School: Irishtown

Location:
Milltown, Co. Westmeath
Teacher:
Margaret McNally
Browse
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0742, Page 055

Archival Reference

The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0742, Page 055

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: Irishtown
  2. XML Page 055
  3. XML “Hidden Treasure”

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. Hidden Treasure
    One very dark night a man was passing a fort about a quarter of a mile from our house. He heard sweet music and stopped to listen.
    The man heard a low voice saying "Why do you stand there", then the man started to walk and after a while found himself in the fort. The fairies said to him "You are not to tell anyone that you were here, we are going to give you gold and tell no one"
    Then the man went off and he met another man and told him all that had happened. Next night as the man with the gold was going home he stopped at the fort and heard no music when he passed he dropped dead.
    The gold is said to be under a few stones still and the ghost of the man was often seen. This field is called Pairc na Fir dearg.
    This was collected by Phyllis O Reilly, Ballynacargy and told to her by Christy Gillan. This man is dead about three years. County Council labourer.
    15th March 1938
    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
    Phyllis O' Reilly
    Gender
    Female
    Address
    Ballynacarrigy, Co. Westmeath
    Informant
    Christy Gillan
    Gender
    Male
    Occupation
    County council labourer