School: Kilbeggan (B.)
- Location:
- Kilbeggan, Co. Westmeath
- Teacher: P. Mac Siúrtáin
Archival Reference
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0732, Page 325
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: Kilbeggan (B.)
- XML Page 325
- XML “The Lore of Certain Days”
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
- The Lore of Certain Days
May Day: (i) Early May Day morning people put May flowers, cowslips & Primroses on their doorsteps to keep out the fairies who are supposed to be very active on that morning. ii) A Maypole is made at Lisminey on the Clara Road and people dance & sing there during the evening & well into the night.
(iii) An altar is built in honour of the Blessed Virgin & flowers are offered to the altar.
(iv) Whoever puts down the flowers on the doorsteps will have good luck the whole year through.
In some places you could not get milk to buy for fear they would take the butter off the family by certain charms. To prevent this salt is sprinkled on the churn before it is started & some old ladies put a half-burned coal under the churn.
"If you take a cows track out of another farmers land on May Day you will get the butter of that farm as well as your own."
- Collector
- P.T. Jordan
- Address
- Kilbeggan, Co. Westmeath
- Informant
- Mrs Elizabeth Mannery
- Gender
- Female
- Address
- Moycashel, Co. Westmeath
