When I was a young fellow, my mother would make me go out for a gad of quicken tree before sunrise on May morning. I remember it well because I used go barefoot for it, and the dew would be heavy and cold on the grass. I used have to go the most of a mile for the quicken, because there was none near us.

When I would get home with it, my mother would bind the gad of quicken round the churn dash under the joggler and then go with her churning. She used to do that I understood late, to prevent her butter being taken. She had a certain person in her eye, she said, who was leaving nothing undone to take her butter, and so 'twas up to herself to work all she knew against it.
(Mr. McGowan ex-Head Constable. R.I.C. Loughrea, native of Cavan or Leitrim. I forget which)