School: Urbal (roll number 13874)
- Location:
- Urbal, Co. Leitrim
- Teacher: Gerald Kelliher
Archival Reference
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0206, Page 504
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: Urbal
- XML Page 504
- XML “Game - The Nine Daughters”
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
- Game "The nine Daughters"
This is how the game is played.
The man (at the head of the game) calling himself the father, gathers eight girls (Calling them daughters) around him and the ninth one sits on his knee. There are nine men (would-be husbands outside the house. Each man comes in on his turn and asks the father for a wife. The 'Would-be' husband has to answer all the questions he is asked concerning his way of living to support a wife. The father has two men on guard, inside (each man having a belt) The first man comes in and asks one of the daughters off the 'father'. He (the father) asks him what way of living he has to support a wife. If the answer does not suit the 'father' says, in an emphatic manner, "I have nine daughters close to my knee. There is nobody fit to get them from me. Round with the rubbish and pay them well" So he orders the two men with belts to flog the would-be husband. and so the game is continued until the ninth comes in.(continues on next page)
- Collector
- Patrick Rourke
- Gender
- Male
- Address
- Cortober, Co. Leitrim
- Informant
- Pat Kelleher
- Gender
- Male
- Age
- 69
- Address
- Cortober, Co. Leitrim
