MEDICINAL PLANTS in Folk Tradition

(Darren Dugan) #1

‘with their feet in the water’) as recently as the 1940s for bathing rashes, sun-
burn and the like.^206


Plumbaginaceae


Armeria maritima (Miller) Willdenow
thrift, sea pink
northern hemisphere; introduced into New Zealand
Though Armeria maritima is a common plant round most of the coasts of the
British Isles, the only records of its use in folk medicine seem to be confined
to the Orkney Islands and to South Uist in the Outer Hebrides. In the former,
the thick, tuberous roots were sliced and boiled in sweet milk to produce a
drink known as ‘Arby’, highly prized up to c. 1700 as a remedy for tuberculo-
sis.^207 John Aubrey was also told by a medical correspondent that a cure for
the ague in Orkney included drinking an infusion in which this plant was
one of several herbal ingredients.^208 In South Uist, a sailor’s remedy for a
hangover was to boil a bunch of these plants complete with their roots and
drink the liquid slowly when cooled.^209 The roots at least evidently contain a
compound which induces heavy sweating.


Notes


100 Rumex palustris



  1. Threlkeld

  2. Purdon

  3. IFC S 530: 51, 121

  4. IFC S 811: 64

  5. IFC S 787: 368

  6. Mactaggart, 18

  7. Ó Súilleabháin, 312

  8. Maloney

  9. IFC S 850: 56

  10. IFC S 512: 445

  11. Beddington & Christy, 212

  12. Williams 1922, 275

  13. IFC S 787: 37

  14. IFC S 617: 333

  15. IFC S 484: 41–2

  16. Quelch, 99

  17. Moore MS; Logan, 38

  18. Vickery MSS (Co. Durham)

  19. Pennant 1784, ii, 155

  20. Paton, 46

  21. Mactaggart, 217

  22. Lightfoot, ii, 614; Vickery 1995

  23. Johnson 1862

  24. Goodrich-Freer, 206; Shaw, 50;
    Henderson & Dickson, 80; McNeill
    25.Independent,5 Aug. 1994

  25. Pennant 1784, ii, 155

  26. Freethy, 125

  27. McGlinchey, 84

  28. IFC S 171: 46

  29. IFC S 771: 151

  30. Palmer 1994, 122

  31. IFC S 689: 103

  32. IFC S 157: 314

  33. IFC S 571: 239

  34. IFC S 710: 48

  35. McGlinchey, 84

  36. Farrelly MS

  37. IFC S 850: 166

  38. IFC S 811: 65

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