School: Bredagh Glen (roll number 14635)
- Location:
- Bredagh Glen, Co. Donegal
- Teacher: Tomás Ó Catháin
Archival Reference
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 1118, Page 91
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: Bredagh Glen
- XML Page 91
- XML “The Sweat-House”
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
- The Lecamy "Sweat House" is probably the best preserved and the most recently used in Ireland. It is situated above and to the right of "Leac-amy" and is about 6 1⁄2 feet inside in height. It is roughly triangular in inside shape and roughly circular in outside shape. The door has a stone lintel and is just high enough and wide enough for a person to crawl into. Possibly the floor has earthed up a bit. The top comes inward and is nearly closed by large flags. The inside is marvellously tighly fitted
The practice was to put a large turf fire on in the hut and then the place was cleaned out and the patient put in for a hot air bath.
When the people who were versed in those things judged that the patient had enough treatment he was hauled out and rolled in blankets and taken home to bed.
It is not locally recorded that the practice was used for mere cleanliness but only against disease. Nellie Doherty born some 124 years ago remembers the practice in use.
It was superceded locally by the steam or hot vapour bath which was discarded later owing to a little local incident recorded on the next page.
- Collector
- Tomás Ó Catháin
- Gender
- Male
- Occupation
- Múinteoir
