increasingly hybrid entity superimposed on that, the product of multiple
intrusive influences. The difficulty is exactly comparable with that faced by
botanists in trying to distinguish pristine vegetation from that altered by
humans, often unintentionally and in some cases so subtly that only an expert
eye can detect the manipulation that has occurred. Just as there is the great-
est likelihood of pristine vegetation surviving in remote places, so one looks
to similar areas to find folk culture at its least contaminated. Collectors of
folk medicine have naturally concentrated on such areas, and they have
indeed proved rich in herbal lore. In the nineteenth century much collecting
was done in the Shetlands and the Isle of Man, while Hebridean lore is well
represented in the records from a range of periods. In addition, large-scale
primary surveys of Wales and the greater part of Ireland within living mem-
ory have made outstandingly valuable contributions to our knowledge of
folk herbal medicine. Between them, these provide a good comparative basis
for reconstructing the salient features of the plant-based therapies that for-
merly reigned more or less unchallenged in the north and west of the British
Isles. In turn, these data provide a means of disentangling what is putatively
indigenous from what is seemingly intrusive from other cultures and sectors
of society.
Outside that belt of presumptively minimal contact, the disentangling
becomes much more difficult. The problems arise not only from the length of
time over which different traditions have mingled but also from the ambigu-
ity of the very term folk. For some this is synonymous with the practices of the
least-educated layer of the rural population, practices which have been passed
down largely or wholly by word of mouth. For others it embraces the equiv-
alent social layer in the towns and cities as well. Still others seem to equate the
term with any system outside the bounds of orthodox, official medicine,
sweeping into that capacious category commercial herbalism of every kind
and every degree of sophistication, including imports like Thomsonianism
and, ultimately, even homoeopathy. Michael Moloney’sIrish Ethno-botany
of 1919 is an example of the third kind. Despite its title, the temptingly long
list of remedies turns out on close examination to be an only partly differen-
tiatedmélangedrawn from herb-based systems of a variety of kinds, for which
reason it needs to be approached with great caution (the more so as it includes
some obviously erroneous plant identifications as well). Unfortunately, many
other published lists conceal their suspected hybrid character more success-
fully. Much information derived from learned medicine, in however an indi-
rectand attenuated form, has been unwittingly incorporated as a result into
28 Herbs Without the Herbals