Today I’ve been wandering around a hospital with mint strapped to my wrist because according to Lady Wilde, in Irish folklore, to prevent infection and disease this is what one must do. Incidentally, mint is also said to keep away mice and flies.
Full confession, below is a re-enactment as I wasn’t paying attention and deleted the originals.
(Had a senior moment when binding the mint to my wrist, as I completely forgot I could use hair bands to hold it in place, so spent rather a long time faffing about with one hand, my teeth and a ribbon. I also had a sock on standby if I couldn’t find anything more suitable to put the mint in.)
By the way, there may have been something in those Philosopher’s Stone fumes after all. This morning I woke up from a long dream about visiting one of my oldest friends, Sophie, in Australia, to find she’d sent me a photograph of us having a picnic when we were kids. Which might not sound too co-incidental except the last time we messaged each other about something unrelated to birthdays or Christmases was 18 January 2018…
Resources
Vickery, R. (2019) Vickery’s Folk Flora, An A-Z of the Folklore and Uses of British and Irish Plants, London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson
Wilde, Lady (1991) Irish Cures, Mystic Charms & Superstitions, New York, Sterling Publishing Co., Inc.
