School: Errigal Trough (roll number 15565)
- Location:
- Emyvale, Co. Monaghan
- Teacher: Saragh Gillanders
Archival Reference
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0958, Page 305
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- XML “Food in Olden Times”
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- Food in olden times was different than the food of the present time. Our ancestors only ate three meals every day, breakfast, dinner and supper. Some worked from six to eight then had breakfast; others had breakfast as soon as they got up.
Potatoes were not eaten at every meal. Large quantities of milk, butter, curds made from skimmed milk, and cheese were consumed by all classes. For drinking buttermilk was mostly used.
The poor people did not get much meat, except a little boiled beef, but they ate plenty of vegetables.
On Good Friday the people got a special kind of bread called ‘cross-bread’ so called because of a cross put on the top.
On Easter Sunday they had fried eggs for breakfast, and ate more eggs that day than any other day in the year.
Ninety years ago, tea was first introduced in this district. The tea was boiled, butter put on the leaves and eaten. The juice was then sweetened and brown sugar put in it to sweeten it. Bread was(continues on next page)
- Collector
- Marion Mills
- Gender
- Female
