Coltsfoot is a daisy-like plant which is flowering about now and Gerard’s Herbal of 1633 suggests that the ‘fumes of the dried leaves taken through a funnel’ is good for those with coughs and shortness of breath. He suggests that it is smoked like tobacco and it ‘mightly prevaileth.’
This idea, Mrs Grieves says in her herbal, is endorsed by ‘Dioscorides, Galen, Pliny and Boyle’. and Coltsfoot is ‘nature’s best herb for the lungs’. (This is historic information re herbs not current medical advice!).
Lobspruch deß edlen hochberühmten Krauts Petum oder Taback Nuremberg, 1658 New York Public Library Public Domain
Last week my grandson and parents found a 19th Century pipe bowl by the Thames and, yesterday I had a walk along the River at Rotherhithe including a time on the foreshore where there were many fragments of clay pipe. For more on 17th Century smoking have a look here
Blossom is also coming out in London, a little early. (last year we had a false spring when Cherry Blossom came out). Blackthorn (I think) is coming out in profusion in my local park. Left February 2022, Right Feb 23.
London Stone
On February 18th I wrote about the famous London Stone as one of London’s palladiums i.e. an object that keeps a place safe from invasion. The story I told was about an ‘ancient proverb’ surfacing in 1862.:
“So long as the Stone of Brutus is safe, so long shall London flourish”
But it was attributed to Richard Williams Morgan, and so I followed the prevailing belief that Morgan made it up. Then, through my inbox came a copy of an article from academia.edu which addresses the issue! Published in 2018 (when I must have read it!) It is by John Clark who is the Emeritus Curator at the Museum of London and an excellent academic who checks his facts much more scrupulously than either Morgan or I.
‘Brut Sett London Stone’: London and London Stone in a 14th-Century English Metrical Chronicle‘ This article tells the story of Morgan’s London Stone claim but notes that a medieval reference to Brutus setting up London stone exists. John says ‘In the 1330s an anonymous London author, in a versified history of England‘ (the Short Metrical Chronicle) wrote:
Brutus set up London Stone And these words he said anon: ‘If each king that comes after me Makes this city wide and roomy As I have in my day, Still hereafter men may say That Troy was never so fair a city As this city shall be.’
(Burnley & Wiggins 2003b, lines 457—64 (John Clark’s modern English version))
So, it doesn’t say London Stone is a Palladium but it does say it was set up by the legendary Trojan founder of London and is part of the City’s history that would lead to it becoming fairer than Troy. Clark thinks it possible that Morgan came across this reference, but its significance is that it shows there was speculation about London Stone in Medieval London.
Hans Holbein the YoungerDesign for a Stained Glass Window with Terminus. Pen and ink and brush, grey wash, watercolour, over preliminary chalk drawing, 31.5 × 25 cm, Kunstmuseum Basel. ‘Terminus is often pictured as a bust on a boundary stone,
Today is ‘Terminalia, the Roman day for setting land boundaries.
Terminus was an old ancient God who was the God of the boundary, the border, the edge, the liminal God. Ovid says that when King Tarquinus swept away the old Gods on the Capital Hill and Jupiter became the Great God, all the old temples were taken down except for that of Terminus. Jupiter’s Temple was built around it. It had a hole in the roof because Terminus had to be worshipped in the open air.
Terminus’s motto was “concedo nulli” which means “I yield to no one”. This was adopted by Erasmus as his personal motto in 1509.
The Terminalia was celebrated on the last day of the old Roman year. February was the last month of the year, but the rulers of Rome added an intercalary month called Mercedonius in an attempt to keep the Solar year in tune with the seasons. And when the intercalary month was added, the last five days of February were given to Mercedonius and the resulting leap year was either 377 or 378 days long.. So, in those years the 23rd of February was the Terminus of the year..
The intercalary months were added at the direction of the Pontiffs, supposedly every two and sometimes every three years. But the Pontiffs were often swayed by political advantage and by the time of Julius Caesar the seasons had got wildly out of sync with the calendar year. The Dictator, therefore, instituted ‘the Year of Confusion’ which was over 400 days long and brought in the Julian Calendar which realigned the calendar back in line with the seasons. It fixed the problem with a leap day every four years, based on the almost correct calculation of a solar year being 365.25 days. It was another 1500 years before that inaccuracy was corrected with the introduction of the Gregorian Year, by which time the year was another 11 days out of kilter.
The festival of Terminus was a pastoral outdoor festival marking the boundaries of towns and villages. It resembles the Beating of the Bounds tradition that we have in Britain, which is recorded from anglo-saxon times, and still continues in some parishes. I will talk about this on Ascension Day in May!
Here is what Ovid, in ‘Fasti’ says about Terminalis
Book II: February 23: The Terminalia When night has passed, let the god be celebrated With customary honour, who separates the fields with his sign. Terminus, whether a stone or a stump buried in the earth, You have been a god since ancient times. You are crowned from either side by two landowners, Who bring two garlands and two cakes in offering. An altar’s made: here the farmer’s wife herself Brings coals from the warm hearth on a broken pot. The old man cuts wood and piles the logs with skill, And works at setting branches in the solid earth. Then he nurses the first flames with dry bark, While a boy stands by and holds the wide basket. When he’s thrown grain three times into the fire The little daughter offers the sliced honeycombs. Others carry wine: part of each is offered to the flames: The crowd, dressed in white, watch silently. Terminus, at the boundary, is sprinkled with lamb’s blood, And doesn’t grumble when a sucking pig is granted him. Neighbours gather sincerely, and hold a feast, And sing your praises, sacred Terminus: You set bounds to peoples, cities, great kingdoms: Without you every field would be disputed. You curry no favour: you aren’t bribed with gold, Guarding the land entrusted to you in good faith. If you’d once marked the bounds of Thyrean lands, Three hundred men would not have died, Nor Othryadesí name be seen on the pile of weapons. O how he made his fatherland bleed! What happened when the new Capitol was built? The whole throng of gods yielded to Jupiter and made room: But as the ancients tell, Terminus remained in the shrine Where he was found, and shares the temple with great Jupiter. Even now there’s a small hole in the temple roof, So he can see nothing above him but stars. Since then, Terminus, you’ve not been free to wander: Stay there, in the place where you’ve been put, And yield not an inch to your neighbour’s prayers, Lest you seem to set men above Jupiter: And whether they beat you with rakes, or ploughshares, Call out: This is your field, and that is his! There’s a track that takes people to the Laurentine fields, The kingdom once sought by Aeneas, the Trojan leader: The sixth milestone from the City, there, bears witness To the sacrifice of a sheep’s entrails to you, Terminus. The lands of other races have fixed boundaries: The extent of the City of Rome and the world is one
I have just found a video of the pancake race at the Guildhall Yard in the City of London. It is an inter-livery company pancake race competition. The competitors, representing the medieval Guilds, have to run across the Guildhall while holding a frying pan and pancake. There is a zone where they have to toss the pancake. There is also a novelty costume race. Here is a youtube video of the 2023 race.
This is the First Day of Lent, the solemn time which runs up to Easter, and is symbolic of the 40 days in the wilderness. February means the ‘Month of Purification’ in Latin, and in Anglo Saxon the name for Spring was ‘lencthen’ thought to derive from the idea of lengthening days. So strictly Lent means Spring. In the Romance languages the term used derives from the Latin ‘Quadragesima’ which means the 40 days of Fast. Spanish (Cuaresma), French (Carême), and Italian Quaresima). In German it is the fasting time: fastenzeit. In England, Lent became a specialised word for the fast period, and Spring took over as the name of the season.
A time of fasting, or at least, a time when we are supposed to give something up – a bit like Dry January? Ash Wednesday gets its name as ashes used to be smeared on the heads of worshippers to remind them that we are dust. The ashes were traditionally made from palms from Palm Sunday.
1540s, “time of merrymaking before Lent,” from French carnaval, from Italian carnevale “Shrove Tuesday,” from older Italian forms such as Milanese *carnelevale, Old Pisan carnelevare “to remove meat,” literally “raising flesh,” from Latin caro “flesh” (originally “a piece of flesh,” from PIE root *sker- (1) “to cut”) + levare “lighten, raise, remove” (from PIE root *legwh- “not heavy, having little weight”).
Folk etymology has it from Medieval Latin carne vale ” ‘flesh, farewell!’ ” Attested from 1590s in the figurative sense of “feasting or revelry in general.” The meaning “a circus or amusement fair” is attested by 1926 in American English.Related entries & more
Pancake Day is the day we eat up all our surplus food so that we can begin our lenten fast and turn out mind to repentance. Traditionally, in Britain its a simple pancake with lemon and sugar (here is a recipe from the BBC) but it can also be a day of excess before the 40 days of restraint. As we saw before on ‘Lardy Thursday’ the Carnival period might be up to a week. Shrovetide was normally three days from the Sunday before Lent to Ash Wednesday the beginning of Lent.
In France its called Mardi Gras which means Fatty Tuesday, in Italy Martedi Grasso. In New Orleans it stretches from Twelfth Night to Shrove Tuesday, in most other places it is a week or three days. In Anglo-Saxon times there was ‘Cheese Week’, ‘Butter Week’, ‘Cheesefare Sunday’ and ‘Collop Monday’.
Shrove Tuesday is the day we should be ‘shriven’ which means to make confession. The point is that the Church has been leading up to Easter since Advent – before Christmas. Easter is the date of the conception and, also, the date of the execution and apotheosis of Jesus Christ. So the pious should confess their sins, then undertake their lenten fast before entering the Holy Week purged and sin-free.
In the Anglo-Saxon Church they stopped using the word Alleluia from 70 days before Easter as it represented the time of exile in Babylon, and with the approach of the death of Christ it was not felt appropriate to be celebratory. It was a custom called ‘locking the Alleluia.’
The sombre nature of this block of time was highlighted by Ælfric of Eynsham (c. 955 – c. 1010)
Now a pure and holy time draws near, in which we should atone for our neglect. Every Christian, therefore, should come to his confession and confess his hidden sins, and make amends according to the guidance of his teachers; and let everyone encourage each other to do good by good example.
Ælfric, Catholic Homilies Text Ed. Peter Clemoes quoted in ‘Winters in the World’ Eleanor Parker
Shrove Tuesday was traditional for football games in the days before football had any rules to speak of. It was a wild game in which teams tried to get a bladder from one end of town to the other, or one side of a field to the other. In Chester the traditional football game on the Roodee island which was held on Shrove Tuesday was so rowdy that the Mayor created the Chester Races specifically to provide a more sedate alterative to the violence of the ‘beautiful game.’
Here is a youtube video of Shrovetide Football.
Royal Asbourne Shrovetide Football
In London, John Stowe quotes Henry Fitzstephen who is writing about Becket’s London in the late 12th Century:
‘Every year also at Shrove Tuesday, that we may begin with children’s sport, seeing we all have been children, the school boys do bring cocks of the game to their master, and all the forenoon they delight themselves in cockfighting. After dinner all the youths go into the fields to play at the ball. The scholars of every school have their ball, or baston in their hands. The ancient and wealthy men of the City come forth on horseback to see the sport of the young men and to take part of the pleasure in beholding their agility.’
I have just found a video of the pancake race at the Guildhall Yard in the City of London. It is an inter-livery company pancake race competition. The competitors, representing the medieval Guilds, have to run across the Guildhall while holding a frying pan and pancake. There is a zone where they have to toss the pancake. There is also a novelty costume race. Here is a youtube video of the 2023 race.
A man born on a Pisces shall be a great goer, a fornicator, a mocker and covetous.: he will say one thing and do another. He shall trust is his sapience, he shall have good fortune: He will be a defender of widows and orphans. He shall be fearful on water: he shall soon pass all adversities and live 72 years after nature.
The woman shall be delicious, familiar in jests, pleasant of courage, fervent, a great drinker. She shall have sickness of her eyes and be sorrowful by shame, needlessly. Her husband will leave her and she shall have much trouble with strangers. She shall travel much, have pain in his stomach and live seventy-seven years.
Both man and woman shall live faithfully.
Kalendar of Shepheardes, 1604 (from the Perpetual Almanac by Charles Kightly
We surprises me about the above is that it has to be nearly always wrong as the predictions are too specific.
Now, the Old Moore’s 2023 Almanac has a page on Liz Truss of all people, clearly written before she imploded as Prime Minister, and it is clear they think she has a real chance of being PM. They say she has ‘an almost steely determination and plenty of apparent ambition. …. She has every astrological requirement necessary to keep her nose clean and at this moment in time is certainly among the main contenders.‘. So yes they are right about her being among the main contenders but absolutely no hint of the disaster that her PMship was. Similarly the 2022 Old Moore’s Almanac had no hint of the Ukraine war.
On February 18th I wrote about Bran’s Head and other Palladiums that protected Britain from invasion. If you missed it look here. For completeness I want to mention that it has been suggested that London Stone is one of London’s palladiums. No, that’s not right. It has been suggested that London Stone is THE Palladium (or part of it at least).
In 1862 an ‘ancient proverb’ surfaced:
“So long as the Stone of Brutus is safe, so long shall London flourish”
It was made anonymously in the journal Notes and Queries. In Welsh it was “Tra maen Prydain, Tra lled Llyndain’ This verse, if genuine, would link the Stone to Brutus of Troy, legendary founder of London. However, the writer has been identified as Richard Williams Morgan, who was a passionate Welsh Nationalist and prolific author, who was not very scrupulous with his analysis of sources. As no earlier source can be found, it is thought Morgan made it up.
He lived in London in the 1850’s and was very struck by the London Stone. For Archaeologists it is probably a mile stone from which the Romans measured distance. For Shakespeare it was the stone on which rebel Jack Cade claimed lordship of London. For the fringe it was a coronation stone; a stone of power; the sword in the stone stone; an ancient megalith. The truth is we have no idea. It was called the London Stone since the 12th Century, but why was it so named and what was it ‘for’ or symbolic of? I have my own theory that it is a stone that marks jurisdiction, and I will discuss that in another post.
Pic by Graham Hussey pic shows the LONDON STONE which is in Canon Street London .pic taken inside the Tech Sports shop
Morgan came to the conclusion it was the stone plinth on which the original Trojan Palladium had stood (this is the wooden statue of Pallas Athene, that protected Troy from invasion and which was stolen by Odysseus and Diomedes shortly before the successful Trojan Horse plot). It was then taken to Italy. (there is evidence that the stone was bigger (10ft into the ground if I remember correctly.)
He believed it was brought to Britain by King Brutus, a descendent of Aeneas.Aeneas was the Trojan leader who escaped from Troy and was the ancestor of Romulus who founded Rome. Further Morgan thought it was used as the altar stone of the Temple of Diana (on the site of St Pauls Cathedral) in his new capital city originally, so the legend says, called Troia Nova, and then Lud’s Dun, and finally London.
No one before Morgan called London Stone “The Stone of Brutus”. and although the verse is still quoted, there is no evidence that London’s safety has ever traditionally been linked to that of London Stone. My main source was this Wikipedia site.
London Stone as recently rehoused.(Photo K Flude)
However, recent discoveries that London was the site of Late Neolithic feasting on a grand scale (discussed here🙂 makes the chances that the stone is a ritual stone from prehistory slightly more likely than previously thought (but, of course, still there is no proof that it was)
Snowdrop, Crocus, violet and Silver Birch circle in Haggerston Park. (Photo Kevin Flude, 2022)
Violets and crocuses are coming out. Apparently, in the UK 63% say crocuses and 37% use the correct Latin plural which is croci. And last year I used the incorrect crocii. Incidently, an earth shaking decision has been made at the Financial Times who have just updated their style guide to make the plural word data (datum is the singular form) take the singular form. So it is no longer ‘data are’ but ‘data is’. For example, it was ‘the data are showing us that most British speakers use crocuses as the plural’ but now ‘the data is showing us that 37% of British people prefer the correct Latin form of croci’. In 2018 they changed it to an option, but now it is mandatory to make data singular.
The crocus represents many things but because they often come out for St Valentine’s Day they are associated with Love ‘White croci usually represented truth, innocence and purity. The purple variety imply success, pride and dignity. The yellow type is joy.’ according to www.icysedgwick.com/, which gives a fairly comprehensive look at the Crocus.
Ovid tells the story of Crocus and Smilax in the Metamorphoses. This poem is one of the most famous in the world, written in about 6 AD it influenced Chaucer, Shakespeare, Keats Bernard Shaw and was translated anew by Seamus Hughes. The mechanicals in ‘The Midsummers Night Dream’ perform Ovid’s story of Pyramus and Thisbe, Titian painted ‘Diana and Actaeon’. Shaw wrote about Pygmalion, and we all know the story of Arachne, claiming to be better than Athene at weaving and then being turned into a spider. The stories are all about metamorphosis, mostly changes happening because of love. But it is also an epic as it tells the classical story of the universe from creation to Julius Caesar. It is about love, beauty, change and is largely an arcadian/rural poem in contrast to Ovid’s ‘Art of Love’ which I have long used for illustrations of life in a Roman town.
He tells us ‘Crocus and his beloved Smilax were changed into tiny flowers.’ But he chooses to pass by this and other stories. So we have to look elsewhere for more details. There are various version. In the first Crocus is a handsome mortal youth, beloved of the God Hermes. They are playing with a discus which hits Crocus on the head and kills him. Hermes, distraught, turns the youth into a beautiful flower, and three drops of his blood form the stigma of the flower. In other versions, love hits Crocus and the nymph Smilax, and they are rewarded by immortality as a flower. In one version, Smilax is turned into the Bindweed, which perhaps suggests that she is either punished for spurning him, or that she smothered him with love.
Photo Mohammad Amiri from unsplash. Notice the crimson stigma and styles, called threads
The autumn-flowering perennial plant Crocus sativus, is the one whose stigma gives us saffron. This was spread across Europe by the Romans, and was used for medicine, as a dye, a perfume. It was much sought after as a protection against the plague. It was extensively grown in the UK and Saffron Walden was a particularly important production area in the 16th and 17th Centuries. It was grown in the Bishop of Ely’s beautiful Gardens in the area remembered by Saffron Hill (home to the fictional Scrooge). This area became the London Home of Christopher Hatton, the favourite of Queen Elizabeth 1. It is on the on the west bank of the River Fleet, in London EC1, in the area now know as Hatton Garden. The placename Croydon (on the outskirts of London), means crocus valley.
The Saffron crops in Britain failed eventually because of the cost of harvesting, and it became cheaper to import it. It is now grown in Spain, Iran and India amongst other places. But attempts over the last 5 years have been made to reintroduce it, This is happening in Norfolk, Suffolk, Kent and Sussex – the hot and dry counties. It likes a South facing aspect, and needs to be protected from Squirrels and Sparrows who love it. (Source of information BBC Radio 4 Gardeners’ Question Time.)
Saffron Photo by Vera De on UnsplashMorning Glory or Field Bindweed photo Leslie Saunders unsplash
Bindweed is from the Convolvulus family, and I have grown one very successfully in a pot for many years. But they have long roots and according to the RHS ‘Bindweed refers to two similar trumpet-flowered weeds, both of which twine around other plant stems, smothering them in the process. They are not easy to remove.’ Medically, Mrs Grieve’s Modern Herbal says all the bindweeds have strong purgative virtues.
Viola odorata CC BY-SA 2.5 Wikipedia
Violets have been used as cosmetics by the Celts, to moderate anger by the Athenians, for insomnia and loved because of their beauty and fragrant. They have been symbols of death for the young, and used as garlands, nosegays posies which Gerard says are ‘delightful’.
The Raven – Corvus corax – is hatching. An early nesting bird, and the biggest of the Covids. They were pushed to the west and north by farmers and game keepers but are making a comeback and finding towns convenient for their scavenging habits. So they, again, cover most of the UK except the eastern areas.
Their habits, and their black plumage has made them harbingers of death. In poetry Ravens glut on blood like the warriors whose emblem they are. Here is a very famous quotation from Y Gododdin, a medieval poem but thought to derive from a poem by the great Aneirin from the 7th Century
‘He glutted black ravens on the rampart of the stronghold, though he was no Arthur.’
This is one of the much argued about references to Arthur in the ‘Was he a real person’ argument.
The Raven was also the symbol of the God-King Bran. Bran was one of the legendary Kings of Britain and his sister, Branwen, was married to the King of Ireland. To cut a long story short, which I will tell in further detail on another occasion, Branwen was exiled by her husband to the scullery. She smuggled a message to her brother by a trained starling. Bran took an army over the Irish Sea to restore her to her rightful state, but the ships were becalmed and so Bran blew the boats across the sea – he was that mighty a man.
Bran was mortality wounded in the battle that followed, having previously given away his cauldron of immortality to the Irish King in recompense for the insults given to the Irish by his brother.
So, the dying Bran, told his companions to cut off his head and take it back to the White Hill in London. His head was as good a companion on the way back as it was on the way out, and the journey home took 90 years. At last they got to London and he told his men to bury his head on the White Hill, and as long as it were there Britain would be safe from foreign invasion. This was one of the Three Fortunate Concealments and is found in ‘the Triads of the Island of Britain.’
By Sonny Mauricio from Unsplash
But many years later King Arthur saw no need for anybody or anything other than himself to protect the realm so he had the head dug up. Thus the Saxons won the Kingdom from the Britons. This was one of the Three Unfortunate Disclosures.
The White Hill is said to be Tower Hill with its summit at Trinity Gardens, although Primrose Hill is sometimes offered as an alternative. If we want a rational explanation for the story, there is evidence that Celtic cultures venerated the skull, and palladiums play a part in Celtic Tales.
A Palladium is something that keeps a city or country safe, and was named after a wooden status of Pallas Athene, which protected Troy. Perceiving this Odysseus and Diomedes stole the Palladium from Troy shortly before the Trojan Horse episode. The palladium then went to Italy (I’m guessing with Diomedes who is said to have founded several cities in Italy), and ended up in Rome. The Romans claimed to be descendents of Trojan exiles led by Aeneas so it was back with its rightful owners. It protected Rome until it was transferred to the new Roman capital at Constantinople, and then disappeared, presumably allowing the Ottoman Turks to conquer the City of Caesar.
So what was Arthur doing destroying the palladium that kept Britain safe? Vanity is the answer the story gives. But, perhaps, it’s a memory of Christian rites taking over from pagan rituals. God, Arthur might have thought, would prefer to protect his people himself rather than they rely on a pagan cult object.
The story of Bran’s head is inevitably linked to the Ravens in the Tower who, it is still said, keep us safe from invasion, and so we clip their wings and get in a tiz when one goes missing.
Sadly, and I am probably more sad about this than most others, Geoffrey Parnell who is a friend of mine told me that while working at the Tower of London he searched the records assiduously for the story of the ravens and found no evidence of the tale before the 19th Century and concluded that it was most likely a Victorian invention.
The Welsh Triads give a total of three palladiums for Britain.
The Head of Bran the Blessed, son of Llyr, which was concealed in the White Hill in London, with its face towards France. And as long as it was in the position in which it was put there, no Saxon Oppression would ever come to this Island; The second Fortunate Concealment: the Dragons in Dinas Emrys, which llud son of Beli concealed; And the third: the Bones of Gwerthefyr the Blessed, in the Chief Ports of this Island. And as long as they remained in that concealment, no Saxon Oppression would ever come to this Island.
All good but then came the three unfortunate disclosures:
And there were the Three Unfortunate Disclosures when these were disclosed. And Gwrtheyrn the Thin disclosed the bones of Gwerthefyr the Blessed form the love of a woman: that was Ronnwen the pagan woman; And it was he who disclosed the Dragons; And Arthur disclosed the head of Bran the Blessed from the White Hill, because it did not seem right to him that this Island should be defended by the strength of anyone, but by his own.
Gwrtheyrn is Vortigen, the leader of the Britons after the fall of the Roman Empire in Britain, one or two leaders before Arthur.
The Dragons were making a terrible noise, causing miscarriages and other misfortunes, and King Ludd, whom legends says gave his name to London (Ludd’s Dun or Ludd’s walled City), had them buried in a cavern in Dinas Emrys in Snowdonia. The Dragons represented the Britons and the Saxons. Vortigern in trying to build a castle in Snowdonia at Dinas Emrys disturbed the Dragons and their disclosure caused the Saxon conquest.
Gwerthefyr is Vortimer, the son Vortigern who was defeating the Saxons, but his father betrayed his own people for the lust of Rowena the daughter of Hengist, the Saxon. And the moving of Vortimer’s bones allowed the Saxons to land safely on the Kent coast and consolidate their increasing hold over Britain and turning it into England.
I will explain this in further detail in another post I’m sure.
