School: Smithstown, Castlecomer (roll number 14626)
- Location:
- Smithstown, Co. Kilkenny
- Teacher: Bríd Ní Mhórdha
Archival Reference
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0865, Page 262
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- The most harmful weeds growing on a farm are chicken-weed, dockens, nettles, thistles, robin-run-the-hedge and black-button. Some of them impoverish the soil, and more of them are harmful because they spread rapidly. Dockens are found only in poor land.
Some of these written, have medicinal properties. If a person got a sting of a nettle they would put a docken-leaf on it for a certain length of time, and, that would heal it. The docken-leaf is pulled and laid on the sting and in this way it would banish it. Nettles are used as food for people instead of cabbage and other green plants when these plants are scarce in the Spring time. When the nettles are young they are plucked and cleaned, and they are then boiled with bacon. Thistles are used as food for pigs. When the thistles are small and young the farmers cut them from the roots and chop them up, then they put them into a big pot or pale and boil them.
Robin-run-the-hedge was commonly used as poisin formerly, but that is not so now.
- Informant
- Mrs Minnie Comerford
- Gender
- Female
- Age
- 50
- Address
- Smithstown, Co. Kilkenny
