Dulse

Dulse is a red seaweed, an alga once classed as Rhodymenia palmata, whose flat, rather leathery fronds, deep rose to reddish purple, divide into broad lobes up to half a metre long. It clings by a small disc-shaped holdfast to rocks or to the stalks of kelp, from the middle of the tidal zone down to twenty metres or more, along northern Atlantic and Pacific shores: Atlantic Europe from Portugal to the Baltic, Iceland and the Faroes, Arctic and Atlantic Canada, Alaska, Japan and Korea. Gathered by hand at low tide, chiefly from June to September, it is shaken free of snails and shell, spread to dry, and then eaten as it is, ground to flakes or powder, or cooked. Ireland has prized it since early times: an early medieval law text counted a serving of dulse among the hospitality owed to any traveller and valued a rock bearing a crop of it as highly as three cows. It is still sold dried as a seaside snack along the Ulster coast and at the Ould Lammas Fair in Ballycastle, and in Iceland it was long an important source of fibre. In magic it belongs to the sea and the Moon: it is added to drinks to stir lust, sprinkled round the house to encourage harmony, thrown on the waves to placate the spirits of the sea, and tossed from high places to reach the spirits of the wind.