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396 METALS—THE NOBLER.
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" The fearless British Priests, under the aged oak—
Taking a milk-white bull, unstained with the yoke,
Then with an axe of Gold, from that Jove-sacred tree,
The Mistletoe cut down."
Sir George Colbatch, a physician in the reign of George I., published (1719) a Dissertation Concerning Mistletoe, commending
it as a specific against epilepsy. A preparation of the berries was
advised ; but in earlier times merely a branch of the mistletoe was
hung about the patient's neck. " The fruits," says Miss Pratt (Flowering Plants of Great Britain,) "
look very beautiful when mingled with the red berries, and glossy
leaves of the holly in the winter bouquet. But the plant is very
properly excluded from the boughs which decorate the churches at that
season; not, however, for the reason which that orthodox old
antiquary, Brande, supposes, because of its heathenish associations;
but because it is so often connected in rustic places with secular
Christmas merriment that it might awaken remembrances scarcely
favourable to religious thought, and devotion."
The
ancient Britons manifestly set store on personal ornamentation with
Gold, and Precious Stones. For instance, a primitive bracelet found at
Colwall, in Herefordshire, during 1650, is thought to have been lost by
Margadud, king of South Wales, in a battle fought with "Athelstan, the
Saxon. This relic, of Gold set with Jewels, was discovered by a poor
man whilst digging a ditch round his cottage. A goldsmith of Gloucester
gave the finder thirty-seven pounds for it; he sold it to a jeweller in
London for two hundred and fifty pounds. The latter disposed of the
Stones alone for fifteen hundred pounds.
The " guinea " as a coin of the Realm is now only a
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