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Ashes and the Fringe Tree — Part 5

Superstitious parents in rural England used to pass a poor little babe suffering from rupture through the cleft stem of a growing ash. Twice the stem must be sprung apart, and the child passed through. The trunk was then tightly bound, and when its halves were firmly knit, they believed that the child would also be whole. An oil distilled from ash chips was counted a sovereign remedy for many ailments, especially earache. John Gerarde writes: "It is excellent to recover the hearing, some drops of it being distilled warm into the ears"

The kernels of ash seeds were credited with having medicinal value. English apothecaries of Evelyn's time had stock of "Lingua avis" on their shelves, calling them this because they were "like almost to divers birds' tongues." Gerarde, citing the authority of Pliny, says: "Serpents dare not so much as touch the morning and evening shadows of the tree, but shun them afar off . . . . . Being penned with boughes laid round about [they] will sooner go into the fire than come near the boughes of the ash." And he adds: "It is a wonderful courtesie in nature that the ash should floure before the Serpents appeare, and not cast his leaves before they be gon again."

As for lightning, the ash is said to attract it. Various warnings are current:

"Beware the oak, it draws the stroke;

Avoid the ash, it courts the flash;

Creep under the thorn--it will save you from harm."

The unfortunate rustic, caught in a shower, probably knows that beech is the safest tree to stand under, for experience and tradition both hold that "a beech is never struck by lightning." The early settlers had this saying from the Indians, and proved its truth. A quaint recipe from Gerarde may interest some of my readers, though certain makers of nostrums may frown upon me for quoting it. "Three or four leaves of the ash taken in wine each morning doe make those lean that are fat." Parkinson indorses this as "a singular good medicine--with fasting a small quantity--for those already fat or tending thereunto, to abate their greatnesse, and cause them to be lancke and gaunt." Who disbelieves in this will do well to remember that Gerarde was no mean authority in his day, and Parkinson--was he not the King's own Apothecarye? I make no doubt, however, that the conclusion will be drawn by many that the "fasting a small quantity" was the effective part of the treatment prescribed.

"Bee-sucken ash," black at the heart, was counted tougher and harder than the wood of sound trees, and especially desirable for making mallets. Bees were credited (or blamed) with a cankered condition produced by a tree-destroying fungus.

Finally, ash wood makes excellent fuel, and its ashes, rich in potash, make an excellent fertiliser. Certainly the genus as a whole deserves the good word of the poet Spenser, who, enumerating trees and their special uses, closes the list with--"the ash, for nothing ill."