School: Acres (roll number 10827)
- Location:
- Na hAcraí, Co. Donegal
- Teacher: Eilis Ní Dhomhnaill
Archival Reference
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 1059, Page 89
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: Acres
- XML Page 89
- XML “Will O' the Wisp”
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
- (continued from previous page)So Will went back to his work at the anvil, singing away as he hammered. Money began ti pour in, and he was becoming quite rich, when one day the devil appeared in the forge, and reminded him that the three years were up, and he had come for him. "All right" says Will. "just catch that sledge and give this iron a few taps I want to finish this job before I go."
The devil got hold of the sledge and lifted it up to hammer out the iron for Will, but when he had the sledge up above his head he found he couldn't take it down; neither could he let go. He was going about the forge in a terrible way until Will said, "If you promise to give me another three years on earth I'll allow you to leave the sledge."
So the devil promised, and Will told him to let the sledge go, and when he did so it dropped on the floor. He then went off in a rage saying he'd be back in three years time and told Will to have his work finished by then.
Will worked away as usual, quite happy.(continues on next page)
- Collector
- Rose-Ann Ward
- Gender
- Female
- Age
- 14
- Address
- Na hAcraí, Co. Donegal
- Informant
- James O' Donnell
- Gender
- Male
- Age
- 41
- Address
- Leac Eidhneach, Co. Donegal
