Pythian Games

Note:This image is not of my grandmother – alas,no photos remain of her.

My grandmother Bridget Kavanagh gathered herbs in a basket, a creel woven from the flexible willow. She knew the Irish landscape intimately,what it could provide, what should be avoided. Her sons laughingly called her `the witch’, but they knew her poultices and potions could heal.

Her boys were the hunters, going out looking for scrap metal, busking on the streets with banjo and old ballads, bringing home fresh caught hare, rabbit or fish. She was the gatherer – she knew where the wild thyme grew.

The basket was an essential piece of equipment for a Traveller woman. On the one hand, they could be made to be sold. On the other hand, those that were kept had many uses, and hung from the caravans filled with pegs, herbs or dry kindling.

A larger basket could be used for a baby, wrapped in a cosy shawl. A life in a basket – it was concept traveller women knew well.

When I was young,I carried a basket rather than a handbag. A handbag simply wasn’t big enough for the things i hauled around with me – my life in a basket. There was my wooden flute, and the latest piece of music I was learning to play. There was always a drawing pad and notebook, ready for whichever muse struck me. A small box of Windsor and Newton water colours and a screw topped jar of water. The latest book I was reading. Plus bits and pieces picked up along the way – shells and driftwood from a walk on the beach, gum nuts and leaves from a walk in the woods, pebbles, flowers pressed between the leaves of my book, and, yes, herbs – although it was their aromatic scents that attracted me rather than their medicinal properties.

In my basket today you will still find these things. I still play old airs on the flute occasionally, I still carry notebooks and drawing pads around (although a digital camera has been added and there are watercolour pencils instead of the paintbox), and I still gather shells, seeds and driftwood. I’m a compulsive beachcomber. But now other things have been added – small gifts for grandchildren, a book one of my daughters would love to read, an extra pair of mittens and a woolly hat for my youngest grandchild. My life, and my basket, have grown much richer.