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FEATURE
ARTICLE | HERBAL
MEDICINE CHEST | WISE
WOMAN WISDOM
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Book
Preview
Nature’s Children
by Juliette de Bairacli Levy
Inside Cover
Contents
Author’s Foreword
Introduction
In a rustic dwelling lives a remarkable woman: Juliette de Bairacli Levy.
Very few children will have a milk goat for a wet nurse, as did Juliette’s daughter, but all children and their parents can benefit from the remedies gathered here in this completely revised and expanded edition of Nature’s Children. This classic of natural childrearing deals not only with the physical complaints of pregnancy, birthing, nursing and raising children, but also addresses the needs of the mother’s and child’s spirit, soul, and feelings.
Juliette offers recommendations for a simple natural foods diet for mother and child, and specifics on the healing powers of herbs. She speaks from her position of complete success in carrying and raising her two children: Rafik, her son, born among the Berber Arabs, and Luz, her daughter, born among the Spanish Gypsies in Andalusia.
Juliette de Bairacli Levy has spent more than half a century writing about her life in remote places and the lore she has learned as a friend and fellow traveler with tribes of Gypsies. She is known all over the world for her theories and techniques for the natural care of dogs, goats, horses, and other animals.
Contents
Author’s Foreword to the Revised Edition xi
Introduction by Helen and Scott Nearing xiii
1. The Mother 3
2. The Father 15
3. Birth and Lactation 21
4. The Infant 37
5. The Child 55
6. Nature Medicine 73
7. Recipes From Many Lands 113
8. Conclusion 147
9. Afterword 157
Appendix 1: Resources 161
Appendix 2: Botanical Names of Herbs 164
Recipe Index 171
Index 172
Author’s Foreword to the Revised Edition
Pg. xi
…I arm for thy sake,
Cast off slough, despondency, despair,
Wearing you on my heart
As Rupert’s knights wore lace over armor…
--Maria Zaruweska, "The Children"
This edition of Nature’s Children is quite special in that I am publishing, for the first time in the United States, from my archives, some very precious photographs of my children with their beloved animals.
As much time has passed since I first wrote this book, I have taken the opportunity of this new edition to add some further Nature lore, revise some recipes, and share my experiences from another twenty-five years of traveling and living as a child of Nature. In addition, I have my say about the unique problems of Nature rearing in the present day.
This book was inspired by my love for children and, in return, it has been received in love. In Vermont a highly respected obstetrician told me that his way of ensuring successful pregnancies for his patients was to advise them to read my book, and that advice went back nearly thirty years! I met many of that doctor’s patients and their beautiful Nature children, many of whom are now using my book to raise their own children, just as their mothers followed in raising them!
What a long time we have all had to wait for the return of Nature’s Children. But here it is at last, with a beautiful new cover, and I think it’s better than ever! I’m sure you will, too.
Juliette de Bairacli Levy, 1996
Introduction
We met Juliette, our Gypsy friend, in a casual encounter twenty-four years ago in Tecate, Mexico. She was squatting on the ground in front of her adobe cabin when we came across her tending her tiny organic garden. She shone with warm friendliness as we began chatting, and we found many things in common: organic gardening, vegetarianism, fasting, love of the wilderness, of animals and nature. We spent large parts of the next few weeks tramping the dry, rolling Mexican hills with her, exchanging ideas and especially absorbing her extraordinary knowledge of herbs and healing.
She was an original "Nature girl," wild and free, completely unattached, except to her love of life, animals, nature, and a few of the right kind of people.
Through the ensuing years she and we wandered over much of the earth, rarely meeting but always keeping in some kind of touch. We sent her our books as they were written and published. She sent us her books on Gypsy life and, notably, her Look! The Wild Swans, a fanciful and poignant novel of healing by natural methods and of organic living.
Years passed and our next extended contact with her was in Israel, where she perched like a bird in "Janouna," a tiny cottage in Rosh Pinna, northern Galilee, near the Golan Heights border. There she was living precariously with her daughter and her dogs, writing about her falcon and owl friends, and picking herbs on the nearby hills for a living. Most of the dwellings near her had been leveled during the Six-Day War. Her house was spared because, as she described it: "The pine trees in front of my place caught the Syrian shells in their arms and exploded them. The pine branches were badly torn, but the trees have mostly survived."
She has brought up her children to be sturdy specimens of her way of life. She has much out-of-the-way wisdom to impart to the young hippies of today. She lives a life as devoid of artifacts and pretense as one can life in the modern world. She bathes in the cold waters of Lake Galilee. She lives mainly on fruits and nuts. She will always be a Gypsy, living close to nature, as far from civilization as she can get.
This is typical Juliette: "At the heart of all, for Nature children, there will always remain a core of love for natural life, for the fresh vegetables and fruits and whole grains, for the sun and the rain, the moon and the wind, for snow—and for beautiful things in general, because their bodies and minds were formed out of such things when in the mother’s womb and in infancy and childhood."
Here in this book is inestimably good advice on natural living—for young mothers and fathers, for grandparents, and for all those who want health and sanity in youth, middle age, and declining years. As Dr. William Vaughn put it in The Newlanders Cure (London, 1630):
Yee, that bee Parents, shall heere learne to weane your Infants with a better Dyet than with Flesh and Fish; which will rot and corrupt their tender bodies.
Yee, that be Rich, accept this Treasure, Divine Sobriety, which will infuse into your hearts modest contentment.
Yee, that be Poore, shall heere learne Frugality, at a cheepe rate.
Yee, that be Young, shall be taught continency.
Yee, that are Elder, and therefore should be wiser, shall meete here with health and long life.
Helen and Scott Nearing
Spring 1971
“In Memory of Juliette the Grandmother of Herbal medicine”
This collection includes three great herbal medicine books and one video by Juliette de Bairacli Levy, well-known as the "grandmother of herbal medicine."
Nature's Children is a classic book on natural childrearing; it includes remedies, recipes, and fascinating lore.
Order Juliette of the Herbs Collection in our Bookshop
