Authority and charm are hard to combine successfully. In The Time Traveller’s Herbal Amanda Edmiston achieves this, carrying the reader through her original, and engaging, journey through plant lore. Using stories and songs as backdrop to the herbalism, her narrative gifts are always evident. The final element in this unique package is its physical beauty: illustrations that speak to the text; the mood of a valued family scrapbook, combining words of wisdom with anecdotes, recipes and pressed plants.
The Herbal incorporates literary traditions from the sixth century BC to the present day, oral traditions, recipes (medical and food-related) and environmental observations. It is globally aware, with a peculiarly Scottish perspective. In this context, ‘history and the story begin to merge – we are past the point where certainty is clear. Then familiarity… we see a hawthorn tree, marker of the entrance to the world of the fae’ (p. 23).
As a storyteller and qualified herbalist, from a highly creative family, Edmiston is uniquely well-qualified to range through time and space, practice and imagination, on a herbal storytelling quest. She does so with confidence and aplomb, and a duty of care to the reader, and to those whose traditions she shares. There is a set of ‘Sensible Precautions and well-kent advice’ at the outset for instance but also, at all times, a curatorial responsibility towards the connections between language and the land.
This reads like a true labour of love, opening with evocative memories of reading in a grandmother’s kitchen:
I vividly remember picking the buttery crystallised crusts of sugar from the thick soft pages of Florence Marian McNeill’s The Scots Kitchen, too young to understand the words. Gradually, as I learnt to read, I came to recognise that this treasured book not only held recipes, but also intriguing hints of folklore and stories […] collected traditions’ (p. 11)
Throughout the book, Edmiston’s alertness the significance of place, as well as the legacies of particular people, is evident: ‘many of my stories, and the recipes and tastes that accompany them, originate in the places I walk. I sit and look around me, notice the plants and the changes afforded by time […] It is easy to be drawn into history if you sit and think, feeling the ground beneath your feet’ (p. 37).
In this process, she imaginatively enters the worlds of herbalists and storytellers, past and present. At Doon Hill, for instance, she enters the world of Robert Kirk, remembering his Secret Commonwealth; as she observes the oak, and ash and thorn, of this evocative location:
There is something enchanted about this place, so we stop to share stories of folk who have encountered the fae, such as Thomas A’ Rhymer, of Ercildoune in the Borders, who shared a beautiful sonnet with the fairy queen and was rewarded with an apple containing the gift of prophecy. Although, for his trouble, he lost seven years in the mortal world’ (p.88)
Further to these reflections, Edmiston incorporates ‘A Lotion to Enable One to See the Fairies’ – something she first learned about through a chance encounter whilst collecting Stirlingshire plant lore. She was fortuitously able to follow this up, and transcribe a recipe from 1600, whilst delivering a workshop at the Ashmolean:
Take a pint of sallet oyle and put it into a vial glass;
and first wash it with rose-water and mary-golde water.
the flowers to be gathered towards the east (p. 91)
From here Edmiston carries the reader to a recipe for infusing oil with pot marigold – ‘a wonderful massage oil for dry skin and mild dry eczema’ (p. 93).
It is only possible, here, to give a brief flavour of the many delightful elements in this book, from ‘Elizabeth Blackwell’s Lavendar Charm to See your True Love in a Dream’ (p. 108) to ‘Spices for Wealth and Health’ (p. 74) derived from the Canterbury Tales, to the 400BC story of ‘Carna, the Goddess of Viscera’ and ‘Hedgerow Jelly’ (pp. 25–33), the stories of Duncan Williamson (p. 114) and birch trees.
It would be remiss, too, not to mention the humour and bravura voice of Edmiston, as a leading Scottish storyteller. For example, after skilfully recounting the story of the North-East’s Maiden Stone, Edmiston includes a recipe for Heather Tonic: ‘As cures go, this might not turn you back to mortal from stone, but it will help you feel a more human temperature on a cold dark evening!’. She adds a caution: ‘beware of flattering handsome strangers who offer the impossible, they are quite often not what they seem to be!’ (pp. 47–57).
At times I heard echoes of Lewis Grassic Gibbon, perhaps linked to Edmiston’s Aberdeenshire roots. Nan Shepherd, Jessie Kesson and Margaret Elphinstone also come to mind as points of comparison. In short, a lifetime of knowledge, a kind heart and a skilful storyteller’s voice are all here, in a book which is made to be slipped into your pocket on a country walk. As Edmiston says:
My mum always told me ‘a story is true whilst it’s being told.’ If you taste the plants as we go, look for them growing between the cracks in the pavement, and infuse the leaves that grow within each story, the world of Botanica Fabula will open up and flourish, guiding you on a journey, back into the world of apothecary storytelling, into The Time Traveller’s Herbal (p. 13).
This is a journey that I, and many others, would undertake in a heartbeat. The careful referencing, glossary and capsule collection of resources within this small volume are all incredibly useful. Edmiston’s Time Traveller’s Herbal is sure to become a key text in several areas of study: traditional medicine; oral traditions; historiography of herbalism; food heritage; auto-ethnography as well as in Scottish literature. It would make the perfect gift, or a valuable addition to a thoughtfully curated library.
