ix: Foraging through Folklore
Getting lucky Ella Leith
My folkloric foraging often leads me down some dark paths. Not so this month. For, despite being a humble and everyday plant, no one seems to have a bad word to say about Clover (Trifolium spp.). It is light-hearted and lucky, generous with its scent, has sweet ‘honey-stalks’, and happily delivers nutrients: A most true maxim [is] that where a full crop of clover...has grown the next corn crop will be the better for it. Hence the common saying had its rise, That clover is the mother of corn (Britten, 1880:84). To ‘live in Clover’ is to be well, prosperous, and content. Those wallowing in delight are likened to ‘a pig in Clover’. Wearing a badge of Clover was believed to offer protection from charms and spells (Pratt, 1852:23). Indeed, as John Leyden (1775-1811) evoked in his poem, The Elfin-King: Woe, woe, to the wight who meets the green knight, Except on his faulchion arm, Spell-proof he bear, like the brave St Clair, The holy Trefoil’s charm. The name ‘Holy Trefoil’ is said to have emerged after St. Patrick used the Clover leaf in his teachings, to illustrate the Holy Trinity. 46
Across Ireland, a Shamrock (seamróg, or ‘little Clover’) is traditionally worn on the bonnet or lapel of those celebrating the national saint’s day. Later, the leaf is ‘drowned’ in a bowl of punch or wine, then drunk (Thistelton Dyer, 1911:138). St. Patrick’s Day almost always falls within Lent, but traditionally ‘all Lenten restrictions are set aside on this day’ (Danaher, 1994:62), making the Clover emblematic of that one day’s lucky escape from the rigours of self-restraint and sobriety. It is the four-leafed Clover that is the real emblem of good luck, however. The earliest written record of its fortune-giving properties dates from 1620, when astrologaster Sir John Melton wrote that, “if a man walking in the fields, find any four-leafed grasse, he shall in a small while after finde some good thing” (in Oakley Harrington, 2020:42). Exactly why a four-leafed Clover brings luck is unclear. In Christian tradition, its luckiness is often attributed to it being shaped like a cross (Brosseau Gardner, 1942:97), but it seems as likely to be due to its rarity; the ratio of threeto four-leafed Clovers is 5000:1. Even rarer are five-, six-, and even seven-leafed Clovers. According to a correspondent ‘who claimed to have studied clover for years’, writing in the
