School: Broca
- Location:
- Brockagh Lower, Co. Leitrim
- Teachers: T. Ó Chioráin S. Ó Gallchobhair
Archival Reference
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0198, Page 441
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- XML “Festival Customs”
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- On Saint Stephen's day boys go around to the houses dressed in straw and old pieces of cloth hanging from their hair. These boys are sometimes called "wren boys," and sometimes called "mummers." They go around to the houses from Saint Stephen's day until the sixth of January. When they come to a house they say funny rhymes at the door before coming in. One of the boys plays a fiddle while the others dance. Than they get money. On the sixth of January they buy loaves, butter, or jam with the money collected. The wren boys go to a certain house to eat the food they buy. It is at night they go to the houses. The twelve days of Christmas tell the weather we are going to have for the next twelve months. There are a great number of tricks played at Hallowe'en which falls on the thirty first of October. Here is one of the tricks: Get a tub of water and put an apple into it. Then some person puts his or her head into the tub and tries to get the apple with his or her mouth. You cannot use your hands to get the apple. A sixpense or a shilling could be used also. An apple is sometimes hung out of a roof with a string and the children try to get a bit of it but you cannot hold it with your hands.(continues on next page)
- Collector
- Tommy Cullen
- Gender
- Male
- Address
- Brockagh Lower, Co. Leitrim
