An Chraobh Airgid
In soft spring light a ruined ivied abbey, leaning headstones and a lightning-split tree stand above the winding Awbeg, a whitewashed slate-and-thatch town beyond.

Mumu · Munster

Cill na Mallach

Buttevant · Co. Cork

A small old town on the Awbeg in north Cork, where the bean sí keened for a harper.

Open it on the full site There it is marked on the map of the five fifths, where the road of a tale can be traced.

The town stands on the river Awbeg, with a Franciscan friary founded in 1251; to the south is Ballybeg, an Augustinian priory founded by the de Barrys in 1229. About the middle of the eighteenth century its rector was Charles Bunworth, harper and friend of the travelling harpers. In The Bean Sí, a week before he dies, his herdsman sees the bean sí keening under a lightning-struck tree by an old abbey on the road from Mallow.

In the tales

  • The Bean Sí The herdsman swore he had not touched a drop. All the way through the glen, a woman with long white hair had kept at his side, keening and calling his master’s name.

See also

  • The Bean Sí The woman of the sídhe who keens before a death in the old families.
  • Charles Bunworth Rector of Buttevant, harper, and friend of the travelling harpers.

Sources

Each tale above lists the sources it is retold from. Every source the site draws on is listed on the full site.