May day and piseoigs.

Dawggone

Does anyone still practice blessing crops and animals with Holy Water to guard against piseoigs?

Bullocks

Dawggone wrote: »

Does anyone still practice blessing crops and animals with Holy Water to guard against piseoigs?

I'm pretty sure the father and mother will be in to the Poor Clares this morning for mass , a chat with one nuns and to collect a bottle of holy water for the farm . It's the only mass they will see for they year bar funerals . I think it's chat with the nun they like at this stage cos I don't even see him shaking out the bottle of water around the place after anymore. The Grandmother was a dinger for shaking everything with the holy water bottle .
It's a thing that's as good as dead now anyhow , God didn't stop us getting TB , BSE or any other misfortune that we didn't deserve and that's when there was holy people around !;

blue5000

I was up half the night lighting fires and running the cattle between them, great craic altogether. Off to Clonmacnoise today to get a bit of soil for the corners of every field. Had a rented field a few years ago and yer man that owned it used to sell a site when he was stuck for money, it ended up being 6 acres and 13 corners, thank God I don't have that one anymore.

foxy farmer

Is that where you go out and wash your face with the morning dew off the grass? Good luck with that after the rain during the night. There's a few relations that follow this ritual but me? Eh no. Total bollxx.

mf240

Do ye allow for the leap year.

Should of been yesterday.

Don't think God likes dairy farmers. He's not a fan of Sunday work.

Dawggone

mf240 wrote: »

Do ye allow for the leap year.

Should of been yesterday.

Don't think God likes dairy farmers. He's not a fan of Sunday work.

Dammit you're right, 'twas May eve such rituals were practiced. Shame to lose those pagan rituals. There is an equivalent here that's practiced on the spring equinox.

Base price

I remember as a child my Grandmother used to spill milk at the entrances of the byre. I can't remember if it was for Mayday or not but it was to do with keeping the cows safe.

Kovu

Base price wrote: »

I remember as a child my Grandmother used to spill milk at the entrances of the byre. I can't remember if it was for Mayday or not but it was to do with keeping the cows safe.

That was practiced here too, a gift for the fairies to keep the evil away. When handmilking the cows they'd bless the cow with a cross made off the froth on her leg.

We still put flowers at the entrances, that's about the only daft thing we still keep up!

Miname

This is all new to me. Haven't heard any of these before.

Kovu

Miname wrote: »

This is all new to me. Haven't heard any of these before.

Really?? I had dunner in Cryans in Carrick earlier and even they had primroses scattered at the front entrance!

Miname

Kovu wrote: »

Really?? I had dunner in Cryans in Carrick earlier and even they had primroses scattered at the front entrance!

I think there a more practical kind of person around me but I could be wrong. There's loads of cures alright but as for the rest no. Sorry I was told to put mirrors in a shed to reflect out bad luck a while back that was getting a lot of scours in. I stuck them up and washed out the shed as its not for the cost of them.

Base price

Miname wrote: »

This is all new to me. Haven't heard any of these before.

I remember hearing that the Irish are Christian on the surface but Pagan underneath

blinding

Base price wrote: »

I remember hearing that the Irish are Christian on the surface but Pagan underneath

After all thats happened it can't do any harm to give the Paganism another go.

That auld catholic stuff is only jonny come lately new-age stuff anyway.........

byhookorbycrook

We "bless the bounds" with Easter water on May Eve.

Base price

blinding wrote: »

After all thats happened it can't do any harm to give the Paganism another go.

That auld catholic stuff is only jonny come lately new-age stuff anyway.........

I was watching A History of Ancient Britain -Neil Oliver last week where he visited burial mounds and stone circles around the UK. The second half of the programme was devoted to some of the even more ancient burial mounds and stone circles of Ireland, Newgrange and Knowth.
Seems that history is continuing to repeat itself and 3500 years ago we emigrated to the UK bringing our beliefs with us :rolleyes:

pedigree 6

My granny here when she was alive used to make up a may bush.
She'd get a branch of a tree and break it off. Then decorate it with coloured sweet wrappers , flowers and painted eggshells.
Then stick it up at the side of the road early in the morning on the 1st of may.

Nobody does it here anymore. Pity.
The only other place I saw it done was in Kilkenny years ago.

Base price

pedigree 6 wrote: »

My granny here when she was alive used to make up a may bush.
She'd get a branch of a tree and break it off. Then decorate it with coloured sweet wrappers , flowers and painted eggshells.
Then stick it up at the side of the road early in the morning on the 1st of may.

Nobody does it here anymore. Pity.
The only other place I saw it done was in Kilkenny years ago.

For a small little island we still honour lots of traditions be them Pagan or Christian.

pedigree 6

Base price wrote: »

For a small little island we still honour lots of traditions be them Pagan or Christian.

Yea I never heard of the other traditions that were mentioned here before.
There's different cures for ailments passed down on my mother's side of family alright.

Muckit

A May Altar was always put up at home. But that would be more a Christian than a pagan ritual. A Statue of Mary decorated with seasonal wild flowers.

patsy_mccabe

I think that priest in The Field was right about 'a thin veneer of Christianity' over the Irish.
I remember doing a project about Phiseogs in primary school. I had to ask my Granny. Crazy stuff like burying rotten eggs in gardens, blessing cows, you name it.

Base price

patsy_mccabe wrote: »

I think that priest in The Field was right about 'a thin veneer of Christianity' over the Irish.
I remember doing a project about Phiseogs in primary school. I had to ask my Granny. Crazy stuff like burying rotten eggs in gardens, blessing cows, you name it.

Ahh The Field -JB Keane

Water John

Yes, the rotten eggs was one. People were very fearful of bad luck.
If a neighbour visited whilst you were churning the milk on May Day, people were afraid you came to steal the cream from the cows.

There were some people that the rest were very wary of.
Our paganism is near the surface. Most of this lost only in the last two generations.

evolving_doors

Ya heard the rotten eggs one from the g'mother... also burying butter.

They had busy lives in them days, sneaking around burying and scattering stuff all around the land.

Anyone hear 'Knife to the floor man at the door, fork to the floor woman at the door, spoon to the floor child at the door'... not really a piseog though

byhookorbycrook

Bringing May blossom into the house would nearly get you evicted in our place!

Siamsa Sessions

Had a friend in school who used get embarrassed when his grandmother would make the sign of the cross on each lambs head when they were going to the butcher - be it May Day or not.

My grand uncle supposedly had a cure for warts too, involving rotten straw and a snail amongst other things. Part of the process was sticking the snail on a thorn of a hawthorn tree.

Kovu

Siamsa Sessions wrote: »

Had a friend in school who used get embarrassed when his grandmother would make the sign of the cross on each lambs head when they were going to the butcher - be it May Day or not.

My grand uncle supposedly had a cure for warts too, involving rotten straw and a snail amongst other things. Part of the process was sticking the snail on a thorn of a hawthorn tree.

That's to do with 'passing' the wart disease onto the snail, then as the snail withers and dries up, the wart shall do the same. Apparently.
I used to love reading all those old superstitions and cures, have a few books about them and old cures/traditions. Full of auld tat my brain is. :pac::D

zetecescort

a new St Brigid's cross goes in the milking parlour here every Feb 1st. Candle put in the window Christmas eve for passing strangers but has to be lit by the youngest in the house

whisky_galore

The father used go to a place that has a holy well in the arse end of nowhere, called 'The City' for water from it for the cattle.

Said he was driving to 'the City' one day, not long after getting married and the mother went dolling herself up...thinking it was a shopping trip.

whisky_galore

Water John wrote: »

Yes, the rotten eggs was one. People were very fearful of bad luck.
If a neighbour visited whilst you were churning the milk on May Day, people were afraid you came to steal the cream from the cows.

There were some people that the rest were very wary of.
Our paganism is near the surface. Most of this lost only in the last two generations.

Fairy forts was another one, with the usual 'rural legends' that someone knew someone else who went levelling a fort and bad sh*t started happening afterwards...something along the lines of a lad doing the job with an open cab JCB and barbed wire from an old fence taking his eye out...or the machine overturning or cattle or family getting sick and dying afterwards.

Leaving eggs in hay to work piseogs, if you went piking out the hay and broke them in the process, again...more bad sh*t happens. Make a fire and put the eggs into it, the smoke will lead to whoever was trying to curse you.

Heard one about a sick horse which was down and on the way out, vets tried everything and then a traveller offered to have a go. Got a fist of butter, said words over it and threw it upwards where it stuck to the roof. Horse was found standing up later on, licking the butter off the roof.

People see this as superstitious nonsense now, much like not taking the church and religion seriously anymore.

whisky_galore

Muckit wrote: »

A May Altar was always put up at home. But that would be more a Christian than a pagan ritual. A Statue of Mary decorated with seasonal wild flowers.

The statue is just a replacement for a pagan deity, holy wells are dedicated to saints etc but before that they would be associated with a pagan god or goddess.