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heritage · Wednesday 19 August 2026 · Various 
Voices of Ballinagh - The Schools Collection 1930s
At Ballinagh Community Hall · Ballinagh, Co. Cavan
At Ballinagh Community Hall · Ballinagh, Co. Cavan
In the 1930s, children at Ballinagh National School sat down and wrote. They wrote about the fairy forts their grandparents warned them away from, about the woman in the village who knew the cure for a sprain, about the roads the old people said were older still. That writing - collected as part of a nationwide initiative now archived on dúchas.ie - survived nearly a century and is the centrepiece of this free Heritage Week evening. If you want to hear what a Cavan village sounded like, who lived there, and what they feared and celebrated, this is a rare chance to do exactly that.
Local teachers read aloud from the Ballinagh section of the 1930s Dúchas Schools Collection - the national folklore archive compiled by schoolchildren across Ireland under the direction of the Irish Folklore Commission. The Ballinagh entries run to around 60 items: fairy stories, ghost stories, accounts of the Famine, local place names and their origins, marriage customs, the village forge, the holy well, cures passed down through families, and even bird-lore. Readings are woven into a live storytelling session accompanied by local musicians, so the evening moves between the archival and the performed. The schoolchildren’s own words form the backbone of the night, read without embellishment, which makes the effect surprisingly immediate. All ages are welcome - the stories are accessible, the format is informal, and it is the kind of event that tends to run a little over time because people stay to talk.
Ballinagh (sometimes written Bellananagh) sits on the N55, roughly 10 km south of Cavan town. Coming from Cavan, take the N55 south-west toward Granard; the village is signed off the main road. From Dublin, the N3 to Cavan town followed by the N55 is the straightforward route - allow around 90 minutes from the city. Bus Éireann serves the Cavan-Granard corridor but schedules are limited on evenings; check bus.ie before relying on it. The Community Hall is in the village and parking in the area is informal and easy enough.
The village is a quiet spot with a strong community feel - the kind of place where events like this draw people from surrounding townlands as well as the village itself. There is more to see in Ballinagh and across Co. Cavan.
Heading to Ballinagh Community Hall in Ballinagh? Cavan has plenty more to see. Read the Ballinagh area guide, find what else is on, and explore the towns and villages nearby.