I am a keen gardener and love plants and flowers.  I am fascinated too by the names and histories of wildflowers, many of which were perceived very differently by our forebears.  Common plants we barely glance at today were once revered (or indeed feared) for their religious, magical or healing properties.  Did you know, for example, that lady’s mantle was dedicated to the Virgin Mary and was said to help women with all manner of troubles from difficulty conceiving to the menopause?  Or that feverfew, as its name suggests, was used as a painkiller by medieval herbalists? We remember from childhood taunts that if you picked a dandelion you were sure to wet your bed.  It turns out there’s some truth in this – dandelions have been used as a diuretic for centuries!  

Mrs Cranwell’s Scrapbook, a staple of the Village Archive, is peppered with beautifully illustrated little cameos of the superstitions and magical properties attributed to some of our most common plants.  These colourful, and often rather scary, beliefs about plants growing in our countryside were passed on from one generation to another and were ignored at your own risk.

The Elder

The common elder, Mrs Cranwell writes, was thought never to be struck by lightning, so country folk would bring branches into the house as protection.  It was also held to improve the fertility of cattle if found growing in a farmyard.  And chewing an elder twig could give relief from toothache.

You’d need to approach the elder with caution, however, because witches liked to live in it and would not take kindly to their home being chopped down. Mrs Cranwell describes how she herself went about the removal of a small stub of elder:

I first went to the stub and had a chat with its occupant. I told her [the witch], very civilly, that I needed that space, that nearby was a much better residence – larger, all mod cons – and I would give her the time to move away from her tiny cramped little one up, one down.  I waited an hour, then chopped the stub down.

It nearly worked, but poor Mrs Cranwell did trip over a brick just afterwards!!

Sarah Cahill