Plants and Folktales

 The Plague Comes to Medieval Iceland Pieter Bruegel 's  The Triumph of Death (1562): Public Domain We see death coming into our midst like black smoke, a plague that cuts off the young, a rootless phantom that has no mercy for fair countenance. Woe is me of the shilling (bubo) in the armpit; it is seething, terrible, where ever it may come, a head that gives pain and causes a loud cry, a burden carried under the arms, a painful angry knob, a white lump. Jeuan Gethin, a Welsh poet and plague victim (1349) The "Black Death," a term synonymous with the pestilence that ravaged Europe for five years, from 1347-1351, coming in from the East by land and by sea following along the trade routes; was once in reference to a different pair of epidemics. Accounts from 16th century Sweden, and literature such as Swiss Family Robinson , used the phrase to mark two plagues that took place in 15th century Iceland. It was not until 1823 when historian Elizabeth Penrose...