Irish Historical Allusions, Curious Customs and Superstitions, County of Kerry, Corkaguiny

This early 20th-century work preserves a world that was already vanishing when Patrick M. Foley set pen to paper. Focusing on Corkaguiny the remote western peninsula of County Kerry Foley documents the customs, superstitions, and historical memory of a people caught between ancient Ireland and the modern age. The book moves from the mythic arrival of the Milesians through centuries of struggle against Danish raiders and English conquest, tracing how these upheavals settled into local memory and tradition. But its heart lies in the living folklore: the May Day rituals that marked the agricultural year, the eerie games of Snap Apple Night (Halloween), the complicated observances of St. Patrick's Day, and the local superstitions about witches that persisted despite centuries of church teaching. Foley also records the bitter legacy of tithes, the taxation system that kept peasant Ireland in subjection. What emerges is a portrait not just of a county but of a mindset, where history and magic coexisted, where the past was not distant but lived and breathed in every custom and belief. For anyone interested in Irish folklore, local history, or the anthropology of belief, this is an invaluable artifact from a world that has largely disappeared.