School: Mullach Ruadh (roll number 10654)

Location:
Mullaghroe, Co. Sligo
Teacher:
Bean Uí Nia
Browse
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0187, Page 011

Archival Reference

The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0187, Page 011

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: Mullach Ruadh
  2. XML Page 011
  3. XML “Funny Story”

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. About ninety eight years ago a boy named John Hannon lived in the parish of Keash in Co. Sligo. His mother died when he was only about two years and his father married again. They were protestants. His father died too when he was about nine years and his step mother was very hard on him. Every morning she would give him an oatmeal cake and send him out minding cows on a mountain.
    Every day when he would take out the cake to eat some of it a little red man would appear to him and ask for a bit of the cake. One day he came and told the boy if he would give him half of the cake he would grant him any request he asked.
    "All right" said the boy.
    John was a great flute player. His first request was that any body that would come within two hundred yards of him would have to dance if he played. The second was that any body that looked cross at him would have to laugh and couldn't stop until he thought it time. That was all he asked. When he went home that night his mother had a party and when he went
    (continues on next page)
    Transcribed by a member of our volunteer transcription project.
    Topics
    1. genre
      1. verbal arts (~1,483)
        1. jokes (~6,086)
    Folktales index
    AT0592: The Dance Among Thorns
    Language
    English
    Collector
    Kathleen Toolan
    Gender
    Female
    Address
    Gorteen, Co. Sligo
    Informant
    Mr Michael Toolan
    Gender
    Male
    Address
    Gorteen, Co. Sligo