School: Dromad (roll number 16781)
- Location:
- Drumod, Co. Leitrim
- Teacher: Millicent "Nuabhroinn"
Archival Reference
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0214, Page 029
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- XML School: Dromad
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- XML “Churning”
- XML “A Story”
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- We have a churn at home it is a dark one. It is about 2 feet in height and 1 foot by 10 inches at the top and bottom. My mother churns about 3 times a week in the Summer and twice in the Winter. Strangers who come in during the churning help with the churning because they say if there was no butter on the churning they might be accused of taking it. It takes about 1/2 an hour to churn. Hot water is poured in, in the Winter to hotten the milk and cold water is poured in, The Summer, to keep the milk cool. The butter is lifted up and put in a butter tub and the milk is washed out of it and it is then salted and made up. The milk is then used to make cakes or to feed calves.
- Long ago in Ireland people used to scutch flax and about 10 or 15 wemon used to gather to one house and scutch the flax. One night there was women scutching and one old woman who owned the place said she could make calleannon so she started to churn and told the other wemon to go to bed. The beds were arranged around the room where the woman was churning. One woman kept awake and watched the woman churning. When the woman had churned she went over to an old trunks and took out a dead hand and said it is to gather far and wide and gather all you can. So she took a few tub fulls of butter of the churn. The man who was watching her said only she had the dead hand she would not have as much butter.
