School: Baile Theas (B.), Malla (roll number 4953)
- Location:
- Ballyhass, Co. Cork
- Teacher: Tadhg Ó Hanluain
Archival Reference
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0364, Page 335
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 people had three meals a day long ago. The Fianna had only one meal a day. They had that meal in the evening after a days hunting. The meals consisted of potatoes yellow meal and sour milk and they used the same diet three times a day. All the food they used is gone out of fashion.
People say the fish were very plentiful in the Blackwater and the people camped near the river. Then they caught fish and salted them and they were preserved for the summer. Before they used these things they almost lived on meat. They used wooden cups and the people who made them were called coopers. They had the first meal in the morning they had the second meal in the middle of the day and they had the third meal at nightfall. They did no work before the first meal.
They used to get special kinds of food at Easter and Christmas and other days. They used to get sweet cake and eggs at Easter. They used to get sweet cake and meat at Christmas. They used to hang the table up on the wall when it was not used. They used not eat meat on Friday. They had no flour in older days because the people could not pay for it because the land was too dear and the landlords had all the money for the rent. They used to have a piece of wood and it was sharpened to peel the potatoes. Some people that were very poor had no money to buy meat or meal or vegetables. In the year of the famine the people had no food and they used to eat raw wild turnips. There were no creameries in that time. The people used to set the milk in pans and then they would skim the cream from the milk and with the cream they used to make butter and from the butter a thick milk is made and it is called buttermilk. July was a very bad month in the olden times because they had no early potatoes. During lent they used no potatoes or meat on the Wednesdays(continues on next page)
- Informant
- Mr Edmond Donoghue
- Gender
- Male
- Address
- Knockardsharriv, Co. Cork
