Between
1937 and 1939 the Folklore Commission began a unique and invaluable project to
collect different aspects of Irish folklore. In order to do this they requested
the help of primary school teachers throughout the Irish Free State. More than
50,000 school children from 5,000 schools took part in what became known as the
Schools’ Project which is now being made available for public consumption on
the internet.
In
neat handwriting in both English and Irish, national school pupils, after
consulting their relatives and neighbours, wrote about folktales and legends,
riddles and proverbs, games and pastimes, superstitions and cures of their
local area. They form a portal to another era and much of what they wrote down
has long since being forgotten and highlight a time when people lived very
closely with the land. Today we go to
the health food shop and buy overpriced goods to maintain our health but people
a hundred years ago knew how to find these things in nature. Nettles were
boiled and eaten during the month of March to purify the blood. Burdock
or cradán as it was also known was boiled and drunk to do this
as well. Wild carrot was used for kidney trouble. Chicken weed heated very hot
was applied to swellings and sores. Bleeding was stopped with cobwebs and fine
feathers.
One
of the ledgers I consulted was compiled by school teacher Eibhlín Halliday of
Knockroe, Dunmore, County Galway and the folk cures described in it interested
me the most. She had a keen interest in folklore and it is clear from the
ledger that she had been collecting them for years and many of the cures were
told to her by her grandparents. Reference is made to ‘long ago’ and writing in
1937 this would be going back to the first half of the 19th century.
People were a lot more superstitious in the early 20th century
and the ledger contains a description of a woman in Carrnagur who had the evil
eye and still born children were believed to have been taken by the
faeries. We learn about the ailments people suffered from at the time.
The most deadly one was consumption, otherwise known as TB, which was a major
affliction in the country until Noel Browne tackled the problem in the 1950s. People suffering from consumption were encouraged to drink
donkey’s milk. A child suffering from the whooping cough was placed under a
donkey’s stomach. Another cure involved boiling a mouse in milk and having the
child drink the milk. The soup from a boiled hedgehog was also believed to be a
cure. Alternatively the advice of man on a white or grey horse was sought and
followed. Those suffering from boils let a snail crawl onto the afflicted area.
Turpentine was placed on loaf sugar and given to children suffering from worms.
A toothache could be cured by boiling a frog and drinking the liquid. People
with ankle sprains placed their leg under a waterfall and this eased the pain
as indeed did goose lard rubbed on the afflicted area. There were healing men
who would utter incantations as they performed their healing. Eibhhlín
Halliday’s grandmother had turf mould in her eye and went to healer in
Claddagh, Tuam. He placed a glass of water on a table and bade her sit close to
it. He then muttered an incantation and the turf mould appeared in the glass
and she was cured immediately.
Towards
the end of the Great War Europe was ravaged by the Spanish flu. Although
not terribly well remembered, more than 20,000 Irish people died until it
subsided in 1919. People carried garlic around with them which was believed
would ward off the fatal flu. Though not mentioned in the project, another cure
for the Spanish flu was whiskey.
In Kilkerrin,
school teacher Caitlín, Bean Uí Chuimín described a cure for warts. The
afflicted person wrote their name on a rag with a burnt tick and burnt the rag
secretly. It was believed that the warts would disappear as the rag
burnt. A cure for a sore throat was believed to be found by heating salt and
putting it on cloth tied around the neck or putting boiled potatoes in sock and
tying it around the neck. Ring worm could be cured with a mixture of sulphur
and unsalted butter. A herb known as buachaillí
an tighe could cure sore eyes. A
fox's tongue was used to remove thorns. A sprain could be cured by
wrapping a snáithe leónta, a type of woollen string and accompanied
by prayers wrapped around the afflicted area for nine days. Those suffering from headaches would have their head
measured three times on three different occasions as they believed that their
head might have actually split. Warts could be washed before
sunrise in the water found in a particular bullaun stone blessed by St Patrick.
A bullaun stone was a hole in a rock, and its water was believed to have
curative properties. Drinking water from a holy well before sunrise was
believed to have general curative properties though some such a well in
Boyounagh graveyard were believed to specifically cure warts. Boiled nettle
juice was believed to cure measles.
Faith healers
such as a seventh son of a seventh son were more common and could cure by
merely touching the afflicted area. Some people believed that they only had
curative powers if something was placed into their hand immediately after birth
before being placed on their mother’s breast. A worm placed in his hand would
ensure he could cure scurvy while a herb would give them the power to cure
cancer.
The cures are to
the modern world bizarre but would have been tried and trusted and passed down
several generations. The power of belief is the most important cure. My own
grandmother used to make an ointment which was known to cure burns, the
ingredients of which were known only to the women of the family. At her funeral
last year, I was impressed by the amount of people who proclaimed how the
ointment had cured them of their affliction.
All of the above
cures were taken from different ledgers of the schools project which is
available to view free of charge on the dúchas website at www.duchas.ie. More ledgers can be
viewed at the folklore collection, stored at the UCD library in Dublin.
