School: Druim Mór

Location:
Dromore, Co. Sligo
Teacher:
Seosamh Ó Catháin
Browse
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0167, Page 290

Archival Reference

The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0167, Page 290

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: Druim Mór
  2. XML Page 290
  3. XML “Fenton of Castletown and Jordan”

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. In the time of the Fentons of Castletown there lived a young man named Jordan. One day Fenton and the bailiff came with the "Greenwax" (seal of seizure) to seize a poor woman's few head of cattle. She was not able that year to pay the rent due to Fenton. Jordan thought it not right to seize the widow's few head of cattle and leave her to starve so he rescued her cattle from them. Now he himself was declared an outlaw and had to go on the run.
    In the meantime Jordan had a row with a man named Sweeney and the two met one day in the local forge. Sweeney was sledging when Jordan came in and when he saw him his blood began to boil and he struck the man so hard that the sledge went everytime to the anvil cutting the iron. Jordan's blood also began to boil and taking a horseshoe he straigthened it without any trouble. The smith seeing this asked them both to leave his forge as he thought they might knock his forge on him if the row started. Now the site of this forge was where our house is at present. Jordan left the forge and seeing Sweeney's mare outside the door he caught him by one ear swung him round and pulled the ear off him. The name the mare went by ever after was the mare with the "Dead Ear".
    When Winter approached Jordan was still on the run and he hid in a hayrick. His hiding place was made known to Fenton and he and his men (yeomen) came to capture Jordan. Fenton told Jordan to come out or he would
    (continues on next page)
    Transcribed by a member of our volunteer transcription project.
    Language
    English
    Collector
    Seosamh Ó Catháin
    Gender
    Male
    Occupation
    Múinteoir
    Address
    Dromore West, Co. Sligo
    Informant
    Mike Tiernan
    Gender
    Male
    Address
    Bellafarney, Co. Sligo