"Rat tail juice" is a buzzword at the end of last year, meaning "good for yourself", which is a common harmonic stem in Internet buzzwords, and it is not long before many people say it. Although this word is not a classic, but it coincides with the end of the year of the rat, it is quite appropriate to talk about this word.
Rats are vernacular, and everyone knows that they are rats. In ancient times, there were many things named after "rattail", and the most storied one was sage. Sage can be used in medicine, so "rat tail juice" can be made out of nothing.
The history of sage, no questions asked. Ancient and modern, Chinese and foreign, sage is really not a small grass without flowers, but there are many names and types, and everyone may not be talking about a grass.
Sage's past and present lives are like a confused account. Because of the many names, and even false rumors, almost let the sage become a lingxiao flower.
The "rat tail" has a head
As soon as the "rat tail juice" spread, it was quickly examined by netizens of various origins.
Andersen has a fairy tale called "The Soup Of Sausages", which tells the story of three mother rats to the old rat king, and one mother rat tells a story of a "soup boiled by the tail of the rat" and becomes the queen. The sausage plug refers to the knot tied at the end of the sausage, which is a Danish idiom meaning "idle for most of the day, all talk is nonsense".
In addition, J· K. Rowling's Harry Potter records a "Motra rat juice" derived from the rat's tentacles, which Hermione used to treat wounds on Harry Potter's hands.
Why are rats called rats? One theory is from the Book of Liang and the Biography of Zhang Rate. Zhang Li was a native of Suzhou during the Southern Dynasty Liang Dynasty, and the official residence Xin'an Waseshou, good wine and greedy, did not care much about household chores. Once the family servants sent grain from Xin'an to their hometown in Suzhou, and most of them arrived home. Zhang Li asked the reason, and the servant said that it was "sparrow consumption", and they were all harmed by rats and sparrows. Zhang Li laughed and scolded a sentence of "magnificent sparrow rat", the sparrow rat can be compared to a villain, Zhang Rate may have a pun. In short, "sparrow rat consumption" has become a synonym for harsh taxes, and rats have become the nickname of rats.
Rat is a colloquial term that does not appear until the Qing Dynasty vernacular novels. For example, in the 68th episode of "Dream of the Red Chamber", Sister Feng sprinkled a joke and pulled You Shi to complain, saying that she was "a sore on the tail of a rat - how much pus and blood", which means that she does not have much ability.
In ancient times, rattail was said to be widely used. In the Song Dynasty, the account book that recorded the salt tax in order was also called the "rat tail account"; Huang Tingjian had a poem "Ten Thousand Miles of Sails and Water in the Sky, Musk Coal Rat Tail new year", which refers to the rat tail pen; the Song Dynasty called the small palanquin "rat tail palanquin", as Yu Fan of the Qing Dynasty said in the "Tea Room Cong Banknote": "According to the rat tail palanquin, it should be the very small one of the palanquins." ”
There are many examples of using animal tails to name flowers and plants. The zodiac signs all have tails and have corresponding grass names. A brain teaser, zodiac sign which animal does not have a tail? The answer is the dragon, because the dragon sees the beginning and does not see the end.
Sage has not been in the eyes of poets since ancient times. Only Shao Guizi of the Song Dynasty had a "poem about eating grass", called "Shuwu Poem for Cao Yunxi", "Mulberry goose of the chicken, brown fish of the dragon." Purslane antlers, rat-tailed tiger whiskers". Is it like the cross-talk "Newspaper Name" - "steamed deer tail, roasted duck, roasted chicks, roast goose"? Shao Guizi's poem, looking at the meat, is actually a vegetarian dish, the sage tail naturally says sage, the mulberry goose is the mulberry ear, the dragon is the bamboo shoot, the chicken is the mushroom on the tree, and the brown fish is the bud of the palm... This poem is about the sushi brocade.
Zu Marlon has a perfume made of sea salt and sage, which should also be considered "rat tail juice". As early as 1615, there were recipes for sage and sea salt in England, but that was this recipe.
Sage almost became a lingxiao flower
The earliest record of sage in ancient books is "Erya". There are two kinds of plants called "leaves" in the Erya Shicao, one refers to sage and the other refers to "mountain sage". Although it is also a wild vegetable, it is more valuable than the rat's tail, and Du Fu has a poem "Ying Basket Chenglu Xue, Not Waiting for the Book to Ask", which is used to thank friends for sending vegetables, saying that it is Shan Xue, also known as wild grass head.
The Book of Poetry has a famous passage "Amaranth Zhihua": "Amaranth Zhihua, Yunqi Huangyi." The heart is troubled, and the heart is hurt! "What is Amaranth?" Ancient controversy.
In the Erya Shicao, it is said that "苕" is also called "Lingyao". Judging from "Erya", the eight rods of Amaranth and Ye could not be beaten, but when it came to the Three Kingdoms, Lu Jie suddenly pulled The Amaranth and the Leaf together in the "Poetry". He commented that Amaranth, a mausoleum, a rattail, born in a wetland, can be used to dye hair. In the Tang Dynasty, the Tang "Materia Medica" said "苕", one name is Lingwei, the other name is Ziwei. Speaking of sage, there are also two names, one name is called Leaf, and the other is called Lingqiao. During the Song Dynasty, Zhu Xi annotated the Erya and simply decided that Lingwei was also called Ziwei and Lingxiao. The Amaranth in the Book of Poetry is annotated all the way, and if according to Lu Jie," sage can transform into LingXiaohua. Sage, which has not been able to enter poetry, can be collectively expressed by the Tang and Song literati "Ling Yunzhi" resume this time. All the names are too many troubles, all the way to the Ming Dynasty, Li Shizhen made a conclusion in the "Compendium of Materia Medica", saying that sage is only called Lingqiao, not called Ling, Lu Jie made a mistake.
From the perspective of modern botany, the "sage" in "Erya", that is, sage, should be called "sage subgenus sage of the family Lipaceae", is it very tongue-twisting? There are more than a thousand species of sage in the family Labiaceae in the world, and there are about 80 species in China. Salvia, often said in Chinese medicine, is a kind of sage genus, and a string of red common in cities, which is also a sage genus.
Sun Qiming questioned in the article "Sage" Real Name Examination", arguing that the "Shu Bencao" said that sage "leaves are like artemisia", and that the Northern Song Dynasty Su Song "Bencao Tujing" has "Qianzhou sage tail sketch", which confirms the statement of "Shu Bencao" - "leaves like mugwort". The author asked a botanist to identify it and determine that the sage depicted in the picture resembled a plant of the Asteraceae family, and determined that it was not a plant of the family Lipaceae. Sage in English may also be Asteraceae. Artemisia californica is a plant of the Asteraceae family, most commonly called California sagebrush.
In any case, sage comes with its own confusing and eye-catching properties. Nowadays, some localities have learned from Europe and built lavender gardens, which are said to have been mistakenly planted as sage.
One box of sage for three boxes of tea?
Speaking of which, in the 17th century, the spice wars waged by Westerners also played an important role in sage.
The first to promote Chinese tea to Europe were the Dutch. Tea was expensive and was initially sold as medicine. Dutch merchants first went to China to buy tea, which is said to have been exchanged for sage.
The Venetian Ramache wrote two books, "Chinese Tea" and "Voyages", and was the first Westerner to describe Chinese tea. In the book, tea is referred to by him as a bitter herbal juice. According to Ramache, the Dutch began trading tea with China in the early 17th century, "and they carried well-stocked dried sage and exchanged it for Chinese tea leaves."
Chinese tea has a process of acceptance in Europe. After the tea was shipped to Europe, it was sold in pharmacies. At first, Europeans had concerns about drinking tea, and many doctors had a negative attitude towards tea. In 1662, Princess Catherine of Portugal married King Charles II of England, the first queen in English history to drink tea, and it was under her leadership that the British had afternoon tea, and Chinese tea became "the most precious jewel in the crown of commerce" (Greenberg, England, "History of Sino-British Trade before the Opium War"). Coincidentally, the British had a tradition of brewing sage before drinking afternoon tea, which may also have originated in royalty. In the 9th century, Charlemagne introduced a national herb cultivation plan, the first of which was sage.
As a "sea coachman", in 1607 the Dutch sea ship made the first tea deal in Macau and the Qing Dynasty, and it is said that one box of sage was exchanged for three boxes of tea. It is doubtful whether sage has occupied such an important position in the Sino-Dutch trade. The Dutch trade transit station in the East was Batavia in Indonesia, known in ancient times as "Gelaba", as early as before the Dutch, Minnan merchants traveled here, from Xiamen to Batavia for about a month, exchanging tea, porcelain and silk for spices such as pepper, nutmeg and cloves. The Dutch established the East India Company, monopolized the spice trade, and initially bartered for pepper and the like. It is not cost-effective to travel thousands of miles from Europe to China to exchange tea, and the demand for European sage by Chinese merchants cannot be too high.
Whether it was a box of sage for three boxes of tea, the Dutch merchants traded tea with cheap spices and Chinese merchants at that time, which was indeed not a fair deal, they were exempt from cash (silver to be precise) payment, and they could also evade taxes and avoid taxes. Judging from the transaction records, it is mainly tea for pepper.
The tea trade between China and the Netherlands has lasted for more than 200 years. Due to the Dutch defeat in the war against Britain, and more importantly the British crackdown on Dutch tea smuggling, by 1830 the Netherlands had stopped trading tea with China. Later, there is the story of opium.
Magical Formula "Four Thieves Vinegar"
Paul Simon and Art Garfinkel performed the popular "Scarborough Bazaar" for the film The Graduate, in which "Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme" was repeatedly sung, referring to four spices — parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme. The song is a traditional English folk song, and the historical Scarborough Bazaar dates back to the late Middle Ages.
The English word for sage is derived from French, and another meaning is "sage". The scientific name of sage is "Salvia officinalis", salvia comes from Latin and means "to save". Etymologically, sage has an extraordinary origin in the West.
Sage is the "holy medicine" of the Roman population, and in the Middle Ages, the Italians were superstitious about the medicinal properties of sage to the extreme, called the elixir of immortality. There is a saying in the Italian city of Salerno: "There is sage in the garden, how can a man die?" ”
Rat tail juice, there is a version in the Uk, can be called "four thieves vinegar". In the Middle Ages (the story is different in version, there is a 400-year error in time), the Black Death spread in Marseille, France (one said to be Toulouse), and four thieves began to touch corpses. After their arrest, they said that they had an exclusive immunization formula, which made them have the courage to do such a thing, and they were willing to hand over the formula for leniency. In another version of the story, the judge sentenced four thieves to bury the plague-infected corpse, and they found such a vinegar party and survived.
Outside of the story, who invented the four thieves vinegar, when it was invented, there is no definite statement, and the formula is also inconsistent. In 1937, the Musée de Paris exhibited a recipe for "Vinegar for the Four Thieves", which is said to be the original version, which was posted on the streets of Marseille during the epidemic. Ingredients include wormwood, mint, bluebell root, marjoram, rosemary and, of course, sage. Later vinegar recipes, there are lavender and garlic added. Italians have sold "seven thieves vinegar" as if the more thieves there are, the better the vinegar. Can four thieves vinegar fight the epidemic? Some studies have shown that according to this formula, the insect repellent effect is still very significant, to know that at that time, fleas were a major source of infection of the Black Death. Note that here only said a "four thieves vinegar" formula of the approximate, it is recommended not to develop their own, let alone take internally.
There is a widely circulated story that sage once saved the infant Jesus from Herod. The Bible does mention many amazing plants, but it does not mention sage that has done so much.
Sage has metaphysics, and to this day some people believe it. A sports news piece at the end of last year made the name of sage out of the circle. NBA star Irving was transferred from the Boston Celtics to the Brooklyn Nets, ran to Boston to play away, and actually burned sage around the game before the game to do things, fans exclaimed that Irving was "demonizing". Owen is of Indian descent, and this practice of burning sage originated in indigenous beliefs. But in addition to paying attention to fire safety, no matter what is burned, smoking, smoking too much is always bad.
Original title: "Rat tail juice" grass history
Source: Five Willow Seven
Process Editor: L004