The fairy Rope

In the late nineteenth century life was very different in Donegal to what it is now. It was hard for many of the families whose only source of income came from either farming, fishing or, in the case of women, sewing. It was the custom for many of the women, having done their chores, to sit at their machines and sew until the 'wee hours of the morning' to complete their batch of shirts. The next morning they would rise early to make the journey to the factory to be paid a pittance for their work.

From Urris the women had to trek barefoot across the Gap of Mamore and on through Desertegney to Buncrana where the nearest factory was situated. They carried the heavy loads of shirts on their backs and on the homeward journey they brought with them that night's material to work on.

It was on one of these early morning walks that Ciara O'Doherty spied a bit of rope by the roadside. As the custom was that anything found on common ground belonged to the person who found it, Ciara decided that she could make good use of the rope, so she picked it up and added it to her already heavy burden.

A week or two later Ciara and her sister Clodagh were making butter. The churn they were using was very old but they could not afford to replace it and up until now they had been able to make minor repairs on anything that had got broken. On this day, however, the churn could take no more; the upper metal ring broke and it started to leak.

'Quick,' said Ciara to Clodagh, 'run and get that bit of rope so we can try to fix this.'

While Clodagh ran to fetch it Ciara was able to hold the churn together without losing too much of the cream. When Clodagh returned they successfully repaired it by replacing the broken metal ring with the rope.

'Now wasn't it a good thing I found that rope,' said Ciara, 'otherwise we'd have no butter for a while.

The two women continued with their work using the newly repaired churn. After a time they noticed something strange was happening. There seemed to be far more butter than there should have been for the amount of cream there was. Also, the butter was the finest that they had ever tasted. After much thought and debate the women decided that they must have chanced upon a fairy rope which was indeed good fortune as anything belonging to the fairies was known to have magical powers. Ciara and Clodagh realised immediately that they would have to hide the rope in case anybody tried to steal it, so they made a place for it in the thatch roof, put the rope in and covered it. They made plans that night as to what they would do with the butter they had made that day - perhaps the local shop would sell some for them.

Amid great excitement, the women went to the shop, sold all of the extra butter and even got orders for another batch on condition that it was of the same quality. The next day they were eager to get started on the churning again so they immediately want to retrieve the rope from its hiding place. To their dismay it was gone. They frantically searched the entire thatch, destroying most of it, before they realised that the rope had disappeared. It seems that the wee folk still had some use for it after all, or perhaps they were just playing games with the two women. Most of the profit made from the sale of the butter went towards mending the roof, and the rest was used to repair the churn.

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