Nell Leahy, drawing on her natural wisdom, explained that boils could be difficult to cure. But if you pressed a hot bottle, heated with boiling water, against the boil it would extract the vile contents and then, hopefully, the boil would go down and disappear. This could be painful, but effective.
Dock leaves eased nettle stings, as well as replacing costly rationed toilet paper in many wartime homes.
For insect stings, you could do worse than try the “blue”, used in whitening of clothes. You rubbed it into the sting to gain relief.
For sprains, you held the affected joint under water until it became almost numb. You then rubbed it with a cream composed of two parts Winter Green, and one part poitin. This afforded you considerable relief.
To purify the blood, you boiled dandelions in milk and drank a cup or two for nine days. Or you might get an equally positive result by eating fresh spring nettles boiled with bacon.
Beef tea was good for anaemia, apart from being a tasty and refreshing drink. Cubes of shin beef were boiled in water sprinkled with salt and pepper. After boiling for two hours, you drained the beefy water or broth from the meat and drank it.
If you had a bad stomach, two egg whites with two spoonfuls of sugar had you smiling again.
To restore flagging vitality, you might boil rose hips slowly in sugared water. One or two teaspoonfuls a day and you were brimming with energy, jumping fences like a horse.
Women formulated beauty facemasks by whisking eggs with oatmeal and water. After leaving it on her face for about 10 minutes, she rinsed off the mould with lukewarm water.
There was a fairly successful cure for burns. Bread soda prevented skin from blistering if rubbed on immediately, and eased the pain. Alternatively, you could apply the pith of an elm tree steeped in cold water to the burn. It got rid of the burn mark.
Of course, all the cures in the world couldn’t cancel one’s inevitable appointment with the Big D...only postpone it. Death was regarded somewhat differently in the 1940s from today, Nell explained.
There was a custom, still proudly upheld in the early to mid forties, that when someone died, the fire in the hearth was quenched and the clock on the wall stopped. The corpse was left alone for an hour or so to allow the soul to have a quiet word with God.
Then it was washed and cleansed to look its best for the rosaries, the prayers, and of course for the all-important wake and the lively drinking session that accompanied it.
After cleaning it up, the volunteers who executed this sensitive and vital task dressed the corpse up in a habit and tastefully laid it out for the wake…usually on a table covered in spotless linen.
“Respect was the keyword,” said Nell, “everything was done with an eye to showing total respect and reverence for the dead, because we knew that some day, that would be us lying there stretched out.”
Nell thought the deceased always looked saintly, and as handsome or attractive as it was possible for a corpse to appear.
Regardless of his or her religious or pious nature, or lack of it, in life, someone carefully entwined a rosary beads around the fingers of the hands, which were joined prayerfully across the chest. A penny might be placed on each eye to keep it closed for the duration of the wake.
On a smaller table adjacent to the large one containing the body, two lighting candles and a little glass or bowl of holy water were placed.
Nell described other aspects of the ritual:
“A window might be left open to give the departed soul a suitable exit from the house to his or her new home in the world beyond. The wake was a lovely social occasion. I know many a mourner that swore they found a wake far more enjoyable than a wedding. There was a better atmosphere, they thought.
“Great reverence was shown the corpse. Neighbours arrived in a procession that seemed to go on forever, bearing sacred relics, beads, or food items. And of course you’d have a lot of drink at the wake, though there would be already enough of this as most households hosting a wake would have a barrel or half of beer and plenty of whiskey available for the mourners and visitors. They all had to be looked after.”
There might be music too, Nell added, especially if the dearly departed had been fond of a song: “Someone might play on an auld squeezebox to entertain the mourners. The greatest praise possible was accorded to the corpse, with everyone trying to outdo the others in speaking well of the deceased.”
The drinking sessions at wakes were social events that everyone looked forward to, Nell affirmed, but the enjoyment wasn’t the same, she cautioned, as at the threshings.
It was a more suppressed form of enjoyment, she discovered, where you had to intersperse your comments and drinking with frequent suitable references to the poor lad or lady “inside in the other room”.
(From Are We Invaded Yet? by John Fitzgerald )
To be continued…
