School: Killahan (B.)
- Location:
- Killahan, Co. Kerry
- Teacher: Liam Ó Leathlobhair
Archival Reference
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0413, Page 194
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: Killahan (B.)
- XML Page 194
- XML “Christmas Customs”
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
- About a week before Christmas people start to clean their houses. A few days before Christmas people go to the nearest town and bring home what they want in the way of food and drink.
The people are very busy on Christmas Eve getting the candles ready. On Christmas Eve night there is a candle lighting on every window. Everyone is merry that night and they play various games. Children hang up their stockings that night and get up early next morning to see what is in the stockings. If they are full of toys they are delighted. Next day school children go out with the wren. They carry a dead wren with them and tied to a bunch of holly. They also carry a mouth-organ with them and they play it and sing at every house after which they collect money.
