School: Abbeytown Convent N.S. (roll number 15043)
- Location:
- Boyle, Co. Roscommon
- Teacher: Sr. M. Columbanus
Archival Reference
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0236, Page 121
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: Abbeytown Convent N.S.
- XML Page 121
- XML “May Day Customs”
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)The heads of the Cows.
Old people would never churn on May day as the butter would be taken off the milk. Some people used to put a coat or "griosach" under the churn to break the spell. Up to the present day people never give away anything on this day. If salt was given away, it was supposed to be unlucky, or to put out the ashes. It was considered lucky to have the first can of water from the well, before sunrise but the water was never brought in after dark.
The person to have the first fire down on May morning could break the spell of the witches, and evil spirits and prevent them from taking the butter off the milk.
During the month of May the blossomed hawthorn was never(continues on next page)
- Collector
- Maeve Turbitt
- Gender
- Female
- Address
- Boyle, Co. Roscommon
- Informant
- Mrs Scanlon
- Gender
- Female
- Address
- Kesh, Co. Sligo
