December, 2, 2001
“Parsley goes nine times to the devil.”
My grandmother, Jennie Walsh Reilly (born in 1893, Co. Cork, Ireland, emigrated to California in 1919), who raised me in Forest Knolls, West Marin, Ca., had relatively few active superstitions for an Irish Catholic woman but this proverb was repeated several times on a yearly basis—especially to the parsley pot outside the kitchen door. My grandmother had trouble sowing the parsley and often roundly cursed it.
I first heard this proverb when I was quite young, during the 1950s (she was in her late 70s), but it wasn’t until I was a teenager before I thought to ask her what it meant. She explained that parsley was such a difficult herb to grow from seed, sometimes she’d have to sow it as many as three to five times before it sprouted.
“Parsley goes nine times to the devil.”
My grandmother, Jennie Walsh Reilly (born in 1893, Co. Cork, Ireland, emigrated to California in 1919), who raised me in Forest Knolls, West Marin, Ca., had relatively few active superstitions for an Irish Catholic woman but this proverb was repeated several times on a yearly basis—especially to the parsley pot outside the kitchen door. My grandmother had trouble sowing the parsley and often roundly cursed it.
I first heard this proverb when I was quite young, during the 1950s (she was in her late 70s), but it wasn’t until I was a teenager before I thought to ask her what it meant. She explained that parsley was such a difficult herb to grow from seed, sometimes she’d have to sow it as many as three to five times before it sprouted.
She never had such rotten luck as to have to sow it nine times though. I wasn’t sure what the devil had to do with it and the idea of him prowling around to have a look at our parsley was a daunting proposition. However, she did hide the pot away from view, “to keeps the cats from taking a snooze (or a shit) in the pot,” she’d explain.
When the parsley sprouted, we’d chew on some of the leaves and she’d always tell me how “parsley was good for the heart.” She said that she must’ve learned the proverb in Bantry Bay, Ireland, where she most likely heard it from her mother (but she wasn’t sure), on their family farm, Coomb an nOr (Hill of gold).
In the “Concise Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs,” J.A. Simpson, ed. (Oxford, 1982), A terminus ante quem is suggested for “Parsley goes nine times to the devil.” as it is first notated in 1658 in Memes & Smith, “Wit Restored (34), “There is as saying in the North Riding of Yorkshire that the weed [parsley] before it’s borne nine times the devil sees.” (p 193). I would add that the ritual use of 9 (3 x 3) is a significant compound of the Indo-European Law of Three.
I don’t think my grandmother believed the devil was withering her parsley with his malevolent gaze, because the cats usually got blamed for it. Or she’d note that she either over watered the seeds or forgot to water them. She rarely indulged in evoking superstitions, she thought they were, nonsense; she was terribly practical for a Victorian Irish woman. I think her goal was to be an active bearer of the oral tradition and I was the intended recipient.
I don’t think my grandmother believed the devil was withering her parsley with his malevolent gaze, because the cats usually got blamed for it. Or she’d note that she either over watered the seeds or forgot to water them. She rarely indulged in evoking superstitions, she thought they were, nonsense; she was terribly practical for a Victorian Irish woman. I think her goal was to be an active bearer of the oral tradition and I was the intended recipient.
She often said, of all her “children” (though I was her eldest-born granddaughter), I was the most like her in temperament. And she was forever filling my head with stories of the ancient Celts. I grew up in a divided world: I learned Irish history at home, and an Anglo-British version of history in school. Often the two didn’t correspond. Later, when I studied anthropology and epic literature in college, I discovered most of her stories proved to be true.
UC Berkeley Folklore Collections
Kroeber Hall, Dr. Alan Dundes
UC Berkeley Folklore Collections
Kroeber Hall, Dr. Alan Dundes
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