MEDICINAL PLANTS in Folk Tradition

(Darren Dugan) #1

with other herbs rather more often than it is employed on its own. In further
sharp contrast to Britain, the only Irish record picked up of an application to
cuts is one from Laois—and that merely as one of three ingredients, along
with elder bark and ivy juice^223 ;however, the root, chopped up and fried with
lard, has served as a skin ointment in Westmeath^224 and the leaves have had
a place in a poultice for erysipelas in Donegal.^225 More equally shared with
Britain has been appreciation of the plant’s relaxing property: toothache has
been eased in Co. Dublin by rubbing with a leaf for about two minutes^226
and the juice drunk in Carlow to counter a pain in the stomach,^227 while in
Cork a tea of both cowslips and primroses has doubtless been a doubly sure
remedy for insomnia.^228


Primula veris Linnaeus
cowslip
Europe, temperate Asia; introduced into North America
The role ofPrimula veris seems to have been mostly as a second-best: used for
much the same ailments as the primrose (P.vulgaris), it is on record from
some areas where the other is apparently not, despite the primrose being
much the more generally distributed and in most regions much the more
plentiful. A particularly striking anomaly is that the records for cowslip as a
jaundice remedy are all English (Dorset,^229 Norfolk^230 ) whereas the more
numerous ones for that in the case of the primrose are all Irish. In that
instance it seems the primrose has been second-best, the Irish forced to have
recourse to that because of the great scarcity of the cowslip in large parts of
that country (though widespread on the limy soils of its midlands).
Special to the cowslip, at least in Britain, has been its role as a folk cos-
metic (the leaves and stalk avoided because those can seriously irritate certain
skins). The plant is said to have enjoyed a great vogue in that capacity in the
Highlands up to the eighteenth century,^231 and there are records also from
Devon,^232 Wiltshire^233 and (perhaps) Kent.^234 Special to the cowslip, too, is its
use for coughs in Norfolk^235 and to banish ‘decline’ (presumably tuberculo-
sis) in South Wales, in parts of which there was once a well-known rhyme to
that effect.^236 Otherwise the cowslip’s recorded repertory echoes that of the
primrose: insomnia in Devon^237 and Derbyshire,^238 wounds in Dorset,^239
backache in Wiltshire^240 and to ‘strengthen the senses’ in South Wales,^241 this
last recalling the use of primrose in Lincolnshire to help a failing memory.
Ireland’s chief distinction is the cowslip’s wide popularity there for coun-
tering insomnia, with records from Cavan,^242 Co.Dublin,^243 Clare,^244 Lim-


  St John’s-worts to Primulas 125
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