School: Drom Bhaoghalláin (roll number 7981)
- Location:
- Ardcarn, Co. Roscommon
- Teacher: M. Pagnam
Archival Reference
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0231, Page 247
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: Drom Bhaoghalláin
- XML Page 247
- XML “May Eve Customs”
- XML “Saint John's Day”
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
- (continued from previous page)This Saint met his death by being ground in a mill
Peggy Gallagher
- Saint John's day is on the 24th June. On the eve of Saint Johns day all the young boys and girls light a fire either in some shady place convenient to the road side or on the top of a high hill so that it can be seen for miles around the district. On that night no one has any objection to boys taking their turf. It is nice to look around the country on that night and see a blazing bonfire on top or each hill.When the fire is lighted some musician plays a flute, melodeon, or fiddle and they dance until midnight. When they are leaving they bring a coal and throw it into their potato crop because they believe it is a lucky thing to do, and that they will have a successful crop that year.There is great rivalry among the boys and girls of the different town lands to see who has the best bonfire and the best crowd.Bonfire means bone fire. Bonfires are sometimes lighted to denote a victory.
Margaret Pender - Collector
- Margaret Pender
- Gender
- Female
