School: Blessington
- Location:
- Blessington, Co. Wicklow
- Teacher: Séamus Ó Cuinn
Archival Reference
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0913, Page 151
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- Long ago when people were buried for four days, bodysnatchers used to come and dig up the corpse. Not far from the graveyard there was a farmer's house and and old man used to stop out playing cards in this house until all hours in the morning.
One night he was coming very late and he heard the bodysnatchers cominganad he said to himself, " I'll trick these fellows". So he hid in the ditch until they had the corpse placed in the cart. While they were closing the grave the man got into the cart himself and put the corpse behind the ditch. He settled himself the same way the corpse had been. When the snatchers came back and were getting into the cart one said to the other, "Be Gob this fellow is hot still" and the other said I was beginning to feel that meself and the man said, "If ye were where I was the last four days ye'd be hot enough". The two men got such a fright that they fell out of the cart and the man drove home the horse and car as his own.
- Informant
- Mrs Murphy
- Gender
- Female
- Address
- Crosscool-harbour, Co. Wicklow
