viii: Botanica Fabula
Meadow phantoms Amanda Edmiston
Even before we reach the meadow, as we walk through the Sweet Chestnut trees (Castanea sativa) at the back of the castle, the scent of salicylates beckons. It has a faintly medicinal allure; part sweet notes, part antiseptic. As we reach the first dip down towards the river, the creamy clouds seem to blur the view of the bank, as if some ethereal creature were hiding behind them. I step closer, brushing past the blooms, scattering petals as I seek to catch the thing, the creature, the being I think I've seen...but there's nothing there. The river ripples with the tremble of something silvery slipping away downstream. Eyes may be watching from the nearby wood, a young bullock grazes the Clover (Trifolium pratense) on the other side of the water, but there is no shimmering, regal figure. My imagination has clearly been seduced by the Queen of the Meadows, flower-led into fantasising phantoms sitting on the shore. Or maybe I'm running a temperature? I check myself for fever, then add a few heads of the Meadowsweet (Filipendula ulmaria) to the flask of hot water I've brought on my walk. As I sip, words shift places, the memory of a story whispers in my ear, the penny drops. I am in the presence of the Morrigan, a phantom queen, capable of transformation, a shapeshifter, one of the ethereal and rarely acknowledged feminine figures in Celtic mythology. The story goes that the warrior Cú Chulainn was sent to Skye to learn the art of combat from the warrior maid, Sgathaich. In those days, it is said, only a man could teach a woman to fight and only a woman could teach a man. Cú Chulainn became enamoured with Sgathaich's daughter, Uathach, and the pair were betrothed. But his was a life of violence. He was a man of temper and, as a warrior, was frequently away at some battle or another. His heroic journeys, I sense, were littered with dubious encounters with women. I'm not sure his behaviour was admirable. Certainly, the story I was told, many years ago, suggested he was not an entirely innocent man when, during a battle at a ford, he encountered the mighty Morrigan. The phantom queen had taken the form of a beautiful young woman and she offered to help him in the battle, if he gave her his love.
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me...all of this played havoc with my skin. Eczema bubbled, then started to peel in scales, lizardlike— but, as my student-clinic supervisor added tincture of Clover to my mix, it started to clear. I felt that I was shedding my skin and starting again.
