School: Gleann Fleisge
- Location:
- Glenflesk, Co. Kerry
- Teacher: Donnchadh Ó Spiolláin

Archival Reference
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0457, Page 823
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: Gleann Fleisge
- XML Page 823
- XML “The Widow's Sons”
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 poor widow who had three sons. After many years struggling with poverty the eldest son decided to go and seek his fortune. In order to furnish himself for the journey he took the best clothes and started off towards midday. He sat down to eat his dinner and a robin came up and asked him for the crumbs. Shortly after he was employed by a magician to a field and a big serpent devoured him.
A year after the other boy had to go and he was cowardly and selfish like his brother and took everything he could lay hands on to make his journey easy. he insulted he robin in the same way and he met the same bad end. After another year the third boy whose name was John had to go and provide for his poor mother. There was very little clothes left after the two big boys and the took his old every day clothes. There was very little food int eh house and John(continues on next page)- Collector
- Con Kelly
- Gender
- Male
- Age
- 13
- Address
- Annagh Beg, Co. Kerry
- Informant
- Mrs D. Kelly
- Gender
- Female
- Age
- 56
- Address
- Annagh Beg, Co. Kerry