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In Thomas Middleton's play the WITCH (1612) the character Hecate is made to stuff the mouth and nostrils of an unbaptised child before boiling him for his fat(!?). She recounts the materials as she uses them:
Hecate:
"The magickal herbs are down his throat;
His mouth cramm'd full,
His ears and nostrils stuff'd;
I thrust in eleoselinum lately,
Aconitum, frondes populeas and soot.
Then sium, acorum vulgare too,
Pentaphylllon, the blood of the flitter-mouse,
Solanum somnificum et oleum."
A fearsome concoction it seems--until examined. The eleoselinum is nothing more than common parsley; aconitum is a hardy herbaceous plant used internally as well as externally in the treatment of rheumatism and neuralgia. Frondes populeas are the leaf-buds of the poplar; sium is the water parsnip and acorum vulgare is calamus, used for disorders of the stomach. Pentaphyllon is the Greek name for the cinquefoil; a flitter-mouse is, of course, a bat. The Solanum family includes such as the potato, bitter-sweet, egg-plant, and others; somnificum probably indicates one of the nightshade species of solanum. The oleum was in all probability the oil used to bind these various innocuous ingredients.
Wiccan Pharmacopoeia
