Parish Life in the Past

Fenor 1884 – 1984

These stories, which relate in some way to the religious life of the parishioners of Fenor, were taken from the book “Fenor – Its Facts, Faces and Folklore” which was published in 1994 for the centenary of the Church of the Immaculate Conception in Fenor. Of course, many of the stories and much of the folklore would be familiar to people of other parishes and, indeed, of other countries.

The many “cures” and piseóga came down from an age when doctors were few and far between and people had to rely on their own devices to survive illness.

It’s easy, now, to laugh at some of these cures but many of them did work and from them scientists were able to extract the essential ingredients such as penicillin (from the fungus Penicillium notatum) and digitalis (from Digitalis purpurea, the common foxglove).

So read and learn and develop a new respect for the people of the time. Do you not wonder how we would fare if we were parachuted into the middle of 1884?