School: Cluain Cátha (roll number 2243)
- Location:
- Cloncaw, Co. Monaghan
- Teacher: P. Ó Hanluain
Archival Reference
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0961, Page 152
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
- (continued from previous page)44 The borrowing days The first three days of April.
The tradition I heard runs thus. Towards the end of March the old cow laughed at the March wind and boasted that she had lived all during the month in spite of his cold blasts. March, it is said, was in a passion against the poor old cow and failing to kill her during the remaining days of the month he borrowed three days from April with which he completed the job of killing the poor old cow. The old people still expect storms on these days.
45 The old people often connected a somewhat singular belief with the Spring Assizes when the judge came to the County Courthouse. In their estimation you might expect bad strong weather if the "old boy with the wig" had arrived in town. They avoided laying out plans for any special farm labour on those days. This gave rise to the expression "I will finish the thrashing when the Judge comes in" The thrashing of the oats was done in the barn during weather when it was impossible to do any outside work on the farm.
46 How are you doing? Just rubbing away and of course every rub is getting thinner. Said by an old person when somebody inquires about his or her health.(continues on next page)
