Zoe Burt asks if anyone knows of any folklore associated with  the following dye-plants:  madder (Rubia tinctoria), weld (Reseda luteola) and woad (Isatis tinctoria).

Please send any information to roy@plant-lore.com

Comment:  During the summer of 1992 English Heritage carried out an archaeological excavation of Mount Grace Priory, in North Yorkshire.  The Carthusian priory was founded in 1397 and ‘ended its life’ during the dissolution of the monasteries in 1539.  The site was never redeveloped.

The excavation was widely reported in the media, and one aspect which seemed of particular interest to journalists was the fact that great mullein (Verbascum thapsus) and weld sprung up ‘wherever the spoil had been spread’.  This led the excavators to suggest that these plants had grown from seeds of plants growing in the Priory’s garden before its dissolution.  It was thought that the weld had been used to produce a dye, which might have been used for dyeing the monks robes.  And, according to the report in Flora Facts and Fables 8: 9 (1996):

‘For yellow colour the flower was boiled with alum and iron, but with different additives golds, bronzes and green colours were produced.  The juice of the plant was used to produce a paint known as Dutch pink which was popular with artists.  The seeds of weld also produce an oil which was used in lamps.  The plant supposedly also has sedative properties.’

Likewise, according to FF&F:  ‘As mullein also has medicinal uses, specifically for chest complaints, it can be seen that both plants, with all their virtues would have been very welcome in a monastery garden.’

Elsewhere it was suggested that the dried flower stalks of mullein when dipped in tallow made wicks for processional candles.

The initial FF&F article stimulated some correspondence.  In issue no. 9 (1997) I noted that both weld and mullein frequently colonise any disturbed ground, and asked ‘to what extent did the Carthusians wear yellow garments, and did they really use what seems to be rather crude candles in their rituals?’  In my opinion weld and mullein would have colonised similar disturbed habitats regardless  of whether or not they were sites of former religious foundations.  The seed had come in recently and had not been dormant in the ground for over 400 years.

However, this view point was challenged by Alan Seymour in issue no. 10 (1997).  Initially he seems to agree, saying that his daughter’s boyfriend who did archaeological work considered it ‘quite ridiculous to think that seeds from the sixteenth century would have germinated for these species.’  But, he then cites Jenny Dean’s The Craft of Natural Dyeing, where she states that weld could be used to produce brown ‘by over-dyeing according to the mordant used’.  Furthermore, according to Encyclopaedia Britannica there was a rule that in Carthusian monasteries there were ‘no more than 12 monks who wore white, and 18 lay brothers who probably wore brown.’

Similarly Seymour made a case for mullein candle-wicks.  Carthusians  go to bed every evening at 7 and are called at about 11 when they say  prayers in their private oratories until midnight ‘when all repair across the grounds to the church for Matins and Lauds which last from 2-3 hours’.  After this they return to bed ‘until 5 when they say Mass alone in their own hermitage.’  Clearly all these nocturnal activities would require the use of artificial lights, so ‘quite apart from any “processional candles” they [mullein] stalks may have been used.’

Thus Seymour thought it ‘quite likely’ that mullein and weld had been cultivated in the Priory garden, but, of course, its unlikely that the origin of the seeds which germinated in the 1990s can ever be established; they could have survived from 1539 or earlier, or they could have come on to the site following its excavation [RV, 7 June 2016].

Images:  upper, weld, Castle Rock, Edinburgh, November 2015; lower, colours created using weld, Erasmus Darwin Herb Garden, Lichfield, Staffordshire, September 2021.

Updated 19 September 2021.