School: Gortnacart (roll number 15554)

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1. The Poor Woman and her Three Daughters (continued)

   

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   They proceeded to build a comfortable home for themselves and their mother and had it splendidly well furnished. All the neighbours around were surprised, for they knew that two girls at service could never accumulate the money spent, and still they could not know where the money came from. One story was that one of the girls had inherited a legacy from an old batchelor, with whom she had been working, and another was that some rich relative that died in America had willed them his life's earnings. However it was all speculation until all the family died out except one of the girls that had got the gold, and in her last year she told an old neighbour, and thus the story of the bags of gold, got into circulation, and remains to the present day in the locality.
   Several young men seeing the circumstances of the girls after they had returned with their wealth paid attention to them and offered themselves as suitors in marriage, but the girls declined. They maintained that since none of them wanted to know them when they were in poverty, they only wanted to marry them now on account of their money; and so they declined and lived the lives of old maids, having plenty for the remainders of their lives, and wanting for nothing.

   

   Transcribed by a member of our volunteer transcription project.

   History Edit

   Language

   English

   Informant

   Annie Gallagher

   Gender

   Female

   Age

   56

   Occupation

   Farmer

   Address

   Gortnacart Glebe, Co. Donegal