What’s In The Cauldron? The Meanings Of Plant Names

“Fillet of a fenny snake,
In the cauldron boil and bake;
Eye of newt and toe of frog,
Wool of bat and tongue of dog,
Adder’s fork and blind-worm’s sting,
Lizard’s leg and howlet’s wing,
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.”

Doesn’t that just send a shiver down your spine? The immortal words of Macbeth’s witches tend to hang in the air, and you can almost hear the cauldron bubbling.
But what is that stuff in the cauldron?

Guess what? Most of it is plants!

Anyone who has worked in the garden has noticed that many plant names have odd, fanciful or gruesome names. If you really consider them, names like ‘dandelion’, ‘foxglove’ and ‘mistletoe’ are pretty odd, aren’t they?
The reason is multi-faceted. A large contributing factor is a socio-historical phenomenon known as ‘linguistic drift’, which is the term for the fact that words are changed over time. Originally, according to Oswald Cockayne’s ‘Leechdoms, Wortcunning, and Starcraft of Early England: The History of Science Before the Norman Conquest’, Dandelion was originally ‘Dent De Leon’, or ‘Lion’s Teeth’, referring to the dentition of the leaves.  Andrew Yang notes another good example in his work ‘Plant Names in Old and Middle English: Problems and Trends in Taxonomy’ : “The tan of mistletan, notes Sauer, “originally meant ‘twig,’ but it was later associated with tan [as OE] toe,” to form mistletoe.”

Another main contributing reason is pragmatic: it’s hard to forget a plant called ‘dead man’s fingers’ or ‘bear’s breeches’ as a rule, which made remembering and passing on plant knowledge much easier.

The Tryskelion Press gives us a short guide to the 16th century English plant name meanings in their August 2015 issue.

Old Name for Part	Actual Part of the Herb Used
Eye	Inner part of a blossom
Paw, Foot, Leg, Wing, or Toe	Leaf
Guts	Roots and stalk
Privates	Seed
Hair	Dried, stringy herbs
Tail	Stem
Head	Flower
Tongue	Petal
Heart	A bud or seed

Here’s a few examples of the common names in the 16th century and the same plants today.

Old Herbal Name	Herb/Plant Name
Adder’s Fork	Adder’s tongue
Adders Tongue	Dogstooth Violet
Ass’s Foot or Bull’s Foot	Coltsfoot
Bat Flower	Tacca
Bat’s Wings	Holly
Bat’s Wool	Moss
Bear’s Foot	Lady’s Mantle
Beggar’s Buttons	Burdock
Beggar’s Tick	Dianthus
Bird’s Eye	Germander Speedwell
Bird’s Foot	Fenugreek
Black Maidenhair	Black Spleenwort
Black Sampson	Echinacea
Black Snake Root	Black Cohosh
Blind Eyes	Poppy

Click	Goosegrass
Clot	Great Mullein
Corpse Candles	Mullein
Corpse Plant	Indian Pipe
Courtesy	Summer Wind
Crocodile Dung	Black Earth
Crow Corn	Ague Root
Crow Foot	Wild Geranium
Crowdy Kit	Figwort
Crown for a King	Wormwood
Cuckoo’s Bread	Common Plantain

Dead Man’s Ashes	Mandrake root
Death Angel	Agaric
Death Flower	Yarrow
Devil’s Apple	Datura
Devils Dung	Asafoetida
Devil’s Eye	Henbane, Periwinkle
Devil’s Flower	Bachelor’s Buttons
Devil’s Guts	Dodder
Devil’s Milk	Celandine
Devil’s Nettle	Yarrow
Devil’s Oatmeal	Parsley

So what was in that cauldron? Black mustard, Crowfoot, Holly, Horehound, Wormwood, and a lot of other rather powerful plants. I wouldn’t drink a cupful myself, but if you want to see visions and fly this brew would definitely do it.
Happy Halloween!

Sources

The Shakespere Standard, http://theshakespearestandard.com

Cockayne, Oswald.  Leechdoms, Wortcunning, and Starcraft of Early England: The History of Science Before the Norman Conquest, vols. 1-3.  Bristol, England: Thoemmes Press.  1864-66.

Gledhill, D.  The Names of Plants, 2^nd ed.  Cambridge: 1989.

Andrew K. Yang, Plant Names in Old and Middle English: Problems and Trends in Taxonomy 

The Old English Herbarium (OEH) and Medicina de Quadrupedibus.  Hubert Jan de Vriend, ed.  Toronto: Oxford.  1984.

Tryskelion Press, Old World Names For Herbs And Plants, http://www.tryskelion.com/herbs_old_world_names_for_herbs.html