The Beginning

            I was fairly young when I discovered that I was a bit different – not because of anything particularly special about me, but rather because my father, God rest his soul, was a wee bit absentminded.  Well, perhaps more than a wee bit, for he got on with mother for many decades and she was a strong-willed Irish lass.  Because he was rather absentminded, however, I learned to read when I was rather young, for father liked to talk about philosophy.  This was probably a good thing, as he was a professor of philosophy at the famous University of Heidelberg, one of the first universities in Germany. 

            So, one particularly fine day, my father came home, terribly excited to share the book that had just arrived at the University, because he knew my mother would be impressed.  It was the works of Hildegard von Bingen, the abbess who was a seer, an herbalist, a song mistress, and philosopher in her own right.  And that’s when I discovered that I was different – for my mother could not read.  It never even occurred to father to question such a thing, for mother was constantly teaching me about herbs and healing.  She was a midwife, of some renown in Heidelberg, and despite the number of “medical doctors” at the University, many women, even the more well-to-do, still preferred to be attended by a midwife at the time of their confinement, rather than a man.  And it was one area that the doctors hadn’t been able to drive away the good works of an herbalist.

            Mother was quite intelligent, but she’d never learned to read for, as I discovered later, women didn’t tend to learn to read, even in the vernacular, let alone in Latin, the language used among scholars of today.  Fortunately, mother was rather busy with her herbs when father came in, and so he gave the book to me to look at, carefully, almost reverently, for books were still rather rare commodities, and he had to return that to the University once the weekend was finished.  As mother continued her work, she told me to read a bit aloud to her, and I began.  So I did, and she asked me to tell me what I thought it meant, in my own words.  My mother, God rest her soul, was a very intelligent woman, but even I didn’t realize at that point that she didn’t understand Latin, and was asking me to tell her what I’d just said in German – for although she was born in Ireland, she lived here with father and me, and we spoke German in the household.  I thought she was testing my Latin, to make sure that I understood what I had read.  How I would have quailed at the thought that mother was only understanding the words of a famous herbalist, through my 7-year-old eyes and mind.  ‘tis probably best that I didn’t know then.

            This work will be a bit of history for my progeny, and a lot of herbal lore and knowledge, much of which came from my mother’s mother to her, and from her to me.  While it is still unusual for women to learn reading, any apprentices I take on will learn the skill, at least to a rudimentary degree, for I have found that books are a quick way to learn what others know about a subject, to add to one’s own knowledge and experience, and possibly find avenues to explore that you haven’t considered before, but should.  I hope to help them learn to at least read Latin, but I write this here in the language of today, so that those who cannot, will still have a resource.  Many stories will be how I was taught about herbs and their preparation, for mother was a fine story-teller, and her stories should not be lost.  My son, Wilhelm, learned many at my knee, but does not tend to remember them himself these days.  He is busy with learning his own trade and the skills and stories he must have to pass along himself.

            Let us begin, then, with a story of my mother’s people, of herbs and how they first began to be used.  We’ll start with the Tuatha de Danaan, or children of the gods.