History of the Herbwyfe

Below is an article that I wrote for A Simple Life Magazine www.asimplelifemagazine.com on the history of Women & Herbs, with specific reference to the history of the Herbwyfe.

I think any of us, who are driven by a passion to learn and work with herbs, feel the pull and tug of this history and respond to it by actively seeking more knowledge and greater participation in the current world of Herbal Medicine.

 

Herbwyfe

(Herbwife)

The History of Every-Woman’s Medicine

Herbs. Those of us who are avid country primitive people decorate with, and grow, plenty of herbs. Dried herbs, crushed herb, swags of sweet smelling herbs. They add a feeling, an extra dimension if you will, of being connected and grounded to the soil and also a feeling of secure self-sufficiency. Herbs heal. If we gather them, somewhere back in our conscience we know that we can take care of ourselves, come what may. This is a good feeling.

We put herbs in our teas or cooking, or steep in our favorite mugs, specifically, herbal tea. But herbs, and the multitude of household and culinary concoctions made from them, were also a huge mainstay in the homesteads of long ago.  We are, I believe, experiencing a re-discovery and a re-birth of the uses and knowledge of herbs in all their varied forms.

There are weeds that grow rampant around our yard, garden and house and fill the fields every spring and summer. Some of these were so profuse that I would pull them every time I walked by. Shepherd’s purse, dandelion, chickweed, lamb’s quarter; all blooming and beautiful, but perceived as weeds nonetheless.  It wasn’t until I learned that I was surrounded by a vast network of healing foodstuffs, that I viewed weeds differently.

According to Maureen Anderson, practicing Herbwife at Hearthside Farms, just outside Colonial Williamsburg, “the word Wort means herb. It is the olde English word for herb. By the late middle ages, the word wort was beginning to be replaced with the word herb. Worts were the common name for any plant used for food or medicine.”

The name wort continues to be used to this day in Motherwort, St. John’s Wort, Mugwort, Soapwort, and many other herbs, though it has fallen out of favor as a generally descriptive term for them.

These plants, useful and healing, were once a part of every woman’s kitchen. The term for this use of herbs is called Herbwifery.  An herbwife is defined as one who grows and uses herbs. Or, specifically, as one skilled in the knowledge of plants; a collector of, or dealer in, herbs, especially medicinal herbs.

In olde English, a ‘wife’ was simply, a woman, with no connotation to marriage. The term ‘wife’ was added on to the job which a woman performed. If she dealt with herbs and healing she was an ‘herb’ wife.  Women commonly held positions of community healers and midwifes, which was an open door for the practice of herbwifery.  Women who practiced the art of midwifery would also, many times, be the community herbwife. The two tended to go hand in hand.  Midwives used herbs to help the mother and baby recover from the birth process, and they also grew and used herbs from their gardens and back fields for these purposes.  Many times, the village herbwife lived on the edge of town.  Here, the tree filled forest and fields met with her needs to gather wild plants, harvest the barks and keep an eye on the natural progression of the wild seasons and the varied storehouse of healing products it provided.

The largest clusters of the population in the 1600 and 1700’s, both in Europe and the New World, were poor rural folk who worked the soil for their living.  If they found themselves or their children ill, their remedies lay in their herb and kitchen gardens. One would be hard pressed to find a single homestead that did not have its medicinal herb garden, a wool dying garden and an herb garden for everyday cooking.  For those whose home remedies failed them, a trip to the herbwife on the edge of the village or town was in order.  These roles, of herbwife and healer, were learned and passed from grandmother to mother to daughter. A matriarchal heritage of self reliant healing, you might say. 

The wisdom of herbal planting, flowering, gathering, drying, tincturing, distilling and decocting, and it’s various uses and cures was no foreign subject in the female lineage of a family. The education of drying and preserving the medicinal and health giving herbs for the winter months was necessary to life and well-being. It was not frivolous or hobbyist in nature.

Laurel Ulrich, of Harvard University, has written an entire book on the subject and history of an American herbwife’s diary entitled,  A Midwife’s Tale.  Martha Ballard, an herbwife, who also was a midwife, in Augusta, Maine, kept a diary of her life and healing practice covering the years from 1785-1812.  It is rare, alone, for a diary from this time to survive, but also rare in that it is the diary of a practicing herbwife who kept records of her healing methods.

An excerpt from Martha’s diary entry of April 28, 1785 reads,

 “Clear. Mr. Ballard gone to Ditoes. John Pinkam here for herbs for his Child that’s unwell. The ice runs in the river this day. Mr. Forbes here, made me a present of a Ladle. I was at home all day.

Martha Ballard’s diary can be viewed, in its original entirety at: http://dohistory.org/home.html

Most women who practiced the art of herbwifery in their homes and villages led quiet lives. Their stories are all but lost.  The written record of herbwives is barely existent because those who practiced its art were not part of the upper middle class, received no formal education and were not men. The chance for their written recipes, healing methods and day to day trials and lives to survive in publication is one of scarcity. Thankfully, herbwifery continued as a verbal matriarchal tradition.

What is most fascinating about the history of herbwifery is that it is not outdated, nor is it dead. In fact, it is experiencing quite a resurgence.  The joy and pride of preparing one’s own herbal preparations in the coziness of your own kitchen is something that cannot be equaled by running to your local store to get cough syrup or sleep aids.  Chamomile tea soothes and quiets the body and a couple of dried sage leaves thrown into your favorite hot tea does wonders to soothe a sore scratchy throat…all within footsteps of your backdoor or pantry. As an added benefit, many herbs are free from disturbing side effects and actually heal more than one ill at a time. 

As Jessica Prentice writes in her book, Full Moon Feast,  “The names of herbs possess much poetry.  I also hear in their names a kind of ancestral memory-an ancient wisdom that wants to be remembered.  The plants seem to be calling me through their names.  They remind me that once upon a time they were honored and valued; they were the primary source of healing.  The herbs themselves and the gardens they grew in were our medicine chests….Herbs were a part of daily life-a familiar, everyday, working knowledge….They have been cooked into teas, brewed into beers, smoked in pipes, tinctured in alcohol. They have been fed to dairy animals whose milk was then drunk. They have been dried and powdered, and given with honey. They have been steamed and inhaled, added to baths, and steeped into oil that is rubbed into the body. Nowadays many people who are taking a medicinal herb for a health problem are simply popping a pill that is not so different from any other modern drug. But once upon a time, gardens were meant to be drunk.”

So, as you begin to plant your seedlings in the soil this spring, and weed your rows of tomatoes and okra, remember that some of the herbs you are pulling could actually be healing you and nourishing your body.  Since some knowledge of the medicinal effects of each herb is suggested, we will revisit this topic in later issues to learn more about how we can heal ourselves from our own gardens and backyards. The bounty of God’s earth is put here for our use, and we will meet here again to learn together and have fun as we gather, dry and store our special remedies and safeguard our homesteads for the many seasons to come.

For More Information About Herbwifery and Its Practice, See These Sources:

Chelsea Green Publishing www.chelseagreen.com

Hearthside Farms, Maureen Anderson, Herbwife, www.thefullnessthereof.blogspot.com

The Herb Quarterly, www.herbquarterly.com

www.herbcraft.org