School: Rathfeigh (roll number 10281)

Location:
Rathfeigh, Co. Meath
Teacher:
Mrs Rose Madden
Browse
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0686, Page 298

Archival Reference

The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0686, 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: Rathfeigh
  2. XML Page 298
  3. XML “Old Houses”
  4. XML “May Eve Customs”

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)
    cook their food. If there was a fire in the house it was usually at the gable-wall or in the middle of the floor. The chimneys were made of motar, clay and wattles but on some houses there were no chimneys.
    The floors in the houses were all made of clay. Long ago there were all half-doors that were on the houses. For light at night they used rushes.
    Transcribed by a member of our volunteer transcription project.
  2. May Eve Customs
    In ancient times people had to take great care on May Eve because the fairies would do them harm. Children would not be let go out on hill side after sun-set because the fairies would steal them away and bewitch the cattle if they got the opportunity. If they heard a young girl singing they always remembered it was a fairy.
    Above all they never gave away fire because fire is the life of man. If there was food left over from May Eve to May Day whether it was baked, boiled or roasted it was
    (continues on next page)
    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
    Maureen Gaffney
    Gender
    Female
    Address
    Loughanstown, Co. Meath