School: Kilcullen (Convent) (roll number 11806)
- Location:
- Kilcullen, Co. Kildare
- Teacher: Na Siúracha
Archival Reference
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0780, Page 248
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: Kilcullen (Convent)
- XML Page 248
- XML “Folk-Tales”
- XML “King Labhra's Secret”
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)him but he would not. He took all the money which previously belonged to him and withdrew. The fairy afterwards told him that he succeeded because he perserved. He and his mother lived in contentment to the end of their days.
- Labhra a king who lived in Ireland long ago had horses ears.
Once a year a man was chosen, and ordered to cut the king's hair. Afterwards the unfortunate man was put to death. Thus Labhra made sure that the secret of his ugly ears would never be known. It happened that on a certain year the lot fell on a young man who was the only support of his widowed mother. The old mother thre herself down on her knees before Labhra and begged that her son would be spared to her. Moved by her tears the king consented. He said "until the day of his death he must tell no living thing what he will see when he cuts my hair.
He saw the horrible ears and after that he had no peace. He longed to tell some-one the secret that weighted so heavily on him and he soon fell sick. His mother went to a wise(continues on next page) - Collector
- Betty Byrne
- Gender
- Female
