A GROWER OF HERBS

Press, Volume LXXI, Issue 21580, 17 September 1935, Page 12

A GROWER OF HERBS

3hristchurch Woman's Memories CURIOUS OLD BELIEFS Nearly SO years ago a small girl used to wander with her grandmother across the fields near the village of Little Dean in Gloucestershire, seeking herbs for the making of simples. The grandmother was Mary Perry, a "wise woman" whose fame had travelled far beyond the borders of her native shire, and who died about 40 years ago, aged 97. Her granddaughter is Mrs Mary Ann Shelley, a Christchurch resident. Mrs Shelley, who has made a lifetime's study of the subject, yesterday explained to an interviewer many old wisdoms and beliefs connected with the lore of herbs. From childhood she has depended on them for healing, and now, at the age of 84, she attributes her own magnificent health to her knowledge of the virtues contained in the many little inconspicuous plants which, more often than not, are cast forth as ■weeds from the average garden. Mrs Shelley's earliest memories are of Mary Perry's thatched cottage, and the garden in which she grew many of the herbs used to make the teas and other remedies whose sale provided her modest livelihood. The "wise woman" was an early riser. Although night sometimes found her gazing for hours at the stars—popular belief in the village credited her with an ability to read them—she loved the sun, and advocated frequent sunbaths as aids to health. She also realised the curative powers of sea water. "Often, at night, my grandmother would take me to the river to skim the salt froth from the flood's head as it came upstream," said Mrs Shelley. "After mixing it with certain herbs she used it to relieve rheumatism and other affections of the joints. She believed that each disease had its own curative herb. One of her most wonderful cures was that of a woman who had not -walked for 14 years." The patient. who was wealthy, wished to give Mary Perry a cottaee and an income for life, but the offer was refused. Nor would the wise woman ride in the carriages which people sometimes sent to take her to their homes. Although of frail apoearance, she thought little of walking as many as 20 miles in the day. Searching for Herbs

Mrs Shelley was taught to recognise every herb growing within a wide radius of the village. Field, ditch, and hedgerow yielded the harvest, as did also the beds on which the charcoal burners had been at work; indeed, it was from these beds that there sprang up many of the herbs most esteemed by the grandmother. As the pair roamed the countryside the wise woman would explain to her small disciple the uses—and the misuses—of the herbs they gathered. Red sage for nervous disorders, hyssop for chest troubles, marshmallow for fomentations —these, Mary Perry would say. were herbs whose value had been recognised by generation after generation. So also were elecampane, wormwood, balm of Gilead, mullein (the "hag-taper" of the old-time witches), camomile, tansy, horehound, and* vervain, the last-named having been held in great respect by the ancient Druids. But there were many other lesserknown herbs sought for their medicinal value—pellitory-of-the-wall, Godshand, woodbitney. featherfule, tarmentol, feverfew. Each of these must be gathered when in its "virtue," that is when the planet governing it was at its brightest; and carefully dried and stored against the day when it might be needed. Very early Mrs Shelley learned that danger often lurked in the most innocent looking plants. While the leaves of a given herb might be valuable, the roots would contain a deadly.poison. Or it might be that the root could be used with safety, while the leaves must be discarded; or again, that of a whole herb family, only a single species was non-poisonous. "Take the common lobelia which jrrows in so many gardens," said Mrs Shelley. "Lobelia is a wonderful herb, yet it requires cautious handling, for its juice, if squeezed into the eyes, will produce temporary blindness. Again, in England, many' people have died through mistaking a certain wild herb for a potherb, very common in New Zealand kitchen gardens." "Use Two Friends"

The villagers of Little Dean loved their "wise woman." They knew her wisdom, her large charity. She had five children of her own, and when, after the accident which killed her husband, they married and drifted away from her, she adopted five others, providing for them out of her knowledge of herbs. She sent them to the village dameschool, paying fivepence a week for each child. Later the girls went into service, and Mrs Shelley recalls that one of them was afterwards proud of the fact that she had worked for six years in the one home, her wages during that time being a shilling a '"Grandmother had a saying which I have never forgotten," Mrs Shel2ey told the interviewer. "She used to say: 'Child, use two friends, and you'll never go wrong. They are JDSftiel Season and John Conscience.' She kept them as her own friends all her life. Even the big doctors of the'district came to see her, and

many a time I have heard them calling her a wonderful woman." Following the example set by the "wise woman," Mrs Shelley has used her herb lore with discretion, never seeking to gain riches from her knowledge. In the garden of her little cottage at Sydenham she grows many of the herbs of whose value her own experience has convinced her. Burdock, plantain, dandelion, eyebright, duckweed, balm of Gilead, goldenrod, rosemary, and hyssop are some of the plants she cultivates; and she still possesses the ancient Herbal of Culpepper over whose pages Mary Perry poured while burning a whole candle from the time of her rising,until dawn. With eyes undimmed by the passing years, a complexion so pink and white as to be envied of many a young girl, and limbs _ which have never known even a twinge of rheumatism, Mrs Shelley is a remarkable woman. More than that, she is, perhaps, the Dominion's sole connecting link with an age in which astrology entered largely into affairs of medicine, and disease was fought with what Kipling has described as the "excellent herbs of our fathers of old."