Balms and bees

vii: Foraging Through Folklore

Balms and bees

Ella Leith

I love that ‘balm’ rhymes with ‘calm’. It feels extremely appropriate, although I know it’s just a coincidence. From ‘basme’— the ‘oily, resinous aromatic substance exuding naturally from shrubs of the genus Commiphora’ (Myrrh) —since the late 1300s, the term has been applied to ‘any aromatic preparation used in healing wounds or soothing pain, or as a perfume or in anointing’ (Etymonline). Through this use, the term ‘balm’ extends to cover various fragrant garden herbs which were felt to have a ‘healing or soothing influence’ (ibid.); one such is Melissa officinalis, a highly scented member of the Lamiaceae (Mint) family.

Most commonly known as Lemon Balm, its other by-names include Heart’s Delight, Balm Mint, English Balm (I’m not sure why, since it is native to Southern Europe and now naturalised across the world), Garden Balm, Sweet Balm, Bee Balm (a byname it shares with Monarda didyma) and Honey Plant. These last names allude to its longstanding reputation as an attractor of bees; indeed, its binomial Melissa, is Greek for honeybee. Back in the first century CE, Pliny the Elder wrote that planting Lemon Balm near beehives would encourage bees to return and settle there, and the sixteenthcentury botanist John Gerard also claimed that rubbing its leaves on a hive ‘causeth the Bees to keep together and causeth others to come unto them’ (Grieve, 1931:76). Like honey,

Lemon Balm has been used medically (hence the officinalis in its name) and was ‘believed to remedy so many different conditions that it was once considered “an herbal cure-all”’ (HAS, 2007:32).

So, it seems fitting to be writing this from Malta, whose name is also believed to derive from the Greek for honey— ‘meli’ —and where the Knights Hospitaler prepared medicines using honey collected from still-standing Roman beehives and herbs grown in the gardens of their public hospitals. Whether Lemon Balm was one of these herbs, alas I do not know, but I’d place a wager on it.

What was the extent of Lemon Balm’s ‘cure-all’ properties, then? Hieronymus Brunschwig wrote in his 1500 Book of Distillation that Lemon Balm caused those driven to anger to be ‘mery and refressht again’ as well as contributing to ‘sharp wytte’ and ‘good memory’ (O'Connor et al. 1984:15); similarly, in 1679 John Evelyn claimed that ‘balm is sovereign for the brain [and] strengthening the memory’ (Ody 1993:78). Improved longevity also seems to be a significant feature of Lemon Balm lore: John Hussey, of Sydenham, who lived to the age of 116, breakfasted for fifty years on Balm tea sweetened with honey, and herb teas were the usual

breakfasts of Llewelyn, Prince of Glamorgan, who died in his 108 th year. (Grieve 1931:77) Although this claim about Prince Llewelyn belongs solely to legend— Llewelyn the Last died at around 60 years old in 1282; Llewelyn the Great died in 1240 at around 67 —such legends are as sticky as honey, and perhaps this one builds on the 16 th century alchemistphysician Paracelsus’ claim that Lemon Balm was an ‘elixir of life’ (HAS 2007:9).

If Lemon Balm doesn’t lengthen life, it certainly makes it more pleasant. Along with other herbs from the Mint family, Lemon Balm has been used as a strewing herb for centuries, sweetening the air as it is crushed under foot. In churches since Medieval times, Mint and other balms and flowers were scattered as a devotion to the Virgin Mary (Sloan, 2019). More recently, Italian women from the Abruzzi region have considered it lucky to find Sweet Balm or Mint on the wayside, and would ‘pick and bruise a leaf between their fingers as insurance for the day of their death, and that Jesus Christ would assist them into Heaven’ (ibid.). The Scottish Traveller ballad-singer Stanley Robertson reflected on the calming influence of stopping to smell the herbs in a 1983 interview. Travellers, he said, “werena allowed to be tender”—the privations of their nomadic lives and the discrimination they faced from the settled population made them “tough… but gentle. […] They lo’ed to be tender, but on their own, ken.” Stanley recalls “a big rrrough Treveller man” (his emphasis), whom he describes as being “as rough a man as ere I knew him, roughness an rawness and fightin an screamin an tough.” He goes on: I remember one day watching [him] […] coming up the road, rough, a big tough man, and he stoppit, an there wis somethin on the ground on the roadside, an naebody seen him, but he picked a bit ae the mint up an he smelt it in its leaves an suddenly the roughness meltit to a beautiful spiritual poignant experience. […] An he smelt it, an he said, “isn’t that a fine savver.” […] But it wis jist – jist fer a fleetin second ye could see, as though the soul wis opened up tae ye… Underneath the very hardness of Travellers, wis a gentleness.

Slow down, appreciate simple pleasures, balance hardness with gentleness. There’s a symmetry to the fact that Mint and Lemon Balm are said to both relax the mind and to promote sharp wit and focus, that they are both calming and energising at the same time (Mabey, 1988:70). These balms evoke balance, and this brings us back to the association with honeybees. Their engagement with plants is active, creative and generative, and ‘the mere presence of bees on a farm or near a dairy or factory was said to improve the productivity’ (Norman, 2014), but the productivity of these ‘peaceful creatures’ depends on maintaining calm (Norman, 2020). Bee folklore asserts that you should never raise your voice to or near a bee: they ’have a dislike of swearing’ and will ‘not thrive as part of a family who have lots of arguments’ (ibid.). Indeed, you should consider as family any bees on your land; the custom of ‘telling the bees’ about any significant changes to the household, especially weddings and deaths, persists to this day (Urquhart, 2017). This custom speaks to the need to carefully maintain the harmony of these creatures’ surroundings, lest they ‘depart the hive, or perish altogether’ (Norman, 2020). The symbiotic relationship between human and bee depends on balance.

Nowadays, the vital role that bees play in maintaining our ecosystem is well-known; so, too, is the fact that their populations are dwindling across the world, due to pesticides, habitat destruction and climate change. ‘What are the bees telling us?’ asks ethnologist Mairi McFadyen (2015). ‘We are living in a culture out of balance.’ As well as telling the bees, we should be listening.

References: Etymonline, The Online Etymology Dictionary, www.etymonline.com Grieve, M. (1931/1971) A Modern Herbal. New York: Dover

HSA The Herb Society of America (2007) ‘Lemon Balm’, accessed via www.herbsociety.org Mabey, R. (1988) The Complete New Herbal: A Practical Guide to Herbal Living. London: Elm Tree Books McFadyen, M. (2015) ‘The Cultural-Ecological Imagination of Patrick Geddes (1854 - 1932)’, blog post, accessed via www.mairimcfadyen.scot Norman, C. (2014) ‘Bees in Folklore’ in the Bumblebee Conservation Trust blog, accessed via www.academia.edu Norman, M. (2020) ‘Telling the Bees: The Folklore of Bees and Beekeeping’ in Folklore Thursday blog, accessed via folklorethursday.com O'Connor, A., Hirshfeld, M. & Cornell Plantations (1984) Plantations: An Herb Garden Companion and Guide to the Robison York State Herb Garden. Ithaca: Cornell University Ody, P. (1993) The Complete Medicinal Herbal. Pennsylvania: Dorling Kindersley Sloan, K. (2019) ‘Some virtues, folklore, and use of lemon balm and mint’, in Wall Flower Studio and Garden blog, accessed via wallflowerstudiogarden.com Urquhart, K. M. (2017) ‘5 Honeybee Myths, Legends & Folklore’, in Hobby Farms magazine, accessed via www.hobbyfarms.com

The interview with Stanley Robertson can be found on the Tobar an Dualchais / Kist o’ Riches website, the online portal for selected items held in the School of Scottish Studies Sound Archive at the University of Edinburgh: http://tobarandualchais.co.uk/en/fullrecord/70 048