School: Dernakesh (B)
- Location:
- Doire na Ceise, Co. an Chabháin
- Teacher: T. Ó Comhraidhe
Archival Reference
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 1017, Page 343
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: Dernakesh (B)
- XML Page 343
- XML “Flax Scutching”
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
- About fifty years ago farmers scutched their flax at home. Although this course meant a good deal of heavy, tedious work the farmers and their assistants were strong therefore they enjoyed it. First a kiln was erected which consisted of a small stout house set apart from all other farm buildings in order to escape the danger of fire outbreak.
It consisted of two flues 24x30 inches and about seven yards long built of smooth, longish stones. A fire of good black handmade turf would be started at one end of the flue and slowly but vey effectively the bales of flax already set in position would soon become quite dry. Just then the dried flax would be put through the beetling maching something like our present day clothes mangle. Pat Clarke and John McCabe, each of whom died about ten years ago, were well known for their strength at twisting the wheel. This work took place at my grandfather's house.
Then the hand scutching would be carried out by women employed locally. It(continues on next page)
- Collector
- Brendan Shalvey
- Gender
- Male
- Address
- Doire na Ceise, Co. an Chabháin
- Informant
- Charles Shalvey
- Gender
- Male
- Address
- Doire na Ceise, Co. an Chabháin
