Where Nymphs Play

from the Latin of Thomas Burnet’s Archaeologiae philosophicae (1692)

Dionysos with a Satyr. 5bce

"The White Bryony, whose leaf is not unlike that of the grape, has a magical reputation, and the cottage folk believe its root to be a powerful ingredient in love potions, and also poisonous. They identify it with the Mandrake. If growing in, or close to, a churchyard, its virtues are increased, for though, becoming fainter as they lengthen, the shadows of the old superstitions linger still." So wrote the Victorian writer on country life Richard Jefferies.

Mandrake, which has a root in the shape of a man, had (on Biblical authority) the reputation of being able to get women pregnant. But it was an exotic item, so in Britain the herbalists used Bryony instead. The roots grow to some size and are sometimes forked when they can resemble a small baby. Eirin Gwion (Gwion's Plums) was the name in Wales, after the  miraculous child who tasted some drops from the cauldron of Ceridwen and so was inspired. Ceridwen chased him in the classic pursuit by a witch where the person chased changes shape and the witch then changes too. Eventually Gwion hid as a grain of wheat but Ceridwen became a chicken and ate him. She was then pregnant with him but when he was born abandoned him on a river for him to be found and become the legendary poet Taliesin.

The Wooing of Daphnis by Arthur_Lemon

Hamadryads are nymphs who inhabit trees, the word is a compound of ‘hama’, "together with," and ‘drus’, "tree" ,"oak". In the ‘Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite’ there is a reference these nymphs as being neither mortal nor immortal, for though they have god-like characteristics their lives are bound up with that of the tree, and “the soul of the tree and the soul of the nymph leave the light of the Sun together.” There are stories about these nymphs punishing mortals who damage trees, but also of showing gratitude to mortals who protect or rescue trees from damage.

When offered a reward this usually turns out to involve sex, but often with conditions attached with the mortals concerned suffering the consequences when not observing them. One of these conditions might be that the mortal keeps silent about his relationship with the nymph. Another is related in the story of Rhoikos who, seeing that an oak was about to fall, had it propped up. The nymph, thanked him and told him to ask for anything he wanted. When he asked to have sex with her, she told him not to have sex with any other woman. She said that a bee would act as a messenger between them. The bee flew by while he was playing draughts, and Rhoikos spoke so crudely that he angered the nymph, who stung him. The story is not specific but he may have been bragging about his forthcoming liaison with the nymph, or that he had been with another woman.

Abductions by Nymphs

woodcut of a Fairy Abduction

Traditional Irish lore tells that this herb was used for safety by a woman who went to meet a fairy lover. In the story it’s called in Irish Aithair-Luss which is Ground Ivy. She takes the herb with her and goes to the hill to dance with him. Afterwards they sit down to a feast, but because of the herb she sees a red-haired man who warns her not to eat or drink or she will never get home. Her lover lifts the wine to her lips but she holds tight to the herb and is able to refuse the drink. When she is ready to leave the feast with the help of the herb she is able to walk out from under the hill and return home after a night of wild dancing and delight.

So the story tells. So a witch collected some Ground Ivy on the night of the Full Moon and went out to the place at the back of her cottage where the Moon rose over the hill and sat on a bank and let the moonlight take her away to the dance ….. spinning  around and around until dizzy …  then he came — the Faerie Lover — and led her away into the trees. The herb was tucked into her underwear and she wondered what he would do if he found it there. But  went with him anyway ….. into the ferns ….. and  the whole wood was pulsing like a heart beating and the rhythm of it was like the dance.

But as they came out of the wood the pulse slowed down and everything seemed to be happening in slow motion. It was then that he brought her to the bench and the food and wine and she felt for the herb but it wasn’t there. Things were slowing even more and she thought they might stop altogether. But she had also distilled some of the plant into a few drops of liquid which was in a phial on a cord around her neck. So she opened it and poured it into the cup instead of the wine. Though it was only a few drops it filled the cup and she drank it down.

Also found in a BOOK OF SHADOWS:

Mugwort is known as the Queen of Herbs.

Una your name is, the mightiest of herbs Of might against thirty, and against three

 So says the Anglo-Saxon  ‘Lay of Nine Herbs’

This is part of the herb lore of mermaids who would whisper :

Would ye let the bonnie one die in your hand When there is mugwort flowering on the land?

So also the verse

If they would drink nettles in March And take mugwort in May So many young maidens wouldn’t lie in the clay.

But to hear these things you have to know how to speak to mermaids.

Other lore says that if it is picked at midday at the Summer Solstice the root nodules can be hung around the neck as an amulet against sickness.

It was also thought that keeping it in the house would ward off evil spirits so that “no wycked sprite abide within” according to a herball of 1525.

When we think of the early herbalists, we think of them preparing plants for medicine. This is true. But many of them were just as interested in the administration of poisons. Take this from the Greek Theophrastus in the 3rd or 4th century bce:

“Of the different plants called strykhnos one is edible …. and there are two others, one brings on sleep while the other causes madness. The one that causes madness has a white hollow root about a cubit long. A little more than a tenth of an ounce will make someone frisky and boastful, double this dose will produce delusions, three times the dose will bring on permanent insanity, four times the dose if the person is to be killed.”

Here is the same writer again on WOLFSBANE:

“It has a leaf like chicory, a root like in shape and colour to a prawn, and in this root is its deadly property. But the fruit and leaf are harmless. So they say. But they can be compounded to cause death in months or even years and this is a more painful death as the body wastes away, but if the person is to die quickly it will be painless. Wolfsbane is useless to those who do not understand it especially as it is illegal to possess it …. the length of time it takes to kill someone depends on when it is gathered and the time that has elapsed since it was gathered.”

Vervain, from time immemorial, has been the floral symbol of enchantment. In ancient times it was much in request for all kinds of divinations and incantation. Virgil alludes to it as one of the charms used by an enchantress:

Bring running water, bind those altars round With fillets and with vervain strew the ground (*)

Vervain is not a showy flower and could be easily missed among the grasses and the flowers growing, as it often does, by roadsides or on waste ground. This always seems to have been the case. An anonymous verse from around the year 1400 says that it may be found “by way or gate” and Gerarde’s Herball(1597) refers to it as growing “in untilled places neere unto hedges, high waies and commonly by ditches”. A Garden Dictionary of 1741 lists it as a medicinal plant gathered in the wild but “rarely cultivated in gardens”.

But as the quotation (from T F T Dyer*) above indicates, it has deep magical associations. Pliny associated it with the Gaulish druids and the word verbenae in Latin indicates boughs used in religious ceremonies, but Pliny also had a particular plant – verbena – in mind, which has since been taken to be vervain (Verbena officinalis). It was recognised in Anglo-Saxon herbalism as capable of driving away disease and also as a herb used by sorcerers. Gerard had his reservations, and suggested that its widespread fame had evil origins: “The divell did reveale it as a secret and divine medecine”. In spite of this it continued to be used well into the 18th century. The Welsh herbal lore of the Physicians of Myddfai advised that the herb be gathered “in the name of God” and that no heed should be paid “to those who say it should be gathered in the name of the devil”. They recommended it to prevent dreams and to counter the effects of Scrophula. Perhaps Gerard’s doubts about the plant simply reflect its magical uses

Lift your boughs of vervain blue Dipt in cold September dew And dash the moisture, chaste and clear, O’er the ground, and through the air. Now the place is purged and pure.