344 Distribution Patterns
cure for earache or a headache involving dropping into the ear sap from a
twig ofFraxinus excelsior heated in a fire. This tree, the ash, was prominent in
Norse mythology and, if that remedy had other than an Irish origin, it seems
more likely to have come from northern Europe, directly or indirectly, than
been devised in one or other of the neighbours immediately to the east.
Only two native flowering plants that are common on both sides of the
Irish Sea appear to have had major roles as herbs in Ireland yet no herbal role
whatever in Britain. These are Caltha palustris (marsh-marigold) and Ulex
gallii (western gorse); Ireland’s other gorse, the much taller U. europaeus,is
apparently a late introduction but has doubtless come to share the folk atten-
tions of its fellow species. It may be more than coincidence that these bear
golden yellow flowers very conspicuously, which would make them prime
choices for magico-religious rituals in which that colour had some special
significance (and from which its use could have carried over into the medic-
inal sphere). Perhaps lending support to that notion is that the shrubby coun-
terpart of the Ulex species,Cytisus scoparius (broom), while not similarly
exclusive to Ireland as a herbal remedy, appears to have been applied to a
markedly wider range of ailments there than in Britain. It may be more than
coincidence, too, that in contrast to the wide medicinal use made ofPrunus
spinosa (blackthorn) in England and Wales, particularly in the form of juice
from its sloes, that tree features in the Irish records anomalously slightly. Was
that because of the malignant power with which that and its counterpart,
Crataegus monogyna (whitethorn), were at one time in Ireland so widely and
emphatically credited?
But if there are hardly any widely used Irish herbs that appear to have
had no history in Britain of any medicinal function at all, there are quite a
number that the two countries have shared that have had at least one appli-
cation seemingly exclusive to Ireland. Apart from the three extreme cases of
Geranium robertianum, Veronica chamaedrys and Iris foetidissima,mentioned
earlier, in which Britain has reciprocated with an application equally exclu-
sive to itself, these include
Betula (birch) bark for eczema
Fraxinus excelsior (ash) leaves for rheumatism
Lonicera periclymenum (honeysuckle) for ‘thrush’
Prunella vulgaris (self-heal) for heart trouble
Quercus (oak) bark for sore feet
Rumex (dock) roots for jaundice and liver trouble
Sedum acre (biting stonecrop) for intestinal worms