition entertained in some parts that wherever the moonwort
flourishes the owner of the