Poaceae
‘Grass’ in a vague, generic sense features here and there in the folk medicine
records, especially the Irish ones: stuffed in shoes to remedy corns in Ros-
common,^27 used to bandage severe cuts in Waterford^28 or staunch a haemor-
rhage in Tipperary^29 or, torn up for the roots, a source of a rheumatism cure
in Kerry.^30 Though other records are more specific, they are scarcely more
helpful. All that we are told of a wart cure in Hampshire’s New Forest is that
it was a preparation of ‘a certain kind of grass’.^31 Even a name is not neces-
sarily any advance: What, for example, is ‘cough grass’, employed for colds in
Limerick?^32 ‘Cough’ seems unlikely to have been a slip for ‘couch’, for colds are
not one of the ailments for which Elytrigia repens is known to have been used.
In some cases, however, the kind of grass in question can be pinned down to
a particular species with more or less certainty.
Briza media Linnaeus
quaking-grass
Europe, temperate Asia; introduced into eastern North America
(Misidentification suspected) Briza media has been recorded as used in Kirk-
cudbrightshire for some unspecified medicinal purpose under the unlikely-
sounding name ‘mountain flax’^33 —which ordinarily belongs to Linum
catharticum and raises the suspicion that some mix-up in identification may
have occurred. There can hardly be any doubt, though, that it was this that
enjoyed the reputation in the East Riding of Yorkshire of keeping away mice,
to which end bunches of it were dried and hung up on the mantelpieces.^34
The claims of this to be Ireland’s mysterious ‘hungry grass’ are discussed
under Agrostis stolonifera,following.
Agrostis stolonifera Linnaeus
A. alba Linnaeus
creeping bent, fiorin grass
Europe, central and eastern Asia, North Africa; introduced into
North America and elsewhere
Irish folklore collectors have been much exercised over the identity of the
feargorta(ch) or fairgurtha,variously described as ‘a long blade of grass’ which
‘grows up through whins’^35 and ‘a peculiar grass that grows on the moun-
tains’^36 (both of Connemara and Kerry) and said to be the cause, once
stepped on, of violent hunger, abnormal craving and—by the more scientif-
ically inclined—diabetes. In Monaghan it has been used in combination with
Pondweeds, Grasses, Lilies and Orchids 323