School: Cnoc na Biolaraighe
- Location:
- Watergrasshill, Co. Cork
- Teacher: Dll. Mac Carrthaigh
Archival Reference
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0382, Page 057
Image and data © National Folklore Collection, UCD.
See copyright details.
DownloadOpen data
Available under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
- XML School: Cnoc na Biolaraighe
- XML Page 057
- XML “Stories of Watergrasshill and District from Old Inhabitants - Snaidhm na Péiste”
- XML “Stories of Watergrasshill and District from Old Inhabitants - Cure for Whooping Cough”
- XML “Stories of Watergrasshill and District from Old Inhabitants - Cure for Thrush”
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
- This was another charm which was used to cure worm in a cow's tail. A piece of string knotted in a certain way was put over the affected part without touching it. When the knot was drawn the worm died.
- Collector
- Mrs Hayes
- Gender
- Female
- Age
- 46
- Occupation
- Assistant teacher
- Address
- Watergrasshill, Co. Cork
- Informant
- Thomas Manning
- Relation
- Parent
- Gender
- Male
- Age
- 79
- Children affected with whooping cough were sometimes made to creep under a black donkey to get cured, and
Milk from a vessel from which a ferret had previously drunk was a cure for the same disease. John Shinnick (see p. 37) told me that he remembers this cure being brought to himself when he had the whooping-cough.
John Shinnick's aunt, Peggy Shinnick, was married to a seventh son of a seventh son. They lived in Rathcormac, 6 miles from here, and he was invariably called "Doctor" Murnane, though he never practised any healing.
- Michael Morey of Coolquane, Father of John Morey, mentioned on page 37, was the last person in this district to practice curing "thrush" by breathing into the mouth of the affected person. He was a posthumous child. He had to perform the operation when he was fasting, and often walked to the village to attend to a child affected, before taking food. He died about forty years ago.
I also heard that a goose was sometimes used in the same way - to get her breath into the mouth of a person affected with thrush.
