Visions and Beliefs in the West of Ireland, Second Series
General
Visions and Beliefs in the West of Ireland, Second Series
Atlantic Coast (Ireland) -- Social life and customs; Folklore -- Ireland; Ireland -- Social life and customs
My mother learned cures from an Ulster woman, for the Ulster women
are the best for cures; but I don't know the half of them, and what
I know I wouldn't like to be talking about or doing, unless it might
be for my own family. There's a cure she had for the yellow jaundice;
and it's a long way from Ennistymon to Creevagh, but I saw a man come
all that way to her, and he fainted when he sat down in the chair,
he was so far gone. But she gave him a drink of it, and he came in a
second time and she gave it again, and he didn't come a third time
for he didn't want it. But I don't mind if I tell you the cure and it
is this: take a bit of the dirt of a dog that has been eating bones
and meat, and put it on top of an oven till it's as fine as powder
and as white as flour, and then pound it up, and put it in a glass of
whiskey, in a bottle, and if a man is not too far gone with jaundice,
that will cure him.
There was one Carthy at Imlough did great cures with charms and his
son can do them yet. He uses no herbs, but he'll go down on his knees
and he'll say some words into a bit of unsalted butter, and what
words he says, no one knows. There was a big man I know had a sore
on his leg and the doctor couldn't cure him, and Doctor Moran said
a bit of the bone would have to come out. So at last he went to Jim
Carthy and he told him to bring him a bit of unsalted butter the next
Monday, or Thursday, or Saturday, for there's a difference in days.
And he would have to come three times, or if it was a bad case, he'd
have to come nine times.
But I think it was after the third time that he got well, and now he
is one of the head men in Persse's Distillery in Galway.
_A Slieve Echtge Woman:_
The wild parsnip is good for gravel, and for heartbeat there's nothing
so good as dandelion. There was a woman I knew used to boil it down,
and she'd throw out what was left on the grass. And there was a fleet
of turkeys about the house and they used to be picking it up. And at
Christmas they killed one of them, and when it was cut open they found
a new heart growing in it with the dint of the dandelion.
My father went one time to a woman at Ennis, not Biddy Early, but one
of her sort, to ask her about three sheep he had lost.
And she told him the very place they were brought to, a long path
through the stones near Kinvara. And there he found the skins, and he
heard that the man that brought them away had them sold to a butcher in
Loughrea. So he followed him there, and brought the police, and they
found him--a poor looking little man, but he had £60 within in his box.
There was another man up near Ballylee could tell these things too.
When Jack Fahy lost his wool, he went to him, and next morning there
were the fleeces at his door.
Those that are _away_ know these things. There was a brother of my
own took to it for seven years--and we at school. And no one could
beat him at the hurling and the games. But I wouldn't like to be
mixed with that myself.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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