School: Druim Míleadh (roll number 14898)
- Location:
- Drumeela, Co. Leitrim
- Teacher: Ailbeard Mac an Ríogh
Archival Reference
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0229, Page 134
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- Many times have I watched the basket maker at work. His name was Philip McDermott and when he died his trade was finished. He had no successor, no apprentice, no follower.
Again it was the factory and changing conditions of rural life which pulled down the curtain on his livelihood.
Leather and Leatherette, foreign braid-bags and cheap baskets together with the itinerant shop & the egg lorry ended the basket trade for him. The introduction of bardogs and the growing popularity of the ass cart cut out the creels.
The dinner basket is still used for teeming of potatoes but the ancient Irish communal system of sitting round the dinner basket has been deserted for the more comfortable family dinner round the kitchen table and so the large shallow wicker basket is slowly but surely going the way of the rest.
I gave a description of the making of a creel as well as I can remember after forty years.
- Collector
- Albert King
- Gender
- Male
