School: Cavan (1)

Location:
Cavan, Co. Cavan
Teacher:
S. Ní Chiaráin
Browse
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0975, Page 143

Archival Reference

The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0975, Page 143

Image and data © National Folklore Collection, UCD.

See copyright details.

Download

Open data

Available under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

  1. XML School: Cavan (1)
  2. XML Page 143
  3. 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

  1. May Day is the first day of Summer. On May Day people strew flowers in front of their doors. They put them there to keep off evil spirits.
    The night before May Day people go out at twelve o'clock and gather a flower called Yarrow, they gather ten stalks of Yarrow. While they are picking it they say a rhyme to themselves. This is the rhyme they say:-
    Good morrow, good morrow fare Yarrow
    Thrice go morrow to thee,
    I hope before this time to morrow,
    Thou wilt show my true love to me.
    When they go home they don't speak, they throw one of the stalks away. Then they go to bed and dream of their future wife or husband.
    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
    Muriel Moorhead
    Gender
    Female
    Address
    College Street, Co. Cavan