Making your own ink
‘Money got from sale of otter should be spent on buying sheep.
‘Mr. Michael McAndrew (Senr.) never heard of King-otter (Rí-mhada).
‘Mrs. McAndrew said the badgers made their own harvest. They had little cocks of grass near their holes. They ate it, the people supposed. Michael (Jr.) said they probably used it for bedding too, as he had often seen the old bed raked out of the holes and new grass put [in].
‘Crúibín sionnach. An herb used as an emetic for jaundice. Is very severe on the system.
‘Something in calf’s mouth when born and if this be preserved no milk can be carried off from that cow by witchcraft. (Note by S. Ó. S. They had not any name for this, cf. greim siorraigh?)
‘“Bruilhín” — a thing shaped like honeycomb in the stomach of a cow. Dung is between the “leafes” attached to this. (Note by S. Ó. S. cf. Máilín na leabhar?) — Mr. Mc A Senr.
“Dooliath” (Dubh-liath?) is a long bluish thing like a piece of liver, flat on one side and curved on the other inside the flank of an animal’s (cattle) left side. If the animal is struck there, it will lie down as dead. Turn the animal over and strike it on the opposite side and it will recover[.]
‘Mrs. McAndrew spoke of elfstones which fall from the sky and bring luck to the finder. A poor man took one which fell at his sister’s feet. He never saw a poor day after. Elfstones are put in water (boiled?) and given to drink inside the house to an animal which is sick in the house. If the animal is sick in the open or in an outhouse this drink is given halfway through the door. The stones are placed in a cloth.
‘These stones are called “blessed stones”.
‘It is not lucky to kill too many hares.
‘A trap for catching hares, called a harehole was something like this
grass etc. for cover.
‘It was made where hares frequented. When a hare fell in it could not escape. They were used up to recently. This trap was dug into the bag [bog?], around 3 ft. deep altogether.
‘A bullet made of a florin with a + was used to shoot an evil spirit. A black hound with no white spot would kill a “milking hare”.
‘The tongs were flung after poachers for luck (Mr. McA. Jr.)
‘Tongs were placed over the cradle when a mother left a child alone (Mrs. McA.)
‘Boys were [sic] dresses of brown, red or blue flannel, like girls. A mother when calling in children after nightfall or late in the evening would not call them by name. “Come in here!”, or “Come in out o’ that!” or some such term.
‘Ml. McA. Sen. had no explanation [for this.]
‘Mr. Delargy told of red and brown clothes, especially socks worn in Connemara to keep away fairies.
‘“Cruital Cloch” used for dying, called (Screamh na gCloch) in Kerry.
‘Cais-searrán and briar-roots were used as dyes. Gave a black dye.
‘Mr. McA. (Sr.) said he often made ink of the roots of flaggers when a young boy. He boiled the roots in a little water[.] It gave jet black ink and was hard to make. He often tried it since but not with the same success. Mr. McA. never went to school, but a travelling schoolmaster came and taught children from several houses.
‘Mr. McA. used goose quills or steel pens for writing.
‘An old wild goose has strong tough quills. A localman was offered (by a gentleman) a sovereign for every quill on an eagle wing, for writing-quills.
‘The bottom turf of the boy [bog?] is called cloch-mhóin. Mc A’s never heard of it being used for a dye.
‘(Dóib ghorm agus dóib bhuí — Frank Burke, Cornamona, Co. Galway)
‘McA. never heard of rileógachs [bog-gaul, sweet willow] having been used in making the Cross or of it being wrong to strike an animal with one. He said the Cross was made with the wood of the yew tree. Yew will not burn in a fire. It smoulders and has an ugly smell.
‘A holly stick is unlucky as a walking stick. A hazel stick is good for warding off spirits.
‘McA. (Sr.) often saw a black coal from a fire being put in the pocket of a person going out late at night.
‘He never heard of an herb which would keep one from stumbling[.]
‘Not lucky to shave on a Friday (Mc.A. Jr.)
‘People would not cut their hair or nails during Lent. Children in the local school, with long hair in Lent, had it cut off with a penknife in school by Fr. Martin, P.P.
‘Buachaill a’ chruic takes the form of a bull, a cock of hay, a horse, or a white cow. Goes over the hills in these forms. Roars. Chased people as far as the mairin (mearing) ditch, but couldn’t cross it. A man who fired at it lost the use of a finger (trigger finger) for a year.
‘The sound of sawing and laughing was heard for a year before in a place where a sawmill was afterwards errected [sic].
‘“Daydrame (day-dream): while saying the Rosary, a woman looked up and saw two white birds going out of the door. Two children who were sick died soon.
‘The straw or rushes left over after making St. Brigid’s Crosses would be made into a spancel and put round the neck of a cow before calving or round the neck of a sick beast.
‘McA. saw knitted trousers.
‘T. a Búrca saw [ditto ditto] two years ago[.]
‘“Spancel straw” was made of rushes. Cut long rushes, soak them in a swamp. Dry them w beetle with a mallet. The fibre left is woven into a spancel. It is very tough.
‘A pig can see the wind. It is of a red colour’.
What does the above combination of folklore and oral history tell us? For a start, it tells us how people in very remote areas were educated. Before the establishment of national schools, or where children lived too far from them, schoolteachers travelled between districts, staying with local families and borrowing a room or barn to teach local children for a few weeks at a time in return for a (necessarily small) fee.
The Schools Collection includes an account of seanscoileanna close by, gathered in 1938:
‘There was a hedge school [gearrscoil] in Sheskin and there was another in Leargan and one in Tawnagh and every other place like that… There was a teacher passing by teaching named Máire Ní Cháidín and another named Robinson…
‘They used to teach Gaelic and literature… They stayed three months or so in each town. Some of them were good and some were not. The people used to respect them a lot.
‘The children spoke English. The children used to write on slates. They had no benches or stools. They would sit down on the floor. The master would sit on a stool’ (collected by Pádhraic Ó Cearbhallán from Micheál Ó Cearbhallán, aged 68, Uggool. The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0133, Page 613).
Another was given by Seán Mac Meanaman of Tawnaghmore, then aged 78: ‘The teacher receives a few shillings a week for each child he had to teach. He used to live in each house for a week. The week he used to teach those children was the week he used to stay in the house…
‘The teachers stayed three months or so in [each] place and then they left it... They only taught the students up to fourth class. The people respected the masters. These schools existed from 1840 to 1870’ (collected by Pádhraic Ó Choileán, Tawnaghmore, The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0133, 605-6).
There may have been other reasons to avoid national schools besides distance. A Pat Herbert of Rathbane, aged 85 in 1938, gave the following account to Seán Ó Raghallaigh, a pupil at Eskeragh National School:
‘George Carter[,] landlord[,] built the present Ballymunnelly School for the benefit of his tenants. As soon as it was built and a “purty” school it was the clergy claimed it. The landlord however refused to give up his authority over it. He said he built it for the betterment of his own tenants [and because] of that he would get a choice [of] teacher for them. Very good, he secured the services of one Finn. Sara wan of me can think of his Christian name. The priests proclaimed a boycott on the school. Tony Cararr a member of the Gallaghers of Ballymunnelly sent his children to the school however for some years. As a result of which he got into bad grace with the clergy of the parish priest disowned him. For 7 long years, “him” nor his family received neither communion nor penance nor any consolation of the Church.
‘Howsoever his family grew up and emigrated and obtained good positions. They reaped the benefit of their schooling [-] a thing which many others from the same district could not say’ (The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0153, 167- 168).
The older McAndrews refer to fear of the fairies and how boys in particular were dressed to fool them. While ‘Ml. McA. Sen.’ offered no explanation as to why children’s names were not called out after dark, this is likely to be because in earlier times some felt it ‘risky’ to let the fairies know the children’s names. Perhaps this had a practical function too, if there were fear of outsiders lurking who might be a threat to children.
That tongs protected the cradle was still remembered in the 1980s, as was the folk custom of leaving hair and nails to grow during Lent. The frustration of the parish priest with folk superstition can be felt even now in the above testimony.
The older McAndrews had a clear memory of subsistence farming in an economy where very little was traded, including making dyes, ink and pens. ‘Saw knitted trousers’ sounds odd out of context, but is possibly an answer to a question as to whether they knew of people wearing traditional dress, which included white pantaloons made of frieze. The Irish Monthly of 1882 refers to a French traveller’s account from 1644 describing such dress on page 362:
We also hear about the importance of hare in the diet, as well as awareness that their population needed to be conserved.
But beyond that, there is a sense in which the three family members were themselves trying to catalogue what they had begun to forget, because they are keen to satisfy the interest of their visitor. They were talking in the past tense. Their visitor was the noted collector Seán Ó Súilleabháin (1903–1996), who had begun working for the Irish Folklore Commission just a few years before.
Reading between the lines, they don’t themselves believe that fairies might steal baby boys — but they are also not minded to say openly that it was foolish to believe so. If they disapproved of Fr Martin cutting the hair of children during Lent, it is likely less because they believed it unlucky, and more that they thought him over-asserting his authority.
The final sentence, however, is both entrancing and impenetrable. Are they saying that pigs can really see the wind — or that this is simply what was believed in the past? Either way, how could we possibly know what colours pigs can see?
