School: Mountbellew (roll number 12352)

Location:
Mountbellew, Co. Galway
Teacher:
William Hans
Browse
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0046, Page 0323

Archival Reference

The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0046, Page 0323

Image and data © National Folklore Collection, UCD.

See copyright details.

Download

Open data

Available under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

  1. XML School: Mountbellew
  2. XML Page 0323
  3. XML “Food In Olden Times”

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

  1. (continued from previous page)
    Food in Olden Times
    Long ago the people's food consisted of oat-meal bread made very thin and boxty. There were two different kinds of boxty, boxty made from potatoes and thick oat-meal porridge which they cut into slices and fried in the pan, and the boxty made out of oat-meal and water and then put in a pot of porridge to boil.
    Long ago there were no spoons no cups or no delph of any kind but they used pitchers for drinking out of.
    When they were eating their dinner they put the potataoes out into a sgib and left in on top of a pot called this the three-legged stool.
    Potatoes they ate for their dinner and supper, and boxty or brown-bread and milk for their breakfast.
    In those times there was no sugar but the people used honey instead.
    Potatoes were the most important vegetable used during the famine years.
    The people long ago used to boil nettles and eat them.
    Tea was only used on Christmas day.
    Transcribed by a member of our volunteer transcription project.
    Topics
    1. products
      1. food products (~3,601)
    Language
    English
    Collector
    William Hans
    Gender
    Male
    Occupation
    Teacher
    Address
    Mountbellew, Co. Galway
    Informant
    Mrs Mary Gavin
    Gender
    Female
    Age
    83
    Occupation
    Farmer
    Address
    Gorteen, Co. Galway