CURES I HAVE GATHERED ON MY JOURNEY

These are cures I came upon during my research. I do not know their medicinal values and I am not recommending them. I am documenting them as part of the folkloric tradition of Ireland. The same applies to all the cures and information contained in my book, Cures of Ireland, A

Treasury of Irish Folk Remedies.

Arthritis: dandelion tea made from the leaves in spring and sweetened with honey, or simmer wild garlic leaves in milk, strain and drink, or eat parsley, or apples, or take a seaweed bath. Asthma: drink goat’s milk, or carraigín (seaweed) boiled in water. Back pain: make a poultice with nettle leaves and apply, or press the back into an oak tree. Baldness: rub the head with a raw onion, or relax with seaweed on the head! Bedwetting: give the child a teaspoon of honey at bedtime. Bleeding: to stop the flow, cover with a cobweb. Blood pressure: nettle soup in springtime (nettles indicate fertile soil), or young wild garlic leaves as a salad, or stop, rest and enjoy nature.

Boils: apply honey, or a white bread poultice (yeast batch bread soaked in warm milk, place on the boil). Bowel problems: eat wild bilberries, raw or cooked. Bruise: place raw meat on it.

Burn: cover with buttermilk, or honey or houseleek (split open the leaf), or fresh cow dung, or torn cabbage leaves.

Burn, inside mouth: hold cream in the mouth.

Car sickness: pick mint, bruise it, and keep it in the car. Chest problems: drink goat’s milk, or honey in hot water, or blackcurrant tea, or eat spring dandelion and wild garlic leaves, or tie a strip of red flannel (woollen) cloth around the chest and keep it there until the condition improves.

Chilblains: soak the feet for fifteen minutes in your own urine, dry them, but do not wash off the urine, or rub on fasting spit, or cod liver oil, or onion juice. Cholesterol: spring nettle tea.

Cold: drink buttermilk, or blackberry and elderberry syrup diluted with water, or eat cooked turnip, or honey. Cold sore: rub a gold wedding ring around it, or rub with a dock leaf.

Complexion: apply a face pack of oatmeal and buttermilk, or for beautiful skin, wash your face in the May

Day morning dew, at sunrise.

Corn/bunion: walk barefoot in the bog, or bandage a fatty rasher to it, or wrap in unwashed sheep wool, or rub with ivy leaves, or houseleek, or dandelion milk (sap from the stem).

Cough: make rosehip syrup (rich in vitamin C), dilute with hot water and drink.

Detox, springtime: young nettle soup, or wild garlic as a soup or eat the leaves as a salad.

Earache: simmer half an onion in water for one hour, then place the warm onion in a sock and apply to the ear.

Eczema: drink goat’s milk, or apply a mixture of buttermilk and honey, or a bran poultice.

Gallstones: dandelion tea or eat the young leaves as salad.

Gout: eat parsley, or nettle soup, or apply honey.

Hair growth: wash with nettle tea.

Hangover: eat some honey and drink lots of water. Headache: to be free from headaches for a year, get a haircut on Good Friday.

Hives: rub with dock leaves.

Infection: use a white bread poultice to draw it out. Infertility: visit a sheela-na-gig (also known as a cailleach, the goddess), which is a stone carving of a female figure displaying her vulva, often sited on the walls of old churches or castles; there are about one hundred still to be found around Ireland.

Insomnia: honey in warm milk at bedtime, or dandelion leaf tea.

Kidney stones: eat parsley, young dandelion leaves and blackcurrants.

Liver tonic: spring dandelion leaves as a salad. Measles: young nettles as a tea, or briefly simmer the leaves in water, strain and eat.

Midges: rub elder leaves or bog-myrtle on the skin to deter them, and avoid sweet food.

Mumps: simmer young nettles in milk, strain, add honey and drink, or pass the child three times under a donkey that has never been ridden.

Nettle stings: rub the affected area with ribwort, or with a dock leaf, whilst saying three times, ‘Dockin, dockin, cure me nettle!’

Ringworm: make the sign of the cross on the infection with a gold wedding ring (do this for three days), or bless the ringworm with straw from the Christmas crib, or apply cider vinegar.

Ringworm, on cattle: cover with cow dung, or seaweed or wild garlic.

Scalds: apply egg white, or grated raw potato and a layer of honey. Shingles: steal water (used to cool down the iron) from a blacksmith’s forge, but make sure nobody sees it being stolen; this water must be rubbed on the shingles for nine mornings.

Sore throat: boil carraigín in water, sweeten the liquid with honey and drink, or boiled duileasc (seaweed) in milk, or rosehip syrup in hot water with honey, or just honey.

Spots: apply your own spit.

Sprain: crush some comfrey leaves and bandage them around the damaged limb, or apply a chickweed poultice.

Stings, bees/wasps: apply onion juice, or houseleek, or dandelion milk, or a bread soda/water paste, or cider vinegar.

Stye in the eye: using a blessed, gold wedding ring, make the sign of the cross over the stye for nine days, or look through a wedding ring with the affected eye and bless yourself three times, or bathe the eye with cold black tea.

Sunburn: apply buttermilk.

Thorn/splinter, to draw it out: bandage a white bread poultice to the skin.

Tired feet: put alder leaves in your shoes, or walk barefoot on the beach.

Tonic: mix three teaspoons of cider vinegar and three teaspoons of honey in a glass of water, and sip slowly. Tooth/gum infection: use warm, salty water as a mouthwash.

Ulcer: eat blackberries and honey, or apply torn cabbage or dock leaves.

Verruca: apply dandelion milk, or cider vinegar.

Warts: if you come upon a rock with water collecting in it, rub this water on the wart three times, or apply sand found under seaweed, or raw potato, or pierced sloe berries, or rub dandelion milk or onion juice on the wart, once a day for nine days.

Whooping cough: pass the child three times under a white horse, or completely around (under the belly and over the back) of a female donkey three times. Wounds: apply crushed plantain, houseleek or yarrow leaves.

Wellbeing: climb a hill, walk in the woods, or swim in the sea, you will feel healthier and happier!