MISCELLANEA.
Folk-Medicine in County Cork.
Whooping {or Chin) Cough. — If you see a man riding by on a white or piebald horse, anything he tells you to do will effect a cure.
You say, "Wisha, man on the white (or piebald) horse, for God's sake, do you know any cure for the chin cough ? "
He : " Faith then, I don't know of any cure, unless to take the chile fastin' to the four cross-roads and give him his feedin' there for four mornings running " {i.e. following).
This was tried on a child who had had a " doctor's bottle," which failed to cure : hence the charm, which proved most efficacious — a fact vouched for by persons who know the mother. She lives in Lower Dripsey. Date of cure, June, 1896.
Another. — A " Boo " in a bottle. — Catch a blue-bottle fly, put it in a corked (?) bottle, and as the fly gets weaker and dies off, so will the cough take its departure. Vouched for and seen by my informant.
Another. — The " Gossip," i.e. the godfather of the child, with- out being told by any one of the child's people, but by his own vile inspiration, must steal, i.e. cut off, the ear of his neighbour's living goat close to the head, make a hole in it with a fork, and pass a string through it; this is tied round the child's neck, and is meant to be sucked by the child.
This was tried on HanTwoomey, Mary L.'s factotum, about thirty years ago. She told me about it, and her cousin, wife of our ploughman, remembers well seeing this loathsome object round the child's neck for about three months. Truly the native Irish are savages.
Another. — Get a mare donkey in milk, and have a person stand- ing on each side of the animal. One passes the child under the body of the donkey to the other, who returns it over the back. Do this nine times for three mornings fasting.
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