School: Cooneal (roll number 6416)

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1. The King of Ireland's Son (continued)

   

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   took the money. It was not coined, stamped, and dated as our money is now, some of it was merely lumps of pure gold stamped with a mark to show its weight, but most of it was ring money, that is solid rings of gold, of various sizes specimens of which you will see at this day in the National Museum in Dublin. Conn proceeded on his journey, but he had not gone far when he met a funeral. It was the custom at this time for anyone who met a funeral to go back and walk a short distance with the funeral. Conn did this and whilst he accompanied the funeral a man came hurrying up, and laid an order for the payment of a debt on the coffin. It was the law of the land then, that the dead person should not be buried until the debt was paid. The debt amounted to five rings of gold. The dead man's friends had not this much money with them; the coffin was left down on the road and they did not know what to do. So Conn seeing their difficulty, paid the debt. But the funeral had scarcely moved on again when another man came with an order for ten gold rings. Conn paid this debt too. More than half his money was now gone, but he was a good hearted prince and it pleased him to have paid the debt for the poor man in the coffin. Conn now proceeded

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   Transcribed by a member of our volunteer transcription project.

   History Edit

   Folktales index

   AT0505: Dead Man as Helper

   AT0513A: Six Go through the Whole World

   Language

   English

   Collector

   Bridget Keegan

   Gender

   Female

   Informant

   Pat Culkin

   Gender

   Male

   Address

   Coonealmore, Co. Mayo