Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 4, 1893.djvu/359

 Rh For Ulcerated Sore-throat (Donegal).—Take the patient by the two ears and "shake the devil out of him or her".—.

(This Miss S. knows to be a fact, for it was done to one of their labourer's sons.)

Dried fox's tongue has many virtues; e.g., it will draw thorns however deep.—.

Cure for the Evil.—A robin's breast rubbed on the place.—Idem.

Cure for a Sick Cow (Donegal).—Cut off the piece of turf on which the cow first treads when getting up, and hang it on the wall, and the cow will recover.—.

Cure for a Sore Mouth (Donegal).—A posthumous child will cure a sore mouth.—.

Cure for Whooping-Cough (Kerry).—Some milk to be poured into a saucer, a ferret to drink some of it, and the rest to be given to the patient.—, Waterville.

St. John's Eve Fires (Kerry).—Fires were (and are still in a less degree) lighted all over the country on St. John's Eve, especially little fires across the road; if you drove through them it brought you luck for the year. Cattle were also driven through the fires.

When anyone is lying dead in a room the walls must be hung with sheets, and the door left open (because the spirit hovers in the room after it has left the body, and must have free egress), five candles must be round the coffin, one of which is not to be lighted. As the coffin is being taken out of the door the sheets are to be taken down.—Mrs. , Darrynane.

The first child that dies in a family must be buried in the children's burial-ground (there are numbers of them about the country for unbaptised children), otherwise two others will follow if the first is buried in the churchyard.

Water that has been used to bathe the feet must be put outside the door at night for fear of fairies.

A gentleman I know at Listowel remembers, about eight years ago, being very much astonished when a cloud of dust was being blown along a road, seeing an old woman rush to the side and drag handfuls of grass out of the fence, which she threw in great haste into the cloud of dust. He inquired, and learned that this was