jaundice and in Cavan^70 for heart trouble, while in parts of Ulster^71 it has
been applied to ringworm and dermatitis and in Meath (with daisy roots)
for a whitlow^72 or a swelling.^73 Widely employed for ridding livestock of
worms, that use has also been extended to children in Antrim^74 and Sligo.^75
Lythraceae
Lythrum salicaria Linnaeus
purple-loosestrife
Europe, temperate Asia, North Africa, Australia; introduced into
North America
Lythrum salicaria is another plant for which the evidence as a folk remedy is
wholly Irish. Though the Gaelic name in general use for it in the west and
south-west of Ireland^76 translates as ‘wound herb’, the present study bears
out the experience of Michael Moloney that that finds no reflection in the
folk records of recent centuries. Other Lythrum species in other parts of the
world are, however, known to be wound plants, so that purple-loosestrife
once served that purpose is not unlikely. As an ‘astringent’, though, there are
generalised statements in the literature that it was popular among the Irish
peasantry for curing diarrhoea,^77 and Caleb Threlkeld in 1726 recorded that
a preparation of it cured a patient of his of a seemingly fatal case of dysentery.
That no mentions of this common and conspicuous plant were picked up in
an extensive trawl of the Irish Schools Survey of 1937–8 is therefore very sur-
prising. Could use of it really have died out in the course of the previous hun-
dred years?
Thymelaeaceae
Daphne mezereum Linnaeus
mezereon
Europe, temperate western Asia; introduced into North America
(Folk credentials questionable) The berries of a plant known as ‘mazeerie’
are recorded as eaten in Lincolnshire as a cure for piles,^78 but as those of
Daphne mezereum are highly poisonous the record must surely belong to D.
laureola.The true mezereon—a name of Arabic origin, probably current only
in the written and learned tradition—has undoubtedly been grown in cottage
gardens, but as a wild plant it has probably always been much too rare ever to
have had a place in the unwritten tradition.
164 Ulex