the Inner^13 and Outer Hebrides,^14 Orkney^15 ). A reputation for also alleviat-
ing pain has encouraged a use for all kinds of stings, too, mostly in southern
England (Devon,^16 Dorset,^17 Somerset,^18 Kent (?),^19 Bedfordshire,^20 the Fens
of East Anglia^21 ) but in the Highlands^22 as well. A still further use, recorded
from Denbighshire,^23 is as a tonic, mixed with yarrow and nettles.
Ireland is distinctive for the wide presence there (Longford,^24 Leitrim,^25
Mayo,^26 Tipperary^27 ) of a belief—common to several other plants—that one
side of the leaf does the drawing out of septic matter from a wound and the
other the healing, a belief recorded apparently only from the Outer
Hebrides^28 in Britain. More exclusively Irish has been drinking plantain juice
for a cough (Monaghan,^29 Mayo,^30 Laois^31 ). While the two countries have
yielded similar numbers of similarly scattered records for applying the leaves
to burns (Monaghan,^32 Limerick,^33 Tipperary^34 ) and to drawing pus out of
boils, wounds or swellings (Donegal,^35 Laois,^36 Tipperary^37 ), Ireland seems to
have found other uses for the leaves unknown, or at any rate untraced, in
Britain: lumps and swellings (Monaghan,^38 Clare-Galway borderland^39 ),
pimples (Laois^40 ), chapped hands or legs (Limerick,^41 Tipperary^42 ), corns
(Longford^43 ), warts (Westmeath^44 ), headaches (Meath,^45 Cavan^46 ) and gout
(Cavan^47 ). The sole records for some internal uses are Irish, too: drinking the
boiled juice for liver trouble (Cavan^48 ) or jaundice (Laois^49 ) and putting it
into the milk of children that are delicate (Tipperary^50 ). Even ‘sore eyes’ have
had their share of attention (Galway,^51 Limerick^52 ) though it is unclear—as
also in the case of a record from the Highlands^53 —whether that meant styes
or merely the result of straining.
Oleaceae
Fraxinus excelsior Linnaeus
ash
Europe, western Asia, North Africa; introduced into North America,
New Zealand
Another tree traditionally believed to exude special power from its every part,
Fraxinus excelsior has been valued for one healing purpose at least which
seems to betray a magico-religious origin: as an antidote for the bites of ven-
omous snakes. That this is based on superstition rather than anything else is
shown by the fact that the cure, or the power to avert such bites in the first
place, is attributed to the wearing of a collar woven out of ash twigs or to the
carrying of an ‘ash-stick’. Records of its use in those ways for people and/or
248 Plantago