Category: Folk Herbalism
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Clover: The Sacred Three Leaf Cover Crop
“There was an herb called wood sorrel and it is said that there is a tradition connected with it. It was a sacred plant of the Druid before Saint Patrick came to Ireland. It is now called shamrock as Saint Patrick picked it at Tara and held it up as a symbol of the three…
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Chickweed: The Nutritive Star
“In olden times the people had great belief in the power of herbs for curing diseases. While the herb was being applied they always chanted some old rhyme. When one gets a sprained ankle he pulls chickweed and roasts it on red coals and then applies it to the ankle. I believe this old cure…
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Oh Rowan Tree
“The rowan tree’s graceful leaves and soft white flowers brush my arm like a whisper.” Lisa Ann Sandell, Song of the Sparrow One of the things I loved most about working in big national museums, was when people Iknew came to visit because it meant I could take them on a tour of my favourite…
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Juniper Tree: A Welcome to the Gods
“On the sideboard there always stood before breakfast a bottle of whisky, smuggled, of course, with plenty of camomile flowers, bitter orange-peel, and juniper berries in it – “bitters” we called it – and of this he (Sir Hector Mackenzie) had a wee glass always before we sat down to breakfast, as a fine stomachic.”…
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Vervain: The Druid’s Heal All
Cover art by Cecilia Brendel “An ancient Irish prescription calls for seven balls of ground ivy, vervain, eye-bright, groundsel, foxglove, bark of elder tree, and young shoots of hawthorn well mixed together. These are made into a potion with bog water and salt and boiled in a vessel with a piece of money and an…