School: Churchtown (Baile an Teampoill) (roll number 1132)
- Location:
- Churchtown, Co. Cork
- Teacher: Liam Ó Briain
Archival Reference
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0395, Page 017
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
- Long ago the captain of a ship had a large store of gold. He wanted to hide it in a very lonely place so that nobody would find it. The captain and his men came ashore in Ballyandreen and took the gold to the Caernach. They found it a very safe place so they buried the gold there. The captain asked his men which of them would volunteer to mind the gold. A black man who was in the company said that he would take care of it.This man was shot and his head was cut apart from the rest of his body. This head was put on the surface of the earth under an arched stone. It was said that nothing but a March cock would frighten the dead man who safeguards the place.Years later some men went to dig the gold at midnight because it was said that there was no use in digging for it in the day-time. As they were digging up the earth the black man appeared to them in the form of a bull and hunted them. The men in their great fear ran as quickly as they could and escaped. A few years ago some more men went to the Caernach(continues on next page)
- Collector
- Eileen O' Brien
- Gender
- Female
- Address
- Churchtown, Co. Cork
- Informant
- Patrick Cronin
- Gender
- Male
- Age
- 27
- Address
- Ballylanders, Co. Cork
