British and Irish
Herbal Lore · 1775
Foxglove
Fairy fingers, and a poison
Digitalis purpurea, a poisonous biennial with tall spires of purple, thimble-shaped flowers.
What it meansIrish country belief held foxglove a fairy plant. A pining child was thought fairy-struck and given its juice; for a changeling, a witch-woman prescribed it until the fairies' power should cease.
The FindingMother Hutton, said to have sold Withering the foxglove secret, comes from a 1928 Parke-Davis advertisement. Withering names only an old woman in Shropshire.
Being · 1602
Herne the Hunter
The Windsor Oak
The antlered ghost associated with an oak in Windsor Forest and Shakespeare's Merry Wives of Windsor.
Who they wereIn Shakespeare's tale, the keeper's spirit blights his oak and makes cows yield blood at winter midnight.
The FindingThe 1602 quarto calls him Horne, a dead hunter whose stag-shaped ghost women used to frighten children.