Egg-free brownies ... and ancestor-envy ...

We've had a miserable weekend, weather-wise, here in London. We'd planned to go on a wonderful long walk on Sunday followed by a lazy pub-terrace lunch down by the river with some of our very best friends, but everything got rained-off thanks to our doolalley British weather. Memo to the British climate: it's SPRINGTIME, can you please take note and behave accordingly?

So, instead we stayed at home and made a batch of yummy, egg-free Brownies. I should explain: Emi has an egg allergy. Eggs in cakes annoy him, but eggs in pancakes are just fine. Not sure exactly why that should be the case, but it's something I've got to work around in the sweet-things department.

And sweet-things, as we all know, are very important. After school, for instance, a cup of hot chocolate with some little nibble or other is an important part of our daily routine. Life's always better with chocolate in my view, and it certainly helps loosen young Emi's tongue as he enjoys his snack and gives me a blow-by-blow account of his day.

And right now he's in the grip of some serious ancestor-envy. It's like this: one of his friend's fathers thinks that he may be descended from Admiral Lord Nelson. And as a result F, the little chum, has had great fun telling the boys at school, that it's an absolute biological certainty that they share the great seaman's DNA.

They found some of his blood on a rusty sword and it was the exact same as mine, he explained to Emi and their other friend, G when they (enviously) voiced their doubts on the matter.

G, who's a very shrewd little operator, didn't miss a beat and replied that he was, of course, related to the late, great Nelson Mandela, which I strongly suspect is a total porkie pie, but full marks to him for quick thinking.

Emi, on the other hand, had not come prepared to claim an illustrious ancestor and he returned home that afternoon feeling very lacklustre in the DNA department.

Over our customary hot chocolate we had a think about his ancestry.

On my side they were a bunch of Border Reavers from the lowlands of Scotland, who played an exceptionally good hand at cattle rustling across the frontier with England. They enjoyed a certain notoriety for their professional talents, and boasted a flying stirrup as their clan emblem. All of it was very colourful, but not really up there with Admiral Lord Nelson.

On  my husband's side we could do little better. He looks like a man of exotic provenance, and we feel confident that there's a Barbary Pirate or two lurking in the upper branches of his family tree. His mother's family have an appellido Judeoespañole, a surname that was often used by Jewish people to hide their semitic origins when they were forced to convert to Catholicism back in the fifteenth century, so we may even have a learned Rabbi or two sitting on a hidden branch safely out of sight of the Spanish Inquisition. But again, there was nothing to compare with Admiral Lord Nelson's star ancestral cachet.

So, having exhausted the supply of actual ancestors, Emi turned his mind to think of whom he might like to have been related to. For reasons which elude adult logic, he decided that it would have been very cool to have owned Harry Houdini as an ancestor. I think he may just have liked the word escapologist: I've noticed that he's been collecting big words recently - possibly to hold in reserve and use defensively when he's feeling the want of an illustrious ancestor or two.

I can just tell everyone that I'm related to Harry Houdini, he mused, slurping the last dregs of his hot coffee through a straw. Using a straw to drink hot chocolate is, I should add, another of his current peccadilloes.

Normally I would not encourage my child to tell fibs, but on the basis that we are all descended from Adam - and, hence, by extension distant cousins - and given that he was by now quite bent out of shape about the Admiral Lord Nelson business I let the matter pass.

The following day he returned triumphant.

Mum, I told them all about my famous ancestor, Harry Hooligan, who discovered the dinosaurs, he announced proudly, having apparently forgotten Houdini's proper name and occupation and, perhaps more importantly, that the whole thing had been a fiction of his own making. 

They were dead impressed even though they didn't know who he was, and then F and I went off to play World War Two.

That's nice, dear. Which parts did you play in World War Two? I asked, happy to see him back on form.

I was Churchill and F was Admiral Lord Nelson, he replied, dabbing the last of the brownie crumbs on his plate with a chocolatey index finger, and popping them in his mouth.

Anyway, if you'd like to make these tongue-loosening brownies to winkle secrets out of your own little people this is how I make them. The trick is to substitute mashed potato in place of eggs as the binding agent. I find that this works well in most other cake recipes when I want to adapt them for Emi.

Ingredients:

85g (3 oz) plain flour
40 g ( 1 1/2 oz) instant mashed potato powder
Sufficient hot water to turn the mashed potato powder into normal eating consistency mashed potato
1 tablespoon good quality cocoa powder
a pinch of salt
2 teaspoons baking powder
170 g (6 oz) caster sugar
55 g (2 oz) butter
2 tablespoonfuls water
100g (3 1/2 oz) plain chocolate
1 teaspoonful of vanilla essence

Method.

1. Preheat the oven to 180 C (Gas mark 4 or 350 F) and line a 7" x 11" baking tin with baking paper.

2. Sift flour, cocoa powder, salt and baking powder into a bowl.

3. Boil a kettle and mix the mashed potato powder with sufficient hot water to give it a normal eating consistency.

4. Over a Bain Marie, melt the chocolate with the butter and sugar until they are a smooth, even consistency. Remove from the heat and add the vanilla essence and the 2 tablespoonfuls of water and mix so that these last ingredients are evenly incorporated.

5. Pour the chocolate mixture and the mashed potato into the flour mixture, and beat until the combined mixture is smooth. Then pour it into the baking tray, and place in the preheated oven.

6. Cook for about 25 minutes, until the mixture forms a slight crust on top and becomes firm to the touch.

7. Remove from the oven and leave to cool for half an hour before cutting into brownies. Store in an air-tight container.

And enjoy with hot chocolate and tall tales of amazing ancestors, real or imagined,

Bonny x
As shared on The Alphabet Project

The Lost Gardens of Heligan

Last Sunday we took a trip down to Cornwall to visit the Lost Gardens of Heligan. They were exquisite, both in their prettiness and in their symbolism.  In 2013 the Imperial War Museum registered the gardens as a Living Memorial to the fallen from the First World War. I can think of no better memorial to the soldiers who never returned to work the land, and to a way of life that was changed forever by the war.

One of the things that I am coming to realise is that the First World War was a terrible, brutal catalyst for social change. You see in those days the junior officers, the first and second lieutenants and the young captains, who were in the trenches with their men, took special pride in leading from the front. They were the first over the top and the last to retreat. As a result the rate of attrition amongst these men was higher than for any other rank. For the most part they were drawn from the upper classes. In 1914 Lord Kitchener called upon the public school boys of Britain to officer his army, and, almost to a boy, they stepped forward and did so. The enemy snipers made it their priority to kill the officers first, and scoured the ranks to find them. Apart from their uniforms they were easy to spot: in 1914 the average public schoolboy, with his better diet and lifestyle, was on average 5 inches taller than his working class contemporary. On the Western Front these young subalterns had an average life expectancy of 6 weeks. During the blackest days of the Somme that fell to just 14 days.  So, in effect, the aristocracy lost a generation of young men who would otherwise have inherited estates like Heligan, and all the other privileges that came with their rank. That inevitably created a sort of opportunity vacuum at the top end of society, making it easier for people of more humble origins to rise.

Most of the Tommies came home from the war in better shape than when they'd left. They'd been fed army rations which, whilst being far removed from haute cuisine, were much more nutritious than what they'd have got back in Blighty. They'd been well clothed and strictly disciplined. They'd journeyed beyond our shores and were fitter and more confident as a result of the experience. Seeing what had happened in the war, lions led by donkeys and all that, they were more inclined to question the established order and all of this made them more aspirational than would have been the case if the war had never happened. In a very real sense the war empowered them to better their lot back in civilian life after they were demobbed.

The anguish of the earth absolves our eyes 
Till beauty shines in all that we can see. 

War is our scourge; yet war has made us wise, 

And, fighting for our freedom, we are free. 

Horror of wounds and anger at the foe,
And loss of things desired; all these must pass. 

We are the happy legion, for we know 
Time’s but a golden wind that shakes the grass. 

Siegfried Sassoon

And then there were the women, who'd been agitating for the vote and for full political rights for years before the war broke out. After their contribution to the war effort, there really was no saying "no" to their demands for political rights. The genie was well and truly out of the bottle.  I wonder how much longer it would have taken for women to get the vote if the First World War had never happened.

Now, please, I'm not for one moment suggesting that the First World War was a good thing. It was a huge tragedy that the political classes on all sides were unable to sort out their differences and prevent it from happening. It was, without a shadow of a doubt, one of the darkest chapters in our history, and I am profoundly grateful that I did not live through it, and that the men in my life were not exposed to the unparalleled horror that was life in the trenches.

All I'm saying is that the war changed much more than the political map of Europe. It fundamentally changed the fabric of our society. Here at Heligan, they recognise the outbreak of the First World War as the day our world changed forever. Why was that? What great change did the distant war make to the gardens of Heligan? Well in the first instance the able-bodied men between the ages of 18 and 38 slowly drifted off to fight. The wages records show fewer and fewer people being employed to look after the gardens as the war progressed. The squire, John Tremayne, fought with distinction as a member of the Royal Naval Air Service. The house was turned over to the Military who used it as a convalescent hospital for wounded officers. Squire John survived the war, but found it impossible to live with the ghosts at Heligan after his home was restored to him. By 1923 he had taken himself off to live abroad, and the house and grounds were in the hands of tenants, and slowly, slowly the gardens began their sad decline. They became more and more forgotten, overlooked and uncared for. This carried on until the 1970's when the house was redeveloped as flats. By that time they had slipped into total neglect and obscurity. Nature took over, and they disappeared into the undergrowth.

Then one day in 1990 Tim Smit and John Nelson, the two men who were to pioneer their restoration, discovered the old Thunderbox Room, the gardeners' outdoor toilet. On the wall they noticed some graffiti. Someone had written Don't come here to sleep or slumber and below the others had signed their names and added the date August 1914. The two men were electrified by this direct contact with the folk who had worked there all those years ago and then gone off to fight. They vowed, there and then, that they would restore the gardens to their former splendour as a living tribute to those who had once made them great: the ordinary people who had worked the land, rather than the grand types up in the big house.

And great is exactly what they've made them. I liked that there isn't a big house visit as part of the ticket. My whole inspiration in coming here had been to find out about the workers who had made the gardens, and their successors, the people who had been inspired to re-make them. There's something inherently magical about the mystery of a lost, forgotten garden, and a big house tour would only have been a distraction from the real business of the day.

The kitchen garden and the walled flower garden are a triumph of functionality and design: all perfectly ordered with a Victorian sense of place and purpose.

They've been growing melons, bananas, citrus, grapes, peaches, figs and pineapples in glass houses here since the early days of the nineteenth century. Those hothouses are now restored and back in production. The pineapple pit was a thing of wonder. They use fermenting horse manure in subterranean trenches to generate the heat needed for the pineapples to grow.

I especially liked the early Victorian Bee Boles, built into the wall of the vegetable garden. They hold two rows of barley straw keps, in which the bees live. They help to pollinate the crops in the gardens as well as providing wax for candle-making and honey.

The gardens are home to the National Collection of Camellias and Rhododendrons introduced to Heligan pre 1920. On Sunday the rhododendrons were in full bloom.

They were glorious: great, large trees covered in flowers, with carpets of fallen petals in the cavernous spaces beneath their sprawling limbs.

I have fond memories from childhood of hiding beneath the arms of a huge rhododendron tree that grew on my grandparents' lawn. The leaf canopy stretched all the way down to the grass, and it was possible for a little girl and her dog to disappear without trace, which must have exercised my poor grandma's patience from time to time.

It's a strange space beneath a rhododendron tree; foreign and quite different from any other part of the garden.

These trees are so huge, you get a sense of them having been here forever. Indeed some of the earliest rhododendrons to reach our shores (from Joseph Hookers' Himalayan trip to Sikkim in 1851) are still growing happily here at Heligan.

This exoticism continues in the Jungle, an eight acre garden in a steep-sided, south-facing valley with a micro-climate all its own. When you descend into the jungle you're conscious of things heating up. It's normally several degrees warmer down there than in the surrounding gardens. It was laid out one hundred and thirty years ago with plants collected from around the world back in the days when botany and collecting plant specimens were just kicking-off as fashionable pursuits.

It really doesn't look much like England. I was greatly tickled by the idea of Victorian guests trooping around in their top hats and tails, crinolines and parasols admiring the lush vegetation. I wonder what they made of it.

Maybe the old hands who'd been out in India or who'd fought in the Boer Wars regaled the others with anecdotes about the last time I saw a plant like this ... . I'd love to be able to listen back through time to the stories they told and the reminiscences they shared whilst they wandered around.

We carried on from the jungle to the Woodland Walk, where I was especially delighted to see lots of bluebells as I've been suffering from a bit of a bluebell fixation recently.

Emi, my son, was very taken with the Insect Hotel - or Bug Hotel as he preferred to call it - which is a really groovy place for all the creepy-crawlies to hang out.

We were all impressed with the wonderfully contemporary woodland sculptures. For me they reinforced the point that time has marched on, and we are no longer living in 1914. The gardens have survived to be enjoyed by another generation, who are, quite rightly, leaving their own marks and embellishments on the landscape.

Below is the giant's head. He's a very benign, cheerful-looking sort of a giant.

And this is the mud maid, who looked very peaceful as she lay asleep in her woodland glade.

This is the charcoal sculpture, down in the Lost Valley, which was designed to symbolise growth and decay. For myself I'd have made that growth, decay and regeneration, which is really what these gardens are all about.

If you'd like to find out more about the Lost Gardens you can find the website here: Lost Gardens of Heligan Website

Enjoy!

Bonny x

As shared on Friday Finds

Nettle champ from Ulster ...

I should begin by praising the humble stinging nettle. It's a plant that most of us uproot from our gardens and take detours around when we find it in our path, but it's really rather amazing.

I mean just think about the mechanics of what it does: its hollow stinging hairs act like tiny hypodermic needles injecting a venom, made up of histamine and other chemicals, into the skin of passing animals. It does this to deter them from touching it or interfering with its growth cycle. It's a clever, defensive, "keep off my patch" mechanism that works brilliantly well.

In Ireland we've eaten fresh spring nettles since forever. Cooking destroys their sting, and - hey presto - you're left with is a delicious green vegetable, that contains more iron that spinach, is high in protein and loaded with vitamin C. It really is a bit of a superfood, but it's best eaten early in the season as they develop gritty particles called cystoliths later on as the leaves age. These cystoliths can cause urinary tract infections so, please, don't eat them after the end of June. 

Right now, though, I'd say the fresh green leaves are just about perfect for harvesting.

When I was a little girl my mum used to make nettle infusions as a hair tonic in the spring time. We'd pour it over our hair as a final rinse. The nettles made the hair shine, and they are also supposed to help control dandruff and scalp disorders. If you'd like to make some all you have to do is gather an armful of nettles and wash them in the sink. Chop them into manageable sized pieces with your kitchen scissors and place them in a saucepan with a couple of pints/ a litre of water. Bring the mixture to the boil, then turn down the heat and allow them to simmer for a few minutes. When they're done drain off the liquid and leave to cool. Once it's cooled down, add a drop of lavender oil to make it smell better, and then simply use it as a final rinse when you wash your hair. 

People have been making clothes out of nettles for the better part of two millennia. Do you remember in Hans Christian Andersen's Wild Swans how Eliza had to weave eleven shirts from the churchyard nettles to free her wild swan brothers from their stepmother's wicked spell? 

In cloth-making the nettles are processed in a manner very similar to the way in which flax is treated to produce a tough, hard-wearing material, not dissimilar to linen. Sadly it went out of fashion as a fabric way back in the sixteenth century with the arrival of cotton. During the First World War, however, some of the German soldiers' uniforms were made from nettle fabric as there was a shortage of cotton. There's been a bit of a resurgence of interest in it in more recent times. There's a lot of chat about it being an environmentally friendly material as they don't need to use agrochemicals given how robust our lovely native nettles are. 

But my own personal favourite thing to do with nettles is to make Nettle Champ. Champ is a big thing back home in Ulster. It's the Ulster version of Colcannon. You can find my recipe for Colcannon here: Recipe for Colcannon

If you'd like to turn your hand to making some nettle champ here's what you'll need:

Ingredients for Nettle Champ for four people:

Several handfuls of nettle tops

6 medium to large potatoes

200 ml of milk

150 g of butter 

1 large spring onion

Salt and pepper to taste 

Now, just a word or two about cutting nettles. You need to wear a pair of thick rubber gloves to cut them, and you need to wash them carefully. It's best to gather them from somewhere wild where they won't have been doused with any toxic pesticides. I'd also steer clear of the grass verges along the roadsides as they're going to be contaminated with all the nasties from passing vehicle emissions. I take the first four or five inches of the plant, using my kitchen scissors to cut them, and then lift them into a basket using the scissors like tongs to grip the stems. Avoid any unhealthy-looking brown leaves.

When you get them home wash them carefully. Cut off the green leaves and discard the stems. 

Peel the potatoes, chop the spring onion and boil them together until the potatoes are cooked.

Whilst the potatoes are cooking put the nettle leaves and the milk in a saucepan and bring to the boil, turn the heat down and let them simmer gently for seven or eight minutes. Then leave to one side.

When the potatoes have cooked, drain them and leave them to steam off any remaining moisture. Mash them with the spring onions, and season to taste. Add all of the nettles and then the milk, a little at a time, mashing as you go to achieve a light fluffy puree. Depending on which potatoes you use you may not need all the milk. Stop when you've achieved the desired, lightly-whipped consistency, and before you end up with something soupy. 

Your champ should be served with a well in the middle into which you place a dollop of butter, which melts to create a wonderful, salty, yellow reservoir. It makes a great accompaniment to a Sunday roast.

Delicious! 

When I was a child, this was a restorative dish that my grandmothers or my mum would make when I was off-colour. And to this day it is my ultimate comfort food.

If you have any left over (which is highly unlikely, but just saying that you had ...) you could save it in the fridge. Next morning shape the champ into little balls, and flatten them to make pancake shapes. Dust these with flour and fry them gently in the frying pan as part of a fried breakfast.

Delicious again! 

Clearly none of this is good for your cholesterol levels, but the odd little treat every now and then is good for morale. I mean what's the point in living to be a hundred and five if you're going to be as miserable as sin? 

Enjoy!

 Bonny x

The New Inn, Coleford, Near Credition, Devon

I love their sense of irony down here in Devon. They call our local pub the New Inn. New Inn? It's a thirteenth century coaching inn ... so to my way of thinking there's nothing remotely new about it. Maybe the explanation is that it was just a little bit newer than the cave down the road where Bronze Age man used to brew up his fire water.

You can find it in Coleford, a tiny hamlet set amidst the rolling, green hills of Mid Devon. It's a picturesque, timeless sort of a place. In the old days it used to be on the main road, but these days it's an out-of-the-way spot that you're unlikely to stumble upon by accident.

They say that King Charles I passed through on 27th July, 1644 when the English Civil War was raging all around. He's supposed to have reviewed his mounted troops standing on the porch of the house at the end with the lamppost outside, and then he was on his way to spend the night down the road in the neighbouring village of Bow.

What's in a name? Who cares if the New Inn isn't that new? It's a fabulous little watering hole that looks like a traditional country pub and acts like a traditional country pub. It isn't one of those pretentious gastro pubs without a soul where they serve up fancy-pants continental-inspired food on weirdly shaped plates. The food is wholesome British fare, and full-on delicious at that. They source most of their ingredients locally. There's Clannaborough red ruby beef from a farm just 2 miles' away, Creedy Carver ducks from another farm 5 miles in the opposite direction, best Devon sausages from a rare breeds farm in the Exe Valley, fresh mussels from the Teign and Exe estuaries, crab from Brixham, seasonal salads and vegetables from West Country farms and, most wicked of all, Devon clotted cream in the desserts.

We tend towards the wine menu rather than the ales and beers, but they hold a Real Ale Casque Award and stock a selection of local ales on tap such as Stag Ale from Exmoor and Dartmoor Ale.

You can even bring your dog to dinner if he's a well behaved pooch. What's not to like? Nothing. That's what.

We've been coming here for years. We rock up when we can't face cooking at home. The landlord and landlady, George and Carole, are terrific hosts. We've spent a New Year's Eve in here partying. We've come to celebrate Halloween when they put on a spectacular display of carved pumpkins. When friends come down from London this is where we take them to see an authentic West Country pub. This is our local, and it always feels friendly, comfortable and welcoming whatever the occasion, whatever the weather.

In the cold depths of winter they've got a cosy fire burning inside, and for those balmy summer nights there's a terrace outside with a little steam running by, complete with weeping willows and a pretty little garden. If you're lonely they've even got an Amazon Blue parrot called Captain that you can talk to. He holds court beside the bar and greets all comers with a loud "Hullo".

On the last Friday of every month from April to October they do a special hog-roast, which is epic. The poor old porker is cooked whole on a spit, and served up with all the trimmings. It's usually a buffet service, and  everyone in the village comes along and queues patiently to load up their plates, and then the greedy folk sneak back for seconds.

The last hog roast of the season is usually a special Halloween party where everyone, guests and staff alike, comes dressed up as a ghoul or a phantom. And, as I've said, they display the most incredible carved pumpkins that I have ever seen.

And would you believe it they've even got a resident ghost? This being the English countryside you'd probably feel a bit short-changed if they didn't have one.  His name is Sebastian, and the word is that he used to be a monk way back in the old days when he was alive and mortal. I've heard two versions as to how spooky Sebastian met his personal Waterloo.

The first is that he overheard a gang of brigands arguing over their ale cups about how they would share the proceeds of their cattle rustling. Sebastian, being a civic-minded chap, intervened and threatened to spill the beans, whereupon they lured him outside and slit his throat to keep him quiet.

The second version features Sebastian as a clerical Lothario who had seduced a local girl. Full of passion, one dark and moonless night, he made his way for an illicit rendezvous with his lovely lady, took a wrong turn and tumbled headlong into the little stream that runs through the village. There his ardour was cooled and his life was lost. Although one of the barmaids told me that he didn't die in the stream. He was instead apprehended and put in a gibbet.

Whatever the way of it,  he's still supposed to hang out in room 3. Some guests have reported seeing him, and sensing a dreadful chill as his shadow passed silently by.

Now I must say, for the record, that we have spent several nights in the New Inn when we've had the builders in, and I am sorry to report that Sebastian has never had the decency to show up and give me something sensational to write about.

If you'd like to spend the night at the New Inn and link up with Sebastian there are loads of lovely walks that you could go on to work up an appetite for dinner. Just strike out in any direction, and you'll find yourself in wonderful rolling countryside. The Two Moors Way, which links Exmoor with Dartmoor passes close by. You can't go wrong.

Have a great time if you do decide to stop by.

All the best,

Bonny x

Bluebells in Osterley Park

If you go down in the woods today you're sure of a big surprise ... 

... cos all the bluebells are bluebelling ... and it's totally epic!

Yesterday morning, in the glorious sunshine, Maxi and I set out with some of our chums in search of a bluebell wood. We thought we'd check out Osterley Park as they were running an official guided tour of their bluebells later in the day - at a time that unfortunately didn't work for any of us.

And we weren't disappointed. We found loads of beautiful bluebells all over the place, their sweet perfume mixing with that of the hawthorne and the freshly cut grass on the lawns to create a scent that was the very essence of English springtime.

Did you know that we have more bluebells in Britain than anywhere else in the world? That's proper bluebells, or Hyacinthoides non-scripta, to give them their la-di-da botanical name. They only grow in North Western Europe, and here in Britain we have about half of the worldwide population of these little beauties. 

Please don't confuse them with their ill-mannered cousins, the Spanish bluebells. These larger, stronger impostors have no smell, and threaten the survival of our delicate native bells through hybridisation. 

You can tell a proper British bluebell by its pollen, which is creamy white in colour. All these other interloper bluebells have green or blue pollen. A true British bluebell can also be distinguished by its strong, sweet, heavenly fragrance. 

They are an indicator species used to evaluate whether or not a woodland can be classified as ancient. They love to grow in deciduous forests, where their bulbs give them a competitive advantage over rivals, such as the dandelion and cow parsley. With the nutrients that the bulbs contain they are able to germinate in colder conditions, and, hence to flower ahead of the others, taking advantage of the sunlight before the leaf canopy closes over.  One concern for their survival is that climate change will allow these rivals to germinate earlier in the year, robbing the bluebells of their early-start advantage. For the past 50 years the botanists at Kew have been making a note of when their first bluebell opens. This date can vary by several weeks, depending on how cold the previous winter has been. They think that the average first opening dates have advanced by as much as two weeks over the course of the past 30 years. Spring would appear to be getting earlier and earlier.

They're protected these days under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, which prohibits landowners from removing wild bluebells from their land to sell, or anyone else from randomly digging them up when they're wandering around in the countryside. Bluebell bulbs may only be traded by those who have a special licence allowing them to do so.

I'm all for conserving them. They are the quintessential British flower. Moreover, they're greatly favoured by the fairy folk. According to old folklore the ringing of the bluebells is a means by which the little folk can be summoned, but woe betide any mere mortal who hears the bluebells ring, for they will surely be dead within a year. 

If you go down in the woods today you better not go alone

It's lovely down in the woods today but safer to stay at home ...

In the olden days people were scared of walking through the bluebells, believing that they were sewn together with fairy enchantment, kind of like a magical mine field, where anything could happen if you stood on a trigger point.

Maybe there was some point to all this folklore in that the lovely bluebells contain toxic glycosides, which are poisonous to humans. Lots of folk have felt very poorly when they've confused their bluebell bulbs for wild garlic down the ages, and even cows, dogs and horses have suffered digestive problems after having a munch on bluebell leaves. Their sap can trigger contact dermatitis, so maybe there was a good reason why people used to believe it was unlucky to pick the wild bluebells that grew in the woods. They must have felt pretty unlucky when their hands turned red and started to itch like mad before they'd even got home with their posy. And, in an earlier age, it's easy to see how the little folk might just have got the blame ... .

Down the years, however, some of the braver souls were able to get over their fear of the fairies and put bluebell sap to good use. Apart from being highly toxic, it's also very sticky. As a result archers have been using it to stick feathers on their arrows since the Bronze Age. The Elizabethans used it to make a glue for binding the pages of their books into the spines. It was particularly good in this context as all the poison kept the insects at bay that might otherwise have munched their way through the parchment - although it probably wasn't a good idea to lick your finger too often as you turned the pages way back then. The Elizabethans also crushed bluebell bulbs to make starch for their very grand ruffs and collars and sleeves. 

If you'd like to go and check out a bluebell wood over the bank holiday weekend the nice people at the Woodland Trust have put together a search engine that can find all the bluebell woods in your area. You just have to type in your postcode. You can find it here: Find a bluebell wood near you.

And, now, I think the last word on the subject should go to Emily Brontë:

The Bluebell is the sweetest flower

That waves in summer air;

Its blossoms have the mightiest power

To soothe my spirit's care.

Just remember not to linger too long or the fairy folk might get you!

Bonny x