Mid-April, in Ireland. The days blow in sunshine and showers, rainbows and patches of blue. We’re past the new moon with its eclipse now, only partial here, I’ve watched the green tailed comet trail across the sky. We’ve been jumping in puddles and checking on tadpoles, my boy and me. We’ve been wandering the museum for hours, meteorites and fossils, dinosaurs and shipwrecks, dragons circling on the ceiling and flying through the pages of new books, his imagination sparking at a hundred miles an hour. And it makes me weep. With the joy of days like this in motherhood which once felt so impossible, so overwhelming, and too lonely, and for the ache of my privilege whilst I watch on powerless as over 14,000 sparks of joy and imagination, of hope and love and potential have been taken bloody from this earth. I weep with it, and my ancestors howl with that wind.
My headspace is so filled with mothering, with being present for my child and with the incompatible (and incredibly privileged) task of managing the renovation, making a few thousand decisions that will make up our home that I am behind on the posts for you all. Today I offer you the catch-up folklore for April’s Writing Down the Weeds and a few short companion pieces that sit somewhere between poetry and prose. It is of Primrose and its soothing balm, brewed by my witch’s mind for these times.
Primrose
Latin: Primula vulgaris
Irish: Sabhaircín
This tiny spring flower carries a potent mix of folklore from all over the country. The Latin translates as first flower and indeed it is the first of our native flowers to bloom in spring[1]. It has been flowering in my garden (where it has self-seeded in pale yellow from the meadow next-door) and on the edges of the meadow since February. They’ve been known to bloom in more sheltered spots even earlier in the year, one tale even tells of them flowering around a holy well in the depths of winter. Should you find a flowering primrose three times in February it was believed you would not catch a cold for the entire year.
Their official flowering period is April-May, earning them associations with Bealtaine (May Day and the beginning of summer by the old ways) which can be seen in their folk names from various counties; White-Summer in Dublin and Tyrone, White May in Tyrone, May-Flower in Sligo and Ulster and just Summer in parts of Ulster too. They are also known as Goslings in Tipperary as they are in flower when the goslings hatch, whilst one of their names as Gaeilge (in Irish) hint at their folk use; Bainne Bó (Cow’s milk).
In parts of England, they are more associated with the Christian festival of Easter with names such as Darling-of-April, Lent-rose or Easter Rose. And in Scotland they were more widely associated with Brigid’s Day in Early February, when they were used to dress the Brideóg.
Here in Ireland, they were one of the main flowers used in the Bealtaine celebrations and warding charms. Primroses were picked on May Eve or before dawn on the 1st of May and strewn or strung across the doorways of houses and cow byres, tied to cows’ tails or even used to decorate milk churns, all to protect the cow’s milk production (particularly the butter in the milk) from the other crowd’s mischief on this veil-thin night. They were also used to decorate the maypole (a stick put up outside homes or in the farmyard covered in bunches of primrose flowers, usually seven) or the May-bush, which was a branch of hawthorn with primrose flowers skewered on every thorn. It was thought to be unlucky to bring Primroses indoors on any other day of the year and the consequences of their presence vary from general ill-luck or the loss of hatchlings (geese or chickens) to the birds ruling the house for the coming year.
However, given their abundance in folk medicine it is certain that they were brought indoors more regularly. The flowers brewed into a tea is an effective treatment for nervous complaints and insomnia, they were also steeped in fresh milk and given to patients as a cure for jaundice. The unripe bulbs of the flowers can be used to create a green dye.
Primrose leaves seem to be a cure-all being used in folk medicine to treat many ailments such as burns, scalds, acne, ringworm, eczema, infected sores, jaundice, toothache, styes, consumption, asthma, and easing period pain by strengthening the uterus, as well as treatment for sores on cow’s udders and a medicine for a disease in horses. The roots were used similarly. Some remedies state just placing a leaf on the affected area is enough, whilst others mix in several other plants and involve frying or boiling and mixing with butter or lard to create ointments and poultices.
There is an old recipe for times of great hunger, a primrose pie. When nothing else was available in the early spring, before even the nettles came through, our ancestors would use primroses as a field green. Theses days, when we are so fortunate to have such access to food the flowers can be eaten in salads and used as a pretty decoration for cakes.
Primrose and vervain were involved in the initiation of Bards, as Primrose can aid in prophetic dreaming and poetic inspiration.
In folk magic Primrose was used in love charms, one particular spell mixes it with the blood of a sparrow, but a more accessible version is to simply pick the first primrose you see and think of your love, keep the primrose safe and your love will stay true. The flowers can also be carried to attract love and used in bath water to increase beauty. On Bealtaine morning go to a patch of primrose early and bathe your face in the dew, this will give you the beauty of the fair folk. Indeed, primrose flowers are often used as a symbol of otherworldly beauty in Irish folklore.
There is a much-repeated modern belief that a patch of primroses in a field is a “fairy ring” and a gateway to their realm, however I cannot find the root of this in Irish folklore and given their use as a deterrent to the other crowd, with the belief that they cannot cross the flowers, this modern whimsy does not marry the old lore well.
Below are some short fictional charms and cures, brewed with Primrose (jumping off from the folk medicine and magics listed above) and I hope, balm for our times.
A cure for all that ails you:
Mix equal parts primrose with the blood leaked from your brother, when he fell home, rifle butt to his head. Boil it over the heat of your rage, on to simmer ten generations deep. Allow it to cool in the hard light of day and have your mother spit her trauma in at the last. Stir well, pour the venom for them from your tongue each circle round. Lose your words and with it fold in a handful of dirt. Black as the graves of your ancestors who began this charm, in blood and fury. No life should be lived on your knees. Add to it butter you have dredged from the deepest bog and smear it thick across your heart. Wrap it with your grandmother’s silk, as blue as hope, and leave it there until their bitter poison leeches from you.
A charm so that your eyes may see:
First rub in the nettle, iron clotted and raw, needle sting until they water, and you see the sharp edge of truth in the world. Spring-soothe with primrose, pale as mornings first light, so your sight is clear and bright, cutting through wayward words and waylaid meaning. Smear across your lids the peat black soil of your land, the land where your ancestors rest their bones, gathered by starlight on shady midnight, so that you may see with their long-lined sight. Take you then well water gathered on the day of your birth, soak in it wild woodbine, cut long from the depths of the wood, this you will wrap around your eyes, steadfast to witness, bound to truth, clear to the heart of the world.
Cure for a burning heart:
Drink down the stars. Keep company with those who would stoke the fire of your heart and gather the embers close on wind torn nights. Wear a necklace strung long with primrose flowers, slung between your breasts. Wear strong, flat boots for days on your feet. Dance until the mountains shake and the stars spin you round. Let lose your hips. Tend your voice with well water and whiskey, and Poitín for the hearth. Coat your tongue in your mother-words, taste them like honey to the ear. Swallow down the words of poets and seers, those who burned before. Eat the rebel songs until they run thick in your blood. Then shout loud your fire unto the world.
A charm for a sleepless night:
Boil water by flame alone. Slow and sooty. Keep off the lights. Brew primrose tea in your grandmother’s china, pour it into your mother’s cup. Wrap yourself in the night, braid the moon and stars into your hair. Sip slowly, feet planted into the earth. Carry the soil on your soles back to bed. Check on the children, tucked in against the dark. Slide a primrose leaf under their sleeping heads, keeping one for your own. Check them again, their breath a milk-sweet lullaby. Put away the light. Stay away the dawn. Lie your head on the green, your feet still earthed and listen through ‘til morning.
A brew to dream true:
Pay attention, to the syntax of things. Bud and briar, bird and breeze. Brew primrose before bed, sprinkle in the starlight and trace the spiral dance. Burn mugwort through the rooms, until it twists itself into the curls of your hair. Allow your age to show, you’ve earned the years, the life. Remember who you are. Cast off all else. Gather rain for the roof and a crow feather so that you might take flight in the night. Drink the tea wandering barefoot across the floors and sleep through the wee hours. In the pale, primrose dawn you will dream true.
The month-long exploration of intwined plant and local lore will be with you in June now, I’m still waiting for the plant to bloom… Next week in anticipation April’s full moon I will bring you folklore from the local landscape and the continuation of a tale I published here almost a year ago, I’m excited to revisit it and the landscape I pulled it from. Be sure to subscribe to get it all straight to your inbox. I’ll hopefully see some of you then.
Grá agus Saoirse Siobhán Xx
[1] Snowdrops aren’t native to Ireland, any that have naturalised in parts are garden escapees.
Siobhán, this is gorgeous and magical and powerful and all the things. I loved reading your beautiful words. Thank you.
I absolutely adore these charm spells you've written, they are just stunning and I would like a whole little poetry collection of them please :) I love especially "A Charm for a Sleepless Night," it's mothering gentleness and flame-boiled tea, and the fierce visceral power of "A Cure for All that Ails you." WOW xx