School: Irishtown

Location:
Milltown, Co. Westmeath
Teacher:
Margaret McNally
Browse
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0742, Page 138

Archival Reference

The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0742, Page 138

Image and data © National Folklore Collection, UCD.

See copyright details.

Download

Open data

Available under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

  1. XML School: Irishtown
  2. XML Page 138
  3. XML “Cures”

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

  1. Cures
    Lifting of the spoon (or spool) of the breast.
    This was a very common disease in former times, and there was a person in every district who had a cure. In this district a woman names Jenny Kerrigan who lived in Ballynacargy used to cure it. She is dead about fifty years. A cake of oatmeal bread was made by her and placed on the breast with a candle stuck in it and a tumbler placed over the candle. This was done three times on three different days. Crowds of people used to come to her. She would accept a present but no money. As she said she would lose the cure if she got money
    Transcribed by a member of our volunteer transcription project.
    Topics
    1. activities
      1. medical practice
        1. folk medicine (~11,815)
    Language
    English
    Informant
    Patrick Halligan
    Gender
    Male
    Age
    70
    Address
    Ballynacarrigy, Co. Westmeath