DR. CLAIRE MACKAY
Herbalist
Author’s Note: I made the acquaintance of Claire MacKay when she was employed as an herbal consultant to the television show, and I asked her whether she might be interested in contributing some of her very extensive expertise in historical Scottish herbology to this book. In addition to her other activities, she’s been instrumental in putting together a fascinating exhibition on historical herbs, to be mounted at the Inverness Museum and Art Gallery.
FROM HIGHLAND HEATHENS TO HEALTHCARE INNOVATION
aelic-speaking peoples in the Highlands of Scotland had a simple outlook and way of life that was preserved in proverbs still found in use today. Examples of such proverbs are:
Health is an inheritance to be bequeathed to one’s children, or Man by nature is healthy.
However, it’s the proverb There is no disease without a remedy, and there is no turning back of death that really gives an insight into the determination and optimism of the Highlanders in the healing arts as well as their realism in the acceptance of death. In the noble mindset of the early Highlanders, when your time was up, your time was up—no arguments!
Gaelic traditional medicine has a strong association with the official healing physicians of the Middle Ages (namely the Beaton clan) as well as distinctly Celtic influences.
The Celts were lovers of riddles and puzzles, and this is mirrored in many of the incantations and chants (known as eolas, meaning “charms”) that accompanied the early healing methods of the Gaelic tradition. Also, the many Gaelic proverbs still in use today are a reflection of this entertaining oral tradition of passing on healing and wisdom.
As in many other cultures, in the Gaelic language the names given to medicinal plants are often a window into the world of the ancient people. Plant names often refer to the medicinal use at the time: for instance, rein an ruisg, “water for the eye,” is the Gaelic name for eye-bright, which has been used traditionally to heal conditions of the eye and improve sight. Additionally, Gaelic plant names may refer to the typical habitat of the plant, and a plant may have several names. Lus-nan-leac is an alternative name for eye-bright, meaning “hilltop plant.”
Gaelic plant names may also be a way of plant identification, referring to the plant form or shape, such as Copan-an-druichd, or “dew cup,” commonly known as lady’s mantle, which famously collects the morning dew as glittering pearls in the center of its leaves. Names may also point to the folklore associated with the plant: St. John’s wort was known as achlasan Chaluimchille, “Columba’s armpit package,” referring to a Celtic fable that reminds us of how St. Columba cured a boy of melancholy by placing the herb under his right armpit. Interestingly, St. John’s wort is now scientifically confirmed and in use as an antidepressant. The folklore and stories attached to an herb often remind us of their healing virtues, which the early folk in the Highlands often believed were attributed to divine entities or deities.
During the Great Witch Hunt, the Highlanders in many regions retained their earlier customs. In Catholic areas especially, the Church accepted and tolerated the traditional pre-Christian customs alongside the practices of the Church. There were reasons for this:
1. It was too costly and time consuming to go through the bother of translating Gaelic kirk sessions (of accused witches) into English;
2. Prosecution would have involved relocating the accused from remote Highland places to the cities of Inverness or Edinburgh, to be sentenced—and those were less commutable times.
With few exceptions, the Highlands escaped the persecution of the witch trials that other places in Scotland and Europe encountered and thus preserved the early pagan customs and traditions for much longer than many other places. The Presbyterian Church was less tolerant, and although not many cases were brought to sentencing in the Highlands, the Free Church was known to bully the practice of local customs into hiding.
The survival of the early tradition included the knowledge of medicinal plants, since many cases elsewhere in Scotland involved women sentenced as “witches” merely for such knowledge. For this reason, the physicians of the Scottish Highlands were able to face the eighteenth century and Scottish Enlightenment period armed with an arsenal of in-depth knowledge of native plant medicines. Thus, the Beaton lineage of physicians was to become refined in the advanced knowledge of plant cures and was to go on to influence the first Scottish medical school in Edinburgh and the Holyrood Phy sicians’ Garden, also in Edinburgh. The teachings of this globally esteemed school of medicine were to inspire the opening of the first American hospital in Pennsylvania, which based its education curriculum on that of the Edinburgh medical school. This came as a direct result of the Scottish settlers bringing with them their knowledge of cures and their medical training.
By this route, it is possible to see how the humble herbal folk medicine of the Highlands has influenced medicine on a global level and helped produce some of the most highly educated physicians in history.
THE BEATON PHYSICKS—CONTEMPORARIES TO THE DRUID PRIESTS?
The Highland hereditary physicians, who went by the family name of Beaton, gained support not only from clan chiefs, who offered them land and funded their education (often abroad): they were also highly esteemed in the eyes of the Scottish court and received prestigious patronages.
Their origin is said to come from an Irish woman named Agnes, who married Angus Og, the Lord of the Isles in the early thirteenth century. She was awarded a dowry of “seven score” of men, among whom were those of the name MacMeic-bethad. Among these men were a medical kindred with long-standing medical knowledge in Ireland. In Scotland they would be known from then on as the MacBeths and from the sixteenth century onward as the Beatons.
The Beatons were well versed in Irish medicine and were also Gaelic-speaking. They didn’t arrive in Scotland as outsiders but were welcomed with open arms: they both absorbed and were accepted by the local culture. They were well respected, and it wasn’t long before they were sitting in high positions within the Scottish courts. In fact, between the reigns of Robert I and Charles II, the Beaton doctors were employed by every Scottish monarch.
Their esteemed position allowed them to amass a wealth that enabled them to travel and bring back copies of medical manuscripts, transcribed into Gaelic, from all over the world. The Beatons’ manuscripts that survive today show that their knowledge came from the influence of Greek and Arabic countries as well as from the Latin world. In fact, from the only Gaelic medical manuscript that has been fully translated into English to date (Regimen Sanitatis, “Rule of Health,” translated and contributed to by John Beaton of Islay, 1563), we can see that the knowledge the Highland physicians had at the time was far superior to that of their counterparts in lower Britain or other parts of Europe.
Many of the Beaton references cite Hippocrates, and it is interesting that the Hippocratic oath promises:
…I will hand on precepts, lectures and all other learning to my sons, to those of my master and to those pupils duly apprenticed and sworn, and to no other.
This is entirely fitting with the hereditary practice of the Highland physicians and indeed of the Gaels as a whole. Over centuries, the Beatons gathered and collated medical knowledge from their travels and from many esteemed medical schools, often translating texts into Gaelic and adding to the teachings their own knowledge of the Highland native plants. These manuscripts remained in the family lineage throughout history, until they were submitted to the national libraries for safekeeping.
Although it is thought that no women were Beaton physicians to the monarchs and that Highland women were not generally educated in the official medicine of the time, the Gaelic medical works are permeated with the teachings of the advanced medical school of Salerno. The school was famed for its attitude of encouraging women as students and teachers of medicine and for disregarding the restrictions of color, creed, and class. It is known that by the nineteenth century there were Beaton women healers in the isla
nds of Scotland, and oral accounts say that there existed female Beaton healers in history before this.
Peggy Beaton is one such healer. She died only a few years ago, in 2013, was a resident on Kyle of Rona, and was known by the locals for her knowledge of herbal cures. She claimed to be a descendant of the famed Beaton healers.
In many ways, this esteemed lineage of wisdom and healing resembled the legendary traveling Druid priests of the pre-Christian Highlands (there is a legend of a lineage of Irish Druids influencing the medicine of Scotland under the reign of Josina, Ninth King of Scotland, second century B.C.: he was said to be educated in Ireland and to have brought back a book of healing cures, learned from Irish Druids). The Beaton physicians in a similar style were healers who absorbed the local customs but also held secret knowledge gained from exotic places, and who were in many ways put on a pedestal by those who encountered them. So, it’s not surprising then that life wasn’t always a bed of roses for the Beaton healers.
PERSECUTED FOR A DIFFERENT KIND OF KNOWLEDGE
In the seventeenth century, on Husabost on the Isle of Skye, a physician by the name of Neil Beaton was accused of witchcraft. It was said during a kirk session that his cures came from a compact with the Devil and that he pretended to judge the qualities of plants and roots by their tastes and likewise has ways of Observation of the Colours of their flowers, from which he learns their astringent and loosening qualities. Unfortunately, the fate of Neil Beaton has not been recorded.
The “doctrine of signatures” was a method of observing traits in plant forms and colors that could reveal their healing virtues, the most humorous being the observation of Ranunculus ficaria (commonly known as pilewort), said to have roots that resemble hemorrhoids: traditionally (and in modern times), this plant has been used as a salve to treat piles/hemorrhoids. There is now clinical evidence to show that it is an effective way of treating this condition, and so perhaps Neil Beaton was ahead of his time with his observations.
It’s also worth noting that we can indeed glimpse certain chemical knowledge of a plant by color alone. We know, for instance, that the green pigment in plants is caused by the presence of chlorophyll, and that berries and fruits that are red, blue, or purplish in color contain antioxidant anthocyanins or carotenoids, and that orange colors in plants are a result of carotenoids or beta-carotenoids. Interestingly, this brings to mind an old wives’ tale that eating carrots improves the eyesight: beta-carotene is the precursor to vitamin A, which is now known to be important to eye health.
Taste is also an important way of learning about the qualities of plants. Think of a time when you have tasted something that had “gone off”—your taste buds are a signal to let your body know whether something is good for you or not. There’s a reason hemlock doesn’t taste good. You don’t want to eat a lot of that. Poisons are generally not pleasing to the taste buds.
It may have seemed like the work of the devil in the seventeenth century, but with the advent of modern science we have been able to confirm the presence of certain chemical constituents in plants and we now know the taste of many of them:
Alkaloids—a metallic bitter taste that lingers on the tongue, often at the tip or sides.
Resins—a mildly bitter taste that leaves a waxy coating at the back of the tongue.
Iridoids—an intensely bitter taste over the whole tongue that causes salivation and dissipates quickly.
Coumarins—often smell like freshly cut grass or hay in herbal teas or tinctures.
Acids (such as citric acid, ascorbic acid, and tartaric acid)—are sour and often taste like lemons/vinegar.
Tannins—have a drying and astringent effect in the mouth, drawing in the sides of the cheeks.
Saponins—taste like soap.
Terpenoids and Steroidal Saponins—taste sweet like “artificial sweeteners.”
We now know that each of these chemical groups has a general type of action in the body: bitters produce saliva and stimulate secretions, tannins are drying and toning, etc. It is possible that while our predecessors, like Neil Beaton, could not identify the names or isolate the constituents they knew by taste, they were able to identify their action in the body, therefore knowing or approximating the virtues of the plants by taste or smell.
BEATONS: A BRIDGE BETWEEN FUTURE AND PAST
Having arrived from the twentieth century with her advanced medical knowledge, it is perfectly appropriate that Claire should be first appointed as the castle physician in the surgery of Davie Beaton, the previous castle physician. The Beaton physicians of the eighteenth century really represented the future of medicine in the modern world, and while Claire consulted with the likes of many other influential characters in medicine of the time (wise women, folk healers, monks, and native medicine people), as the Beatons did, her role as physician in a lineage of Beatons is representative of her medical knowledge of the future.
MEDICINE OR MAGIC?
Looking at medieval folk remedies in the Highlands, it is impossible to separate the medicine from the magic, because illness and healing were viewed as highly complex processes at the time. Healing was considered in a much more holistic way at that point in history, and although many of the “cures” may appear bizarre to us now, they survived through centuries because they had some basis in the experience of these early peoples. It is also important to note that many healing powers attributed to the medicinal plants of the time have been validated by chemical analysis. Perhaps some of the folklore surrounding illness and healing was there to fill in gaps in the early people’s understanding of diagnosis or patho-physiology.
Sometimes what was superstitious back then is just logical in modern times. For instance, around Inverness there were sacred wells (tobar-slainte, “healing wells”) believed to have healing properties. It was believed that no animal should be allowed to drink from the wells, lest an evil spirit enter the well and pollute it forevermore. Well, I don’t know about superstitious, but I certainly understand the reasoning behind protecting your water supply from pathogen-carrying animals. Fresh and clean water has been a saving grace to the health of many communities throughout time in the Scottish Highlands.
In some cases, it’s hard to argue that “cures” are anything but magic. A story from 1901 recounts a Highland woman with a wen (boil, cyst, or growth, normally a swelling of a sebaceous gland) on her head. Doctors were not interested in treating wens at this time, and her friend known as a “skilly woman” (Scots: “wise woman”) offered to remove it for her, if she would follow the treatment accordingly. In agreement, she walked two miles across the countryside every morning before breakfast to the healer’s home. When she arrived, she sat quietly in a seat while her friend held a needle over the wen, as if to hold it in place, and mimicked cutting around it with a knife, while making a chant in Gaelic:
“The big mountain, the little mountain; the black dog, the spotted dog, the brindled dog.”
It is said that after a week of this treatment the wen disappeared permanently.
Of course, we can never know what the wen was in the first place. Did it even exist, or was the “healer” a trickster and the only one to see it? Would it have “cured” itself in a week without any treatment? Did the morning walk stimulate the immune system? Or was there an element of the placebo effect at work?
What is interesting is that this type of sympathetic magic is similar to shamanic practices, which can be found in indigenous cultures all over the world. Modern science has proven on many occasions that the mere intention to heal can have powerful effects on the ability to heal. The placebo effect exists, and we don’t quite know how it works.
CHARMS, CLOUTIE TREES, AND CLAY PEOPLE
I knew the sort of person she meant; some Highland charmers dealt not only in remedies—the “graiths” she’d mentioned—but also in minor magic, selling lovephilters, fertility potions…ill wishes.
—THE FIERY CROSS
The use of charms or effigies was something that existed
both for healing and harm in the early Highland culture. Remember Laoghaire’s ill wish to Claire? That could easily have been a protective posy of white heather (soaked in urine). A popular lucky amulet, still found to this day. It might not sound appealing, but it’s the thought that counts, right? The image of a person was crudely formed in clay, known as a corp-creadh; depending on the intent, it was then either cleansed in a stream, for healing, or held over fire and some say destroyed, to cause harm. Another possibility is that it was destroyed to get rid of an illness or negativity. Mrs. Bug’s fertility figure of a pregnant woman carved in stone is based on the concept of the corp-creadh. The importance of these potent beliefs is that they reflect the strongly held idea that all things have their origin in a higher being. Illness was believed to come from a higher level of consciousness, which was why it was thought that a person’s health could be affected on a supernatural level—for better or worse!
I said a brief prayer to St. Bride and slipped it round my neck and down inside the bodice of my dress. I was so much in the habit of wearing the amulet when I set out to practice medicine that I had almost ceased to feel ridiculous about this small ritual—almost.
—THE FIERY CROSS
The belief that everything had a spirit was perhaps a legacy of the Daoine Sidhe, “the Shining Ones” or “the People of Peace.” These are believed to be an early race of vanquished Celtic pagan gods, who were banished to live underground. It was very difficult for the early Christian Church to persuade the Celts to shun their own deities. They ended up living in coexistence with the Christian saints for a long time, and then these beings became the nature spirits and fairies, dwelling in wild places, so common in the Gaelic folk stories.
The Companion to the Fiery Cross, a Breath of Snow and Ashes, an Echo in the Bone, and Written in My Own Heart's Blood Page 87