No cure for curiosity documentary maker finds

Short film- 'My Cure and Me'- funded by Creative Ireland through Cavan County Museum.

A documentary directed and produced by Virginia's Alan Bradley has been selected to screen at the prestigious Galway Film Fleadh later this year.

The 13 minute short film- 'My Cure and Me'- funded by Creative Ireland through Cavan County Museum explores the experiences of two elderly, rural, Irish faith healers with 'the cure', examining a practice rich in history and folklore.

One of those interviewed is Alice Smith from Crosserlough, who talked to Alan about how she inherited her cure from her father, but then lost it by trying to save an animal.

The film was also selected to screen at Docs Ireland in Belfast which took place last weekend.

“I always was interested in the cure, because I never could get my head around it. I don’t understand how it works, but it does work for people, so it’s always been something that’s fascinated me,” says Alan, who says the documentary was a “passion project” that relieved a particular creative itch he’d had niggling him since he was a child.

Though he never got “the cure” himself, Alan vividly recalls his brother being brought to a local healer in an attempt to shake off the worst symptoms of asthma.

When the Celt speaks with Alan he’s working in London editing a documentary for RTÉ. It never ceases to amuses him just how the lore of home remedies centred on superstition or religion remain popular still- a farmer with ringworm, a woman with a sore throat, and a boy with a wart- but don’t travel far beyond these shores or even certain sheltered pockets of Ireland.

“It’s such a uniquely Irish tradition and custom,” he assesses. “But when I mention it to people in the UK they haven’t a clue. It just sounds completely mad to them. Even some people in Dublin who I’ve mentioned it to aren’t aware. It’s a very rural Ireland thing.”

He says never his intention to set out to “prove or disprove” whether cures work. So did he ever find out how the cure really works?

“I did in so far as the processes that people do, because everyone does cures in different ways. So I understand that. But I still don’t understand how it works, or why it happens.”

Alongside Alice, Alan spoke with Joe Gallagher, proprietor of The Pull Inn in Offaly, who runs a ‘Cure Session’ every Sunday.

“They all sit there. It’s like a doctor’s waiting room, them all sitting there eating crisps and drinking fizzy drinks, before going in one by one into his little room to get the cure for whatever ails them.”

He tells Alan that his highest success rates it with children.

Worryingly though Alan finds the tradition starting to die out, and he felt it just as important to preserve the subject matter from an archival perspective.

“What I learned from doing the film and from speaking to people as well is a lot of it has to do with your own faith, whether in the cure itself, and a belief that it will work,” suggests the Cavan writer, actor and documentary filmmaker. “And then they tell me it works for babies, and babies don’t know what’s going on, so how does it work for them?”

Alan adds: “It was always about the custom of what goes into it, and the more I got into it I learned more about how this has impacted their lives, and what I found interesting was how they feel about it now.

“Both Joe and Alice, and most the people who do the cure do it for free. So there’s nothing in it for them, and if anything it’s probably more of a hindrance because they’re being called on at all hours of the day. What a lovely thing it is, the sense of caring for your community, that’s what appealed to me the most.”