Foraging through Folklore

Upset stomachs and stone soup

Ella Leith

During the Christmas season, one’s eyes tend to be bigger than one’s stomach, and, come January, many of us will be feeling the effects of a certain amount of overindulgence. Folk medicine offers remedies in the form of ‘yarb [herb] beers’— bitter and ‘as black as black treacle’, containing as many as twenty-four different stomach-settling herbs (Addy, 1901:411) —and other, more obscure solutions, such as using Hazel (Corylus sp.) twigs to bind the legs of a horse that has overeaten (Drury, 1985:243). I’m not sure this latter would yield good results when applied to humans but, then, we always have the option to blame our woes on the supernatural. If you’re suffering from disrupted sleep and bad dreams, don’t blame the rich food you ingested; it’s probably just one of the nocturnal horses— literally, night mares —that are known to trample on a sleeper’s stomach ‘so that he could not breathe or speak... [and] expected to choke’ (Griffis, 1918). Or perhaps it’s a female goblin jumping up and down on your belly. To banish the latter, you must steal her red hat and use it to lure her outside at dawn; once the sun rises, the stomachtrampler will turn to stone (Ibid).

Even if you did eat too much, it may have been the fairies that led you to it. In the Dutch fairy tale, The Boy Who Wanted More Cheese, young Klaas is described as having a stomach with no bottom— an affliction for which I have great sympathy. One night, Klaas was woken by an enticing whisper: “There’s plenty of cheese. Come with us!” Who could resist? Following the voice into the woods, he found:

dozens of pretty creatures, hardly as large as dolls, but as lively as crickets...as full of light, as if lamps had wings. Hand in hand, they flitted and danced around the ring of grass...He felt himself pulled by their dainty fingers. One of them, the loveliest of all, whispered in his ear: “Come, you must dance with us.” Then a dozen of the pretty creatures murmured in chorus: “Plenty of cheese here. Plenty of cheese here. Come, come!”

(Griffis, 1918)

Needless to say, dancing with the fairies is never a good plan. Once they had exhausted the child, the fairies brought him cheese after cheese and began to force feed him, until even the insatiable Klaas was full:

His jaws were tired. His stomach seemed to be loaded with cannonballs. He gasped for breath. But the fairies would not let him stop, for Dutch fairies never get tired. Flying out of the sky— from the north, south, east and west —they came, bringing cheeses. These they dropped down around him, until the piles of the round masses threatened first to enclose him as with a wall, and then to overtop him...At last, with a thick slice in one hand and a big hunk in the other, he could eat no more cheese...At this moment, while afraid that he would burst, Klaas saw the pile of cheeses, as big as a house, topple over. The heavy mass fell inwards upon him

(ibid).

Luckily, at that moment, the sun rose and the fairies and mountain of cheese vanished, leaving Klaas wondering whether it had all been a dream.

The sensation of being over-full— of having a stomach full of cannon-balls —is echoed in the motif of actual stones being sewn into the stomachs of fairy tale villains, such as the wolf in The Seven Little Kids. In this story, the wolf impersonates the mother goat by chewing chalk to make his rasping voice more gentle, and by disguising his big black paws with flour. Having gained access to the goats’ house, he devours six of the seven kids, then lies down under a tree for a nap. The grieving mother goat and the youngest kid realise that the others are still alive in his belly. Cutting the sleeping wolf’s belly open with scissors, they replace the liberated kids with stones and sew him back up. When the wolf wakes up, thirsty and in pain, he cries out:

‘What rumbles and tumbles / Against my poor bones? / I thought ‘twas six kids, / But it feels like big stones.’

(Grimm, 1812)

When he leans over the well to get some water, the stones overbalance him, and he tumbles to his death. A similar fate awaits the wolf who swallows Little Red Cap in the Grimms’ version of Little Red Riding Hood: the woodcutter snips open his belly and replaces Red Cap and her grandmother with stones, leaving the wolf to collapse and die when he tries to run away (ibid).

These stones are punitive, but others found in the stomach may be curative. Bezoar stones, also known as madstones, are ‘are aggregates of inedible or undigested material found in the...digestive tracts of both humans and animals’ and were traditionally believed to have magical properties, specifically as an antidote to any poison (Eng and Kay, 2012:776). Similarly, Ancient Greek writers attributed particular powers to stones found in the stomach, gizzard or crop of various birds: the Alectorius, or Cock Stone, was held to be ‘the source of great athletic prowess, victory in battle, quenching thirst ... [and] especially useful for conquering fear in young boys’ (Duffin, 2012:182). Aspects of these beliefs continued into the Medieval and Early Modern periods (ibid), alongside another longstanding folk belief. ‘Bosom serpents’— not always snakes —were creatures that could ‘live within the human body, invariably damaging the host’s health’ (Ermacora et al, 2016:286). Drinking contaminated water can introduce a bosom serpent into your body, as can sleeping with your mouth open. In an eleventh-century miracle tale associated with St Dominic of Silos, while a Galician woman slept a snake ‘slithered down into her stomach, where it dwelt for nine months. Hence whatever the woman ate, the serpent stole it all and she began to die of hunger’ (Grimuldus, in Ermacora et al, 2016:293). She is cured (sort of) on pilgrimage to the grave of St Dominic, where ‘as soon as she was deeply asleep, a large snake came out of her body, bursting through the flesh of her throat, and sprang out bloody onto the grass, leaving her half-dead’ (ibid). The parallels between bosom serpents and tapeworms are obvious, but hopefully there is a less traumatic cure for the latter.

Of interest to herbologists is the rich story tradition around what Ermacora (2020) calls ‘botanical bosom serpents’, ‘where a plant, or some vegetable element, is said to enter and/or grow in the human body’ (p.244). The earliest record may be from the fifth-century Roman chronicler, Julius Obsequens, who claimed that, in 97BCE, ‘spikes of wheat grew out of a woman’s nose, and she vomited kernels’. Much later, in the 1630s, it was reported that a boy who cut himself on a Blackthorn (Prunus spinosa) ended up with a small Blackthorn tree growing in his stomach. This was surgically removed, but:

It was not possible, without risking the boy’s life, to cut all of its roots which were firmly attached inside. From the small hole left in his stomach, the boy kept expelling, day after day, large quantities of small blackthorn branches. Witnesses added that they subsequently saw branches covered with green leaves, fruits, and thorns attached to a trunk rooted in the boy’s body.

(Ermacora, 2020:252)

Throughout seventeenth-century Europe, there were copious reports of ‘oats, fruit seeds, peas, and plum pits which took root in the stomach or intestines of patients’ (Ermacora, 2020:250), and this belief continues to some extent to this day. In my childhood, we were warned that swallowing Apple pips (Malus domestica) or Cherry stones (Prunus avium) would cause a tree to grow inside us, and the motif features in innumerable modern and urban legends (Bennett and Smith, 2007). For the most part, these reports are just that: legends. However, and somewhat alarmingly, a medically corroborated case was reported in 2010 whereby an unwittingly inhaled Pea (Pisum sativum) had begun to sprout inside a Canadian man’s lung (BBC News). ‘Biologically speaking,’ Ermacora observes, ‘botanical seeds contain within themselves all of the nutrients needed to sprout. With the right temperature and moisture, photosynthesis is not necessary’ (2020:255256). Luckily, the process of digestion makes the survival of a seed in the stomach impossible. At least, I hope so.

I realise that all my examples of stomach-lore are a bit unsettling, when what’s needed at this time of year is cosiness and comfort. So I’ll leave you with an international folktale that, despite its name, is very easy to stomach: Stone Soup. In the version I was told as a child, a beggar comes to a castle on the night of the king’s feast and asks to warm himself by the fire. The stressed cook grudgingly lets him in, but warns him not to waste his time asking for food.

“No bother,” says the beggar. “I’ve no need of food. If I could just borrow a pot and some water, I can cook myself some stone soup.”

“Stone soup?” scoffs the cook. “I’ve never heard of such a thing!”

“Oh,” the beggar says. “It’s quite a delicacy.” And he pulls a stone out of his pocket and places it reverently in the pot. As the water begins to bubble, he adds: “If I could just trouble you for a pinch of salt to bring out the flavour, that would be very kind.”

Still incredulous, the cook gives him the salt, and watches out of the corner of his eye as the beggar carefully stirs the water and takes the occasional sip, smacking his lips in appreciation.

“Good, is it?” he asks at last.

The beggar nods. “Oh yes. It’s just a shame I don’t have any carrots. They really complement the earthiness of the stone.”

“You can have the tops and tails of these carrots,” the cook offers. “And the ends of these turnips, too, if you like.”

“Oh, I don’t know about turnips,” the beggar says. “They may overpower the subtle stoniness. But I’ll give it a go...”

A few minutes later, he turns back to the cook in delight.

“What a revelation! I’ll take a couple more turnips, if you’re offering. I wonder whether all root vegetables would work...”

“Add a couple of these potatoes and see,” says the cook, increasingly intrigued. “And I have some off-cuts of ham here— would they enhance it?”

As the evening progresses, more and more scraps from the cook’s table find their way into the pot. And, after the king’s feast is over, the beggar and the cook settle down for a big bowl of soup together. And they both agreed that stone soup was the best soup they’d ever had.

References

Addy, S.O. (1901) ‘Garland Day at Castleton’ in Folklore, 12:4, 394-430

BBC News (2010). ‘Pea plant grows inside man’s lung.’ 11 August 2010. bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-10945050 [Accessed 08/12/21)

Bennett, G. & Smith, P. (2007) Urban Legends. Greenwood Press: Westport

Drury, S. (1985) ‘Herbal Remedies for Livestock in Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century England: Some Examples’ in Folklore, 96:2, 243-247

Duffin, C.J. (2012) ‘A Survey of Birds and Fabulous Stones’ in Folklore, 123:2, 179-197

Eng, K. & Kay, M. (2012) ‘Gastrointestinal Bezoars: History and Current Treatment Paradigms’ in Gastroenterol Hepatol (N Y), 8:11, 776–778

Ermacora, D. (2020) ‘Botanical Bosom Serpent Traditions’ in Folklore, 131:3, 244-267

Ermacora, D., Labanti, R. and Marcon, A. (2016) ‘Towards a Critical Anthology of Pre-Modern Bosom Serpent Folklore’ in Folklore, 127:3, 286-304

Griffis, W.E. (1918) Dutch Fairy Tales for Young Folks. Full text available at: gutenberg.org/ebooks/7871

Grimm, J. & W. (1812) Grimms’ Fairy Tales. Full text available at: gutenberg.org/ebooks/2591

Newman, L.F. (1945) ‘Some Notes on Folk Medicine in the Eastern Counties’ in Folklore, 56:4, 349-360

Obsequiens, J. (c.400CE) On Prodigies. Full text available at: topostext.org/work/742

Other versions of Stone Soup can be found at: sites.pitt.edu/~dash/type1548.html