Personal sketches of his own times, Vol. 3 (of 3)

by Sir Jonah Barrington

As to the farriers, I reflected, that as man is only a mechanical animal, and a horse one of the same description, there was no reason why a drug that was good for a pampered gelding might not also be good for the hard-goer mounted on him. In truth, I have seen instances where, in point both of intellect and endurance, there was but very little distinction between the animals—save that the beverage of the one was water, and that of the other was punch—and, in point of quantity, there was no great difference between them in this matter either.

At that time there was seldom more than one regular doctor in a circuit of twenty miles, and a farrier never came to physic a gentleman’s horse that some boxes of pills were not deducted from his balls, for the general use of the ladies and gentlemen of the family; and usually succeeded vastly better than those of the apothecary.

The class of old women called colloughs were then held in the highest estimation, as understanding the cure (that is if God pleased) of all disorders. Their materia medica did not consist of gums, resins, minerals, and hot iron,—as the farriers’ did; but of leaves of bushes, bark of trees, weeds from churchyards, and mushrooms from fairy grounds; rue, garlic, rosemary, birds’-nests, foxglove, &c.: in desperate cases they sometimes found it advisable to put a charm into the bolus or stoop, and then it was sure to be “firm and good.” I never could find out what either of their charms were. They said they should die themselves if they disclosed them to any body. No collough ever could be a doctor whilst she had one tooth remaining in her head, as the remedy was always reduced to a pulp or paste by her own mumbling of its materials, and the contact of an old grinder would destroy the purity of the charms and simples, and leave the cure, they would say, no better than a farrier’s.

Our old collough, Jug Coyle, as she sat in a corner of the hob, by the great long turf fire in the kitchen, exactly in the position of the Indian squaws, munching and mumbling for use an apron-full of her morning’s gatherings in the fields, used to talk at intervals very sensibly of her art. “Ough! then, my dear sowl, (said she one evening,) what would the poor Irishers have done in owld times but for their colloughs? Such brutes as you!” continued she, (looking at Butler, the farrier of the family, who was seated fast asleep on a bench at the opposite end of the hearth,) “’tis you, and the likes of you, a curse on you, root and branch! that starved the colloughs by giving your poisons to both cows and quality. Sure its the farriers’ and pothecaries’ drugs that kills all the people-ay, and the horses and cattle too,” and she shook her claw-like fist at the unconscious farrier.

“Jug Coyle,” said I, “why are you so angry?”

Jug:—“Sure it’s not for myself, it’s for my calling,” said she: “a thousand years before the round towers were built (and nobody can tell that time), the colloughs were greater nor any lady in the country. We had plenty of charms in those days, Master Jonah, till the farriers came, bad luck to the race! Ough! may the curse of Crummell light on yees all, breed, seed, and generation, Larry Butler! not forgetting Ned Morrisy of Clapook, the villanous cow-doctor, that takes the good from the colloughs likewise, and all—”

Here Jug Coyle stopped short, as the farrier opened his eyes, and she knew well that if Larry Butler had a sup in, he would as soon beat an old woman as any body else. She therefore resumed munching her herbs, but was totally silenced.

Larry Butler was one of the oldest and most indispensable attachés of our family. Though nobody remembered him a boy, he was as handy, as fresh, and as rational, perhaps more so, than half a century before. Short, broad, and bow-legged, bone and muscle kept his body together—for flesh was absent. His face, once extremely handsome, still retained its youthful colouring—though broken and divided: his sharp eye began to exhibit the dimness of age: the long white hair had deserted his high forehead, but fell, in no scanty locks, down each side of his animated countenance. He is before my eye at this moment—too interesting, and, at the same time, odd a figure ever to be forgotten.

I had a great respect for old Butler: he was very passionate, but universally licensed: he could walk any distance, and always carried in his hand a massive firing-iron. I have thus particularly described the old man, as being one of the most curious characters of his class I ever met in Ireland.

Larry soon showed signs of relapsing into slumber; but Jug, fearing it was a fox’s sleep (an old trick of his), did not recommence her philippic on the farriers, but went on in her simple praise of the collough practice. “Sure,” said she, “God never sent any disorder into a country that he did not likewise send something to cure it with.”