School: Castlecoote (roll number 6344)
- Location:
- Castlecoote, Co. Roscommon
- Teacher: Máire, Bean Uí Ghabhláin
Archival Reference
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0263, Page 150
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
- Old people believe that at regular times during the year the fairies hold important horse fairs. One special 'fairy' man near this village relates how he was ordered to get up in the middle of the night to change horses from Mount Mary near the town of Ballygo down to Rathcroghan near Tulsk.
Hundred of horses with small 'mineen' riders galloped down across the country in the moonlight November Eve.
The great grandfather of the present blacksmith had his instructions to be always ready on Halloween night to put on shoes on the little travellers' horses.
One night he was dozing by the fire when a shout + tramp of horses wakened him. He was going to lift the horse's hind foot, when he noticed the animal had only three feet. "I can't shoe this horse" he said. "It's all right we will help you" said a score of little riders. The work was done and away went the fairy host, galloping like the wind, on their way to Rathcroghan for the great horse fair.(continues on next page)
