School: Athlone (Mixed) (roll number 16092)
- Location:
- Athlone, Co. Westmeath
- Teacher: T. Hunter
Archival Reference
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0748, Page 066
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: Athlone (Mixed)
- XML Page 066
- XML “In the Penal Times”
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 priests used to hide in a place in Clonmacnoise, and when the monks saw the English coming they would ring a bell, (which is in Saint Marys' Church Athlone now) and all the priests would run to this hiding place which can be seen to this day.
There was a famous priest hunter called Lowe who lived around Athlone.
The English used to roll the children of a parent who didn't attend church down a hill in a barrel which was lined with spikes.
The priests were brought in a horse and cart to the gallows, and were left hanging on a tree at a crossroads for a couple of days.
Sometimes they gave the priest the rack by putting him between two horses and the horses would pull him to pieces.
They put thumb screws on some priests and the priests would be forced to tell lies.
- Informant
- Mr W. Taylor
- Gender
- Male
- Address
- Athlone, Co. Westmeath
