THE closest most get to it these days is the intensely blue flower nestling atop a properly constructed glass of Pimm’s. No herb, once so generous in its offerings to mankind, has retreated further from popular awareness. Its many English folk names—bee plant, bee bush, bee bread, ox tongue, talewort, starflower, cool tankard, herb of gladness, borak, lisan selvi, lesan-el-tour, euphrosinum and common bugloss—reflect its perceived attributes. Its five-petal flowers grow together in long, scorpioid cymes and are wreathed in a haze of soft bristles. On the human palate, they have a moreish, honey flavour. The hairy leaves and stems may be likened to bovine tongues in texture and shape—hence bugloss, an inelegant word that comes from the Greek bou, a cow or ox, and the Latin glosso, tongue.
Borage, sometimes written borrage, is thought to derive from the Celtic borrach, or courage, for the plant was sacred to the Druids: weapons were consecrated with it before battle and their warriors prepared for the fray by drinking wine in which borage had been steeped. Its virtue was recognised throughout the Classical world, for the Greeks and Romans used it similarly—Dioscorides and Pliny the Elder both acknowledged it.
A woman hoping to elicit a positive response from a cautious suitor might slip it into wine
Some scholars suppose it to have been the ‘nepenthe’ of Homer’s Odyssey Book IV, a substance that, dropped into wine, ‘eased men’s pains and irritations, making them forget their troubles—a drink of this, once dipped in wine, would guarantee no man would let a tear fall on his cheek, not even if his father and his mother died’.
Denne historien er fra June 30, 2021-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra June 30, 2021-utgaven av Country Life UK.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.