Lora O'Brien – Irish Author & Guide
Your Authentic Connection to Ireland
When just 1 year old, she sat on her kitchen floor in a pool of blood, beside a mother who would never move again. This is not the opening scene of a modern crime tv show, but the start of life in 1890’s rural Ireland for one of the world’s most daring and trailblazing aviators,…
Visiting Faith Healers for ‘Getting the Cure’ was – and still is – a big thing in Ireland. There’s copious amounts of folklore around herbs, faith healing, and various other remedies in the Irish tradition, but if you didn’t grow up here you might be surprised to learn that Irish people still believe. I’m 40…
It’d be fair to say that the Irish have always had a bit of a wanderlust. Which goes someway to explaining why Irish Genealogy is so popular. Sometimes, our travel has been caused more by necessity than the desire to see new sights. Although I guess if your sights at home were as horrific as…
It means ‘bull feast’. FYI. “A bull-feast is gathered by the men of Erin, in order to determine their future king; that is, a bull used to be killed by them and thereof one man would eat his fill and drink its broth, and a spell of truth was chanted over him in his bed….
Veterinarians have been around for quite a while now. From the Egyptian king Piyadasi, who made medicines available to animals as well as humans in 1900 BCE, and the Roman ‘Veterinarius’ who were mostly military doctors just for animals – we can trace the development of the field to the first official organisation – when…
‘Worties’ was the common name in Ireland, from the English ‘wortes’, which were vegetable greens and members of the onion family, such as cabbage leaves, spinach, beet greens, leeks, wild garlic leaves and so on, as well as some of the leafy herbs used for seasonings, like borage, parsley, and sage. When cooked together with…
Clochar na Trócaire, Ceapach Chuinn Location: Cappoquin, Co. Waterford In the center of Waterford there lies a place which long ago was the stronghold of the ‘Fir Bolgs’. This place is a large Lios descending into the ground for about two feet, and then in underneath for about four yards. At the end of this…
This blog has a lot of new visitors, and I’m really glad to see that! But I also don’t want to be fooling anyone into being a part of a community with me if the fit isn’t right either, you know? So, I figured I’d give ye a little dose of who I really am,…
To follow on from the recent post on Irish Ráths, I wanted to include some extra detail on a type of Ráth – the Lios. In my experience and understanding, Liosanna (plural) are particularly associated with the Sidhe, the Irish Fairies, so I was very surprised to come across this account today… Liosanna are plainly…
A cure of warts is to squeeze the milk out of a weed called the penny leaf. This milk is called the fairies’ milk. Goat’s milk is a cure for sore eyes or bad feet or many other things. An ointment can be made from goats’ milk to draw boils. To cure a blast,…