Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 27, 1916.djvu/451

 Collectanea. 42,

A Herbal Reinedy.

The following narrative was related to me in the Co. Water- ford : — My father had a farm, and was not in the house when the following happened. It was not long after the death of their first child that my mother was " sitting her lone " in the house and grieving at the thought of her little boy's death, when a travelling woman came in and rested a while by the fire. "Good woman," said she, " I know you're lonesome, and after burying your wee child. But you'll sliortly have another boy, and only I came this way you would have had to bury him too. Now do as I bid you, and don't tell your husband, or all will be of no use. I'll gather you certain herbs, and when the child is born boil some of them in milk and make him drink it. The remainder you may keep dry, but if any sickness takes the lad when he is growing up prepare some more, and it will cure him, and will last for twenty years at least." And sure enough, said my narrator, it all came true, and whenever I was ill my mother fetched out the packet of herbs, and when put in the milk they became quite fresh-looking, and they near twenty years old ! and I was cured by their virtue.

The Worm Knot, '■'■ S7iaidhtn na peiste" (pron. "snave na paystha").

A herd employed at Cookesborough, near Killucan, Co. West- nieath, showed me a charm he used when cattle got " the founder." He took a piece of string or light rope and tied a rather intricate knot, but did not pull it tight till he had passed it three times under the cow and over its back ; and then, if it had been properly made, by pulling the two ends the tangle was resolved, and the cord untwisted itself from the convolutions. It had also the virtue, I was told in the Co. Waterford, of curing an animal of any knot or contortion of the bowels, which is supposed to be the cause of gripes or colic.

A Biblical Legend.

At the interesting Cathedral of Lismore, Co. Waterford, an altar tomb called the Magrath tomb is preserved, and has been