Bog Myrtle

[Lachlan09]

You could ask Jock Scott to send you some of the real stuff – he might have to go into the heart of Campbell country to get it though ! (wink !) (aka God’s own country – Argyll). After all, myrtle and butcher's broom are the plant badges of the Campbells of Argyll.

I still remember the aromatic smell of bog myrtle leaves from our family holidays in Argyll as a boy. My dad, who’s from Argyll, showed me how to bruise the leaves and rub them over the skin to keep away midges. You can also use them in cooking, similar to bay leaves - use sparingly. Happy days – he also showed me how to take dockens (bracken) and squash the stems to release the white juice to rub on to relieve nettle stings. Then there was the sphagnum moss, saturated with water, straight out the bog, which was used to keep cold the fish we’d caught (salmon - caught in the sea in our net – usually illegally !, net-caught sea-trout, “angled” loch trout, line-caught mackerel while in the boat, but not grey mullet caught in our net – they went in the bin – Highland tradition ! The lobsters and cruben caught in our handful of creels were kept alive till boiling-pot time ! The congers we sometimes found in our creels were dispatched with a pater-noster and left on the beach for the gulls). Plus the carrageen gathering we did in tidal pools and the shallows, to eat ourselves in a pudding or else dry in the sun and sell to health shops in Edinburgh.

Sorry, I’m getting all nostalgic ! Maybe I should open a nostalgia thread in “Off Topic” !