Riobárd Ó Dwyer's Beara folktale — 'Tis a hard life the women have' (a Dursey Island role-reversal tale)

Riobárd Ó Dwyer Papers, NEHGS (Mss 1097) — "Stories from Beara"; received as an email from Riobárd Ó Dwyer · private email correspondence; also deposited at NEHGS (American Ancestors) · 2006-11-25

oral historysecondary focus

Summary

A humorous Beara folktale relayed by Riobárd Ó Dwyer (verbatim in notes.md per NEHGS rights). A man ploughing on **Dursey Island (Baoi Bheara)** comes in to dinner and mocks "the fine life the women have," reciting the long list of a wife's daily chores as if it were leisure. The wife swaps places with him the next day — takes the horse to the plough and leaves him the housework. Within an hour the pigs escape, the child falls from the cradle bawling, and the husband, overwhelmed, begs her to come back and never to belittle her work again. "'Tis a hard life the women have!!" she says, smiling; "'Tis only now 'tis dawning on me!!" agrees the husband. Domestic-comedy color for the Beara homeland chapters.

Also mentioned

Riobárd Ó Dwyer
Beara genealogist/folklorist; see the other three O'Dwyer-email oral histories in this batch.

Places

Beara Peninsula (primary)
West Cork (context)

Themes

Story threads

Berehaven Murphys

Related sources

Transcription

transcription: complete · confidence high

# 'Tis a hard life the women have *Beara folktale relayed by Riobárd Ó Dwyer (email, 25 Nov 2006); also NEHGS Mss 1097.* > **Rights note.** NEHGS copy © NEHGS, CC BY-NC-ND, member-restricted. > Verbatim text is held in `notes.md` (private). Summary below is the > editor's own words. A role-reversal comedy from Dursey Island: a ploughman belittles his wife's housework as "a fine life," so she swaps jobs with him for a day; the pigs bolt, the baby tumbles from the cradle, and the overwhelmed husband recants — "'Tis a hard life the women have." (Full verbatim in notes.md.)

Open questions

Dursey Island (Baoi Bheara) not yet a vocab place; named only here. Add if it recurs.