School: Abbeyleix (South) (roll number 14260)
- Location:
- Abbeyleix, Co. Laois
- Teacher: Mrs Galbraith
Archival Reference
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0831, Page 327
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: Abbeyleix (South)
- XML Page 327
- XML “Ballygehan Castle”
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
- Ballygehan Castle is about one mile north eastwards from Ballacolla in Leix. It is owned by a farmer called Whelan. A small garden surrounds it, with a large wall around it and small holes in the wall where a giant the owner of the castle used to fire arrows through. It is a ruined castle now with ivy covering it. The remains of a winding stairs can be still seen there.
It is said that there used to live a giant in the castle. His name was Mull Peter. About two hundred yards from the castle down the Ballygehan road there are four holes beside the road about two feet deep. It is said that the giant jumped four times there and made the holes. There are about twenty yards between each leap he took. Beside the castle there is also the remains of an old cottage where an old man lived. This man had the history about the castle but when he died the history got lost.
