Comfrey, Vervain and Mints 223Gloucestershire^171 and the Highlands^172 as far as Britain is concerned. The
second function, as a treatment for colds and respiratory problems, was
reportedly popular c. 1700 in several parts of Wales^173 and is on record more
recently from two remote areas where dying usages are likely to linger longest:
the Pennines of Westmoreland^174 and the island of Colonsay in the Inner Heb-
rides.^175 (Elsewhere in the Hebrides a tea made from self-heal and tansy (Tana-
cetum vulgare) was once drunk for cooling the blood.^176 )For the third main
function of the plant, however, no records at all from Britain have been traced.
Ireland seems to have had little interest in self-heal’s ability to staunch
bleeding, at any rate in more recent times, and the three counties from which
that action is recorded (Londonderry,^177 Co.Dublin,^178 Cork^179 )aresuspi-
ciously ones containing large centres of population, suggesting a late arrival.
One of John Ray’s correspondents, a physician in Kilkenny accustomed to
that use of the plant elsewhere, was surprised to find that Irish herb doctors
instead gave it frequently, boiled in a posset,‘in all sorts of common continual
fevers, some also in intermittent ones’.^180 It has persisted as a cure for ailments
of that type in at least Donegal,^181 Cavan,^182 the Aran Islands^183 and Wick-
low,^184 but it is in the more particular guise of a remedy for easing tubercular
coughs that it features in the later records, with a marked concentration—
and striking frequency—in the counties of the centre: Kildare (especially),^185
Laois,^186 Carlow^187 and Offaly.^188 If this is the plant known there as ‘pusey’, it
is on record for that from Fermanagh, too.^189 There was a saying in those
parts that you could tell whether a person had this fever-like illness, known
there under the name mionnérach,by rubbing the plant in the hand and see-
ing if a froth developed.
The third main function of the plant, as a heart remedy, appears to have
been exclusively Irish, recorded especially along the western coast (Done-
gal,^190 Sligo,^191 Clare Island off Mayo,^192 Limerick^193 ) but also farther east
(Cavan,^194 Kildare^195 ). In that capacity it has variously borne the names of
cailleach’s tea^196 and ceann de dohosaig.^197 A presumably related use, in some
unspecified part of Eire,^198 has been for a sudden stroke (or poc).
That medicinal uses of self-heal in Ireland have acquired some accretions
of special ritual strengthens the impression that the history of the plant in that
country is especially deep-rooted. Not surprisingly, therefore, it has attracted
some further applications there of a more marginal kind: in Kildare^199 and
Wicklow^200 toridchildren of worms, in Londonderry^201 and Wexford^202 as a
treatment for piles, in Meath^203 as a cure for eczema, in Carlow^204 as a remedy
for ‘a pain in the back’ (renal colic?) and in Cavan^205 for ‘weak blood’.