Tréde neimthigedar liaig:
Dígallrae,
díainme,
comchissi cen ainchiss
Three things that constitute a physician:
a complete cure,
the leaving of no blemish,
a painless examination
~ From The Triads Of Ireland
Botanical name: Cytisus scoparius
Family: Fabaceae
Ogham: Ngeatal
Scots Gaelic: Bealaidh
Irish Gaelic: Giolcach shléibhe
Welsh: Banadl gorweddol
French: Balai
Message: In making yourself whole, you aid in the healing of those around you. In making others whole, you aid in the healing of the world.
There are times in northern Europe when the skies are gray for days. It seems the sun will never return. You are trudging along a muddy lane, your spirits at lowest ebb… and then you raise your eyes. In the grayness, there is a speck of sunfire. It is the flowering broom, bright as a candle flame.
This bushy plant has many names in the Isles: bizzom, broom, and whin are the most common, and it is confused with gorse often in passing. (1) Evergreen and ever-blooming, it was once believed, the plant was one of the most popular wedding and celebration decorations well into the 20th century. (2) Broom was carried at weddings for its luck, burned as a torch to promote health, fed young to cattle, people, and sheep in winter to provide missing vitamins in the diet (3) and brewed into a heady mead. (4) At Eastertide it was common to form flowering broom into besoms and clean the house out for the year, and scrubbing pads for floors and walls were often made from the wire-like branches. The plant was a favorite for thatching houses as well. (5) But the hand that would pluck the broom must do so with care, for the long, whippy branches are lined with corded bark inlaid with silica, and a grasping hand will be sliced, every wound embedded with splinters of bark. (6) As the plant can both cause and treat deep wounds, the Irish word for the fid refers to both the wound and the healer who will cure it. When we carelessly harvest broom, as when we do so many things carelessly, we learn a painful lesson. Broom’s tough bark can, and will, lacerate our flesh. If we ignore the wounds, they will fester. The longer a splinter is left in the flesh, the greater the pain and the sickness it causes will grow. Ignoring a wound may seem less painful than seeking the cause of it, but in the end the wounds that we do not treat are the ones that will ruin us. Yet we persist and work in spite of the injury. Why?
Sometimes we think we have no choice. Sometimes we fear the ridicule of others when they see our wound and mock us for our weakness. But the man who sits down, cleans the blood and splinters from his hands, and returns to work better than he was, does not show weakness. He shows wisdom. And the man who mocks another for his injuries shows not his own strength, but his own stupidity. Injury and illness do not affect the worth of the afflicted individual. Again and again, the old texts make this point. Cormac Mac Art wrote:
Do not mock the elderly, though you be young;
Nor the poor, though you be rich;
Nor the ragged, though you be wealthy;
Nor the lame, though you be fleet.
Nor the blind, though you can see;
Nor the weak, though you be strong;
Nor the senseless, though you be prudent;
Nor the foolish though you be wise. (7)
And in The Triads of Ireland we read:
Trí buirb in betha:
óc contibi sen,
slán contibi galarach,
gáeth contibi báeth.
Three rude ones of the world:
a youngster mocking an old man,
a healthy person mocking an invalid,
a wise man mocking a fool (8)
Again and again, we see the theme. The old man who is mocked is in fact the powerful mage of the story, the old woman who is insulted on the road is one of the sidhe. Equating the worth of a person with their affliction is a grave error of the one making the judgement, whether that judgement concerns oneself or another. You will never know when a shoddy exterior might hide great worth.
In a niche overlooking the king’s baths at Bath, England, there sits a regal figure. The inscription below reads ‘Bladud, son of Lud Hudibrus, Eight King of the Britons, founder of these baths.’
It is the story of the founding that will teach us.
As a young man, Bladud (pronounced ‘bla-dith’) was the treasure of his family and his people. A brilliant scholar, Bladud was sent to Greece for eleven years of study. On the day he was due to return, his royal parents prepared the court for a fete.
But it was not a brave young man who rode through the gates: it was a wretched boy, covered in sores.
The queen cried out, “My son, what ails you?”
Bladud whispered a word that shook his parents to the core:
“Leprosy.”
At the word, the subjects of the court cried out in panic, demanding the banishment of the pestilence. Bladud turned away without a word. But his mother cried his name, and cast her ring into the dirt at his feet.
“If the gods heal you, this ring will prove you are my beloved boy.”
Bladud kept the ring against his heart as he left his home once more, stripped of his title and his pride. He wandered for a year and a day, driven out of every place, until he came to the great oak forests of the River Avon. There a swineherd saw him wandering.
“Man, a bed and your meals for your eyes on my pigs, what say you?”
“I say aye,” Bladud replied gratefully.
From that day he watched over the pigs under the oak trees, feeding them on rich acorn crops. He might have lived like this for all his life. But one winter’s evening, he camped beneath Solsbury Hill with his pigs. And in the morning, the pigs were gone.
Bladud searched in a panic, finding the tracks of his pigs and trailing them to a place where they were rolling joyfully in mud. Bracing himself for the cold slime, Bladud stepped in.
To his shock, the mud was warm.
One by one and two by two, he wrangled and tempted his pigs out of the mud and into the River Avon for a wash. To his amazement, every scratch and scar that forest living had given his pigs were washed away with the mud, as were his leprous wounds and ruined flesh.
Laughing and giving his thanks, he drove his charges back to their owner, and turned his feet towards home.
“Who are you?” the guards at the gate of his home demanded, for they saw a farm man only.
Bladud held up his mother’s ring. “I am the king that will be.”
Returned to his health and his place, the first thing Bladud did was bestow the lands and the lordship of a town upon the swineherd who offered him a place when the world shunned him. The town is still known as Hogs Norton. That done, Bladud set about building a shrine around the hot springs he’d found, in his pious thanks for the healing he was given. That place of healing still stands today.
The broom’s branches are dangerous, but its flowers are bright.
“I know it hurts,” broom murmurs, “but it will be worth the pain to become greater than you were yesterday. This is how you heal. This is how you become more than you are today.”
- British and Garden Botany, Grindon, Leo H., 1864
- “Trees in early Ireland, Irish Forestry”, Kelly, Fergus, Journal of the Society of Irish Foresters 56, 1999
- Ireland’s Wild Plants–Myths, Legends & Folklore, Mac Coitir, Niall, the Collins Press, 2010
- Food for Free, Mabey, Richard, Collins Press, 1972
- A Druid’s Herbal of Sacred Tree Medicine, Hopman, Ellen, Destiny Books, 1994
- Flora of the County Dublin, Colgan Nathanial, Hodges, Figgis & Co., Ltd., 1904
- The Counsels of Cormac: An Ancient Irish Guide to Leadership, Cleary, Thomas F., Doubleday Books, 2004
- The Triads of Ireland, Meyer, Kuno, ed. Vol. 13. Hodges, Figgis, & Co., Ltd., 1906
- “Bladud of Bath: the Archaeology of a Legend”, Clark, John, Taylor & Francis, Ltd. on behalf of Folklore Enterprises, Ltd., 1994