School: Rochfortbridge (Convent of Mercy) (roll number 14603)
- Location:
- Rochfortbridge, Co. Westmeath
- Teacher: Sr. M. Aquin
Archival Reference
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0730, Page 567
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
- (continued from previous page)Before the housekeeper (made) makes the butter she first washes her hands in a warm soap lather, then rubs oatmeal around them this is said to keep the butter from sticking to your hands as the butter was made by the hands long ago. After that she washed her hands in clear spring water.
Before the churning starts it is washed with salt and boiling water and scrubbed with rough heather out of the bog. The heather is not used now but long ago they would not scrub the churn without a scrub made from it. To make one of these scrubs a bunch of heather was pulled and left to dry for some time. It was then tied in the centre with a piece of cord.
On a May morning no-body will let you in to where they are churning because you are supposed to bring away the butter. It is said if you put a coulter of a plough into the fire on a May morning nobody will bring away the butter.
- Informant
- John Hynes
- Gender
- Male
- Address
- Tyrrellspass, Co. Westmeath
