School: Rashina, Athlone
- Location:
- Rashinagh, Co. Offaly
- Teacher: S. Ó Cinnéide
Archival Reference
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0810, Page 200
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: Rashina, Athlone
- XML Page 200
- XML “Faction Fights”
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
- Faction fights were very common in the parish of Ballinahown. The Roughans of Ballinahown fought the men of Clonfinlough on one side and the men of Canlry on the other. The Races of Garrycastle, near Athlone was a favourite meeting place for rival factions. The men were all armed with black thorn sticks. Sometimes the thick ends were loaded with lead to make them heavier. The leaders on both sides collected their men and they fought until separated by police. At the last race meeting the rival parties were handcuffed together on the middle of the field. The parish priest of Moate dashed through the thick of the fight on his horse, slashing with his horse whip on all sides to try to separate the fighters.
At the Fighting Hill in the parish of Shannonbridge, about a mile from Clonmacnoise the factions used to meet. It is said that a funeral procession often stopped, laid down the corpse and fought their rivals there.
Faction fighting is dead out in this district for the last forty years.
- Informant
- Mrs Maria Kennedy
- Gender
- Female
- Address
- Cloncraff or Bloomhill, Co. Offaly
