over much or all of both Britain and Ireland, yet if the records of their use for
therapeutic purposes are broadly representative of the whole, in many
areas—and some of those very extensive ones—their potential has been
ignored. Some herbs will have failed to penetrate some areas fully suited to
them because an alternative with a similar action was well established there
already; others may have gained favour through being sponsored by a par-
ticular forceful individual or dominant social group; still others may be the
legacy of some past wave of incomers, their utilisation preserved by mere
habit down through the centuries since.
Some of these patterns are relatively limited in their extent; others, how-
ever, can be traced across some major portion of either Ireland or Britain. It
is tempting to assume that a wide distribution is indicative of considerable
age, but such an assumption may be misplaced: we have no means of know-
ing how rapidly in the past herbal novelties were able to spread. Rural socie-
ties tend to be extremely retentive of the practices they are used to, but a
demonstrably more effective cure for an ailment possessed by a neighbour-
ing, more sophisticated culture has probably always had the power to break
down resistance, especially at times of crisis, when an epidemic occurs that
exposes the ineffectiveness of a tried-and-tested nostrum and the helpless-
ness of those whose healing knowledge had hitherto been regarded as infal-
lible.
In some cases it is just one particular application of a herb, out of the full
range of its recorded functions, that has thrown up a pattern worthy of note.
One or two of these patterns are fully as clear-cut, in a stark all-or-nothing
type of occurrence, as any displayed at the level of the herb as a whole. Thus
as a remedy for skin troubles,Geranium robertianum (herb-Robert) has
emerged as exclusively British, whereas as a treatment for coughs or as a cure
for kidney complaints it has come to light as equally exclusively Irish.Ve r o n -
ica chamaedrys (germander speedwell), similarly, features mainly as a cure for
jaundice in the Irish records, yet its British records are wholly as an eye lotion
and wholly from the south of England at that.Iris foetidissima (stinking iris)
has been widely recorded in Ireland as in use for mumps or a swollen throat,
whereas in the older English records it receives mention only as a purge.Sam-
bucus nigra (common elder) provides a fourth, less extreme example. Though
one of the most widely used of all British and Irish folk herbs and applied to
a great variety of ailments, its flowers or berries have been looked to for ame-
liorating colds and the like in numerous counties and other areas in Scot-
land, Wales and especially England but in relatively very few in Ireland. Con-
338 Distribution Patterns