Herbals and Hedge-Witches...

The Hawthorn bushes are laden down with bright scarlet berries food for the Blackbirds and finches, they have the proven benefit to those with heart problems, gathered by Monks for their still-rooms to make potions, by Hedge witches to grind into pastes, given out as pills carefully wrapped in a small piece of linen cloth...the Crab Apple tree by Paddy's pen has branches bowed under the weight of wrinkled pale pink and green apples...impossible to pick because of the deep ditch... they stay until the leaves fall and then gradually disappear... eaten by the Mistle Thrushes, who snatch mouthfuls of almost rotting fruit...gulping the sweet flesh down as though it will be their last meal of the encroaching winter.

The Valerian has long since gone to seed... as a sleeping draught in times long past, there was nothing like Valerian, prized also to soothe a troubled mind, it was an important herbal... as has the St. Johns Wort, which grows in wild profusion along our street, said to be the most gentle of herbs to combat depression, it is powerful and much care ought to be taken before using it...there is Marjoram, but that too is a memory now. They'll come back again next year, along with the Horse-Tail used for scouring pots and pans and the Ox-Eye daisies, their faces turned to the sun.

There are only the stalks left now of the heady scented Meadow-Sweet...dig up the roots...crush and boil them and they produce a reasonable black dye for a woollen skirt or a pair of thick stockings...

The banks of Primroses in spring would make a light white wine...the Sweet Violets a nosegay or dipped in egg white and sugar, the finishing touch on a sponge cake. The ever so humble Dandelion makes a decent enough wine and will help to dispel bladder stones while the juice from the earlier Celandine will rid you of warts and freckles...

But perhaps the herbal most sought after would have been the Coltsfoot flower...growing on stony ground, the blooms were essential to make a soothing cough syrup...

We have wild roses growing in abundance along our street...they produce the hip used in syrups for colds and coughs...rich in Vitamin C we know now, but when our ancestors gathered them and mixed the crushed berries with honey, they were maybe going by an instinct or a collective memory rather than the results from a group of scientists in a lab.

There are big clumps of Comfrey...also known as knit-bone...used since Roman times and maybe before, as a reliable means of ensuring that broken limbs set fast...Roman soldiers also used the leaves to stop their feet from aching on long marches...a couple of the broad leaves in the bottom of their sandals.

I wonder who was the Hedge Witch here in our street...or did she come from a nearby village perhaps...gathering the herbals to make her syrups and pills and ointments...would she have had a little pony and a cart or did she walk barefoot along the laneways...perhaps she had a cottage down the end of a boreen and a cat who sat beside the fire. Alert for the scrabble of mice in the thatch...

We were kindly towards our so called Witches here in Ireland... they weren't hauled before a court and had their Witches marks exposed...we didn't build pyres of wood to burn them to death...didn't presume an old woman with a pet cat had evil intent.

We welcomed the knowledge they had of herbals and midwifery...the rituals involved in the laying out of the dead were left to them...the sweet ointments to anoint the corpse came from their little cabins deep in the woods...

Samhain...the closest we get to the otherworld is now...the month of October when the veils between the living and the dead are lifted...a time for quiet reflection...a time when we can take the opportunity to look back and to look forward...