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Slainte : A Charmed Life 
While numerous feasts and celebrations pepper the Irish year, Bealtaine,
or May Day, is a good time to pass on family ‘cures,’ writes
Edythe Preet.
My friend Michael says he has a charming mother. He hastens to add: “I
know you think we all do, but my mother has charms other than the ones
on her gold bracelet. She has the ability to stop bleeding and cure burns
and headaches and sprains and styes in the eyes just by laying on her
gentle hands and reciting words handed down through the centuries.”
The concept doesn’t surprise me at all. Folk remedies are not exclusive
to the Irish. When I was a child and came down with a fever or sore throat
my Italian grandmother used to place her hand lightly on my forehead and
murmur a string of singsong syllables. Almost immediately my temperature
would drop and my discomfort would diminish.
Neither my mother nor her siblings knew how their mother achieved her
cures, replying when questioned only, “It’s a secret.”
Since my grandmother didn’t speak English and none of her grandchildren
were taught Italian, I couldn’t ask her to teach me her folk remedy,
but I listened carefully and memorized the sounds. Years later when my
own daughter experienced an occasional fever, I mimicked Nana’s
ritual and found it to be as effective as ever, even though to this day
I have no idea what I was saying.
Michael is more fortunate than I. His mother Patricia, born and bred in
Belfast, still has the yellowed slip of paper inscribed with words that
were passed on to her more than fifty years ago. Her charms can only be
revealed to a family member of the opposite sex, but she did share how
it was that she came to learn them. While watching a boxing match on television
with her father-in-law, who was a devoted fisticuffs fan, his sparring
favorite received a blow that bled profusely. When the elder gent whispered
a few words and the bleeding stopped, his son chuckled, “Ah, Da’s
charmed another one.”
Stopping bleeding, a most useful charm, is mentioned in the Tain Bo Cuilange,
or Cattle Raid of Cooley, when Cúchulainn and Ferdia are so badly
wounded that they are beyond the help of herbs and plants and “nothing
could be done but lay magic amulets on them and say spells and incantations
to stop the spurts and spouts of blood.” After the boxing match
ended, with an eye to safeguarding his future grandchildren from cuts
and other potential maladies, Patricia’s father-in-law wrote down
his charms, cautioning her to mind the confidentiality caveats or their
potency would be lost forever. His admonition to secrecy reeks of Irish
faerie lore.
Illnesses and injuries were thought to result if one of the faerie folk
was treated with unkindness or disrespect, or if their activities were
disturbed in any way, such as building a house atop one of their favorite
pathways. Conversely, it was also believed that physicians and healers
received their curative skills directly from the faeries. A tale told
around the hearth fire speaks of three women from Dingle who needed to
cross a river and encountered a beautiful lady on its bank.
When she asked for their assistance in fording the water, two of the
women said they were already carrying too heavy a burden but the third
generously put aside her own parcels and carried the lady to the opposite
side. On reaching dry land, the stranger told her: “When you wake
tomorrow morning you will know fully every plant and herb that grows in
Ireland.” Next morning on awakening the woman knew all plants and
herbs by name, where they grew, and the power of each, and from that moment
she was a great doctor.
Admittedly, belief in the faerie folk was stronger before computer technology
and workstations in space, but it lingers even now – especially
midway between the vernal equinox and summer solstice at the full moon
known for millennia as Bealtaine.
Like its autumnal counterpart Samhain (Halloween), Bealtaine, which means
‘bright fire’ and is now celebrated as May Day, marks a time
when folk believe the veil between worlds is the thinnest and fairies
roam at large. Formerly fields, herds and people were blessed in fire
rituals that they might be free from disease, be fertile and produce abundantly
through the agricultural season. Though the practice of walking through
flames or over glowing embers has all but vanished, certain Bealtaine
customs remain.
It is, for instance, the night of nights to pass on family charms, for
the charms shared then will be more effective than any told on other days
of the year. Herbs cut on that day will hold their curative powers longer
and stronger. Washing with dew gathered before Bealtaine dawn will insure
that beauty’s rose will fade more slowly. And it is the best time
to draw water from a Holy Well to use for healing purposes throughout
the year.
Like most other celebrations, Bealtaine has certain traditional foods.
Cattle being the significator of Celtic wealth and spring being the time
when calves are born, May is the time when cows produce a copious amount
of milk. Ireland’s ‘white foods’ therefore are one of
the headliners on the May Day menu.
At the top of the milk products list is butter. Until fairly recently
every farmhouse churned its own, and since butter was both beloved and
nutritionally necessary, superstitions surrounded it. Every good butter-maker
had an arsenal of prayers and charms to prevent mischievous or malevolent
sprites from jinxing the process. Second only to butter, cheeses of all
types, plain and flavored with herbs or honey, also occupied a place of
prominence on the Bealtaine table.
Spring’s newly sprouted herbs and flowers are important Bealtaine
elements as well. In the mythological tale Cath Maige Tuired, wounded
Tuatha De Danaan are healed by being immersed in the Well of Slaine into
which had been placed “every herb that grew in Ireland.” All
healers, then and now, prize their apothecaries of herbal remedies. Some
faerie herbs that were widely used for healing include dandelion (heart
disease), eyebright (eye infections), vervain and rowan (general health
and prosperity), elder twigs (pain), calendula (fever), and St. John’s
Wort (dementia and depression).
Last, but certainly not least, are eggs, with their yolks symbolizing
the life-giving sun and the miracle of stones seeming to crack open of
their own volition to reveal newborn chicks. With spring’s warmer
temperatures, birds once again begin to lay eggs so regularly that there
is no want of them for the Bealtaine meal, a fact best expressed by the
Celtic proverb “The cocks crow, but the hens deliver the goods.”
While numerous feasts and celebrations pepper the Irish year, Bealtaine
is one of the most cherished, and the charm for the time rings with promise
of plenty. May the blessed sunlight shine on you and warm your heart till
it glows like a great peat fire. Sláinte! |
