School: Fadhbach, Caisleán na Mainge (roll number 10016)
- Location:
- Fybagh, Co. Kerry
- Teacher: Ml. Ó Tíodhcháin
Archival Reference
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0432, Page 416
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
- St John's day falls on the 24th June. Long ago the people used light bonfires on that night.
The bonfires were made of turf, each person in the locality brought an equal share of turf. They used have about two rails of turf.
They used have great fun that night, they used by singing and dancing around the fire.
They used never quench them, they used leave them burn out. They lit them in honour of St John and they danced round them to celebrate the middle of then Summer.
On St John's night after milking the cows they used tie a lighting bush to the cows' tails when they were leaving them out into the field after they were milked.
The bush used be felt burning away until it quenched from itself. The roots or the parts of the bushes that did not burn were taken off their tails on the following day at midday.
The idea of this was to keep away evil spirits from them. They used also say it was not right to kill crickets in Winter for crickets(continues on next page)
- Collector
- John Griffin
- Gender
- Male
- Address
- Gortnahulla, Co. Kerry
