School: Carrowbeg (roll number 10754)
- Location:
- Carrowbeg, Co. Donegal
- Teacher: Rachel Nic an Ridire
Archival Reference
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 1118, Page 511
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: Carrowbeg
- XML Page 511
- XML “Mermaids”
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
- There were supposed to be mermaids in the district long ago. There was once a man in Buttach who got married to one of them and one day when he hid her tail in the barn, he went to the town, but while one of the children was playing, he found it and brought it to her, and she put it on at once and off she went to the sea again. The children used to go down to the beach every morning to get their hair combed with her own comb and their faces washed in the salt water and it was always their own mother came up to the surface to do it for them. They were often heard crying when leaving her. Half of the mermaid is a woman and the other a fish. She has lovely, curly, golden or yellow hair. She can talk, sing and cry. When fisher-men hear her cry, they do not like to go to sea as it is supposed to be a sign of a storm. This one that I mentioned in the story is the only one I ever(continues on next page)
- Collector
- Robert Mc Eldowney
- Gender
- Male
- Address
- Ballymagaraghy, Co. Donegal
- Informant
- John Norris
- Gender
- Male
- Age
- 62
- Address
- Moville, Co. Donegal
- Informant
- Pat Mc Colgan
- Gender
- Male
- Age
- 87
- Address
- Ballymagaraghy, Co. Donegal
