Distribution Patterns 345Senecio jacobaea (common ragwort) for jaundice
Stellaria media (common chickweed) for cuts or sores and for coughs
or sore throats
Symphytum officinale (common comfrey) for burns and scalds
Taraxacum officinale (dandelion) for consumption and heart trouble
Te ucrium scorodonia (wood sage) for colds and coughsOne or two further applications that come into this Ireland-only category
have distribution patterns that are sufficiently intriguing to call for some spe-
cial comment. The most remarkable is that of the drinking of a tea made
from Urtica dioica (common nettle) to bring out the rash in measles. For this
there is a striking density of records in the far north-western corner of the
country and in a band extending eastwards along both sides of the present-
day border, yet none has been traced from anywhere else. Could it be that
there was a measles epidemic in that region at some time in the past, possibly
even in the fairly distant past, in the course of which this tea was found to
have such an effect and thereafter gained an enduring reputation for it
locally? The one thing that is certain is that a special abundance of the herbal
plant in question cannot be responsible for the intense localisation of the
use, for the common nettle occurs almost everywhere on suitable terrain
throughout Britain and Ireland below a certain altitude.
The relative remoteness of that north-western corner of Ireland has tended
toleave it culturally rather self-contained and one where old practices have
persisted on a perhaps more than ordinarily extensive scale. That is doubtless
why the records of three other folk medical applications rise to a marked peak
in the same region: a cold cure made from the boiled seeds ofRumexspecies
(docks), a tonic fromMenyanthes trifoliata(bogbean) for cleansing the system
of impurities, and a poultice for sprains and other swellings from that spe-
cially Irish herb,Scrophularia nodosa (common figwort).
That region is by no means the only part of Ireland to have had a herbal
use seemingly largely or wholly exclusive to it.Prunella vulgaris (self-heal), for
example, though common and more or less countrywide in its distribution
botanically, appears to have been used for easing tubercular coughs uniquely
in the British Isles in a group of counties in Ireland’s centre, in three or four
of which the records rise to a more than proportional frequency. That, again,
has the look of a remedy that originated in that area at some past point in
time, proceeded to acquire an extensive and faithful following, but failed to
spread further—perhaps, similarly, as the result of a measure of socioeco-
nomic isolation.