CULPEPER'S COMPLETE HERBAL

RYE

Description. The winter rye, which has the largest grain, is what farmers generally cultivate, In many northern counties rye and wheat are often mixed and sown together.

Place. It is generally sown and thrives best in poor limestone, dry, gravelly, and sand soil.

Time. It is generally sown in Autumn, and rises in a much shorter time than wheat.

Government and virtues. Rye is more digesting than wheat; the bread and the leaven thereof ripens and breaks imposthumes, boils, and other swellings. The meal of Rye put between a double cloth, and moistened with a little vinegar, and heated in a pewter dish, set over a chafing dish of coals, and bound fast to the head while it is hot, doth much ease the continual pains of the head. Matthiolus saith, that the ashes of Rye straw put into water, and steeped therein a day and a night, and the chops of the hands or feet washed therewith, will heal them.