School: Johnstown (roll number 877)
- Location:
- Baile Sheáin, Co. na Mí
- Teacher: Miss H.C. Hickie
Archival Reference
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0687, Page 171
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: Johnstown
- XML Page 171
- XML “Taking 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
- Lynch- an extensive farmer - lived neat Tara, about 100 years ago. His cream yielded no butter and he was wondering who it was that had worked the spell.
This day when walking through his grazing fields he found a ball of yarn. He took it home to his wife for mending purposes, when suddenly the thought struck him that it might have some connection with the milch cows.
He told the priest about the butter and also about finding the ball of yarn.
The priest old him to collect some of the neighbours and at sundown they were to light a good fire and then throw the ball of yarn into the roaring flames.
Lynch did so, and immediately an old lady named English a neighbour ran up howling for mercy. The ball of yarn was recovered form the fire. The old spell-worker took her departure and the butter returned and stayed.
Reilly heard this story from his mother and several neighbours who knew of the occurrence.
- Informant
- Garrett Reilly
- Gender
- Male
- Age
- 73
- Address
- Cill an Chairn, Co. na Mí
- Informant
- Mrs Reilly
- Gender
- Female
- Address
- Cill an Chairn, Co. na Mí
