Sage

From Angelika's Diary:

As always, my herbal knowledge comes from my mother, God rest her soul. As a child, she told me a story of how the Sage plant had saved the Christ child from Herod's soldiers. As Mary and Joseph traveled with the baby Jesus through the mountains of Judea, they stopped in a small town to rest. The town folk didn't have anything to spare - no hospitality, no water, no shelter, and not even a kind word. So Mary rested by the side of the road, nursing the tiny babe, as Joseph took the donkey to get a drink from the town well. As Mary sat, she heard the thundering hooves of Herod's butchers, searching for her child. Quickly, she looked for a place to hide, and not seeing a cave or trees anywhere, she asked a rose bush that was close by, if it would open its petals and hide the baby. The rose bush wrinkled one of its small button flowers at Mary, telling her to get on her way quickly, so that the butchers wouldn't blemish the roses. Mary fled to a nearby clove bush, and asked for shelter for the baby again. The clove bush shooed her away, claiming that she was too busy putting out beautiful blooms. Mary went to the last plant in the area, hearing the hooves coming closer by the second, and begged the sage bush to spread its leaves and hide the baby. The sage plant blossomed so abundantly that it covered the earth, and its furry leaves created a canopy under which the Christ child and His mother sheltered. Herod's soldiers passed without seeing anything. Mary thanked the sage, and gave thanks, blessing the sage for its good deed and saying that everyone would remember it forevermore. Since that time, the rose has had thorns, the clove has ill-smelling flowers and the sage plant was granted many curative powers.

Of course, I wouldn't be any type of midwife, if I'd not tested that knowledge thoroughly before treating my charges. That being the case, we come to a bit of contention here with the barber surgeons, who are becoming so popular these days, particularly among the better paying of society!

Here, of course, I speak of cleanliness, and good, old-fashioned common sense. When there's sickness about, particularly that with sneezing and coughing, one should always set sage to burning or boiling throughout the house. It used to be, in the times before our modern knowledge, that people thought sage would cure warts, fits of seizures, measles and, of all things, worms. Through our modern advances and testing, we have discovered that sage is an excellent tonic, good for coughs, fevers and the ague. It also helps, despite what the barber surgeons would have you believe, to make sure that others in the same household do not get sick. This can be quite important to mothers with many children - not to mention, husbands!

'Tis best if you not only have the steam or smoke traveling throughout the household, but also if you have the one who's ill, drinking a tea of sage and chamomile. You take equal parts of each and let them steep in hot water for a bit. Give it to the one who's ailing, about a tablespoon at a time, throughout the day. For all its wondrous use, sage can be strong on the stomach, and you want to make sure that not too much is drunk at one time.

If you've got yourself an open cut, and how many of us haven't seen our share of them, sage will help to clean out the wound and heal it quickly, before those blood-sucking barber surgeons come to cut off the whole limb. It's also quite useful when the blood has clotted, but the clot has gone within the body and created a blockage. Drinking the tea and using the sage as a warm compress will clear away the blockage and bring the patient back to full health.

Now, I've heard tell, from some of the better traveled Archers in the group, that there are many types of the plant to be found in the lands of the Moors, with a wide range of colored flowers. I've looked in my father's botanical books, him being a learned scholar and all, and discovered that the sage I use regularly is classified as salvia officianalis. In my own opinion, 'tis merely a grayish-green plant that will grow between knee and thigh level high, having blue flowers and soft, furry leaves. Moths and flies can't stand the smell of it, and help to drive away blights to your other plants. Bees, however, can't get enough of the taste, and their honey is quite tasty when they've supped at the sage. For those whose eyes itch and noses run when the plants bloom in the Spring, eating honey made by the bees close by will help get rid of that problem.

Drying sage will give you the very devil of a problem, mind you, so make sure you've plenty of time before you need to travel with it. But, once it is dried, crushing the leaves into a fine powder will provide you with something to simply throw on the fire, without anyone being the wiser, if need be, as well as providing you with an excellent seasoning for fowl.