A mate of mine used to say !A watched clock never boils"

Machines;
One of the last stories we recorded from Travellers concerned of the old custom of destroying the belongings of Travellers who died - it largely died out when they moved into towns
Kerry Traveller, Mikeen McCarthy told us of the old Irish man travelling in the Bristol area who instructed his family not to waste what he left behind by destroying it
Some of the more traditional ones decided to mark his memory by burning his flat-back truck, thinking it would just explode with the full tank; instead, it started up of its own accord and ran around the field three times before it finally came to a halt

The old belief among Irish Travellers of not mourning the dead too much in case they came back, was still current in rural Kerry well into the 20th century
The belief was that, if you continued to mourn them after midnight, more than a set number of days (three, I think), they would not be able to rest
The custom was to celebrate their memory up to midnight, kiss the forehead of the corpse before midnight, then go away and stop mourning
Jim Carroll