School: Druim (roll number 16557)
- Location:
- Drum, Co. Galway
- Teacher: Máiréad Ní Dhubháin
Archival Reference
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0051, Page 0283
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- XML School: Druim
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- XML “The Churning at Home”
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- We have a churn at home, it is called a machine churn. It is about two feet high, being the same size at the bottom as at the top, and the sides are round.
The chief parts, are the body, the dash, the lid and a wooden cup for making butter.
We churn twice a week in Summer and once a week in Winter. This is how mother prepares to churn. She milks the cows and strains it though a muslin cloth and lets it stand to get sour. Then she puts it into the churn. My grandmother always put a drop of holy water and a pinch of salt into the churn and a coal under it.
If a stranger happens to come in while the churning is in progress, he takes the dash for a few minutes, as my grandmother says, if he did not do so he would take the luck of the butter, or if he took any sort of piece of iron out of the house or put a coal on his pipe during the churning, some such thing would happen.
Water is added a few times to make it easy to churn, and to help to gather the butter into a lump. The buttermilk is used for making bread and it is also considered the best drink of all.
- Collector
- Mary Larkin
- Gender
- Female
- Age
- 13
- Address
- Knockmoyle West, Co. Galway
- Informant
- Mrs Flynn
- Gender
- Female
