School: Irishtown

Location:
Milltown, Co. Westmeath
Teacher:
Margaret McNally
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The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0742, Page 049

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The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0742, Page 049

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  1. XML School: Irishtown
  2. XML Page 049
  3. XML “Hidden Treasure”

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  1. Hidden Treasure
    Besid the fort in Rathlaughlin, which is one mile from Irishtown N.S, Ballynacargy, thre is a lone bush under which is supposed to be a crock of gold.
    Once a man tried to get the gold. He set our on Monday morning and began to dig. He dug a little trench round the bush for about two feet. Then he began to dig down deep and as he was down about one foot and a half he heard strange mewings over his head. He looked up and to his great surprise he sawy a large flock of white crows. He continued digging. Two more birds swooped down and bit him on both arms. He still kept on digging . At last the whole flock came down and they bit him and beat him till he was unable to dig. He stretched his hand for the spade with which he was digging but he could not get it. He saw it slip into a hole large enough to contain itself. He then looked to see what would happen. He saw a little red woman coming out from under the bush and put back all the clay which he had disturbed. When the clay was back the woman disappeared.
    (continues on next page)
    Transcribed by a member of our volunteer transcription project.
    Topics
    1. genre
      1. belief (~391)
        1. folk belief (~2,535)
          1. treasure legends (~7,411)
    Language
    English
    Collector
    Maureen Kelly
    Gender
    Female
    Address
    Irishtown, Co. Westmeath
    Informant
    Mr John Mullally
    Gender
    Male
    Age
    76
    Occupation
    Pensioner
    Address
    Corkan, Co. Westmeath