Browse Items · Digital Derg: A Deep Map

Davog was a woman?

"Now let me at my old antagonist Oral tradition: The chair of Davog lies in the townland of Suidhe Dhabheog (Seeavoge) where in the living rock some impressions of elbows &c are strewn. Davog was a woman, who came to make the turas but she died…

Tags: fifth century, Folklore, gender, John O'Donovan, letters, nineteenth century, Oral History, ordnance survey, St. Dabheoc, St. Dabheoc's Seat, St. Patrick, women's history

The monster guards a crock of gold

"The same or a similar monster inhabits the lake yet (still) and was seen not many months ago. It guards a crock of gold which lies buried in the ancient island of the Purgatory…"

Tags: Fenian Cycle, Fionn mac Cumhaill, Folklore, gold, John O'Donovan, letters, Ludovicus Pyrrhus, monster, mythology, nineteenth century, ordnance survey

The salmon of Lough Derg

"There is one strange fact connected with this lake - no salmon come into it, though they come up to the very point where the River Derg escapes out of it…"

Tags: Atlantic Salmon (Salmo salar), empiricism, fauna, fishing, Folklore, John O'Donovan, letters, nineteenth century, ordnance survey, River Derg, Salmon, scientism, St. Patrick

"In nine cases out of ten, the legend is simply an attempt made by an unlettered, but imaginative people, to account for natural appearances by supernatural agency"

A description of the power given to unexplained natural phenomena in Irish folklore, and the character of the storytellers

Tags: colonialism, conversation, debate, dispute, fishing, Folklore, Henry Newland, Irish identity, memoir, mythology, negative description, nineteenth century, superstition, upper lake

The March of the Dead Maguires

An account of Lough Derg folklore on a fishing trip, explaining the strange circular currents of the lake in supernatural terms

Tags: fishing, Folklore, ghosts, Henry Newland, lake, Maguire family, memoir, mythology, nineteenth century, seventeenth century, Station Island, supernatural, water, weather

Templecarne Graveyard, County Donegal

Graveyard on irregular-plan, laid out c. 1600. Now out of use. Contains a collection of multidenominational cut stone gravemarkers (upstanding, recumbent, and table-type memorials) mainly dating from c. 1750 to c. 1900. Two ashlar limestone…

Tags: 1795 disaster, building survey, built heritage, burial, Folklore, Parish of Templecarne, Templecarne, Templecarne Graveyard

"A spreading hawthorn tree"

Knox visits a lone tree on an island, a home of fairies in local folklore

Tags: fairies, Folklore, Hawthorn, James Spencer Knox, nineteenth century, Protestant critique, Sidhe, Travelogue, tree

"What we saw was the great serpent or fish"

Knox describes the fear of his Irish boatmen at the appearance of a lake monster, which he sees as a rock just above the waterline

Tags: elitism, Folklore, James Spencer Knox, lake, monster, nineteenth century, Protestant critique, rock, serpent, superstition, Travelogue

"They told the marvellous incidents of the voyage to their listening friends"

Knox stands on the rock to demonstrate his powers of deduction, an event which results in much storytelling upon the return to shore

Tags: credulity, elitism, ferry house, Folklore, James Spencer Knox, nineteenth century, Protestant critique, scientism, sectarianism, storytelling, Travelogue

The source of the River Termon

"There is a good deal of land [in the disctrict of Cullion] which is mountainous and some good land for the potato crop. There is a small wood growing in it. There is one river and a lake in the mountainous part. The river is the Termon river which…

Tags: border, County Donegal, County Tyrone, Folklore, Lough Erne, Oral History, river, River Termon, Scraghy, source, watershed

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