Local Happenings

transcribed at

Local Happenings  [duchas:4413388]

There were (are) a great many drownings and happenings in my district. The greatest of them all was the great log slide.

It happened in the year 1900. It rained for a night and a day. This mountain was so soft with the rain that the scroof [sic] on the surface burst and the log water and mud came down the basin of the Black Burn. Joe Young’s house was full of this mud. They did not get back to their house for six weeks.

Nobody lost their lives in the log slide.

Several people at bastlefin and Lifford cut turf on the banks of the Finn river.

Some time after that thousands of people were around the place. None of them would venture to go up to where the top of the mountain was for if they did they would sink.

That place is called the “Duck Holes” now. There are a great many wildducks [sic] in it now.

Local Happenings  [duchas:4413389]

There was also a man drowned in Charles Mortlands of Ballygonigans mill-dam.

His name was Edward Kennedy of Tievbrack.

This man went to bathe in the mill dam one summer’s evening. There were other men with him. This boy dived to the bottom and was drowned. The other boys could not save him.

There was a man named Dan Dohert of Meenlougher. He was drowned in the river Finn.

He and another man went after their day’s work to bathe. Neither of them were good swimmers. This man swam into a turn pool in the river.

About ten minutes after that there were hundreds of people there.

The man had Scapulars on him but he took them off. The priest said if he had kept on the Scapulars he wouldn’t have been drowned.

Local Happenings  [duchas:4413390]

The wild birds that are most common about this district are-, the robin, the blackbird, the raven, the crow, the sea-full, the pea-wit, the crane, the wren, the sparrow, the pigeon, the lark, the swallow, the moorhen, the magpie, the thrush, the jack-daw, the cuckoo, and the corn-crake.

All the birds that migrate from this country to a warmer climate are-, the swallow and the cuckoo. They come in the beginning of Summer, and go away when Winter is approaching.

The robin builds her nest in a ditch sme makes it out of clay and moisture; she also lays four brown eggs.

The swallow builds her nest in a barn, or in the eaves of houses. It is always so high that we cannot see what kind of eggs she lays.

The cuckoo lays an egg in some other birds nest, and that bird hatches it for the cuckoo.

If boys rob birds nests it is said that they shall be left without a house when they are in