Beside the main entrance to a demesne in this county, there is a a tall tree.

transcribed at

Cromadh (C.)  [duchas:4920964]

Beside the main entrance to a demesne in this county, there is a tall tree.  In spring and summer this grand old tree stretches "it's leafy arms to pray", like its hundreds of comrades which line the long avenue down to the castle.  But on this particular tree there is one branch remarkable during the leafy season, because it stretches gaunt and bare at it would be on xmas night amongst its gaily dressed brother limbs, and why?  Local tradition explains it by telling the story of the widow's son. 

Once a very long time ago there lived near this great lord's castle a poor widow with one only son.  As boys will, this lad one day stole into the lord's garden and was caught by their owner taking some of the apples.  In spite of the prayers and tears of the anguished mother,the lord got the boy hanged from a limb of a tree at his gate.  From that day onwards that limb never bore a bud or leaf.

The widow over her child's dead body curses

Cromadh (C.)  [duchas:4920965]

the lord and his family and demesne.  Her curse was "That the lords of his race would never have a good horse, that the women of his house would never be without trouble, that the cuckoo would never sing over his place and that spring water would never be found within the confines of his demesne".  People who live near the place say that the curse has run faithfully through many generations.

N.B. As members of this family still live in the same demesne,  I have suppressed names, and would wish the story to be treated confidentially.