School: Ballinacliffy

Location:
Ballynacliffy, Co. Westmeath
Teacher:
A. Ní Dhubhthaigh
Browse
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0747, Page 246

Archival Reference

The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0747, Page 246

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: Ballinacliffy
  2. XML Page 246
  3. XML “The Wounded Mermaid”

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. A man named Mulvihill went out to spear fish, in a boat. He saw a mermaid and he thought it was a big fish. He stuck the spear in her and she made off with it. That night a knock came to the door; the man looked out and saw a crowd of people. They asked him to come down to the shore and pull the spear out of the mermaid. He went to the shore and found the mermaid lying there so he pulled the spear out. Then the mermaids asked him what two wishes would he like and he said first to get home safely and secondly that one of his name would never be drowned. Some time after a lot of people were out in a boat and there was a man named Mulvihill in it. They were out in the deepest part of the lake, Lough Ree, when the boat sank and they were all drowned but Mulvihill.
    Transcribed by a member of our volunteer transcription project.
    Folktales index
    AT0326: The Youth Who Wanted to Learn What Fear Is
    Language
    English
    Collector
    John Reid
    Gender
    Male
    Age
    13
    Address
    Muckanagh, Co. Westmeath
    Informant
    Thomas Dooner
    Gender
    Male
    Age
    57