School: Ardagh (roll number 8929)
- Location:
- Ardagh, Co. Donegal
- Teacher: R. W. Cunningham
Archival Reference
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 1106, Page 264
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: Ardagh
- XML Page 264
- XML “The Whiskey Man's Brae”
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
- It is remarkable that in this hilly part of East Donegal many of the steep hills or 'braes' as they are called locally are honoured with names. When I heard the name "Whiskey Man's Brae" I asked who was the Whiskey Man and why did this particular stretch of road belong to him? Here is the story.
The Whiskey Man was, as one might expect, a man who drank too much whiskey. He was a small stout, kindly fellow, well liked by all his neighbours, although he was rarely sober. Notwithstanding the fact that he was in a continuous state of intoxication, he was never known to act violently or vulgarly. He seemed to exist solely on whiskey, hence his nickname. His real name seems to have been entirely forgotten.
However there came a day, when this Whiskey Man had no money left to pay for his whiskey and since he craved for it and had now reached the stage that he had to have it to exist, he built himslef a neat little still house, with the necessary apparatus, among the gorse bushes. One very dark night, he tried to walk to his home in the usual way but unfortunately could not find his(continues on next page)
- Collector
- R. W. Cunningham
- Gender
- Male
- Occupation
- Teacher
