School: Tamney (Robertson)
- Location:
- Tawny, Co. Donegal
- Teacher: Mrs Kyle
Archival Reference
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 1090, Page 320
Image and data © National Folklore Collection, UCD.
See copyright details.
DownloadOpen data
Available under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
- XML School: Tamney (Robertson)
- XML Page 320
- XML “How Sowens Were Made”
Note: We will soon deprecate our XML Application Programming Interface and a new, comprehensive JSON API will be made available. Keep an eye on our website for further details.
On this page
- Sowens was a dish of food made very often in days gone by.
When the farmer went to the Miller with corn to get it made into oat-meal, he got a few bags of seeds also.
The following gives an account of how the Sowens was made -.
When the farmer came home from the Miller, the house-woman get a few handfuls of the seeds and steeped them in water till they fermented, Then she strained the water out of the seeds and put it in a pot and put the pot on the fire and boiled it. She stirred the water from right to left instead of from left to right because the people had an old superstition that Sowens thickened better when stirred in that way.
When the water was thick enough, the house-woman took the pot off the fire and put out the Sowens out in a dish or plates. When it was cold enough it was taken with milk just the same way as porridge is taken.(continues on next page)
- Collector
- Joe Mc Connell
- Gender
- Male
- Age
- Over 14
- Address
- Ballymagowan Upper, Co. Donegal
