Home › Contents › Of Cuckow Pint, or Wake-Robin

Of Cuckow Pint, or Wake-Robin

The Description.

ARum or Cockow pint hath great, large, smooth, shining, sharpe pointed leaves, bespotted here and there with blackish spots, mixed with some blewnesse: among which riseth up a stalke nine inches long, bespeckled in many places with certaine purple spots. It beareth also a certaine long hose or hood, in proportion like the eare of an hare: in the middle of which hood commeth forth a pestle or clapper of a darke murry or pale purple colour: which being past, there succeedeth in place thereof a bunch or cluster of berries in manner of a bunch of grapes, greene at the first, but after they be ripe of a yellowish red like corall, and full of juyce, wherein lie hid one or two little hard seeds. The root is tuberous, of the bignesse of a large Olive, white and succulent, with some threddy additaments annexed thereto. The Place.

Cockow pint groweth in woods neere unto ditches under hedges, every where in shadowie places.

The Time.

The leaves appeare presently after Winter: the pestell sheweth it selfe out of his huske or sheath in June, whilest the leaves are in withering: and when they are gone, the bunch or cluster of berries becommeth ripe, which is in July and August.

The Names.

In English, Cuckow pint, and Cuckow pintle, wake-Robin, Priests pintle, Aron, Calfes foot, and Rampe; and of some Starchwort.

The Vertues.

Beares after they have lien in their dens forty daies without any manner of sustenance, but what they get with licking and sucking their owne feet, doe as soone as they come forth eat the herbe Cuckow-pint, through the windie nature thereof the hungry gut is opened and made fit againe to receive sustenance: for by abstaining from food so long a time, the gut is shrunke or drawne so close together, that in a manner it is quite shut up, as Aristotle, AElianus, Plutarch, Pliny, and others do write.

The most pure and white starch is made of the roots of Cuckowpint; but most hurtfull to the hands of the Laundresse that hath the handling of it, for it choppeth, blistereth, and maketh the hands rough and rugged, and withall smarting.