School: Ballyduff B. N. School

Location:
Ballyduff, Co. Kerry
Teacher:
Tadhg Ó Leathlobhair
Browse
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0415, Page 110

Archival Reference

The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0415, Page 110

Image and data © National Folklore Collection, UCD.

See copyright details.

Download

Open data

Available under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

  1. XML School: Ballyduff B. N. School
  2. XML Page 110
  3. XML “Fairy Forts”

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

  1. There was a man living in Dromartin, and he usually went gambling every night. On his way home he had to pass by a fort. One night he was coming home, and it was very late altogether. As he was passing the fort, he saw a black cow coming out of one of the gaps in the fort. He knew the cow at once. It was a cow of his own, that died in one of his fields a couple of days before that. He went over and caught the cow's tail. She ran into the fort, and the man kept on to the tail. The man kept his hold although the cow ran down a big hole in the fort. There were several men and women down the hole, and they were laughing at him. They shouted at him to let the cow go. He was very courageous and he said he would not let go his hold, until he would get his cow or the price of another one. They told him that there would be £12 on the threshold of his door the next morning. He got up very early the next morning, and found the money there. He set off for the fair, which happened to be held that day, and bought a cow for the £12.
    He brought her home and they could not get vessels to contain all the milk she had.
    Transcribed by a member of our volunteer transcription project.
    Topics
    1. place-space-environment
      1. legendary and spiritual places (~158)
        1. fairy forts (~5,616)
    Language
    English
    Informant
    Mr John Browne
    Gender
    Male
    Age
    c. 56
    Address
    Rahealy, Co. Kerry