School: Castletown (roll number 8104)

Location:
Castletown, Co. Donegal
Teacher:
Clara S. Kingan
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The Schools’ Collection, Volume 1105, Page 223

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The Schools’ Collection, Volume 1105, Page 223

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  1. XML School: Castletown
  2. XML Page 223
  3. XML “A Story - Nancy's Nuts”

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  1. Once upon a time there was an old woman who was lying with rheumatic pains for years.
    She used to give the children pennies for gathering her nuts and when they had the bag full the old woman died.
    She had purposed that the nuts should be put in the coffin with her and her wish was carried out.
    About this time two boys hit on a plan each one to steal the bags of nuts fron the old woman's coffin and the second lad was the steal a sheep.
    The nut thief later was sitting on the grave-yard wall cracking the nuts.
    Near this spot a woman lived she was confined to bed for years with rheumatisn too.
    Her son on passing by the grave-yard and heard the nuts being cracked.
    He ran home and told his mother. "Nancy is up cracking her nuts," meaning the dead woman.
    His mother would not believe him and said, "If I had the power of my limbs I would go and prove that."
    The son said, "If you wished I will wrap you in blankets and take you on my back there."
    (continues on next page)
    Transcribed by a member of our volunteer transcription project.
    Folktales index
    AT1791: The Sexton Carries the Parson
    Language
    English
    Collector
    Georgena Callan
    Gender
    Female
    Address
    Castletown, Co. Donegal
    Informant
    Miss Maggie Callan
    Gender
    Female
    Address
    Castletown, Co. Donegal