Customer Reviews

The Scots Herbal

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This is a delightful book which breaks into two sections. The first deals with the plants generally and there uses throughout history taking into account religious and political changes to both the nature of the land and attitudes to their usage. It is an extremely intelligent and insightful account based on a great deal of research and knowledge, and some wonderful humour imbedded in the text. The second part of the book tells the reader of the indigenous plants by common, Latin, Scots and Gaelic names. It looks at the use specific plants were put to. and although it does not tell you how to make a plant dye, or how to make a poultice, there are many books which do. This book is , in my experience as a Scot living in Scotland who has been interested in herbalism for over a decade a unique find.

I got this one recently, and in parts it's an excellent book. I would advise taking at least some of it with a grain of salt, though, as she does rather go on about the fictional Celtic Great Goddess and the equally fictional Tree Calendar a bit. She seems to take all sources as equally valid, citing authors like Robert Graves, Mary Daly, and Kaledon Naddair along side authorities like F. Marian MacNeill and Anne Ross and more technical documents like pollen studies.

This said, she seems to be an excellent source for Gaelic names of plants, medicinal traditions in the Highlands and Islands, and material regarding fiber arts and dyeing. She falls down a bit where she goes with Gravesian and NeoPagan sources for spiritual information. I feel that this is definitely worth the money, but one should take certain of her assertions with some caution.

This is an excellent book to wet your appetite for herbal remedies & Scottish/Gaelic lore.
Although the book does not give explicit instructions on how to prepare the herbs, it does give you plenty of information of what the herbs were used for, along with historical information. There are 140 references listed in the Bibliography section, toward the back of the book.
A very interesting book!