School: Castlecoote (roll number 6344)
- Location:
- Castlecoote, Co. Roscommon
- Teacher: Máire, Bean Uí Ghabhláin
Archival Reference
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0263, Page 280
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: Castlecoote
- XML Page 280
- XML “An Open Grave”
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
- Late one night a young man was crossing his field near home. Right in the middle, he came upon an open grave newly made and in perfect shape. He was not frightened, just felt puzzled and took a stick to measure the depth which was quite correct. In order to satisfy himself that he was not dreaming he got four sticks and placed them vertically at the four corners of the open grave and then went home to bed.
The next morning the man got up early and went out to inspect the new grave. What was his surprise - when he went over to the four sticks which marked the spot - to find that there was not a trace of freshly dug earth, but, the grass growing with daisies nodding their heads, not even the track of a person's boot nor a sign of anything unusual in the field - only the four branches which he left as a mark the night before.
