Wilde: Ancient Cures, Charms and Usages of Ireland

Ancient Cures, Charms and Usages of Ireland

Title page of Lady Wilde's Ancient Cures, Charms and Usages of Ireland, 1890.

Ancient Cures, Charms and Usages of Ireland

Ancient Cures, Charms and Usages of Ireland

Title page of Lady Wilde's Ancient Cures, Charms and Usages of Ireland, 1890.

Enlarge image

Lady Jane Francesca Agnes Wilde (born Jane Francesca Elgee) 1821(c.) – 1896 was born in Dublin. She married Sir William Wilde in 1851, and they had three children: William, Oscar (the famous Irish playwright, poet and author) and Isola.

She was a poet and gifted linguist, and translated works from French and German. A strong supporter of the nationalist movement in Ireland, she wrote for the revolutionary Young Ireland movement in the 1840s and published poems under the pseudonym of Speranza (meaning ‘hope’) in the paper The Nation. The paper was shut down by the British authorities following anti-British and pro-Irish independence writing.

In 1879, following the death of her husband in 1876, she moved to London where her two sons lived.

Ancient Cures, Charms and Usages of Ireland relays the use of herbs and charms as cures for people with illnesses, when there was still a firm belief in the supernatural influences in the art of healing.

This volume is a significant contribution to the collection of Irish folklore, as information was gathered and compiled at a time when knowledge of ‘mystic medicine’ was rapidly disappearing.