School: Cill Ábhaill
- Location:
- Killavil, Co. Sligo
- Teacher: Seán Ó Conláin
Archival Reference
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0185, Page 0432
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: Cill Ábhaill
- XML Page 0432
- XML “Bird-Lore”
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 are a good any kinds of birds. The names of these are the robin, the lark, the swallow, the cuckoo, the curlew, the snipe, the corncrake, the blackbird, and the sky-lark. The robin builds her nest in a hedge. The lark builds her nest in tall grass. The swallow is not in this country she only comes in the middle of April. She builds her nest in a barn. The cuckoo builds no nest at all. She lays her eggs in another birds nest, and that bird hatches them. The curlew and the snipe make their nests in a meadow. The corncrake also makes her nest in a hedge. It is said that when the swallows fly low there is going to be bad weather. If boys rob birds nests and breath on the eggs the bird will leave that nest and she will make her nest some other place. It is said also if the robin sings in the evenings there will be rain. When Our Lord was dying on the cross the robin came to the cross and a drop of blood fell on his breast. That is why he is called robin red breast.
Collected by: Bernadette Kilcawley, Harristown
Heard from her father Domnick Kilcawley aged 62 years
- Collector
- Bernadette Kilcawley
- Gender
- Female
- Address
- Ballonaghan or Harristown, Co. Sligo
- Informant
- Domnick Kilcawley
- Relation
- Parent
- Gender
- Male
- Age
- 62
- Address
- Ballonaghan or Harristown, Co. Sligo
