hot
each night and morning, which will heal them, however difficult to
be cured." The name of the bush is derived from brambel, or
brymbyll, signifying prickly; its blossom as well as the fruit, ripe
and unripe, in all stages, may be seen on the bush at the same time.
With the ancient Greeks Blackberries were a popular remedy for
gout.

As soon as blackberries are over-ripe, they become quite
indigestible. Country folk say in Somersetshire and Sussex: "The
devil goes round on Old Michaelmas Day, October 11th, to spite
the Saint, and spits on the blackberries, so that they who eat them
after that date fall sick, or have trouble before the year is out."
Blackberry wine and blackberry jam are taken for sore throats in
many rustic homes. Blackberry jelly is useful for dropsy from
feeble ineffective circulation. To make "blackberry cordial," the
juice should be expressed from the fresh ripe fruit, adding half a
pound of white sugar to each quart thereof, together with half an
ounce of both nutmeg and cloves; then boil these together for a
short time, and add a little brandy to the mixture when cold.

In Devonshire the peasantry still think that if anyone is troubled
with "blackheads," _i.e._, small pimples, or boils, he may be cured
by creeping from East to West on the hands and knees nine times
beneath an arched [56] bramble bush. This is evidently a relic of
an old Dryad superstition when the angry deities who inhabited
particular trees had to be appeased before the special diseases
which they inflicted could be cured. It is worthy of remark that the
Bramble forms the subject of the oldest known apologue. When
Jonathan upbraided the men of Shechem for their base ingratitude
to his father's house, he related to them the parable of the trees
choosing a king, by whom the Bramble was finally elected, after
the olive, the fig tree, and the vine had excused themselves from
accepting this dignity.

In the Roxburghe Ballad of "The Children in the Wood," occurs
the verse--

"Their pretty lips with Blackberries
Were all besmeared and dyed;
And when they saw the darksome night
They sat them down, and cryed."

The French name for blackberries is _mures sauvages_, also
_mures de haie_; and in some of our provincial districts they are
known as "winterpicks," growing on the Blag.

Blackberry wine, which is a trustworthy cordial astringent remedy
for looseness of the bowels, may be made thus: Measure yo