...because snippets of story and lore can turn flowers into even better friends!
My name is Pridie Tiernan and I'm an ethnobotanist and storyteller. Ethnobotany is the study of how humans and plants interact - food, medicine, shelter, dyes, fibres etc, and these skills are best shared with a rich mix of stories and lore to really bring them to life.
Twenty-one years ago, I started teaching English in Secondary schools. It took me one term to work out that we learn best when we are a) in a story and b) outside. We shouldn't be suprised. 'Story is what brain does.' That's Will Storr, in his book 'The Science of Storytelling. And Richard Louv, in his book The Nature Principle, notes that studies consistently demonstrate that "When we are truly present in nature, [this] is the optimum state of learning.” So I took my students outside, and I constantly told them stories.
School didn't like it. Sock puppet Macbeth in the hedge and the sniffing of ditches for inspiration during our Hunger Games creative writing unit, wasn't covered by the insurance. I was told to get my class back into the building.
I didn't. I carried on. Because it worked. Teach anything through the medium of story and the outdoors, and students will learn. The message is spreading. Many schools today have outdoor classrooms, comprehensive forest school curriculums, teachers are encouraged to go outside. There's plenty of work still to do, but we're moving forward.
In 2017, I set up The Wild of the Words, hoping that, in some small way, influence pedagogical change within academia by empowering teachers to harness the power of stories and the outdoors across the curriculum as part of their daily practice. I also hoped that my work would reconnect adults, as well as children, to their natural heritage, prompting the desire to protect it.
Communities have always storied their interactions with the natural world. Personification of plants, trees and creatures enables us to relate to other living organisms. Stories also help us to remember and provide a creative and emotive method of handing on knowledge. They add the colour - the experience and emotion to ethnobotany. Emotion encourages the forming of bonds and bonding with nature is crucial if we are to thrive.
In all my workshops, I seek to establish a bond between people and plants. After an introduction around the fire, we get out into the meadow and hedgerow to meet the plants and trees. I'll start by pointing out physical characteristics, but it's when I introduce the folklore, with their little riddles of wisdom, that eyes light up! Plants suddenly become fun and full of character - we see tricksy, changeable, complex organisms that have an agenda and all manner of methods to meet it! Folklore and stories associated with flowers allows our brain to layer on a little bit of human experience and our neural networks kick into gear. Anything involving threatened antagonism, sexual allure, status play, moral outrage, heroes, villains, unfair trouble, and we're hooked. You'll never look at a meadow in the same way again!
When we forage at home, folklore and story plays an enormously important part in the process. It's fun to find the folklore and if you approach it like a riddle to crack that the ancestors have set us, you'll find all sorts of tips and warnings. Let's take hawthorn, for example. Celtic mythology teaches that the hawthorn tree is sacred, bestowing love and protection. So we look for the link to hearts and guardianship. Hawthorn is a powerful heart medicine containing vasodilators good for lowering blood pressure, helpful in treatment of heart disease and beneficial for those in heart failure. The folklore fits. Wait though, there's also a warning. Hawthorn is said to be kept by the fairies to guard the threshold to the Otherworld. Falling asleep under a hawthorn tree could result in being kidnapped and taken to the underworld. It's also unlucky to bring into the house - someone might die. Used traditionally as a hedging plant and as a guardian of sprouting saplings against grazers that would be protection? But, one might easily prick their finger planting or harvesting it. One prick of the finger and it's gift would be septicemia. Lack care and respect when collecting and you'll risk the wrath of the fairies! Stolen away to the Otherworld in the form of fatal blood poisoning!
Let's take a look at the folklore associated with these flowers. I wonder if the riddles within indicate anything to you already?
Plantain
Meadowsweet
Elder
Comfrey
Hydrangea
Yarrow
Rose
Oregano
Robin Wall Kimmerer reminds us that, “action on behalf of life transforms, because the relationship between self and the world is reciprocal. As we work to heal the earth, the earth heals us.” If we actively set about rebuilding our relationship with our natural world, she'll gift us plenty back. If we learn see our flowers as precious food, medicine, materials with which we might build, weave and craft, they matter. If we explore them in more detail through their folklore and stories - understanding they are living beings that can help or hinder each other;'s existence - our very own existence, they matter. When things matter, we support and protect them. If we nurture and preserve our natural world, nature will, in turn, nurture and preserve us.
Let's begin to build that relationship through lore and story.
Thank you :)