Giles Watson's poetry and prose
Silverweed
SILVERWEED
Plantain and the Little Powerful One
Will claim the trodden portion of the path.
Roman soldiers picked them
Marching barbarian roads:
Stuffed them into boots for easing blisters.
Children dug and roasted them
On little illicit fires.
At Lag nan Tanchasg, a man
Could stake his claim by lying down
On the sward: the upturned roots
Of the Little Ground Hugger
Could sustain him – from a plot
No bigger than a grown man’s grave.
Gerard picked its feathered leaf
And dropped it in a beaker,
The underside a glaze of silver
Bulging, rolling, tumbling.
Praise you, little potent, trampled herb.
Source material: A series of snapshots from the history of Potentilla anserina. The generic name means “little powerful one”, and is probably a reference to its persistence on heavily trampled paths. Alexander Carmichael’s Carmina Gadelica - not always the most reliable of sources – makes the rather extravagant claim that in North Uist a man could sustain himself on the roots of silverweed growing on a square of ground of his own length. The herb is placed inside shoes to this day as a remedy for tired feet. Silverweed is covered with grey hairs, which trap air bubbles when immersed in water. See Geoffrey Grigson, An Englishman’s Flora, pp. 159-60; Roy Vickery, Oxford Dictionary of Plant Lore, pp. 352-3; Gabrielle Hatfield, Hatfield’s Herbal, pp. 319-320. Poem by Giles Watson, 2009.
Silverweed
SILVERWEED
Plantain and the Little Powerful One
Will claim the trodden portion of the path.
Roman soldiers picked them
Marching barbarian roads:
Stuffed them into boots for easing blisters.
Children dug and roasted them
On little illicit fires.
At Lag nan Tanchasg, a man
Could stake his claim by lying down
On the sward: the upturned roots
Of the Little Ground Hugger
Could sustain him – from a plot
No bigger than a grown man’s grave.
Gerard picked its feathered leaf
And dropped it in a beaker,
The underside a glaze of silver
Bulging, rolling, tumbling.
Praise you, little potent, trampled herb.
Source material: A series of snapshots from the history of Potentilla anserina. The generic name means “little powerful one”, and is probably a reference to its persistence on heavily trampled paths. Alexander Carmichael’s Carmina Gadelica - not always the most reliable of sources – makes the rather extravagant claim that in North Uist a man could sustain himself on the roots of silverweed growing on a square of ground of his own length. The herb is placed inside shoes to this day as a remedy for tired feet. Silverweed is covered with grey hairs, which trap air bubbles when immersed in water. See Geoffrey Grigson, An Englishman’s Flora, pp. 159-60; Roy Vickery, Oxford Dictionary of Plant Lore, pp. 352-3; Gabrielle Hatfield, Hatfield’s Herbal, pp. 319-320. Poem by Giles Watson, 2009.