Читать книгу Ye Lyttle Salem Maide. A Story of Witchcraft онлайн

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Next to the kitchen the still-room was the most important one in the house. Here were kept all preserves and liquors, candied fruits and spices. From the rafters swung bunches of dried herbs, the gathering and arrangement of which was Deliverance’s especial duty. From early spring until Indian summer did she work to make these precious stores. With the melting of the snows, when the Indian women boiled the sweet waters of the maple, she went forth to hunt for winter-green. Together she and her father gathered slippery-elm and sassafras bark. Then, green, fragrant, wholesome, appeared the mints. Also there were mysterious herbs which grew in graveyards and must be culled only at midnight. And there was the blessed thistle, which no good child ever plucked before she sang the verse:—

“Hail, to thee, holy herb,

Growing in the ground,

On the Mount of Calvarie,

First wert thou found.

Thou art good for many a grief

And healest many a wound,

In the name of Sweet Jesu,

I lift thee from the ground.”