The wild parsnip is good for gravel, and for heartbeat there's nothing so good as dandelion. There was a woman I knew used to boil it down, and she'd throw out what was left on the grass. And there was a fleet of turkeys about the house and they used to be picking it up. And at Christmas they killed one of them, and when it was cut open they found a new heart growing in it with the dint of the dandelion.
My father went one time to a woman at Ennis, not Biddy Early, but one of her sort, to ask her about three sheep he had lost.
And she told him the very place they were brought to, a long path through the stones near Kinvara. And there he found the skins, and he heard that the man that brought them away had them sold to a butcher in Loughrea. So he followed him there, and brought the police, and they found him—a poor looking little man, but he had £60 within in his box.
There was another man up near Ballylee could tell these things too. When Jack Fahy lost his wool, he went to him, and next morning there were the fleeces at his door.
Those that are away know these things. There was a brother of my own took to it for seven years—and we at school. And no one could beat him at the hurling and the games. But I wouldn't like to be mixed with that myself.
There was one Moyra Colum was a great one for doing cures. She was called one time to see some sick person, and the man that came for her put her up behind him, on the horse. And some youngsters began to be humbugging him, and humbugging is always bad. And there was a young horse in the field where the youngsters were and it began to gallop, and it fell over a stump and lay on the ground kicking as if in a fit. And then Moyra Colum said, "Let me get down, for I have pity for the horse." And she got down and went into the field, and she picked a blade of a herb and put it to the horse's mouth and in one minute it got up well.
Another time a woman had a sick cow and she sent her little boy to Moyra Colum, and she gave him a bottle, and bade him put a drop of what was in it in the cow's ear. And so he did and in a few minutes he began to feel a great pain in his foot. So when the mother saw that, she took the bottle and threw it out into the street and broke it, and she said, "It's better to lose the cow than to lose my son." And in the morning the cow was dead.
The herbs they cure with, there's some that's natural, and you could pick them at all times of the day; there's a very good cure for the yellow jaundice I have myself, and I offered it to a woman in Ballygrah the other day, but some people are so taken up with pride and with conceit they won't believe that to cure that sickness you must take what comes from your own nature. She's dead since of it, I hear. But I'll tell you the cure, the way you'll know it. If you are attending a funeral, pick out a few little worms from the earth that's thrown up out of the grave, few or many, twenty or thirty if you like. And when you go home, boil them down in a sup of new milk and let it get cold; and believe me, that will cure the sickness.