CHANGELINGS

Part of fairy lore, changelings are the fairy substitutes for human babies that they have abducted. There are standard procedures, often violent, for forcing the fairy abductors to return the true child and take away the changeling. Sometimes the procedure involves plants, as with FOXGLOVE, for instance. The suspected changeling is bathed in the juice, and fairystruck children had to be given the juice of twelve (or ten, some say), leaves of foxglove (Wilde. 1902). Or a piece of the plant could be put under the bed. If it is a changeling, the fairies would be forced to restore the true child (Mooney). Simpler still, put some leaves on the child itself, and the result would be immediate (Gregory). And instructions from County Leintrim advised a suspicious parent to “take lusmore [an Irish name for foxglove] and squeeze the juice out. Give the child three drops on the tongue, and three in each ear. Then place it [the suspected changeling] at the door of the house on a shovel (on which it should be held by someone) and swing it out of the door on the shovel three times, saying “If you’re a fairy, away with you”. If it is a fairy child, it will die that night; but if not it will surely begin to mend” (Spence. 1949). A Scottish way to get rid of a suspected changeling was to build the fire with ROWAN branches, and to hold the child in the thick of the smoke. The brat would disappear up the chimney, and the true child would be returned (Aitken).

CATARRH

was cured at one time by taking the powder made from CONKERS as a snuff. The Pennsylvania Germans used it that way (Fogel), but this was quite an early habit (Thornton), and the idea was to grate them up and use the powder to make one sneeze. Apparently it was recommended not only as a powder, but also as an infusion or decoction to take up the nostrils. SANICLE can be used to treat catarrh (an infusion of the astringent leaves) (Conway). Smoking the crushed berries of VIRGINIAN JUNIPER is an American domestic remedy for catarrh (H M Hyatt). The fern known as POLYPODY was made in Scotland into a medicine for catarrh (Beith), and FENUGREEK is also used as a traditional treatment for the condition (Schauenberg & Paris), who also suggest that the infusion of the flowers of SMALLLEAVED LIME was used.

CATCHTHORN

(Zizyphus abyssinica) In Malawi, an extremely potent alcoholic drink called kachaso is made from the berries (Palgrave & Palgrave). The leaves are chewed as an aphrodisiac, and a root decoction is used as an abortifacient, while the root infusion is taken for dysentery. There is a lot of tannin in both the bark and leaves, so its use for dysentery probably depends on this. A powder prepared by drying and pounding is used to rub into incisions made on the chest in cases of pneumonia (Palgrave & Palgrave).