School: Talbhain (Irish Wastelands Society) (roll number 4013)
- Location:
- Knockmoyle East, Co. Galway
- Teacher: Bean Uí Fhearghail
Archival Reference
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0051, Page 0180
Image and data © National Folklore Collection, UCD.
See copyright details.
DownloadOpen data
Available under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
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
- The old houses were generally built against the moat. The walls were built to turf mixed with mortar of Dóib Buide - the yellow clay found under the top soil. This clay gripped together like mortar and when tramped on became hard and firm. Rafters for the roof were placed from the moat to the top of the walls and covered in with scraws and a thatch of rushes and sometimes straw was put over them. A small hole was left in the roof for the smoke to go out.
The door was low, and the window consisted of one pane of glass set in a wooden frame - and was never opened. The front of the chimney was made of Dóib Buide and wattles - this long pieces of ash.
Behind the door there was an upright perch of rods for the hens and the cock. This perch consisted of a wickerwork of osiers and the housewife put fresh straw on it daily.
The cock was the clock, he crowed at twelve oclock, at two and at break of day. The old common breed of fowl crowed regularly at these stated times but the present breeds do not.(continues on next page)
- Informant
- Mrs Kate Rafferty
- Gender
- Female
- Age
- 50
- Address
- Marblehill, Co. Galway
