Blackberry

The ripe fruit goes into jams, jellies, pies, wine and liqueurs, and the London Pharmacopoeia of 1696 counted the berries a great cordial. In magic Cunningham uses them, like the leaves, in wealth spells; Kynes suggests eating a handful before magical work to go deeper in consciousness, and dressing candles with the juice when contacting spirits. She notes that Bretons often left them uneaten, since the faeries resented people taking their magical fruit.

Blackberry leaves have long been laid on burns and scalds, once with a spoken charm. Cunningham gives one: dip nine leaves in spring water and lay them on the scald while repeating a chant to Brigit three times over each. The leaves also go into his wealth spells. Herbalists brewed them as an astringent tea for diarrhoea, and Culpeper and Grieve both record a lye of the leaves that dyes hair black.

Grieve lists the root among the parts used and calls it more astringent than the leaf: the bark, peeled and dried, was boiled in water or milk as a remedy for diarrhoea. Culpeper gives a decoction of the root for gravel and stones in the kidneys.

A bramble cane that arches over and roots its tip makes a loop credited with healing. Cunningham has the sufferer crawl backwards and then forwards through it three times, east to west, against boils, rheumatism and whooping cough; Grieve records children passed through it for hernia, and Northcote cites Markham drawing shrew-struck cattle under one. Kynes makes a wreath of prickly canes for protection, as one was hung in the rafters of a Guernsey barn to scratch any witch flying in, and notes canes laid on English graves to keep the dead in place.