School: Gortnacart (roll number 15554)

Location:
Gortnacart Glebe, Co. Donegal
Teacher:
León Ó hÚallaigh
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The Schools’ Collection, Volume 1042, Page 28

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The Schools’ Collection, Volume 1042, Page 28

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  3. XML “The Minister and his Servant”

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  1. Once upon a time there was a minister that had a servant boy and they lived near the village of Ardara. One day the minister told the boy that he would be put to death if he did not do two deeds. The first deed was, the servant had to take five horses from five riders without the men being aware of it. The servant boy went to the town and got five bottles of whiskey. He gave a bottle each to the riders and put them drunk so the men went to sleep. He took the horses from them and took them to the minister.
    The minister told him he had to take the sheet off the bed from under him and his wife. The servant boy was very clever. He went to the graveyard and dug up a body and he took it to the minister's house. He tied it to a rope so that he could let it up and down before the window as he wished. The minister saw the skeleton and he thought it was the servant and he told his wife that he was trying to get in through the window. She told him to shoot as he had the gun ready.
    The minister shot at the figure and the servant let the body fall to the ground. Then he ran and hid. The minister's wife told him that he would be put to prison for shooting his servant and he said that he would go out and bury the body. He put on his clothes and went out and he got
    (continues on next page)
    Transcribed by a member of our volunteer transcription project.
    Folktales index
    AT1525: The Master Thief
    Language
    English
    Informant
    Joseph Gallagher
    Gender
    Male
    Age
    55
    Address
    Doochill North, Co. Donegal