School: Leath-árdán

On this page

1. Old Houses Long Ago in this Locality

   

   Share Share Post

   Up until thirty or forty years ago the majority of the people of this locality lived in hovels not much better than the pig sty of today. At least the half of them were like that. A good number of them were built up to sand banks, and the roof covered with scraws and rushes. Others had walls built of bog sods or what they now call turf, covered over in the same way with scraws and rushes which were very plentiful around the dwelling. These houses in a good many cases contained only one room, in which three or four cows were tied at one end, a couple of calves along the side walls,
   and right over that was a hole in the wall about one foot wide by one and a half feet high. This hole was called a window. It was open by day time but stuffed at night by a plug of straw or heather. The owner of the house and his wife slept in a bed up against the wall beside the fire. This bed was made of forest or bog oak timber with four posts and bearers of the same kind of rough wood. Some-times there were no posts only four strong sods of bog laid on the ground and the stretchers laid across them. Over

   (continues on next page)

   

   Transcribed by a member of our volunteer transcription project.

   History Edit

   Language

   English

   Collector

   Mary Blake

   Gender

   Female

   Address

   Carrowkeel, Co. Mayo