School: Rathkenny (roll number 15483)
- Location:
- Rathkenny, Co. Meath
- Teacher: Tomás Mac Cárthaigh
Archival Reference
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0714, Page 228
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: Rathkenny
- XML Page 228
- XML “The Druid's Altar”
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)In this field in which the Druid's Altar is situated Slevin used to have his milch cows. On a certain morning when he went out to milk them in the field (in summertime) he was surprised to see a hare standing on her hind legs and drinking one of the cows. The cow was standing perfectly quiet. He hunted the hare and then found that the cow had not a drop of milk left. Next morning he saw the hare at the same game, and again the cow had a no milk. Next morning he saw the hare again, and on this occasion neither of the three cows had any milk left. Slevin determined to get rid of the hare, and he got Baron Hussey's gamekeeper who was "a great shot" to shoot the hare. This man was called "The Fiddler Grant", as he was a wonderful violinist. The "Fiddler" went with him the next morning and fired at the hare but missed. The same thing happened on the second and third mornings, the "Fiddler" failing to shoot the hare. The "Fiddler" was now very angry. "I'll put an end to this game, even if I don't shoot the hare", said he. Next morning the "Fiddler" came again, but this time he had a silver sixpence in the gun as well as the(continues on next page)
