School: Church Hill, Cuffe's Grange (roll number 5927)
- Location:
- Church Hill, Co. Kilkenny
- Teacher: Tomás Ó Floinn
Archival Reference
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0854, Page 158
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: Church Hill, Cuffe's Grange
- XML Page 158
- XML “A Ratheen”
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
- It was told to him by his grandfather - Patrick Marnell - Born and reared in Ballykeeffe , about 2 miles from here. Told this story 3 years ago when he was 83 years - dead since.
About a mile from my home there is a little field and it is called a Ratheen It is enclosed with briars and furze. It is said that the fairies would take away anyone who would touch the furze or briars The fairies are supposed to dance there.
One time a man who lived near it cut the briars and cleaned it up. That night about twelve o clock when he was asleep, he felf something heavy coming on him. When he woke he saw a big stone leaning on him. He tried to push the stone from him but it immediately disappeared.
He went to sleep again the next night and in the morning when his people went to his room he was not there. He was never seen afterwards and it is believed that the fairies took him.
The Ratheen is unharmed since and no one would think of removing a briar from it.
- Collector
- Nicholas Marnell
- Gender
- Male
- Address
- Ballybur, Co. Kilkenny
- Informant
- Patrick Marnell
- Relation
- Grandparent
- Gender
- Male
- Age
- 83
- Address
- Ballykeefe, Co. Kilkenny
