Cowslips, or Peagles

Both the wild and garden Cowslips are so well known, that I neither trouble myself nor the reader with a description of them.

Time : They flower in April and May.

Government and virtues : Venus lays claim to this herb as her own, and it is under the sign Aries, and our city dames know well enough the ointment or distilled water of it adds beauty, or at least restores it when it is lost. The flowers are held to be more effectual than the leaves, and the roots of little use. An ointment being made with them, takes away spots and wrinkles of the skin, sun-burning, and freckles, and adds beauty exceedingly; they remedy all infirmities of the head coming of heat and wind, as vertigo, ephialtes, false apparitions, phrensies, falling-sickness, palsies, convulsions, cramps, pains in the nerves; the roots ease pains in the back and bladder, and open the passages of urine. The leaves are good in wounds, and the flowers take away trembling. If the flowers be not well dried, and kept in a warm place, they will soon putrefy and look green. Have a special eye over them. If you let them see the Sun ounce a month, it will do neither the Sun nor them harm.

Because they strengthen the brain and nerves, and remedy palsies, and Greeks gave them the name Paralysis. The flowers preserved or conserved, and the quantity of a nutmeg eaten every morning, is a sufficient does for inward diseases; but for wounds, spots, wrinkles, and sunburnings, an ointment is made of the leaves, and hog's grease.