School: Ballyduff (roll number 17097)
- Location:
- Ballyduff Upper, Co. Wicklow
- Teacher: Caitlín Ní Mharannáin
Archival Reference
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0927, Page 134
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: Ballyduff
- XML Page 134
- XML “The Local Forges”
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
- There are three forges in Ashford Parish. There is one in Ballyduff and Mr. Lawless is the smith. There is another in Ballycurry, where Mr. Byrne works. There is also an old forge in Killiskey, Mr. Lawless used to be the smith there many years ago, but he is in Ballyduff now. Mr. Lawless was the last smith in Killiskey forge, but it is not in use now. The forge is situated on the roadside. It is very near a little river and there is a spring well just above it. There is a crossroads a few yars above that again. The forge is joined on to a dwelling house. It is very big. It has a slanted roof of slates. It has a square door, not of any special shape. There is only one fireplace in it. There is no bellows left, Mr. Lawless must have taken it to Ballyduff with him. The following are the implements the backsmith uses - pincers, rasp, sledge, vice, file and chisel. The smith shoes horses and asses, but he does not shoe cattle. He does not make farm implements. There is not any part of the forge work done in the open air. The forge water cures warts. We never heard of any special privileges that a smith had. People never send(continues on next page)
- Collector
- Sally Geoghegan
- Gender
- Female
