School: Clonard (roll number 16067)
- Location:
- Clonard, Co. Meath
- Teacher: Séamus Ó Fithcheallaigh
Archival Reference
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0694, Page 199
Image and data © National Folklore Collection, UCD.
See copyright details.
DownloadOpen data
Available under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
- XML School: Clonard
- XML Page 199
- XML “An Old Story - Máire Gaelach”
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 the parish of Desert Serges and in the townland of Carhuvouler (Rossmore, Ballineen, Co. Cork), there lived about 100 years ago, an old lady called Maíre Geadhealach. She married a widower, who had two sons, when his first wife died. After some time, she began to treat the two step sons harshly, and one night, she refused to let them in.
They went into a cattle shed to sleep. Later in the night, their father went out to sleep with them, and when the three were asleep, the step mother set the house, in which they were on fire and burned the three occupants to death. She then committed suicide.
For almost 50 years after, her spirit paraded the adjoining public road, at night, and was a terror to all travellers, who happened to be out between midnight and cock-crow.
She was usually seen on a stretch of road about 2 miles long and intersected at each end, by a stream. Ghosts are not supposed to be able to cross running water.(continues on next page)
- Collector
- J. Fehily
