for Headake of Melancoly/
Headacke of colde ayer
“A wounderfull experience for the headacke.
Set a dish or platter of tynne upon the bare head filled with water, putte…
two ounces of molten leade therin, whyle he hath it upon the head. Or els
make a garland of Vervayne, and wear it daye and night, that helpeth wounderfully.”
- Hieronymus Brunschwig, in A most excellent and perfecte homish apothecarye or
homely physic[k] booke/for all the grefes and diseases of the bodye. (1561)
*
take the ashes burnt little frogges/ /wash
the head
If a head that can not be healed/
in the evening and the wekes
/that the head may be the
corruption.
make the skin stronge/ and also cleane
the heades of herbe Nigella/ burne them to ashes/ put
swynes grese
Or els a penny/
half an ounce swines butter/ anoynte
awaye
the rootes
But if summer harvest/
the juice of them:
Or els a little piece of the clothe
and it may be kepte
*
On Hieronymus Brunschwig
Hieronymus wore the Vervayne dressing gracefully, but would inevitably trip up in the long tails of that cure. Once, during his daily burning of frogge and herb, his garland caught fire and he ran from the house, carrying with him only the fire. A miracle, that the molten lead that he wore on his head, never spilled over edge of the tynne plate. Though the water did, and eventually the little frogges began to live and spawn in the puddles, in the little time before their ash was up.
What was it Hieronymus could have known better? A Most excellent and perfecte attempt in life. To cure the headacke. Nay, to have a most wounderfull experience of the headacke. For the headacke. A fullness of wounds in the acke (of life).
Hieronymus wore the Vervayne garlands every day after like a tethered pheonix, his daughter later wrote. A tethered ashy bird rising from spawny puddles of the little frogges. An ashy bird with wilting garlands about his crown. He left behind little, she said. But for his body, these books. These pages: a fabric of a life, she said. Or els a little piece of the clothe and it may be kept.
Much of it has since burned, by various accidents, she wrote. ·
Vervayne
To forget the cure
Or take beaten Cinnamon / or Cinnamon unbeaten
by a burnt little pyre
of saintly frogges
lyfe would be to longe to drye in the sun
not to sometimes / mask the scent
of them pyre
Ian U Lockaby’s poems and translations have recently appeared, or are soon to appear, in APARTMENT, CutBank, Timber, DATABLEED, Sink Review, and elsewhere. He currently serves as Editor in Chief and Translations Editor at New Delta Review, and he lives in New Orleans.