Folklorist At Large

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31736, 20 July 1968, Page 5

Folklorist At Large

Healing Weeds

(Specially written for “The Press” by DERRICK ROONEY) FARMER’S WIVES, Lady Porritt, wife of the Gover-nor-General, said to countrywomen at their annual conference this week, should endeavour to keep their homes free of pills by doing research to find out what pioneer women gave their families as remedies for minor ills. She might well have added that it should not be necessary to plough through musty history books or ancient herbals in this matter; for many of the answers are apparent at a glance in waste land throughout the country. Mullein, for example, with its tall spikes of yellow bloom and soft, downy leaves, is one of the most persistent (and most handsome) weeds of our riverbeds and dry hillsides; but it was almost certainly introduced in the pioneers’ herb gardens for its medicinal properties. In ancient folk-lore mullein was Aaron’s Rod, which budded, brought forth buds, and bloomed blossoms; the tall spike suggested the rod of power, and Mercury gave it to Ulysses when he went to Circe, so that he need dread “none of her evil works.” “If a man beareth with him one twig of this wort,” said the Anglo-Saxon version of the Herbarium of Apuleius, “he will not be terrified with any awe, nor will a wild beast hurt him; or any evil coming near.” More prosaic people used it as a cure-all for coughs, colds, gripes, and piles, and they also fed it to cattle as a remedy for consumption—which may partially explain its wide distribution in the countryside. I Dandelions and chicory, the

most decorative of our introduced weeds, were probably also introduced for prosaic, rather than aesthetic, reasons —namely, their diuretic properties. The dandelion is worth a place in the kitchen garden, for the flower-heads, which make superb wine and beer, and for the young leaves in spring, which blanched, make excellent salads. But it is mainly famous for its medicinal virtues, and these include, according to Culpeper, not only its opening and cleansing properties, but procurement of rest and sleep efficacy against pestilential fevers, and the washing of sores. Chicory, whose starry blue flowers are a gay sight along the roadsides in Central Otago in late summer, is today frequently mixed with coffee, though I don’t know why. English housewives grew it in their herb gardens, partly because it was good for the bladder, and partly because water distilled from the flowers eased inflammation of the eyes and dimness of sight. Chicory’s presence along the roadsides, by the way, is explained in a German legend of a girl who said she would stop weeping for her dead lover only when she was turned into a flower beside the road. For cuts and bruises, our forbears had an introduced weed (now a pest in lawns) with a name which explains itself: self-heal. “The decotion . . . made with wine and water, doth joine together and make whole and sound all wounds both inward and outward, even as bugle does,” Gerard wrote. “In the world there are not two better wound herbs, as hath bin often proved.”