School: Mercy Convent, Rathangan
- Location:
- Rathangan, Co. Kildare
- Teacher: Sr. M. Pádraig
Archival Reference
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0778, Page 018
Image and data © National Folklore Collection, UCD.
See copyright details.
DownloadOpen data
Available under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
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
- May-Bay Customs and Superstitions
On May morning it is customary with old people of this district to go out and gather up all the dew off the ground, and by doing this they believe that they will be rich the whole year round. Some of them wash their faces with the dew and this is supposed to prevent them from getting sun burned during the Summer months.
There is also a peculiar belief about cows with some of the old people . On May Day if one farmers cow strays into the field where his neighbour's cow is grazing, one cow is supposed o take the butter off the milk of the other cow, and this generally leads to a quarrel between both owners, as it means that one of them will be at the loss of an amount of butter throughout the year.
Mary K Burke
- Collector
- Mary K. Burke
- Gender
- Female
