School: Loughill, Longford
- Location:
- Laughil, Co. Longford
- Teacher: P. Ó Corcora
Archival Reference
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0768, Page 457
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: Loughill, Longford
- XML Page 457
- XML “Story”
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
- A great many years ago when Basel was surrounded with enemies there were also traitors inside the defence. These had agreed together that at a certain time they would work with the enemy and thus give the latter possession of the city. The plan agreed on was the striking of twelve by the clock in the tower on a certain night.
Fortunately the watchman in the tower was informed of this plan before it was to late to prevent its being carried into effect. So after a little thought he advanced the clock one hour and in place of midnight it sounded one o'clock. This confounded all and made both those outside and inside the city doubtful what to do.
Meanwhile the watchman hastening to inform the magristate and commandent. At length the enemy retired and left Basel without having obtained any advantage. The magistrate ordered the clock to remain as the good watchman had set it and for many years it struck one o'clock in Basel while in other places it sounded twelve. From this the saying arose that "The inhabitants of Basel are one hour in advance of all the rest of the world.
- Collector
- Sadie Hegarty
- Gender
- Female
