inMedicinal Plants in Folk Tradition: An Ethnobotany of Britain & Irelandwas
not apparent at the outset, or it might well not have been attempted at all. Nor
was it apparent at that time, now more than sixteen years ago, that other
research and administrative commitments would shortly intervene and
reduce it to a part-time activity and one with a far longer timescale than orig-
inally envisaged. To those who have assisted with the project in one way or
another and have had so long to wait to see the fruits of that assistance in
print, we can but apologise and thank them for their patience.
Among those to whom we are indebted more particularly, Sylvia Reynolds
must be mentioned first and foremost. One of Ireland’s leading field bota-
nists, she could not have been a more appropriate choice for the lengthy and
onerous task of sifting for herbal remedies the many volumes constituting
the Schools’ Manuscript Collection of the Department of Irish Folklore, Uni-
versity College Dublin. The key importance to the project of that source,
without compare in its size and comprehensive geographical coverage, is
abundantly clear in the following pages, and we are indebted to the head of
department for his kind permission to publish data from it. Several past stu-
dents of the department have similarly granted us permission to cite records
drawn from their undergraduate essays and postgraduate theses. Both those
and the Schools’ Manuscript Collection proved to contain numerous prob-
lematical names in Irish, and we are further indebted to Mrs Reynolds and to
Dr Nicolas Williams of Trinity College, University of Dublin, for the trouble
they went to in seeking to identify the plants and ailments in question.
For generously giving us access to two other major manuscript collec-
tions, and granting permission to cite records contained in them, we also
wish to thank Roy Vickery and Dr Anne E. Williams most warmly. The latter’s
data rectified what would have otherwise been a serious dearth of Welsh
information. The survey from which those data come, ‘Folk Medicine in Liv-
ing Memory in Wales, 1977–89’, was carried out under the auspices of the
then Welsh Folk Museum (now the Museum of Welsh Life), one of the sec-
tions of the National Museums and Galleries of Wales, whose permission to
publish these records is also gratefully acknowledged. Vickery’s personal files
of data on folklore, obtained in large part from correspondents, yielded many
useful extra records, some of which have appeared in the periodical he
founded and edits,Plant-lore Notes and News.
Professor J. D. A. Widdowson, Director of the Centre for English Cultural
Tr adition and Language (now the National Centre for English Cultural Tra-
dition) of the University of Sheffield, similarly welcomed scrutiny of that
12 Preface