Tisty Tosty

There was once an old woman who I used to help look after. She was born in about 1898 in Dorset. I asked her about her childhood and she said that in the spring she and her sisters used to gather Cowslips on the downs and make them into Tisty Tosties, their name for balls of these flowers.

The flower was also knows as Palsy Wort since it cured the disease and insomnia and migraine too. Another name was Herb Peter or St Peter's Keys of Heaven. Apparently Welsh girls used the flowers for divination, they too made Tisty Tosties and tossed them while asking who their husbands might be. And of course one mustn't forget Cowslip Wine!

The flowers here have grown through the hedge into our garden and now they seed themselves like fury in our lawn.