viii: Foraging through Folklore
Witches and milk, goats and herbs Ella Leith Why is Galega officinalis known as Goat’s Rue? It is not related to Common Rue (Ruta graveolens), the Herb of Grace traditionally used to sprinkle holy water and to protect against the Evil Eye and various poisons. No, this Goat’s Rue is mildly toxic to mammals, although it has been cultivated as a fodder for livestock and used to stimulate milk production— ‘not only [to] increase the amount of milk, but also improve its quality’ (Mabey, 1988:221). Yet Goat’s Rue doesn’t seem to have been particularly associated with either goats’ milk or goats’ health; that honour goes to Dittany (Origanum dictamnus). Galega officinalis, meanwhile, has little to do with goats beyond its byname— a possible explanation for which is the ‘disagreeable odour’ it emits when bruised (Grieve, 1971:696). Goat’s Rue does, however, have a folkloric role in relation to milk products more generally. Before the industrialisation of dairy production, collecting milk and making butter and cheese were daily tasks in rural households that possessed a milking goat, sheep or, ideally, cow. Across Europe, this was seen as women’s work; ‘men were believed to lack the necessary patience and care’ for milking and churning, and ‘rural women were skilled with all aspects of dairy work ... [which] was hard, physical work’ (Spencer, 2019). Without refrigeration, milk had to be promptly converted into butter and
cheese— a simple ‘cottage cheese’ for most families, as ‘making hard or farmhouse cheese was a long, skilled process limited to the bigger houses and farms’ (ibid.). Cheese-making requires rennet, the enzymes found in the lining of a calf’s stomach, but those with only a few livestock would need to improvise. Enter Goat’s Rue. One of its bynames, shared with Lady’s Bedstraw (Galium verum), is CheeseRennet, and it has been used as a rennet substitute since at least the seventeenth century, as recorded by the botanist Nicholas Culpeper (Grieve, 1971:697). There are a few other links between herbs, goats, the folklore of dairy production, and the supernatural. Since dairy was central to most families’ diet and livelihood, ‘if a cow lost her milk, it could prove disastrous for a hard-up family’ (Spencer, 2019). So, protecting livestock from threats and theft was paramount. Hedgehogs were believed to be dastardly milk-stealing creatures who drank milk directly from cows’ udders (whether this is true or not is still hotly contested— see Baldwin, 2021), and ‘a now uncommon bird called the nightjar was colloquially called ‘the goatsucker’, for its unsubstantiated habit of suckling milk from goats’ (Spencer, 2019). But much worse were milk-stealing witches. These nefarious women would either transform themselves into or send out creatures to thieve milk. The creature of choice was usually a hare (called a mjölkhare or
