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Biddy’s Contribution

An Irish-Canadian servant girl from Sanger now became a member of their household.  Her grandmother was an herb-doctor in great repute.  She had frequently been denounced as a witch, although in good standing as a Catholic.  This girl had picked up some herb-lore, and one day when all the family were visiting the cemetery she darted into various copses and produced plants which she named, together with the complaint that her grandmother used them for.

“Sassafras, that makes tea for skin disease; Ginseng, that’s good to sell; Bloodroot for the blood in springtime; Goldthread, that cures sore mouths; Pipsissewa for chills and fever; White-man’s Foot, that springs up wherever a White-man treads; Indian cup, that grows where an Indian dies; Dandelion roots for coffee; Catnip tea for a cold; Lavender tea for drinking at meals; Injun Tobacco to mix with boughten tobacco; Hemlock bark to dye pink; Goldthread to dye yellow, and Butternut rinds for greenish.”

All of these were passing trifles to the others, but to Yan they were the very breath of life, and he treasured up all of these things in his memory.  Biddy’s information was not unmixed with error and superstition: 

“Hold Daddy Longlegs by one leg and say, ‘tell me where the cows are,’ and he will point just right under another leg, and onct he told me where to find my necklace when I lost it.

“Shoot the Swallows and the cows give bloody milk.  That’s the way old Sam White ruined his milk business—­shooting Swallows.

“Lightning never strikes a barn where Swallows nest.  Paw never rested easy after the new barn was built till the Swallows nested in it.  He had it insured for a hundred dollars till the Swallows got round to look after it.

“When a Measuring-worm crawls on you, you are going to get a new suit of clothes.  My brother-in-law says they walk over him every year in summer and sure enough, he gets a new suit.  But they never does it in winter, cause he don’t get new clothes then.

“Split a Crow’s tongue and he will talk like a girl.  Granny knowed a man that had a brother back of Mara that got a young Crow and split his tongue an’ he told Granny it was just like a girl talking—­an’ Granny told me!

“Soak a Horse-hair in rainwater and it will turn into a Snake.  Ain’t there lots uv Snakes around ponds where Horses drink?  Well!

“Kill a Spider an’ it will rain to-morrow.  Now, that’s worth knowin’.  I mind one year when the Orangeman’s picnic was comin’, 12th of July, Maw made us catch twenty Spiders and we killed them all the day before, and law, how it did rain on the picnic!  Mebbe we didn’t laugh.  Most of them hed to go home in boats, that’s what our paper said.  But next year they done the same thing on us for St. Patrick’s Day, but Spiders is scarce on the 16th of March, an’ it didn’t rain so much as snow, so it was about a stand-off.