School: An Dúinín (roll number 4444)

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1. Games (continued)

   

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   by a handful of grass or a scrape of a shoe-heel on the roadside & the bowl is thrown back again to the players for an opponent to throw it. When one player is one throw ahead, in distance, he is said to have a "bowl of odds" Supporters of the players usually try to divert their particular favourites by standing on the road at a spot where they wish the player to land the bowl if he is to get a long throw. Of course they jump quickly aside when the bowl is thrown. Local friendly matches take place often for small stakes, but parochial champions will often issue challenges for stakes as high as £5 or £10.

   Football
   This is not played now to any great extent in the district. In former days parochial teams often challenged each other for a match.
   Often oars were placed upright as goal-posts
   Old people still call the ball a "peil"

   Hurling
   not played at all in this district

   Birín Beo.
   This game (indoor) is now unknown, but was played up to a few years ago in Toehead. The first person took a lighted splinter from the fire and recited the rhyme
   "Birín Beo! Birín marbh" Is mo gheibheann mo bhirín bás
   toir do dhá láimh, beidh an "trom, trom" ort." The person, in whose hand the stick quenched, went on hands and knees and various articles were placed on his back until he guessed what had been placed on him.

   

   Transcribed by a member of our volunteer transcription project.

   History Edit

   Topics

   1. activities
      1. social activities (~7)
         1. entertainments and recreational activities (~5,933)

   Languages

   Irish

   English

   Informant

   Donnchadh Ó Ceocháin

   Gender

   Male

   Address

   Toehead, Co. Cork