At one time almost every housewife made her own wine. The only essential additives to wine not requiring to be stored are yeast, sugar and water. The most popular of the homemade wines were made from sloes, blackberries, elderberries, rhubarb, apples, beetroot, nettles, carrots and potatoes. Other homemade brews included celery tea, tansy tea, dandelion coffee and ginger beer.
Many of the wines and other home brews were said to have curative powers. Dandelion coffee, made from the roots or leaves of the dandelion, was said to be a cure for bed-wetting; mixed with whiskey it was used by people with chest complaints. Cowslip wine was said to be good for the complexion. In Cork a tea made from boiling wild carrots was used for rheumatism. One of the most popular drinks all over the country was made from bogbean, known as ‘báchrán’ or bahrams. In Donegal they said: “Drink bahrams in March and nettles in Mye (May) and you’ll not need a doctor till the day you die.” Roots of the bogbean, which are white, run underground and have small stems. In the month of March it was usual to dig up the roots and clean them in water. They were then boiled and sugar was added to taste. It was a drink guaranteed to clear the blood. In folklore collected in the 1930s, bogbean juice (leaves boiled) was said to be good for the kidneys, valuable for rheumatism, skin diseases, constipation and as a tonic.
Young nettles, particularly in May, were boiled and used as a blood cleanser. Boiled nettles are also said to be good for rheumatism and bronchitis.
Tea was introduced to Ireland in the early part of the 18th century, and like coffee and chocolate, was first drunk only by the wealthy and leisured. It took over a century for it to become part of the staple diet of the Irish people. A breakfast of tea and white bread was considered a luxury well into the middle of the 19th century and given only to important visitors. In William Carleton’s pre-famine story, ‘Going to Maynooth”, the obnoxious Denis O’Shaughnessy, conscious of his exalted status as a clerical student, announces to his unfortunate father: “In future I’m resolved to have a ‘tay’ breakfast every morning.”
Times were hard and tea was bought sparingly, if at all. In folklore collected in the 1930s, an informant in Co. Sligo recalls that long ago tea was bought only for Christmas. A half-ounce was used, and the remainder kept until Easter. Stories are told of the confusion over methods of preparation that arose when tea was first introduced. A story from Co. Wexford highlights this: “When tea first came to these parts they never used the liquid. After brewing, the liquid was thrown out and the leaves spread on bread with milk to drink.” Up to the middle of the last century, tea came in large chests and was weighed by the shopkeeper. Unlike today, when everything is packaged, many goods came loose and were packed and weighed in the shop.
Like many itinerant traders, the ‘tay’ man was a familiar figure in the Irish countryside, going from house to house selling ‘spills’ of tea. In the west of Ireland he is remembered best as ‘Seáinin a ’tae’ (Seán of the tea). There is a rueful Irish proverb: ‘Marbh ag tae is marbh gan é’ (dead from tea and dead from the lack of it). During World War II when many goods had to be rationed, tea and tobacco were solely missed.
Tea was considered a luxury in many parts of Ireland in the 19th century and was given to servant boys and labouring men on Sundays and Church holidays as a special treat. Folklore collected in Kerry describes: “All the payment a man might ask for jobs such as helping with a litter of pigs was a good fire, the tea and a teapot under his arm. Women who arrived to do such work as plucking geese, cutting seed (i.e. for potato farming) or washing clothes would refuse to stay unless they were assured of the odd smoke and tea served several times a day.” The tin can made by the local tinsmith with a handle on one side made do for a teapot in many homes. The teapot was seldom out of the ‘gríosach’ or ashes, and tea might be brewed up to ten times a day. It wasn’t considered worth drinking unless it was so strong that “you could dance a mouse on it.”
The tea on the draw, the ever-ready offer of a cup to a neighbour, was a sign of hospitality. Bargaining at a fair generally needed the help of a go-between, who might say to a reluctant buyer: “Make the deal, be a decent man. You come of good stock. Sure your mother never took the teapot from the fire.”
