Mugworts in May: A Folklore of Herbs

An herb woman for several decades, author Linda Rago has tended, cooked, and cured with herbs, collecting their stories, charms, and tales along the way. In this book, she passes along herbal folklore, a history with an oral tradition that has been passed down from grandmothers, scholars, friends, and “Wise Women.” Mugworts In May contains charming rhymes and ditties to help your love life, your garden, and your health.

Sunflowers and roses, rosemary and thyme, all run riot in the Wise Woman's garden. Tubs of fat sedum and towering hollyhocks crowd the stone path. In times only shortly gone by, every village or town had a recognized Wise Woman. Her house was usually the last one before orderly streets gave way to meadows and hedgerow. Her garden was a place to stop for springs of catnip to soothe the colicky baby; a leaf of mugwort to slip in the shoe to ease sore feet; and maybe even some lunaria florets to ensure prosperity.

The Wise Woman and her garden were the repository of untold centuries of folk wisdom and knowledge gained by trial and error. More often than not she was a midwife, healer, and layer-out of the dead as well. New Englanders called the Wise Woman goodwife. In Virginia she was called granny. In the lowland South she was usually an African-American woman, enriching the European traditions with African wisdom and recipes.

Wise Women from all over would frequently prescribe one herb for a multitude of different symptoms or charms. The herb that she dispensed for protection from bad luck or evil vapors, she also used for healing practices. For example, chamomile chases away nightmares, but also eases an upset stomach. The Wise Woman's ability to accurately utilize one herb for an infinite number of uses should comes as no surprise. An ancient relationship has always existed between women and plants.

This relationship weaves through our notions of flowers, gardening, botany, "green witchcraft," and Mother earth herself...

In the current post-industrial age we can still find a Wise Woman or two in quiet country lanes, as well as in our imaginations, memories, and family histories. Until only a few years ago, Florence Williamson in Woodville, Virginia, tended a marvelous garden. She was known for sharing wisdom along with her plants. One afternoon when I dropped in, she was gathering raspberry leaves to brew in a tea for friend having "women's troubles." Many people remember her driving up to speak at Garden Club meetings in her battered old station wagon, which would always be stuffed with flowers and herbs.

Just over the ridge, in West Virginia, a round motherly lady keeps a Wise Woman's garden. She always gives advice along with her plant cuttings...

I myself am often called on to speak about herbs at Garden Clubs and other meetings. While there, I nearly always learn as much as I share. Women today still have a strong oral history. The elderly Judy sisters in Pendleton County, West Virginia said that they would never plant parsley themselves because it is bad luck, foretelling of death. However, if they piled parsley seed on a fence post and let the wind sow the seed, bad luck vanished.

"If you steal a plant it will thrive best and bring good luck," is an old adage I have heard from my mother and many others. I have a theory to explain it. For hundreds of years, women were burned at the stake for simply having knowledge of plant mysteries. Giving or receiving a plant "with powers" could be damning evidence against either party. It was safer to steal such plants than to purposefully give them to another. Rue is an herb with an ancient history of mystical powers. More than once a modern matron has told me, "Now I'll turn my head while you take a cutting of that rue plant." Some Roman Catholics still use rue today n the sprinkling of holy water.

Recently a friend told me how her mother would always send out for a few mullein leaves just before company came. The prickly leaves rubbed on her cheeks gave them a pink glow before cosmetics were available or socially acceptable. Yellow stalks of mullein grow as weeds on the roadside. They were originally brought from Europe, and carefully tended as medicinal plants. The leaves were dried and smoked to cure respiratory ailments....

Table of Contents

Introduction

The Wise Woman's Garden
The Enchanted Hedgerow
Herbal Charms-A History
Herbal Charms for Aid and Protection
Herbal Healing Charms
Tree Charms
Love Charms and Herbal Divinations
Herbal Charms for Plant Protection
Herbal Fairy Charms
Compendium of Magical Herbs