be wild turnip,Brassica rapa Linnaeus), its juice was drunk in Limerick as a
spring tonic to keep the system free of diseases for the rest of the year.^173 In the
area just south-west of the border a preparation of the flowers was the usual
cure for jaundice.^174
Raphanus raphanistrum Linnaeus
wild radish
Europe, North Africa, Japan; introduced into North and South
America, Australasia
See under charlock,Sinapis arvensis,preceding.
Empetraceae
Empetrum nigrum Linnaeus
crowberry
Eurasia, North America
A locally abundant plant of moors, at one time regarded as a berry-bearing
form of heather (‘Erica baccifera’),Empetrum nigrum was found in use in the
Inner Hebrides by Martin Martin in 1695 as a cure for insomnia, a little of it
boiled in water and applied to the crown and temples.^175 It was presumably
the ‘kind of heath’ claimed by a later author to be in use for the same purpose
in ‘the Highlands’,^176 but the description of its application is so similar that
the record may be an unacknowledged repeat of Martin’s. Another record
from the Inner Hebrides, from Colonsay, credits its juice with the power to
heal sores that are festering.^177
Ericaceae
Daboecia cantabrica (Hudson) K. Koch
St Dabeoc’s heath
south-western Europe; introduced into New Zealand
On his visit to the west of Ireland in 1700, when he added Daboecia cantabrica
to the list of the wild plants of the British Isles, Edward Llwyd learned that on
the moors of Mayo and Galway the women sometimes carried a sprig of it on
them as a preservative against some mishap which, as ill luck would have it,
is written only partly legibly in the letter in question.^178 Of possible alterna-
tive readings, ‘incontinence’ seems most likely, for other kinds of heath are on
record as in folk use for similar-sounding trouble.
St John’s-worts to Primulas 121