The Land of Milk and Honey

Siobhán Barrett

In two blogs last year (see here and here), I described some of our native Irish trees and how their leaves, roots, bark and seeds were prescribed for medical use. This month’s blog will consider two ingredients that were derived from animals – namely, milk and honey – with reference to material that is found in Irish medical manuscripts.

Milk

Cattle and dairying are integral to the Irish economy now and their importance in the past is reflected in the many references to cattle in literary, legal and medical texts. Arguably the best known work of Irish literature is Táin Bó Cúailnge or ‘The Cattle Raid of Cooley’, in which Queen Medb leads an attack on the men of Ulster to take possession of the peerless bull, Donn Cúailnge, by force. St Brigit is the patron saint of dairy farmers and her hagiography describes several miracles associated with milk and butter. When she was a child, Brigit only began to thrive when she was fed on milk from a white red-eared cow (Stokes 1877: 69). In legal texts, the importance of cattle in economic terms is evident in the numerous references to cattle and milch cows being used as payments for important transactions. As well as the economic value of the cattle themselves, dairy products are also mentioned in legal texts as being part of the food-rent that clients paid to their lord.

In the medical texts, there are several different Irish words for milk, including lemnacht, as and the word still used in Modern Irish, bainne. Other products derived from milk that are used in remedies include bláthach ‘buttermilk’, medg ‘whey’, gruiten ‘curds’, englas ‘milk diluted with water’, im ‘butter’ and cáise ‘cheese’.

For example, a remedy to treat what seems to be a parasitic infestation of the skin, possibly scabies, uses the stem of foxglove, root of dock and elecampane crushed in goat’s milk or in butter. The resulting ointment or lotion was then rubbed onto the affected area (Figure 1):

Figure 1: Dublin, Royal Irish Academy MS 24 B 3, p. 36, ll. 22–24 : a remedy to treat scabies (Image courtesy of Irish Script on Screen).

To treat uvulitis that was not accompanied by swelling, it is advised that one should put oyster-shell ashes mixed with sheep’s milk on the uvula (Figure 2):

Figure 2: Dublin, Royal Irish Academy MS 24 B 3, p. 58: a cure for uvulitis (Image courtesy of Irish Script on Screen).

As well as animal milk, human breast milk is a very common ingredient, and especially so in eye remedies. Very often there is a distinction made as to whether the mother is nursing a boy or a girl. The remedy in Figure 3 is to treat poor eyesight and specifies that one should mix together the juice of eyebright, the juice of fennel, and equal amounts of milk from a breast where a boy is being nursed (bande cīch ar a mbī mac). A very small measure of the resulting mixture is poured on the eye before sleeping and before rising:

Figure 3: Dublin, Royal Irish Academy MS 24 B 3, p. 50, ll. 2–4: a remedy to treat poor eyesight (Image courtesy of Irish Script on Screen).

In contrast, this treatment for an eye ulcer in King’s Inns Library MS 15 (Figure 4) requires the milk from a breast where a girl is being nursed. Bistort, red fennel, the tips of rue, and leaves of vervain are crushed and boiled in the urine of a one-year-old baby. This liquid is then strained though a linen cloth and mixed with banne cīch ingine, ‘breastmilk of a daughter’, before being applied to the eye:

Figure 4: Dublin, King’s Inns Library MS 15, fol. 100r, ll. 8–9 : a cure for an eye ulcer (image courtesy of Irish Script on Screen).

The above remedies are applied topically, but various drinks composed of milk mixed with herbs were also prepared to treat many diseases. To kill intestinal worms, for example, sorrel is boiled in milk or whey and it kills worms immediately after drinking (see e.g. Dublin, RIA MS 23 N 29, fol. 3v15-16). To cure coughs, boil garlic, salt, butter and milk and drink morning and evening (see e.g. Dublin, RIA MS 24 B 3, p. 65.27-8), whereas chest complaints can be cured by drinking honey and curds boiled together (see e.g. Dublin, RIA MS 24 B 3, p. 65.8).

Honey

The existence of a legal text called Bechbretha ‘bee judgements’ provides evidence for the practice of bee-keeping in Ireland dating back to the 7^th century (Charles-Edwards & Kelly 2008: 13). There are very few Latin loanwords in Bechbretha, leading Charles-Edwards and Kelly to argue that the existence of native words associated with the art of beekeeping, such as bech ‘bee’, mil ‘honey’ and mid ‘mead’, is linguistic evidence that bee-keeping was practiced in Ireland before the arrival of Christianity (Charles-Edwards & Kelly 2008: 40–2). However, according to Félire Óengusso, ‘The martyrology of Óengus’, a list of saints arranged by their feast-days, Mo Domnóc (whose feast-day was 13^th February) first brought bees to Ireland in a boat, thus firmly linking the arrival of bees with Christianity (Stokes 1905: 60). Leaving aside how the bees got here, by the time our medical manuscripts were being written, honey was listed as an ingredient in many medicines. It is used topically, especially for wounds, ulcers, and abscesses. In this example for aillse ‘cancer’ (possibly some kind of skin cancer), the stem of yellow iris is placed between two linen cloths and is dried above a fire, after which it is ground to a powder and mixed with honey to make a medicinal bandage that is applied to the affected skin (Figure 5):

Figure 5: Dublin, Royal Irish Academy MS 24 B 3, p. 84, ll. 6–8: a treatment for cancer (image courtesy of Irish Script on Screen).

Oxymel, a therapeutic drink made from honey and vinegar, is frequently mentioned in medical texts. Tadhg Ó Cuinn composed an Irish translation of the Circa Instans, a Latin list of medicinal ingredients written by Matthaeus Platearius, in which he includes a recipe for a simple oxymel. It is made of two parts of vinegar and one part of honey, which is boiled until it is as thick as honey. Recipes for oxymels with additional herbs and spices are found on pp. 245-8 of Dublin, National Library of Ireland MS G 414 (on which, see our Manuscript of the Month entry for December 2024).

Bees themselves may have paid the ultimate sacrifice in the quest for blonde hair: ashes of bees are mixed with oil and rubbed on the head to turn the hair yellow. This remedy is also found in The Trotula, a collection of texts on women’s medicine and cosmetics which is thought to have been composed by a woman in Salerno in the twelfth century (Green 2002: 116, §261). This is not the only remedy from this collection that is found in Irish medical manuscripts: much of the advice in our sources surrounding childbirth, fertility and pregnancy can be traced back to The Trotula (see Hayden forthcoming).

This short blog merely touches on the repository of knowledge that is contained in our medical texts, which reveal much about the diseases, sometimes trivial but often devastating, that plagued humanity at the time of writing. The ingredients commonly named also show us their knowledge of, and dependence on, ingredients locally sourced from animals and plants.

The Land of Milk and Honey

Milk

Honey

Further reading:

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