Selfsufficientish.com

Bostin=good
Fittle=kitchen

It's more a booklet than a book I was given it via my half's great aunts who thought it would be my kinda thing. It has Black country recipes of a yesteryear in there such as faggots, toffee & parsnip wine. I might give some of the recipes a go, though not the remedies as I'm not sure that putting cobweb on a cut is a good idea.

No, give it a go. Cobwebs, real one's not strings of dust, have amazing anticoagulant and healing properties. Fantastic They've been used for centuries to heal even really huge sword wounds etc.

Ive got this book,came from the wonderfull Black Country Living Museum.Bout time I tried some of the recipes as we do a lot of cooking on the coal range on the boat.

Dear Green Aura,

I thought it was the Miss Haversham, dangling from the wedding cake, sort of cobweb rather than the type the spiders weave. (I have, at times, used them fairly successfully.) The thinking behind it being that they were a mould related to pennicillin. Can anyone confirm this one way or another?

Love and Peace
Jim

I have a book called something like Healing Traditions (don't quote me on that!) by Mary Beath. It's about the local (as in NW Highlands) history of healing, herbalism, lore etc. Fascinating woman, I heard her speak earlier this year on the same subject.

Anyway, to get back on point, in her book she talks about using spiders webs, something to do with the"silk" that they're spun from having anticoagulant and healing properties as well as being antiseptic. There's one, apparently quite famous story (in these parts only I guess), about someone with a huge sword slash in their side being nursed back to health using these webs and a few herbs for pain relief and sedation. No stitches in those days!

Dear GA,

Thanks for the information. Further down the same road, have you heard of the use of bread/bacon (yes, I know it sounds VERY unhygienic) mould being scraped into wounds in the same way? It is well documented that during WW1 wounds stuffed with sphagnum moss were less likely to go gangrenous. Also, prior to the development of anti-biotics, Soviet Russia was developing a range of life forms known as "phages" which supposedly had similar properties. (The word "phage" comes from the Greek meaning "to eat"; apparently this is what they did to bacteria in wounds.)

Sorry Sleepyowl, gone way off subject!

Love and Peace
Jim

Nature truly is wonderful!!! I knew about bread - isn't mouldy bread how they first cultured penicillium?I think so.

Anyway, as Jim says, back to the topic - I love books that recount local ancient folklore - a lot of it is behind what many Ishers believe in I guess, doing it for yourself.

Although I suppose with us it's a lifestyle choice

I know its a bit off topic but I saw the bit about the Black Country Museum, what a great place, now if we had somewhere like that down here that would so be my dream job!!!! I also went to Blists Hill on the same trip

I've been to both

Sleepyowl

Haven't had faggots since I was a kid, so how about the recipe please,

Go's off chuntering " Mussy Peas, Faggots, an Chips" oo can't wait