AULD SCOTTISH GRANNIES’ REMEDIES

A HAGGIS A DAY KEEPS THE DOCTOR AWAY

By Betty Kirkpatrick

ISBN 1-905102-06-2
£2.99, PB

That greatly loved - if equally feared - auld Scottish granny possessed a formidable amount of ancient folk remedies to keep her family healthy, or cure them if they insisted on succumbing...

Here are some examples of problems and remedies:

Whooping cough
Pass the child with the condition under a donkey (possibly because the donkey was thought to have unusual powers from its association with Christ).

Worms
Get the child to chew on a piece of bread and then spit it out before taking a drink of whisky (in the belief that the worms would open their mouths to eat the bread and then be drowned in whisky...).

Bed-wetting
Boil a mouse in water and then give the bed-wetter a tablespoon of the resultant liquid three times a day. (Let’s hope the child was never aware of the ingredients as this would be sufficiently terror-inducing to wet the bed in the first place!)

As this funny Little Book shows, when Scottish grannies were about, taking to your bed was definitely a last resort!