School: Lisnagirl (1)
- Location:
- Lismagiril, Co. Cavan
- Teacher: Harriett Kinkade
Archival Reference
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 1005, Page 167
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: Lisnagirl (1)
- XML Page 167
- XML “Food in Olden Times”
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
- People in days gone by did not eat often as three meals were only provided. Work commenced at six o'clock in the morning, and breakfast was ready at eight o'clock, and it generally consisted of oat meal porridge and buttermilk.
When potatoes were very plentiful in the months of August, September and October they were used for almost every meal. In Summer the breakfast had to be carried to the fields, where the men were working, and so was the dinner. Bread was usually given after ach meal.
Very seldom was butter used. Each farmer cured his own bacon and also killed a big bullock for meat. This was salted and it provided meat for about six months. The fat was fried and the bread was dipped into the fat.
A basket was placed on a round table in the centre of the floor of the kitchen, and this held the potatoes. The family sat around the basket and each person kept his plate on his knee.
They peeled the potatoes they needed, with their thumb nail, as knives and forks were scarce and sometimes spoons were used. A bannock of oat cake was in the centre of basket and some of the cake was used to finsih the meal.
In Lent fish were used for dinner(continues on next page)
- Collector
- Tilly Dancey
- Gender
- Male
- Age
- 12
- Address
- Beagh Glebe, Co. Cavan
