School: Tomena

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1. Churning

   

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   We have a churn at home and it is three feet high it is about two feet six inches at the top and two feet at the bottom. It is about two years old. We make butter twice on three times a week in Summer. The woman of the house on sometimes the man does the churning. Strangers who come in do help for luck. It takes about three quarters of an hour to bring butter on the milk. When it is finished it is salted and made into prints or rolls with butter clappers, and is sold to shop keepers.

   Churning is hard work, especially in Winter because the milk is colder. In olden times people would have big loads of butter every fortnight to bring to Enniskillen. Often it takes a long time to bring butter on the milk and sometimes there comes no butter on it. I know of a place where there came no butter at all on the churn. They kept churning for two hours and a half but it was the same when they were finished as when they began. That happened for two or three times. They had a friend a priest and he came home on holidays. He blessed the milk and told them never to wash a can that there was the track of milk on, in a river for that the fishes, could

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   Transcribed by a member of our volunteer transcription project.

   History Edit

   Topics

   1. activities
      1. economic activities
         1. agriculture (~2,659)
            1. butter and churns (~3,280)

   Language

   English

   Collector

   John James Duffy

   Gender

   Male

   Address

   Tawnagh, Co. Cavan

   Informant

   Francis Mc Govern

   Gender

   Male

   Age

   73

   Address

   Scrabby, Co. Cavan