I found out recently that my husband’s (maternal) great grandmother practised herbalism in the foothills of Slemish, a 1,434ft mountain that sits on the horizon of the farm like an old relative who has seen everything and forgotten nothing.
Its Irish name, Sliabh Mis - “Mis’s Mountain” - carries the memory of a woman at its heart. Everyone knows the story of St Patrick and Slemish but most have no idea about the origins of the mountain’s name.
In pre-Christian folklore, Mis was a wild mountain woman, driven into the hills by grief after the death of her father, where she wandered untamed through the wilderness for years. The surviving version of Mis’s story comes to us through medieval Christian writers, who preserved many older Irish tales while filtering them through a Christian worldview.
In their telling, the wild woman of the mountain is ultimately redeemed through an encounter with Saint Patrick, a figure who arrived long after the story would have first been told and long after the mountain had already taken her name. There is a certain irony in a mountain named after a woman, becoming better known for the saint who came to ‘save’ her. It makes me wonder what stories were told about Mis before the monks took up their pens and gave the tale a different ending.
Knowing this story makes it feel even more fitting that, for generations, wild women have gathered remedies, foraged food and hard-won wisdom from the land beneath Sliabh Mis. Depending on the century, they might have been revered as healers, relied upon as community doctors, or whispered about as witches. Whatever name was given to them, their knowledge was rooted in the same place. Standing in the mountain’s shadow centuries later, I felt drawn to see what lessons the land still had to offer through experimenting with herbalism… and a cheeky bit of jam making.
So, armed with a moderately concerning level of confidence, I began foraging. Pretty quickly my willow-woven basket filled with Hawthorn and Elder berries, Rosehips, and several flower species. I felt Sliabh Mis watching over me as I harvested the hedgerows and smiled back at her towering presence.
What surprised me most was not what I collected, but what I noticed in the process. When you start hoking and poking around bushes, the world becomes very small, crowded with lives you’d been walking past for years. Brambles transformed into entire cities and moss-covered stones became tiny forests. I found lichens that looked like ancient maps drawn by fairies with poor navigation skills and Fungi resembling delicate porcelain shelves. The insects seemed particularly unimpressed by my presence. Spiders glared at me from jewelled webs heavy with autumn dew, Bees drifted lazily through the last blooms and green Aphids clung to my hand as if telling me to get out of their house.
There was something deeply comforting about gathering from the land during this seasonal shift. Practical, but also sacred. Each berry picked felt like a small conversation with the women who had done the same years before me. I often wondered if they felt this awe for nature too. Did they stop to admire the colours on a mushroom? Did they marvel at the geometry of a spider’s web? Or were they simply getting on with the job while silently judging future descendants who would one day pay £4 for a herbal tea bag containing plants growing freely outside their back door?
As I sat watching YouTube tutorials on brewing medicinal tinctures and drying flowers for tea, I couldn’t help but wish the knowledge was being passed to me by weathered hands at a kitchen table rather than an algorithm. Somewhere between pausing videos and replaying instructions for the third time, I made a promise to myself: to learn some recipes well enough that one day I might pass them on to another generation, preferably with a little more confidence and a lot less buffering.
Monday arrived after a weekend spent happily disappearing into hedgerows. I sat at the kitchen table sipping chamomile tea and spreading elderberry jam onto thick slices of toast, feeling proud of the jars lining my shelves. Outside, rain swept across the fields in silver sheets. As I ate, my thoughts drifted to two local women I deeply admire; mothers, growers and herbalists whose knowledge run deeper than my fledgling experiments. Curious about what had drawn them to this path, I picked up the phone and asked if they would share their stories with me.
Alena, writer, brand & comms consultant and folk herbalist based in Ballycastle on the North Coast.
“Herbalism has really deepened my relationship with the native plants growing around me. I wanted to connect more closely with the year-round bounty of our hedgerows and discover what I could cultivate myself. There’s been something reassuring about having herbs to turn to through life’s transitions, from monthly fluctuations in energy to the exhaustion of my years of motherhood. That sense of support has been a real lift and a way of caring for myself through those changes.
When I see the enthusiasm for ceremonial cacao or matcha, I think about how little many of us know about the traditional medicinal uses of plants growing close to home. Both can have a place in our lives, but their popularity highlights how much there is on our own doorsteps to get to know. My relationship with wild weeds and foraging has become a seasonal anchor. It’s a chance to notice what’s growing around me, connect with the different energies of each season and pay attention to my own self-nourishment.”
Jane Rea, aka @ForageandFaff, Floral Artist, Forager and Workshop Host, based on a family farm in Shilnavogie (near Slemish)
“For me foraging is an excuse to slow down. I’m no pro on what’s growing in the hedgerows, but every time I look in one I learn something new, see something that makes me smile and take a mental note of what to watch out for next week, season or year. It’s about living in tune with today, soaking up the season as it stands in front of you and letting your shoulders ease a bit. I look forward to a slice of nettle cake in early summer, and a glass of damson gin in the depths of winter – perhaps not medicinal in the traditional sense of herbalism, but I’ve found both to be a sure way to soothe the soul. For me it’s about the storytelling and small daily joys. And don’t panic yourself about learning every leaf, bush or berry immediately – no one likes a know it all!”
We are living through a moment when witches have returned to popular culture, not as villains but as women connected to nature, community and ancient wisdom. From the new Practical Magic film to the resurgence of apothecaries and “witchy” books, many of us seem to be searching for something our ancestors would have recognised immediately: not spells or superstition, but a deeper relationship with the natural world and its powerful, healing benefits.
This Samhain, I hope others feel encouraged to find their own witchy side, whether that’s brewing a hedgerow tea, learning the names of the plants on their doorstep or simply walking a little slower through wild places and learning old stories about them. Because magic, I’ve discovered, isn’t really in the tinctures or the jars; it’s in paying attention. And if you listen closely enough, beneath the watchful shadow of Sliabh Mis, the old lessons are still there, waiting to be heard…