At the present time people begin to wear boots when they are very young In Dunlavin a hundred years ago the people did not begin to wear boots until they were about 25 years of age. They went barefooted. A man named James Kearney, who lived in Cryhelp, about three miles east of Dunlavin never wore boots that my grandmother ever remembers. He died in hospital when he was 60 years of age, in the year of 1870. The people in olden times only wore boots to Mass on Sundays, and for that reason their boots lasted for a long time.