School: Cahermurphy, Cill Mhichíl (roll number 15327)

Location:
Cahermurphy, Co. Clare
Teacher:
Séamus Ó Laoighléis
Browse
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0602, Page 178

Archival Reference

The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0602, Page 178

Image and data © National Folklore Collection, UCD.

See copyright details.

Download

Open data

Available under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

  1. XML School: Cahermurphy, Cill Mhichíl
  2. XML Page 178
  3. XML “Superstitions”

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

  1. (continued from previous page)
    people consider it unlucky for any wheel to turn and for that reason some people would not ride a bicycle or turn a spinning wheel or a mill wheel because St. Martin was killed by being thrown into a mill wheel. On November's night, (31st Oct) people also observe a lot of old supertitions. On that night a young girl gets a ball of wool and goes to the nearest lime-kiln. She throws the ball of wool into the kiln, but she keeps one end of it in her hand. Then she starts winding up the wool again and if the end of the ball which is in the kiln is held she calls out "Who is holding my thread" and the man who will marry her answers his name.
    On Christmas night also people believe that "The Holy Family" goes around from house to house, and for that reason a lighted candle is placed on the window, a large turf fire is put on and the door is left unlocked, before the people retire so that the Holy Travellers may find the welcome which they sought in vain
    (continues on next page)
    Transcribed by a member of our volunteer transcription project.
    Topics
    1. events
      1. events (by time of year) (~11,476)
    Language
    English
    Collector
    Máire Treasa Ní Chonchubhair
    Gender
    Female
    Address
    Cahermurphy, Co. Clare