School: Gartan (roll number 13755)
- Location:
- Bellville or Gartan, Co. Donegal
- Teacher: Nóra Ní Dhuibhe
Archival Reference
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 1072, Page 361
Image and data © National Folklore Collection, UCD.
See copyright details.
DownloadOpen data
Available under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
- XML School: Gartan
- XML Page 361
- XML “A Dane's Cave and Graveyard”
Note: We will soon deprecate our XML Application Programming Interface and a new, comprehensive JSON API will be made available. Keep an eye on our website for further details.
On this page
- On a hill called Skeagey in the townland of Carrick in the parish of Glenswilly is a Dane's Cave. There is a pipe or drain round this, which they used for making beer, from heather. The stones inside the pipe are blackened, as if by smoke from a fire. The opening is large enough to allow a man to crawl through.
These people lived chiefly on Beer, Oat-Corn and Wild-Deer. The corn was ground between two stones called Querns. They followed the wild deer for sport, and also because they proved very good for food. A sort of trap was set, which caught them easily. It consisted of a number of sharp sticks stuck into the ground, and when the pursuers chased the animals, they ran over the sticks which caught and held them fast until they were over-taken and killed with axes.
A circular grave-yard is near the Cave, and in it are many graves. A stone stands at the end of each(continues on next page)
- Collector
- David John Bovaird
- Gender
- Male
- Address
- Carrowtrasna, Co. Donegal
- Informant
- John Cheatley
- Gender
- Male
- Age
- 74
- Address
- Carrick, Co. Donegal
