School: St Canice's, Aghaboe (roll number 16939)
- Location:
- Aghaboe, Co. Laois
- Teacher: Aine Ní Dhubhlaoigh
Archival Reference
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0829, Page 290
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: St Canice's, Aghaboe
- XML Page 290
- XML “A Funny Story”
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
- In the time when Farren Church was standing a funny thing happened. Two men named Martin Delaney and William Ryan both residing in Farren, were digging a grave in the graveyard. They dug up three skulls and placed them in the Church window. William Ryan bet ten shillings that Delaney would not go to the graveyard at twelve o' clock and take the skulls out of the window. Martin Delaney was a brave man and wanted to show his bravery to his companion, so he accepted the challenge. At twelve o'clock he set out for the graveyard which was about half a mile from his residence.
On reaching the graveyard all was very quite, except for the hooting of an owl among the ivy tree. Rather nervously he went over to the window in which the skulls were placed. As he was taking one of the skulls he heard a voice saying " Leave that there, that's mine. "
He left back that and was about to take the second skull when the warning was repeated. On his touching the third skull the same words were uttered. "Arra" said Martin Delaney, " sure you don't own the three of them." He took the third skull to William Ryan thereby winning his ten shillings.
