Elder, and the shape of which resembles the human ear.
Alluding to this fungus, and to the supposed fact that the berries of
the Elder are poisonous to peacocks, a quaint old rhyme runs
thus:--

"For the coughe take Judas' eare,
With the paring of a peare,
And drynke them without feare
If you will have remedy."

"Three syppes for the hycocke,
And six more for the chycocke:
Thus will my pretty pycocke
Recover bye and bye."

Various superstitions have attached themselves in England to the
Elder bush. The Tree-Mother has been thought to inhabit it; and it
has been long believed that refuge may be safely taken under an
Elder tree in a thunderstorm, because the cross was made
therefrom, and so the lightning never strikes it. Elder was formerly
buried with a corpse to protect it from witches, and even now at a
funeral the driver of the hearse commonly has his whip handle
made of Elder wood. Lord Bacon commended the rubbing of warts
with a green Elder stick, and then burying the stick to rot in
the mud. Brand says it is thought in some parts that beating with
an Elder rod will check the growth of boys. A cross made of the
wood if affixed to cow-houses and stables was supposed to protect
cattle from all possible harm.

Belonging to the order of _Caprifoliaceous_ (with leaves eaten by
goats) plants, the Elder bush grows to the size of a small tree,
bearing many white flowers in large flat umbels at the ends of the
branches. It gives off an unpleasant soporific smell, which is said
to prove harmful to those that sleep under its shade. Our summer
is [171] not here until the Elder is fully in flower, and it ends when
the berries are ripe. When taken together with the berries of Herb
Paris (four-leaved Paris) they have been found very useful in
epilepsy. "Mark by the way," says _Anatomie of the Elder_
(1760), "the berries of Herb Paris, called by some Bear, or Wolfe
Grapes, is held by certain matrons as a great secret against
epilepsie; and they give them ever in an unequal number, as three,
five, seven, or nine, in the water of Linden tree flowers. Others also
do hang a cross made of the Elder and Sallow, mutually inwrapping
one another, about the children's neck as anti-epileptick."
"I learned the certainty of this experiment (Dr. Blochwich)
from a friend in Leipsick, who no sooner erred in diet but
he was seized on by this disease; yet after he used the Elder
wood as an amulet cu