School: Achadh Mhaoláin (roll number 9254)
- Location:
- Achadh an Mhuilinn, Co. Liatroma
- Teacher: Mrs Prior
Archival Reference
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0226, Page 301
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: Achadh Mhaoláin
- XML Page 301
- XML “Losing the Butter”
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
- Until about twenty years ago it was a common occurence for farmers to "lose" their butter through some form of witchcraft or another. Perhaps they would experience the same now only that most of the milk is sent to the creameries and mixed with other milk and the loss of butter on a few cans wouldn't be noticed. There were three or four agencies responsible for the taking away of the butter and the farmers had charms for counteracting almost all of them.
The first agent was the person of the evil eye and covetious heart. If he saw your crocks of milk you were sure to have no butter on them. In the same way if he saw your live-stock they took ill and died.
You could counteract this charm he had of taking the butter by burning a piece of his clothes under the cream-crocks. You could save the life of the beast or beasts he "overlucked" by fastening pieces of red ribbon to the beast's tail or burning a piece of his garment under its nose or burning the alphabet under its nose.
Those who have the evil eye don't benefit by your loss or are they aware that they are possessed by this distructive power.
The second agent was the person who came for the loan(continues on next page)
- Collector
- Bridie Kelly
- Gender
- Female
- Informant
- Francis Kelly
- Age
- c. 60
- Address
- Droim Ingne, Co. Liatroma
