School: Johnstown (roll number 877)
- Location:
- Johnstown, Co. Meath
- Teacher: Miss H.C. Hickie
Archival Reference
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0687, Page 140
Image and data © National Folklore Collection, UCD.
See copyright details.
DownloadOpen data
Available under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
- XML School: Johnstown
- XML Page 140
- XML “Churning”
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
- Churning was a laborious task.
Every person that came into the house while the churning was on had to take the dash and give it a few wallops as a guarantee that they would not spirit away the butter.
I often heard it said myself to the visitor, "Come here and put the size of your head on the churn", meaning that his contribution to the work would increase the yield of butter to that extent.
I also saw a pinch of salt and a spark of fire put under the churn before the operation as a protection against the machinations of evil spirits.
All the toil in connection with butter making was done by hand.
When the butter was made it was gathered into one lump in the churn by a rolling motion of the dash. Then it was lifted out. Washed free from all milk by being kneaded and pounded with a small wooden platter called a skimmer, salted and made into rolls.
- Informant
- Mrs Fitzpatrick
- Gender
- Female
- Age
- 80
- Address
- Kilcarn, Co. Meath
