And a Galway woman, who has been in England says:  ’I was delicate one time myself, and I lost my walk; and one of the neighbours told my mother it wasn’t myself that was there.  But my mother said she’d soon find that out; for she’d tell me she was going to get a herb that would cure me; and if it was myself, I’d want it; but if it was another, I’d be against it.  So she came in and said she to me:  “I’m going to Dangan to look for the Lus-mor, that will soon cure you.”  And from that day I gave her no peace till she’d go to Dangan and get it; so she knew I was all right.  She told me all this afterwards.’

The man from East Galway says:  ’The herbs they cure with, there’s some that’s natural, and you could pick them at all times of the day.’

‘Sea-grass’ is sometimes useful as a natural and sometimes as an occult cure.  One who has tried it and other herbs, says:  ’Indeed the porter did me good, and good that I’d hardly like to tell you, not to make a scandal.  Did I drink too much of it?  Not at all.  But this long time I am feeling a worm in my side that is as big as an eel, and there’s more of them in it than that.  And I was told to put seagrass to it; and I put it to the side the other day; and whether it was that or the porter I don’t know, but there’s some of them gone out of it.

’Garblus—­how did you hear of that?  That is the herb for things that have to do with the fairies.  And when you drink it for anything of that sort, if it doesn’t cure you, it will kill you then and there.  There was a fine young man I used to know, and he got his death on the head of a pig that came at himself and another man at the gate of Ramore, and that never left them, but was with them all the time, till they came to a stream of water.  And when he got home, he took to his bed with a headache.  And at last he was brought a drink of the Garblus, and no sooner did he drink it than he was dead.  I remember him well.

’There is something in flax, for no priest would anoint you without a bit of tow.  And if a woman that was carrying was to put a basket of green flax on her back, the child would go from her; and if a mare that was in foal had a load of flax on her, the foal would go the same way.’

And a neighbour of hers confirms this, and says:  ’There’s something in green flax, I know; for my mother often told me about one night she was spinning flax before she was married, and she was up late.  And a man of the fairies came in—­she had no right to be sitting up so late:  they don’t like that—­and he told her it was time to go to bed; for he wanted to kill her, and he couldn’t touch her while she was handling the flax.  And every time he’d tell her to go to bed, she’d give him some answer, and she’d go on pulling a thread of the flax, or mending a broken one; for she was wise, and she knew that at the crowing of the cock he’d have to go.  So at last the cock crowed, and she was safe, for the cock is blessed.’