‘bad stomachs’ and biliousness,^106 but more usually it has served to counter
rheumatism, as in one district of Gloucestershire^107 and two counties in
Wales (Pembrokeshire and Flintshire^108 ). It has been used as a purifying tonic
in Wiltshire,^109 Merionethshire^110 and the Isle of Man.^111 Like other members
of the Lamiaceae, this species has the production of sweating as its most obvi-
ous property and the majority of its recorded applications reflect that.
Though those records come principally from Ireland, they include the easing
of ‘a sore head’ (presumably a headache) with a plaster made from the plant
in the Highlands.^112 But that can hardly be why wood sage has been used for
shingles in Caernarvonshire,^113 St Vitus’ dance in Denbighshire,^114 jaundice
in Orkney (as reflected in the plant’s name there in Old Norse)^115 and dysen-
tery in the Isle of Man.^116
Though Ireland has echoed that limited use for rheumatism (Cork^117
and, assuming ‘mountain sedge’ was a mishearing for this, Mayo^118 ), it is as a
cure for colds and coughs, including those of tuberculosis, that the plant has
predominantly featured there (‘Ulster’,^119 Mayo,^120 Co.Dublin,^121 Wicklow^122
and other unspecified areas of the country^123 ). That it also has a relaxing
effect could explain a subsidiary popularity in Ireland for such varied trou-
bles as colic, gripe, indigestion,^124 palpitations^125 and—in Cork—sprains^126
and ‘a pain near the heart’.^127
Particularly striking is the extent to which wood sage has been employed
in combination with other herbs. The Welsh cure for shingles already men-
tioned, for example, also involves navelwort and greater stitchwort^128 ; as a
cure for tuberculosis in Wicklow it has been mixed with thyme and honey-
suckle^129 ; in Wexford it has shared with equal parts of chickweed the role of
poulticing boils and ulcers^130 ;while in Mayo it was merely one of eight ingre-
dients in a juice taken for coughing after a fever.^131 Was this because it was
typically seen as fulfilling a supporting role, in need of a boost from some
other source if it was to overcome the more deep-seated complaints? Yet some
people do seem to have had great faith in its effectiveness even if utilised
alone: according to one Mayo informant, indeed, it ‘can cure every disease.’^132
Teucrium scordium Linnaeus
water germander
southern, western and central Europe, western Asia
Locally abundant in the Cambridgeshire Fens until the eighteenth century, as
‘English treacle’Te ucrium scordium was said by John Ray to have been in use
by women ‘very frequently’ two centuries earlier in a decoction to suppress
218 Te ucrium scorodonia