Folklorist At Large

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31724, 6 July 1968, Page 16

Folklorist At Large

[Specially written [or °The Press" by DERRICK ROONEY]

Browsing the other day through the undergrowth of weeds that run wild in my garden, I was stopped short by the pristine white flowers of a thriving clump of ramsons (Allium ursinum), pushing through the übiquitous chickweed and forget-me-nots. “Oh, those,” said my wife scornfully. "Onionflowers. They’re weeds.” And it is true that a garden full of ramsons would win no prizes in a beautifying society competition, that the bulbs drench their surroundings with an overbearing smell of garlic on a hot summer day, and that they find an unwelcome way into all corners of the garden; but they have their virtues.

The metaphysical poet. Gerard Manley Hopkins, wrote of a wood “curled all over with bright green garlic:” and ramson leaves are one of the most fresh and clear greens you could find in a folklorist's garden. But its main attraction for the folklorist is its multiplicity of curious and irresistible names. It is ramson in most of England, Ireland and Scotland; badger’s flower in Wiltshire; brandy bottles in Dorset: devil’s posy in Shropshire: Tufelschnoblech (devil’s garlic) in Switzerland; gypsy’s gibbles and ironflower in parts of Somerset. It is ramps in Northumberland and the Lakes

District: rams in Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Germany; ramsden in the Isle of Wight; ram’s horns in Gloucestershire; rosems in Staffordshire; water leek, snake’s food, snake plant, stinking jenny, and stinking lilies in other parts of Somerset; stink plant in Lincolnshire; and wild garlis in Surrey, Warwickshire and Cheshire.

The Elizabethan herbalists found it invaluable. The juice anointed on a bald head in the sun, brought “the haire again very speedily,” wrote Gerard. When mixed with a decoction of pennyroyal, and anointed “upon the goutie member with a feather,” the juice eased the same very much.

Culpeper found it a useful remedy against a surfeit of mushrooms; but Gerard had the last word. In the Low Countries, he wrote, fish sauce was made from the foliage, which “maye very well be eaten in April and Male with butter, of such as are of strong constitution, and labouring men.” And if you find it in your garden, you will have to work hard indeed to get rid of it

WHEN you want to BUY. look where people advertise what they have to cell When you want to SELL, advertise where people look for what they want to Buy The Classified Columns of "THE PRESS" will serve vou weil—BOTH WAYS Phone 50 UW any time, a Direct Line for I your convenience