viii: Foraging through Folklore
Loud actions and unspoken Nettles Ella Leith Dragged out on winter walks as a kid, whenever I complained of cold my dad would turn to me, a twinkle in his eye, and offer to throw me into a patch of Nettles (Urtica dioica). “That’ll warm you right up!” he’d say, advancing with open arms, and I’d shriek with gleeful horror and race off. It worked, too— running away from a Nettle bath was at least as warming as the burning sensation of the stings themselves, just as I suspect that the effectiveness of Dock leaves (Rumex obtusifolius) as a remedy for Nettle stings is partly down to the distraction of hunting for them. My dad never did follow through on his Nettle bath threat, but ‘nettling’ or ‘nettle tickling’ has a long history as a playful punishment, usually between children. In the Midlands each year on 29th May, Peter Opie observed children ‘of about nine or ten years old running after one of their playmates and thrashing the urchin's bare knees with stinging nettles’, a phenomenon he attributed to the fact that ‘three hundred and two years ago a king climbed up an oak tree’ (1954:149). This is because 29th May was known as Oak and
Nettle Day; the day ascribed to honouring Charles II’s escape from the Roundheads by hiding in an Oak tree (Quercus robur). Failure to honour Oak and Nettle Day was once a punishable offence. A nineteenth-century observer describes it thus: The rising generation sally out in the morning, their caps and buttonholes adorned with sprigs of oak. They also provide themselves with a bunch of nettles. They request all persons whom they meet with “to show your oak.”...Supposing they are unprovided with the necessary sprig or leaf their face, neck, and hands are well “nettled”. When punishment has been bestowed for disloyalty, a slip of oak is presented to the offending party, who is thus provided with protection from the next gang of youths and lads they meet (‘E.’, 1884:381). The ritual had an ‘abrupt, authoritarian conclusion at twelve noon’ (Opie, 1954:149), so those with anti-royalist sympathies could consider taking a long lie-in that morning.
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