Old Roads

transcribed at

Old Roads  [duchas:4369338]

There are old roads all aroung the country which are used only when some pedisterian takes "a short cut" which means going by an old road across fields, hills, and valleys instead of going the longer way by the public road. In dry weather these old roads are very pleasant to walk upon being soft and green and only in very few places have become overgrown with heather or ferns. There are very wide roads and also very narrow roads. The latter are called bóthríns which means little or small road and are just passages leading from the wide roads to houses and field etc.
There were resting places along those roads for in those days poor people for the most part carried loads on their backs or in large ciseáns. The roads always ran by good clean streams and spring wells so that weary travellers were sure of refreshment.

Old Roads  [duchas:4369339]

In this neighbourhood one wide "green" road crosses the fields from Ballycastle to Ballinglen where it meets the public. Then it continues towards the river across which stepping stones were placed ages ago and are still there. From thence on through the fields of Bail an Phortaigh till it joins another old road leading from Killenna and then on to Ballinkinlettera where it meets a road which leads to Alderrig and so on. It is along these old roads that one sometimes sees little mounds and monuments telling of the woeful tragedy of the famine and it was in the years immediately after-wards that our present roads began to be made, in the way of relief works for the people who had land to till. A small quantity of Indian meal was the pay a man was the pay a man received and women and boys received a still smaller quantity about a pint.

Old Roads  [duchas:4369340]

They had to work "for dear life".