School: Poor Clares' Convent, Cavan

Location:
Cavan, Co. Cavan
Teacher:
Sr. Carmel
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The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0975, Page 069

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The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0975, Page 069

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  1. XML School: Poor Clares' Convent, Cavan
  2. XML Page 069
  3. XML “May Day Customs”

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  1. Most of the people in Cavan still keen the old May Day customs. The children gather primroses, daisies, and buttercups and sprinkle them at the doorway. In the evening they collect all the flowers and have a huge bon-fire usually on a hill or some slope. Other children get a whin bush or two (usually two and place one each side of the door the they throw the may flowers on the whins.
    I heard at home that some children get a whitethorn bush and plant it at the door. They say that in the morning they will find a present from the fairies under the bush. It is really their parents who put the gift there. Long ago on May Eve the women
    (continues on next page)
    Transcribed by a member of our volunteer transcription project.
    Topics
    1. events
      1. events (by time of year) (~11,476)
        1. May (~639)
    Language
    English
    Collector
    Teresa Smith
    Gender
    Female
    Age
    12
    Address
    Aghnaglogh, Co. Cavan
    Informant
    Mrs Mac Connell
    Gender
    Male
    Informant
    Mrs T. Smith
    Relation
    Parent
    Gender
    Female
    Age
    49
    Address
    Aghnaglogh, Co. Cavan