WHETHER it's a bad sore throat, a cut knee or a soaring temperature, the Irish Mammy has a cure for all ailments.
The Irish Mammy has medical knowledge that would put any professional doctor to shame. And forget traipsing to the hospital, everything Doctor Mammy needed was in the cupboards in the kitchen. She doesn't need no degree in medicine. She knows that a damp face cloth can reduce a temperature, a thick lathering of Vicks Vaporub all over will shift a chest infection and a mug of flat 7Up will quell a sick tummy in minutes.
Doctor Mammy knew that tea could cure all ailments from heartache to headache and even shock. But it has to be sugary and with a biscuit for shock. And when she was done with the teabag she used it to cure sties on the eyes.
If that didn't work a good blessing of the eye with a wedding ring would shift it. She knew that the mystical components of Sudocreme would work their magic on burns, scrapes or breakouts. Is it still sore? Well, you haven't given it enough time to work.
She used the veiny side of Dock leaves to help stop the pain of nettle stings. It doesn't matter if a dog peed on them. Dog pee is probably good for you anyway. Doctor Mammy always kept a good supply of pink Calpol in the kitchen cupboard, none of that orange muck, it had to be pink, and was always there with a kiss and a hug, which in itself had it's own powerful medicinal qualities.
My mother had her own cures. One particularly nasty but effective one was Bogbean, a sticky brown putrid concoction made from the leaves extracted from Donegal's finest peat bogs, up behind my granny's house. As children, we would have been forced to glug down this mystical mucky nectar as the promise of it curing everything from migraine to acne to infections to allergies rang in our ears. It still haunts my dreams.
Friends remember their mammies having amazing, bizarre and wonderful cures for everything from whooping cough to warts.
Bronach's mammy knew that Lucozade cured many a sickness, and was even thought to bring people back from the dead, but only the big bottle with the orange cellophane wrapper. The wrapperless bottle was useless.
Eamonn's Irish granny would have cut an onion in half and attached it to the side of the head to cure ear infections and was a big fan of brown paper. Brown paper, salt and vinegar for warts. Butter and brown paper for a bad chest. Worked a treat.
Former MLA Pat Ramsey's Irish mother-in-law regularly cured whooping cough, as legend goes, having a 'cure' just by being a woman who married a man with the same surname as her. The woman was inundated in the 1960s and 70s with sick people who came to her home, were presented with a ceremonial piece of bread with honey on it by her and went home to recover.
Alliance Councillor Kellie Armstrong's mum used Milk of Magnesia for everything from cut knees to tonsillitis to tummy upsets. The magic white stuff was called upon for every ailment imaginable.
Seamus's granny would have placed spider's webs on cuts to help them heal and taken them as children to a priest's grave in Derry to rub grave soil on hands to banish warts.
Andrea's mammy would use mustard poultices for chest problems and Fionnuala's would have used bread poultices to draw out infection.
Liz's mammy used cod liver oil administered with a oversized brushed steel spoon to build kids up after illness and Nicole's granny swore by the spit of a person who had fasted for 24-hours to cure warts – either that or a black slug placed on the offending area. Whereas Anna's mum swore by rubbing a raw half of potato onto the wart then burying it in the garden.
Sylvia's mammy used burnt milk to cure stomach ulcers and James's mammy swore by a piece of tobacco placed in a tooth to stop toothache.
Never mind underage drinking, a 'drop of whiskey' was used on dummies, on teething gums, or burns, for colds and rubbed on sprains. It was almost as powerful as tea of the mammy hug.
The Irish Mammy was in a realm above Dr Quinn Medicine Woman when it came to what was best for every ailment under the sun. And whether it was muck from a priest's grave, waving wedding rings at eyes or rubbing black slugs on warts none of us are any the worse for it.
