School: Ardlow

Location:
Ardlow, Co. Cavan
Teacher:
S. Mac Síomain
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The Schools’ Collection, Volume 1004, Page 054

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The Schools’ Collection, Volume 1004, Page 054

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  1. XML School: Ardlow
  2. XML Page 054
  3. XML “Rantavan Cemetery”

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  1. 28 May 1938
    On the back road leading from Mullagh to Kells about a quarter mile to the south of the town of Mullagh at a place called Gleann Dub is the remnant of an ancient cemetery. When the Kellett family came to Rantavan this cemetery was situated on their property. They got their workmen to remove the headstones from the graves and with these stones they made floors in the Kitchen, the dairy and many of the outoffices. They had the soil of the cemety carted out as topdressing to the adjoining field several days being spent at the work. The night following the completion of the work a rainstorm washed every trace of the soil from the sloping field and left it in a line along the entire fence at the bottom of the field. Pretending to attribture the occurrence to natural causes in a day or two they ordered their men to re-cart the soil on again to the field but when the men arrived in the field with their carts they found not soil but one huge string of tangled worms so gruesome that man and master fled from the field.
    John Fitzsimons
    Told to me by John Gibney Mullagh age about 40 years in 1838 who heard this story from his father, also John Gibney in 1832 aged about 81 or 82 years
    Transcribed by a member of our volunteer transcription project.
    Topics
    1. objects
      1. man-made structures
        1. historical and commemorative structures (~6,794)
          1. graveyards (~2,501)
    Language
    English
    Collector
    John Fitzsimmons
    Gender
    Male
    Informant
    John Gibney
    Gender
    Male
    Age
    c. 40
    Address
    Mullagh, Co. Cavan