School: Mullach Buí (roll number 2793)

Location:
Castletowncooley, Co. Louth
Teacher:
Micheál De Búrca
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The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0658, Page 297

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The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0658, Page 297

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  1. XML School: Mullach Buí
  2. XML Page 297
  3. XML “Fairy Forts”

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  1. There are several forts in this district. The nearest one to the school is in the "Grazing" and is only a few hundred yards distant from this school. It is supposed to be the abode of fairies, and some of the old people tell of how they saw lights moving about in the "Grazing". But the people at the present time are more enlightened and know that these lights are due to phosphorus in the ground. Phosphorus is a combustible substance, and must be kept in water, otherwise it will go in flames. No lights are seen at the present time, in the "Grazing" because the land being under grass, all the phosphorus near the surface has been exhausted. But if the "Grazing" was to be tilled again the probability is that these lights would be seen again, because more phosphorus would be exposed to the air. The fort referred to is circular rings or fences. It was believed in olden times that when the De Danaans were beaten by the Milesians they betook themselves to the forts and lived there as fairies. Not far from the fort in the "Grazing" we have another one to the west called Sally's Lios. The last one referred to is a fairly large one, and can be seen from
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    Transcribed by a member of our volunteer transcription project.
    Topics
    1. place-space-environment
      1. legendary and spiritual places (~158)
        1. fairy forts (~5,616)
    Language
    English
    Collector
    Tom Martin
    Gender
    Male
    Address
    Castletowncooley, Co. Louth