School: Faughalstown (roll number 9622)

Location:
Faughalstown, Co. Westmeath
Teacher:
Bean Mhic Gabhann
Browse
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0719, Page 639

Archival Reference

The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0719, Page 639

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: Faughalstown
  2. XML Page 639
  3. XML “Festival Customs - May Day”

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. It was an old custom for children to make a May-bush and dance around it. This bush was covered with wild flowers and the prettiest girl in the district was crowned as May Queen.
    People who charmed away their neighbour's butter long ago would have to be out early on the first of May carrying the hand of a dead child.
    They would have to walk through the meadow belonging to the person whose butter they were about to take, saying "All the butter in this land gather around this dead hand."
    Long ago the people would give up buying candles on May Day because you were supposed to do all your work in the day light. It was an old saying "May day throw the candle away".
    (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
    Desmond Smyth
    Gender
    Male
    Informant
    Mr G. Smyth
    Gender
    Male
    Address
    Grangestown, Co. Westmeath