cure—a use for water-lily roots according to a recipe written on the back of
an early eighteenth-century account at Inverary Castle in Argyllshire.^5 A fur-
ther complication is that bog pondweed in its turn may have been confused
in part with marsh pennywort,Hydrocotyle vulgaris,for that seems the like-
liest possessor of the ‘penny leaves that are got in the bog’ mentioned by two
other Limerick informants^6 ;they used them, however, for putting on burns,
which, suspiciously, was the principal application of the pondweed on Colon-
say^7 (as it has also been in parts of Wales^8 ). What have also been recorded as
water-lily roots were more recently used in Cavan to staunch bleeding or
applied as a poultice for ‘drawing’ a boil.^9 The roots of yellow water-lily,
Nuphar luteum,evidently possess some chemical potency, for William With-
ering^10 claimed that, when rubbed with milk, they are effective against cock-
roaches and crickets. The likeliest inference would seem to be that both
pondweeds and water-lilies were utilised herbally, perhaps in different
regions and for on the whole different purposes, but failure to draw a clear
distinction has led to some confusion.
Ranunculaceae
Caltha palustris Linnaeus
marsh-marigold, kingcup; mayflower (northern half of Ireland)
arctic and temperate Eurasia, North America
Although John Parkinson in his comprehensive seventeenth-century herbal
could find no evidence of the use ofCaltha palustris medicinally, its flowers
are reputed to have been much valued for such purposes in Ireland for-
merly.^11 In Meath they are known to have been boiled into a posset or a soup
and the contents drunk for heart ailments—perhaps on ‘sympathetic’
grounds, as the heart-shape of the leaves was stressed to the informant.^12 The
fleshiness of these, as one might expect, was also an attraction: in Roscom-
mon, three were plucked and one at a time stewed and then tied hot on a
bandage to a boil.^13
Helleborus foetidus Linnaeus
stinking hellebore, setterwort
western and southern Europe
Though mainly used for cattle and horses,Helleborus foetidus was widely
grown in cottage gardens or (as Gilbert White observed at Selborne in Hamp-
shire) gathered in the wild and the powdered leaves administered to children
troubled with worms. But it was so violent a purge that Parkinson^14 consid-
70 Nymphaea andNuphar