School: An Gleantán, Lombardstown
- Location:
- Glantane, Co. Cork
- Teacher: Tomás Ó Colmáin
Archival Reference
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0362, Page 297
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
- In every townland in this district and in the districts around it the boys and young men used to light large bonfires on St. John's Eve.After school the boys used to assemble and collect furze bushes from the fences and pile them up on some elevated spot from which the fire could be seen for miles around.When evening came the pile was set on fire and the young people shouted, danced and sang around it. According as the fire showed signs of dying down fresh supplies of fuel were brought in because it would considered a disgrace if the local bonfire was not as large as those in view in other places.Some remained around the fire until midnight and then, before departing the more active used to try to jump over the griosach.It sometimes happened that boys in their desire to have a bonfire set fire to furze bushes on a farmer's fence and did a great deal of damage in this way.The observance of "Bonfire Night" has almost entiredly disappeared in this locality in recent years.
T. Coleman,
Glantane N.S.
Lombardstown,
Co. Cork.
21 . 11 . 1938
- Collector
- T. Coleman
