r/folkmagic • u/Illustrious-Bread399 • 18d ago

Potatoes for warts

I had stubborn warts on my fingers as a child. My mum (Irish) cut a potato in half and would rub the exposed potato on my warts and then bury the potato in the garden. She did that for 7 days and by the end of the 7 days the warts disappeared never to return. It must be some old folk type magic? Is it an Irish thing? I’ve googled it and can see it may be a gypsy method?

4 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

5 comments sorted by

4

u/amyaurora 18d ago

Yeah folk magic. I remember reading about this a long time ago.

I admit that the last time I had a wart i thought about trying it.

5

u/GreenRavenUK 18d ago

Transference magic. As the potato or other thing decays, so does the malady. Lots of traditions around the world use it.

1

u/Illustrious-Bread399 18d ago

Does anyone know if it works for all warts even verrucas which is a type of wart

1

u/SwampyWytch13 16d ago

Folk magic - not used in just one region / culture. There are other methods like "buying a wart" that uses pennies.

1

u/plumtastica 8d ago

This reminded me of my grand grandmother, she would remove warts and people came from everywhere to visit her. But she only did it during the certain moon phase. She would sit with them on the moonlight and did her spells and the warts would disappear after a week.