School: Talbhain (Irish Wastelands Society) (roll number 4013)
- Location:
- Knockmoyle East, Co. Galway
- Teacher: Bean Uí Fhearghail
Archival Reference
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0051, Page 0163
Image and data © National Folklore Collection, UCD.
See copyright details.
DownloadOpen data
Available under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
Note: We will soon deprecate our XML Application Programming Interface and a new, comprehensive JSON API will be made available. Keep an eye on our website for further details.
On this page
- The most harmful weeds in this district are
groundsel, crows’ foot, nightshade, dandelion
robin run the hedge and the thistle – the three
last named grow in good land.
Many herbs are used for medicinal purposes The green leaves of the dandelion were eaten for liver complaint. Children collected the leaves which were pounded in apestle-mortar– a little whiskey was added to the bruised leaves and the mixture was put into a bottle and given to the children to drink.
Nettle:- It was believed that if people ate
three meals of nettles in the month of March
that they would have no sickness during
the year.
Ribgrass was used in making a green
ointment for healing burns. Ribgrass, chopped laurel leaves, yarrow & lard were boiled together for 2 or 3 hours & the green ointment was the result.
The purging plant a green shrub – cattle were fond of it
Another herb called the meacan buidhe (I do not know it) was scraped & boiled in milk.
If scraped on both sides it was deadly(continues on next page)
- Informant
- Mrs Kate Rafferty
- Gender
- Female
- Age
- 50
- Address
- Marblehill, Co. Galway
