Old John Gerard, who was some time gardener to Cecil lord Burleigh, in
the reign of queen Elizabeth, says, in his “Herbal,” that “beares, after
they have lien in their dens forty dayes without any manner of
sustenance, but what they get with licking and sucking their owne feet,
do, as soon as they come forth, eate the herbe Cuckoo-pint, through the
windie nature whereof the hungry gut is opened, and made fit againe to
receive sustenance.”
Gerard further tells, that “the most pure and white starch is made of
the roots of Cuckow-pint; but is most hurtful to the hands of the
laundresse that hath the handling of it, for it choppeth, blistereth,
and maketh the hands rough and rugged, and withall smarting.” From this
ancient domestic use of the _arum_, it was called “Starch-wort:” it bore
other and homelier names, some of them displeasing to a modern ear.
Gerard likewise relates of the _arum_, medically, that after being
sodden in two or three waters, whereby it may lose its acrimony, and
fresh put to, being so eaten, it will cut thick and tough humours in the
chest and lungs; “but, then, that Cuckow-pint is best that biteth
most--but Dragon’s is better for the same purpose.”
I know not whether I have fallen in with the sort of _arum_ “that biteth
_most_,” but, a summer or two ago, walking early in the afternoon
through the green lanes to Willsden, and so to Harrow on the Hill, its
scarlet granulations among the way-side browse and herbage, occasioned
me to recollect the former importance of its root to the housewife, and
from curiosity I dug up one to taste. The piece I bit off was scarcely
the size of half a split pea, yet it gave out so much acrid milk, that,
for more than an hour, my lips and tongue were inflamed and continued to
burn, as if cauterized by hot iron; nor did the sensation wholly cease
till after breakfast the next morning. Gerard says that, according to
Dioscorides, “the root hath a peculiar virtue against the gout,” by way
of cataplasm, blister-wise.
Hervey introduces the flower of the Cuckoo-pint as one of the beautiful
products of the spring. “The hawthorn in every hedge is partly turgid
with silken gems, partly diffused into a milk-white bloom. Not a
straggling furze, nor a solitary thicket on the heath, but wears a rural
nosegay. Even amidst that neglected dike the _arum_ rises in humble
state: most curiously shrouded in her leafy tabernacle, and surrounded
with luxuriant families, each distinguished by a peculiar livery of
green.” I am almost persuaded that I have seen the fruited _arum_ among
the ornaments of gothic architecture, surmounting pinnacles of delicate
shrine-work.
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