School: Killurine
- Location:
- Killurin, Co. Offaly
- Teacher: Ss Hutton
Archival Reference
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0804, Page 104
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: Killurine
- XML Page 104
- XML “Farm Animals”
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
- Farm Animals 12-5-38
Cows and horses and pigs are the commonest animals in Gorteen. Poor people sometimes keep goats, but big farmers keep them to prevent cattle from getting disease. We distinguish our cows by referring the their colour as the black cow, the grey cow, and the white cow.
We call one the "Maol" cow, because it has no horns. When I am bringing the cows home in the evenings I always say "Bale pup" a few times. The is no name on the house where they are kept for the night except the cow house. It is 52 yards and 4 yards broad and can hold 3 cows. The cows are chained to the manger by a chain which is fastened around the neck and firmly fixed to the manger "Bales" are sometimes used.
A cow's horn is sometimes hung over the manger to bring "good luck". Sometimes a bit of Blessed Palm is hung, in the house. When my mother milks the cow she dips her middle finger in the milk and makes the sign of the cross on the "Hip Bone" and then she says "God bless you pet. It is lucky to see swallows building in the cow house, and if you robbed their nest the cows would milk blood.
- Collector
- Betty Tobin
- Gender
- Female
- Address
- Gorteen, Co. Offaly
