Food in Olden Times

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Food in Olden Times  [duchas:4360523]

Food In Olden Times

While I was visiting last night in Mrs Dunleavy's she told me about the food used long ago. She is the eldest woman in the village and when I went over she was sitting beside the fire in an armchair. She welcomed me as when I went in and when I was about an hour within she made some tea.

The people of long ago used to have stirrabout for breakfast and sometimes they ate oatcake and when they would not have either of them they used to have roast potatoes. The stirrabout was made of yellow meal and when boiling they used to thicken it with oatmeal.

The oat cake was made with water and oatmeal and they used to keep working until they would form a cake and then they used to put it up right on a flag on the hearthstone. They

Food in Olden Times  [duchas:4360524]

used to keep turning it until it would be baked.

The first tea was used more than 70 years ago and the first cup of tea Mrs Dunleavy got was from Mrs McDonagh's a neighbour, when she was a little girl. When she came home she told her mother she would not give a penny for all the tea in Ireland.

The first man who bought a bag of flour Derryronane was Mrs Dunleavy's father when she was twelve years old, and all the people came to see it and ask the price of it. When he told them he paid eight shillings for it the thought very dear. In every village almost there were a few mills for grinding the corn . There was one in the next village Barnacogue which belonged to Henry's.

At Christmas a few of the richest

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of the people used to buy a pig and kill it and the poor people used to buy a fletch of bacon and it used to last them a few months. The bacon was very cheap at that th time. The Russian bacon was three pence a pound.

Written by Annie Nestor 10th May 1938
Told by Mrs Anne Dunleavy, Derryronane, Swinford