School: Lappen (roll number 2020)
- Location:
- Lappan, Co. Monaghan
- Teacher: Seán Ó Ruanadha
Archival Reference
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0938, Page 109
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)
- XML School: Lappen
- XML Page 109
- XML “Stories”
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
Stories
“It was supposed that butter could be taken from churn of neighbour.”
Sam Gilliland Groves could not get any butter from churning. He went to Smithboro where there were seven sons & got them to make a horseshoe. They were supposed to heat horseshoe in fire while churning. One of family kept blowing bellows to heat shoe so that whoever was stealing butter would be so thirsty from heat they could not get a drink until he would come to churn. Sam stood all time at door with gun while churning went ahead to shoot person who would come in shape of rabbit or some thing like that as the person was supposed to use witch craft.
On May Eve a precaution was taken. A red rag was attached to cow's tail with horse stump? & and that took power away from.
To prevent them using witch craft the rowan twig was placed at doors. The may flower now used in places for in the parish for same thing. But in older times it was only to strew Mary's path (May the month of Mary) with flowers & was not used for witchcraft.