Eaten raw, fresh or dried, or cooked like spinach,Palmaria palmata has long
held a place in Scottish and Irish folk medicine as a protection against ill-
health in general. In Orkney there was once a saying, ‘he who eats the dulse
[of a local rocky creek] ...will escape all maladies except Black Death’.^43 A
soup of it, taken at least three times a week, was popular in the Highlands as
a means of purifying the blood.^44 It was eaten in Berwickshire^45 and Skye^46
for the same purpose. In the Highlands and Western Isles it has also been
regarded as one of the best cures for indigestion and stomach disorders.^47
Indeed, few other plants were recorded by early observers as used for such
a range of ailments. From Ireland a physician in Kilkenny reported to John
Ray in 1696 that it was esteemed effective against both worms and scurvy^48
and was eaten to sweeten the breath, while his contemporary Martin Martin
learned of its use in Skye for constipation, scurvy, poor vision, migraine,
colic, the stone, worms and stomach pain. Martin also found that the people
of Skye shared with those of Edinburgh the belief that, when fresh, it removes
the afterbirth safely and easily.^49 Two later visitors to Skye confirmed and
added to Martin’s information: James Robertson in 1768 noted that the
inhabitants dissolved a bladder stone by drinking a dilute solution of the
ashes of a seaweed^50 (which he left unidentified but which was doubtless
this), and Lightfoot in 1772 learned that it was sometimes employed to pro-
mote a sweat in cases of fever.^51
In Ireland in more recent times, dulse has been used in the Aran Islands
for worming children,^52 while in Mayo it has been chewed and its juice drunk
to ease a sore throat.^53
Porphyra umbilicalis (Linnaeus) Kützing
purple laver, slake, sloke, slouk,sloucan
Arctic, northern Atlantic south to Canaries, Mediterranean,
northern Pacific
Species of the genus Porphyra,perhaps more particularly P. umbilicalis,have
been eaten extensively in Ireland, Scotland and Wales but records of their use
in folk medicine are rare, surprisingly. In eighteenth-century Cornwall,
William Borlase was informed that three spoonfuls of the juice, taken every
morning, fasting, for three weeks had proved very effective against cancers.
One cure of breast cancer was claimed to be due to that alone, but it is unclear
which medical tradition, the folk or the learned one, was being referred to.^54
We can be sure, however, that it is as a folk cure that sleabhcán has won a fol-
lowing in the Aran Islands for easing indigestion.^55 Similarly, Martin Martin
Bryophytes, Lichens, Algae and Fungi 45