School: Kilfenora (C.) (roll number 2156)

Location:
Kilfenora, Co. Clare
Teacher:
Mrs Conole
Browse
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0620, Page 298

Archival Reference

The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0620, Page 298

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: Kilfenora (C.)
  2. XML Page 298
  3. XML “May Night”

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. In olden times when the people believed in pisreógs, one May night a woman went to her neighbours cabin and milked one of the cows. Then she cut the sign of the cross under the cows udder three times with a reaping hook. While doing so she said "ím fé do chorrán", "im fé do chorrán", "im fé do chorrán". She thought she was doing all this in silence. But there was a man watching and listening to her. Then he spoke saying:- "coc fé do corrán", "coc fé do chorrán, coc fé do corrán.
    On May day she was making butter when the very same man came in to her on a message. As usual he made a "dreas" of the churn. After a while the cream cracked, and she was expecting a great churn of butter. To her surprise when she took the cover off the churn what should she find but a great churn of cowdung. Then she was ashamed of her life and the man went away out of the house laughing his sides at her. He knew that he had more power than she had.

    Kathleen MacDonagh
    Doctor's Hill,
    Kilfenora
    Transcribed by a member of our volunteer transcription project.
    Topics
    1. events
      1. events (by time of year) (~11,476)
        1. May (~639)
    Language
    English
    Collector
    Kathleen Mac Donagh
    Gender
    Female
    Address
    Kilfenora, Co. Clare