Nettles (folklore)

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Nettle, both stinging and non-stinging (sometimes called "dead-nettles"), have many folklore traditions associated with them.

1 Ancient days
2 Health and wealth
3 Literature and poetry
4 Warning

[edit] Ancient days

Fabric woven of nettle fiber has been found in burial sites dating back to the Bronze Age.

Milarepa, the great Tibetan ascetic and saint, was reputed to have survived his decades of solitary meditation by subsisting on nothing but nettles; his hair and skin turned green and he lived to the age of 83.

[edit] Health and wealth

Handmade soap with the extract of stinging nettle

Nettles in a pocket will keep a person safe from lightning and bestow courage. Nettles kept in a room will protect anyone inside. (This may have arisen from common knowledge of the tremendous amount of nutrients nettles offer, making them a powerful plant in that sense.) Bunches of stinging nettles will also keep a room free. Arthritic joints were sometimes treated by whipping the joint with a branch of stinging nettles. The theory was that it stimulated the adrenals and thus reduced swelling and pain in the joint. Nettles are reputed to enhance fertility in men, and fever could be dispelled by plucking a nettle up by its roots while reciting the names of the sick man and also the names of his family.

Turkeys and other poultry (as well as cows and pigs) are said to thrive on nettles, and ground dried nettle in chicken feed will increase egg production.

A distillation of the flowers of the White Archangel, or white dead-nettle (Lamium album) is reputed "to make the heart merry, to make a good colour in the face, and to make the vital spirits more fresh and lively." [1]

In 1926, the Royal Horticultural Society's recommendation for getting rid of nettles was to cut them down three times in three consecutive years, after which they will disappear.

[edit] Literature and poetry

An old Scots rhyme about the nettle:

"Gin ye be for lang kail coo the nettle, stoo the nettle

Gin ye be for lang kail coo the nettle early

Coo it laich, coo it sune, coo it in the month o' June

Stoo it ere it's in the bloom, coo the nettle early

Coo it by the auld wa's, coo it where the sun ne'er fa's

Stoo it when the day daws, coo the nettle early."

(Old Wives Lore for Gardeners, M & B Boland)

Coo, cow, and stoo are all Scots for cut back or crop (although, curiously, another meaning of "stoo" is to throb or ache), while "laich" means short or low to the ground.[2] Given the repetition of "early," presumably this is advice to harvest nettles first thing in the morning and to cut them back hard (which seems to contradict the advice of the Royal Horticultural Society].

The Caribbean trickster figure Anansi appears in a story about nettles, in which he has to chop down a huge nettle patch in order to win the hand of the king's daughter. [3]. In Hans Christian Andersen's fairy-tale "The Wild Swans, the princess had to weave coats of nettles to break the spell on her brothers.