School: Ballinlough (roll number 9238)
- Location:
- Ballinlough Big, Co. Meath
- Teacher: P. Mac Domhnaill
Archival Reference
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0704, Page 131
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: Ballinlough
- XML Page 131
- XML “Ghost Story”
- XML “An Old Custom of May”
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
- (continued from previous page)The man gave the cat a stroke of the reins, and all of a sudden it became a big black calf with huge eyes in it. The man was very much frightened when he saw the calf. The next night another man came to the shed to get a bundle of the thatch for a bed for his pig. A man stood by and would not let him take the bundle of straw. It was the cat that would not let him take the straw, because he was struck with the reins the night before.
- It was an old custom long ago to make a May bush for the first of May. Get a nice green bush first, then get a nice big bunch of primroses or any kind of May flowers, and make them in nice small bunches, and put them here and there on the May bush. Then get any kind of coloured ribbons and put them here and there on the bush. Then get some egg-shells and colour them, and put in on the thorns ofthe May bush. Then put it on a ditch.
- Collector
- Bridget Gaynor
- Gender
- Female
