School: Béal Átha 'n Fheadha (B.)
- Location:
- Ballina, Co. Mayo
- Teacher: D. P. Ó Cearbhaill
Archival Reference
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0146, Page 338
Image and data © National Folklore Collection, UCD.
See copyright details.
DownloadOpen data
Available under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
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
- Long ago there lived a King and his wife. He was very good to the poor. He was very generous too but his wife was very bad. She used to kill one of the people's children every week. But at last the King found out and he hunted her away. About three years after he got married again but he thought she was a very wicked woman. How he found out was that there was a son born next morning.
"The little child is gone" he said to his wife.
"What have you done to him"
She said she did nothing to him. The King said he would say nothing more about it. About four years after another son was born and the same thing happened. The King ordered his soldiers to go round the town and bring every child to him. This was done but no child was his. This thing happened on five more occasions. That was seven times the same thing happened and the King said he would get his wife burned. The day soon came and the fire was lain. The King's wife was hung from a tree. They were just putting the light to the fire when seven princes rode in and said "Stop this, It was not her that did it. It was a witch that took us away"(continues on next page)
- Collector
- Val Muldowney
- Gender
- Male
- Address
- Ballina, Co. Mayo
- Informant
- Mrs Muldowney
- Relation
- Parent
- Gender
- Female
- Address
- Ballina, Co. Mayo
