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Did not Shakespeare's witches learn some of their
uncanny rites from these reverend men of old? One is impressed
with the striking similarity of many customs recorded of both.
Two of the most frequently used ingredients in witches' cauldrons
were the vervain and the rue. "The former probably derived its
notoriety from the fact of its being sacred to Thor, an honor
which marked it out, like other lightning plants, as peculiarly
adapted for occult uses," says Mr. Thiselton Dyer in his
"Folk-lore of Plants." "Although vervain, therefore, as the
enchanter's plant, was gathered by witches to do mischief in
their incantations, yet, as Aubrey says, it 'hinders witches from
their will,' a circumstance to which Drayton further refers when
he speaks of the vervain as ''gainst witchcraft much avayling.'"
Now we understand why the children of Shakespeare's time hung
vervain and dill with a horseshoe over the door.
In his eighth Eclogue, Virgil refers to vervain as a charm to
recover lost love.


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