Authors: Karen Cushman
Grayling's Song (18 page)
She stopped for a moment and then nodded and added a last line:
Seasons change, and so do I.
Then Grayling turned for the path back up the hill toward the rest of the world.
Cunning folk? Wise women? Hedge witches? I knew there was a story there, and the only way I could find out what it was was to write it. So I did, setting the story in a place much like medieval England but with magic.
For centuries, all across the world, cunning folk, also called wise women or wise men or hedge witches, were the ones villagers sought out to cure toothache or bellyache, to find lost or stolen objects, or to provide love potions and prophecies. The activities of cunning folk could be sorted into herbal medicine, folk magic, and divination. Some of their pursuits may sound far-fetched to modern ears, but they were recognized remedies in medieval England, and much of what cunning folk found and did is still used today.
The use of plants as medicines dates as far back as the origin of humankind. Historic sites in Iraq show that Neanderthals used yarrow, marsh-mallow root, and other herbs more than sixty thousand years ago.
People have always relied on plants for nourishment. Through trial and error, they discovered that some plants are good to eat, some are poisonous, and some produce bodily changes or relieve pain. Over time, these observations were passed down from generation to generation, with each new population adding to the body of knowledge.
Many ancient plant-based remedies are used to this day, such as ginger and mint to treat nausea, poppies to make medicine for sedation and pain relief, and witch hazel lotion for skin ailments. Saint John's wort, once used to ward off evil spirits, now relieves depression. Spiderwebs have been used since Roman times on wounds to stop the bleeding. It is now known that spiderwebs are rich in vitamin K, which can be effective in clotting blood. Even carnivorous animals are known to consume plants when ill. My cat eats grass.
Valuable modern medicines are derived from herbal folk remedies: from the moldy bread used on wounds to speed healing came penicillin; from willow bark, used for fevers, came aspirin; foxglove, used to treat various complaints, led to digitoxin for heart trouble.
In March 2015, scientists at the University of Nottingham in England reported that they had tried a thousand-year-old Anglo-Saxon remedy for sties, or infections of the eyelids:
Take crop leek and garlic, of both equal quantities, pound them well together. . . . Take wine and bullocks gall
[bile from the gall bladder of a steer]
, mix with the leek. . . . Let it stand nine days in the brass vessel.
The bizarre-sounding potion was then tested on skin taken from mice infected with the antibiotic-resistant superbug MRSA. It killed 90 percent of the bacteria! And the Anglo-Saxons knew about it more than a thousand years ago.
Not all ancient remedies were actually helpful, however, and some sound loathsomeâfried mouse for whooping cough, for example, or boiled sheep droppings for smallpox, or boiled onions carried in the armpits to cure pneumonia.
Herbal healing, like life in general long ago, was mixed with magic and superstition. Charms or amulets, objects believed to have magical powers (like a rabbit's foot), were carried to ward off illness or misfortune. Specific actions or gestures, such as hand motions against the evil eye, were assumed to have magical powers. Think of Auld Nancy waving her broom at a rainy sky.
Spells, chants, and incantations are magical words or phrases intended to bring about a specific result. “Hocus-pocus” and “abracadabra” are magic words used by many magicians. The Amazing Mumford on
Sesame Street
used “A la peanut butter sandwiches!”; Ali Baba in the Arabian Nights called out “Open Sesame!” and the door opened. Auld Nancy, Pansy, and Sylvanus all use spells or chants, with varying results. Grayling's song to the grimoire is a magical incantation.
Used in various cultures throughout history, both ancient and modern, divination is the practice of seeking knowledge of the future or the unknown by reading signs or omens. In contemporary society, it is encountered in the form of astrology, tarot cards, the
I Ching,
and the Ouija board. Reading tea leaves or the lines on one's palm are other types of divination.
For more than five thousand years, diviners, such as Sylvanus, have read prophecies in all manner of objects, including dust (abacomancy), spiders (arachnomancy), entrails of animals (haruspicy), the howling of dogs (ololygmancy), and, of course, cheese (tyromancy). Their prophecies were taken seriously and probably changed the course of history more than once. Today, although few read the future in animal entrails, millions of people practice a form of divination by consulting their daily horoscope or flipping a coin to make a decision.
12
TH DAY OF
S
EPTEMBER
I am commanded to write an account of my days: I am bit by fleas and plagued by family. That is all there is to say.
13
TH DAY OF
S
EPTEMBER
My father must suffer from ale head this day, for he cracked me twice before dinner instead of once. I hope his angry liver bursts.
14
TH DAY OF
S
EPTEMBER
Tangled my spinning again. Corpus bones, what a torture.
15
TH DAY OF
S
EPTEMBER
Today the sun shone and the villagers sowed hay, gathered apples, and pulled fish from the stream. I, trapped inside, spent two hours embroidering a cloth for the church and three hours picking out my stitches after my mother saw it. I wish I were a villager.
16
TH DAY OF
S
EPTEMBER
Spinning. Tangled.
17
TH DAY OF
S
EPTEMBER
Untangled.
18
TH DAY OF
S
EPTEMBER
If my brother Edward thinks that writing this account of my days will help me grow less childish and more learned,
he
will have to write it. I will do this no longer. And I will not spin. And I will not eat. Less childish indeed.
19
TH DAY OF
S
EPTEMBER
I am delivered! My mother and I have made a bargain. I may forego spinning as long as I write this account for Edward. My mother is not much for writing but has it in her heart to please Edward, especially now he is gone to be a monk, and I would do worse things to escape the foolish boredom of spinning. So I will write.
What follows will be my bookâthe book of Catherine, called Little Bird or Birdy, daughter of Rollo and the lady Aislinn, sister to Thomas, Edward, and the abominable Robert, of the village of Stonebridge in the shire of Lincoln, in the country of England, in the hands of God. Begun this 19th day of September in the year of Our Lord 1290, the fourteenth year of my life. The skins are my father's, left over from the household accounts, and the ink also. The writing I learned of my brother Edward, but the words are my own.
Picked off twenty-nine fleas today.
20
TH DAY OF
S
EPTEMBER
Today I chased a rat about the hall with a broom and set the broom afire, ruined my embroidery, threw it in the privy, ate too much for dinner, hid in the barn and sulked, teased the littlest kitchen boy until he cried, turned the mattresses, took the linen outside for airing, hid from Morwenna and her endless chores, ate supper, brought in the forgotten linen now wet with dew, endured scolding and slapping from Morwenna, pinched Perkin, and went to bed. And having writ this, Edward, I feel no less childish or more learned than I was.
21
ST DAY OF
S
EPTEMBER
Something is astir. I can feel my father's eyes following me about the hall, regarding me as he would a new warhorse or a bull bought for breeding. I am surprised that he has not asked to examine my hooves.
And he asks me questions, the beast who never speaks to me except with the flat of his hand to my cheek or my rump.
This morning: “Exactly how old are you, daughter?”
This forenoon: “Have you all your teeth?”
“Is your breath sweet or foul?”
“Are you a good eater?”
“What color is your hair when it is clean?”
Before supper: “How are your sewing and your bowels and your conversation?”
What is brewing here?
Sometimes I miss my brothers, even the abominable Robert. With Robert and Thomas away in the king's service and Edward at his abbey, there are fewer people about for my father to bother, so he mostly fixes upon me.
22
ND DAY OF
S
EPTEMBER
I am a prisoner to my needle again today, hemming linen in the solar with my mother and her women. This chamber is pleasant, large and sunny, with my mother and father's big bed on one side and, on the other, a window that looks out on the world I could be enjoying were I not in here sewing. I can see across the yard, past the stables and privy and cowshed, to the river and the gatehouse, over the fields to the village beyond. Cottages line the dusty road leading to the church at the far end. Dogs and geese and children tumble in play while the villagers plough. Would I were tumblingâor even ploughingâwith them.
Here in my prison my mother works and gossips with her women as if she didn't mind being chained to needle and spindle. My nurse Morwenna, now that I am near grown and not in need of her nursing, tortures me with complaints about the length of my stitches and the colors of my silk and the thumbprints on the altar cloth I am hemming.
If I had to be born a lady, why not a
rich
lady, so someone else could do the work and I could lie on a silken bed and listen to a beautiful minstrel sing while my servants hemmed? Instead I am the daughter of a country knight with but ten servants, seventy villagers, no minstrel, and acres of unhemmed linen. It grumbles my guts. I do not know what the sky is like today or whether the berries have ripened. Has Perkin's best goat dropped her kid yet? Did Wat the Farrier finally beat Sym at wrestling? I do not know. I am trapped here inside hemming.
Morwenna says it is the altar cloth for me. Corpus bones!
23
RD DAY OF
S
EPTEMBER
There was a hanging in Riverford today. I am being punished for impudence again, so was not allowed to go. I am near fourteen and have never yet seen a hanging. My life is barren.
24
TH DAY OF
S
EPTEMBER
The stars and my family align to make my life black and miserable. My mother seeks to make me a fine ladyâdumb, docile, and accomplishedâso I must take lady-lessons and keep my mouth closed. My brother Edward thinks even girls should not be ignorant, so he taught me to read holy books and to write, even though I would rather sit in an apple tree and wonder. Now my father, the toad, conspires to sell me like a cheese to some lack-wit seeking a wife.
What makes this clodpole suitor anxious to have me? I am no beauty, being sun-browned and gray-eyed, with poor eyesight and a stubborn disposition. My family holds but two small manors. We have plenty of cheese and apples but no silver or jewels or boundless acres to attract a suitor.
Corpus bones! He comes to dine with us in two days' time. I plan to cross my eyes and drool in my meat.
26
TH DAY OF
S
EPTEMBER
Master Lack-Wit comes today, despite my mother's objections. Although she is wed to a knight of no significance, her fathers were kings in Britain long ago, she says. And my suitor is but a wool merchant from Great Yarmouth who aspires to be mayor and thinks a wife with noble relations, no matter how distant, will be an advantage.
My father bellowed, “Sweet Judas, lady, think you we can eat your royal ancestors or plant your family name? The man stinks of gold. If he will have her and pay well for the privilege, your daughter will be a wife.”
When there is money involved, my father can be quite well spoken.
T
HE HOUR OF VESPERS, LATER THIS DAY
: My suitor has come and gone. The day was gray and drippy so I sat in the privy to watch him arrive. I thought it well to know my enemy.
Master Lack-Wit was of middle years and fashionably pale. He was also a mile high and bony as a herring, with gooseberry eyes, chin like a hatchet, and tufts of orange hair sprouting from his head, his ears, and his nose. And all his ugliness came wrapped in glorious robes of samite and ermine that fell to big red leather boots. It put me in mind of the time I put my mother's velvet cap and veil on Perkin's granny's rooster.