Warts must have been a very common complaint in days gone by because everybody in the parish has a tretment which works. People believed that warts on the hands were caused by washing the hands in water in which eggs were boiled. A fasting spit rubbed on the wart or the froth from the cuckoo’s spit, or water from the forge, all worked a treat. There is a wart well in Drumcannon below Tramore and there was a stone in the orchard of Power’s, Islandtarsnay (the Tailors). This stone had a depression in it where rainwater collected. You just washed the affected part in this water and, appropriately, it was called the wart stone. The dew of the grass before sunrise on May morning removed warts as well as corns, bunions, freckles, and all skin blemishes, and guaranteed eternal beauty. Stranger still are the following cures. If the wart is rubbed with a piece of fat-bacon and the bacon is then buried, the wart disappears as the bacon rots away. A raw potato rubbed on and then thrown away works the same way. A very common cure is the shellakiepookie cure. You get a shellakiepookie (snail), rub the wart with him, stick him on a thorn and, as he withers away, the wart disappeares. Caustic soda and wart plant (spunk) were rubbed on the wart.

There were two people from the parish who had the charm to cure warts. They used a straw from the rick and made the sign of the cross on the wart, then they buried the straw and the wart just disappeared within a few days. If all of these failed, a hair from the horse’s tail was tied tightly around the wart until it withered. Take your pick, they all work if you have faith.

 To stop bleeding

The charm to stop bleeding was most peculiar because it worked on animals as well as people and it worked at a distance.

William Kiely from Killfarrasy had the charm. A mare of Bob Phelan’s jumped a gate and burst a vein in her leg when she hit the top rail. The workman ran for William. He had a prayer that he used to say to stop the bleeding. The workman urged him to come quickly but he answered, “I said the prayer, it will be stopped when I get there” – and it was. The charm to stop bleeding was passed from a man to a woman to a man and could not be used unless someone requested it. (I was privileged to be given the prayer to stop bleeding by Tommy Drohan, who got it from his grandmother.) St. Martin’s blood was also used to clear bleeding. On St. Martin’s eve (November 10th) a cock or some domestic animal was killed and the blood was sprinkled on the door-post and also on a cloth. This cloth was kept safely and applied to any bleeding wound.

For every ailment there was a folk-cure – an eelskin for tralach [tráileaċ], or cork under the matress for cramps in the legs, boiling potato-water for hangnail, oatmeal water for freckles, a cobweb or a key down the back of the neck for nosebleed. Many of the old cures are lost and very few of them are used. Nowadays, however, there are still people to whom we turn in times of specific need – the healers and the people with “the cure” .