School: Dean Kelly Memorial (roll number 16639)
- Location:
- Athlone, Co. Westmeath
- Teacher: D. Cahalene
Archival Reference
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0748, Page 199
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: Dean Kelly Memorial
- XML Page 199
- XML “May Day Customs”
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
- (continued from previous page)into the fields and gather all sorts of wild flowers. Those when put outside the door are supposed to keep away the evil spirits for the rest of the year. Around the month of May the hawthorn bushes are usually in full bloom and some people put those outside their houses. It is said to be unlucky to bring hawthorn into the house.In former years people took interest in those customs and they carried them out, but now most of them have forgotten and they are not carried on at all.On the night of April 30th a big bonfire is lighted on the highest hill in the neighbourhood, and the young catch hands and dance round the fire until it is almost out at about twelve o'clock, then they jump through the fire. They say that by doing this they are better able to face the dangers and evils that lie before them during the coming year.
