IA-IRISH-L Archives

From: "Cathy Joynt Labath" <>
Subject: [IA-IRISH] Item on Co. Donegal...from 1900 Iowa Newspaper
Date: Tue, 1 Oct 2002 18:40:39 -0500

Daily Times
Davenport, Scott, Iowa
September 8, 1900

The Home of the Donegal.
In His Cottage. Dwelling Place of the Irish Mountaineer
His Rental, His Daily Fare, and the Crop He Raises-The Parish Beggar, and
his Unfailing Welcome. Burning of the Soil-Family Devotions.

Our average cottage has three apartments, a kitchen between two rooms.
The cave of the thatched roof is the height of a tall man. The thatch is oat
straw bound to the under layer of tough turf (scraws) hidden rows of
scallops of briar, and then crossed and recrossed some scores of times by
straw ropes that interlace and finally tie to pegs of fir and bog-oak
inserted in the walls, just under the eaves.
Within the roomy kitchen, with its hardened and clean clay floor, the
inside of the roof with its scraw lining, the cupples and bacs of fir and
oak (dug from the depths of the peat bog) which support it, are exposed. A
ladder is hung on pegs along one side wall; a dresser, on which the plates
and bowls, and mugs are ranged, and on which also stand the wooden
utensils-piggins, a few noggins and a few turned beechen dishes, stands by
the side of the room door. Under the big wide chimney, a fire of mixed peats
and fir burns on the hearth and in all likelihood an oat cake stands on end
(against a griddle) hardened by the fireside. There are a couple of
sios-togs (seats about eighteen inches high) of platted straw by the fire,
but for the most part the seats are four legged stools yet there are also a
few chairs. A bed, too, stands in the kitchen near from the fire fitting
into the out shot formed purposely for this in the side wall; the bed is
covered with a neat patchwork quit and is canopied overhead with deal?
papered later.
Outside the house, to the left and at right angles, runs the little row
of cattle-byres and the fowl-house; and to the right are built the turf
stack (which contains fifteen or twenty tons of peat) and the fir stack
(with five or six tons of bog-fir.)
Attached to the cottage are four or five acres of arable land, and in
addition the sum of some miles of mountain (in common with the hundred other
cottages in the same district) for sheep; a rental of twenty or thirty
dollars a car (which is a very great sum to the poor cottager in our
mountains) is paid to the landlord for this and about eight dollars in other
taxes. It must be noted that the cottager bought this land from his
predecessor and paid five hundred dollars for it; yet a lord who lives in
London and Paris and at Monte Carlo owns it and a thousand other farms and
sports abroad all the dollars the cottager can be made to save and pay to
him off it.
The cottager owns two milch cows, three of the four growing cattle and
.....

Meat a Rarity in Donegal.
The Donegal mountaineer can reckon on his fingers the number of times
in his life that he has eaten mutton or beef. And though the bean autighe
(housewife) owns two score of hens and ducks and egg to a meal in their
cabin is a rarity. On festive occasions, or when a neighbor is helping at
the farm work, butter is indulged in. One or two pigs are kept, yet the
household knows not the taste of pork or Irish bacon. For an occasional
Sunday or feast day dinner, provided money be unusually plentiful, a pound
of American bacon, at ten cents is bought; as our own Irish bacon costs
fifteen cents a pound is out of the question. The breakfast is oaten
porridge, (stir-about); the dinner potatoes boiled in their jackets and
eaten with milk and salt and occasionally fish. And the supper again is
usually of potatoes, but sometimes of porridge. We have " a mouthful of tea"
and oaten bread or soda bread, between meals once or twice a day.
A favorite luxury with us is potato-bread, for which the boiled
potatoes are peeled and mashed and baked with flour. When buttered hot, this
is a luxury worth living for. Another toothsome luxury is boxty-a bread also
made from the potato, which is grated, when raw wrung through a linen cloth
till all the water is expressed, and then baked with flour. The result is
fit for kings. Our Donegal Gaelic poet "Padraic," has commemorated the
delights of boxty in a charmingly humorous ode.
Our staple crops are potatoes and oats, and cabbage is practically the
only other raised. A couple of acres of ground are left under these-and the
remainder goes to grass. Near the seacoast the weeds, wrack and llach are
the chief manures employed. As the landlord's domain in Ireland extends over
the sea itself, he has apportioned the rocky strand whereon the wrack grows
between the several tenants. Early in Ware (February and March) taking
advantage of the far-receding spring tides, the men and women, boys and
girls, are on the strand at day break and, following the receding tide, cut
down the wrack with big knives and carry it to the shore in creels. The
llach, which grows in great blades six and eight feet long, is got on rocks
far out to sea-rocks that are seldom or never bared-and it must be gone in
boats and cut and pulled with knives and hooks fixed at the end of long
poles.
Further inland where the cottager has not wrack or llach, he burns the
land and manures with the ashes. AS most of the arable land in our mountains
is peaty, it burns well after it has been exposed to a couple of weeks of
dry weather. A few live coals are laid down and the dry mould takes fire and
smoulders still more is heaped upon it. These heaps burn for weeks together.
At the one time there may be from one score to fur score such fires in one
little field; so, on a fine day in April it is not strange to see a thousand
little smoke spirals curling up all over the bosom of a small valley.
The spade is the universal implement of tillage. In the odd instance in
which a horse employed for carrying manure, he "backloads" only-that is,
carries his burden in creels with hinged bottoms. In the spring and in the
harvest most of the women have to take part in the field work, the lighter
parts of the work only being assigned to her. Though in the districts where
every able bodied male migrates for a portion of the year to Scotland to
earn the rent, the women must do both the heavier and the lighter.

Hearts Are Light in Donegal
Because our people are very poor, and sorely laden with worldly
crosses, and innocent of the luxuries and the pleasures of the people of
other countries, it is a very ridiculous assumption that they are therefore
to be pitied. Even the stranger who has mingled with them a little knows
moreover that far from dreaming that they need pity the poorest and the most
sorely tried of our people are ever extending that commodity to those who
are better off (according to the world's rating) but who are nevertheless
very far from knowing the happiness they enjoy and from knowing the beauties
they know. And the secret of it all is because the Celtic soul sets small
store upon material things save insofar as such are absolutely necessary;
because the Celt is a dreamer and a spiritualist; because his temperament is
optimistic and enthusiastic. There are poor mountain men whom I know whose
ignorance-because it is scholastic and worldly ignorance-would be guffawed
at by the scholarly and enlightened men, who, intellectually are not worthy
to untie their shoe latchets and who, moreover, are in heart wealth to those
poor men as beggars to millionaires.
Be the day black or bright, the work slavish or light, our people are
ever, ever merry and have the kindly failte and genial joke for the passer.
And out of ten such who are soaked and shivering on a potato ridge in March,
I can count more whose hearts are singing than in any ten times ten men of
ease and affluence in the mansions of New York.
[This paragraph has a chunk out of it and is not readable]

At Night in the Cottage
At night the fire is often the only fire in the cottage. And with the
aid of fir blocks it makes a light both effective and cheery, a light that
plays merrily with the girating delf and tins upon the dresser; and makes
the big shadows leap up the walls and quiver over the cupples in the roof.
For use in particular occasions oil lamps now coming into general use, but
not so long since the old man nightly cut and seasoned long, slight
fir-spalls for casual use. He cut and dressed the spalls as he sat in the
corner giving his reminiscences or telling a tale to the eager group that
knitted or carded wool, or rested from a hard day's work, around the fire.
And afterwards by the spalls aid, eh read for them from the weekly paper the
exciting news of the week before last. The fir-spall is still in use to some
extent-but its one time contemporaries, the rush-light (made by dipping a
peeled rush in melted grease) and the home made resin candle have passed
away.
[This paragraph has a chunk out of it and is not readable but appears
to be about the "parish beggars and the good reception he is given in
homes.]...And the beggarman acts the parts of a despot who ored?. He
dictates to the household, and, if necessary, harangues and reprimands if
due respect is not paid to his words.
If he is one who makes profession of a school education, he may occupy
a leisure hour by examining the children-"puttin' them through their
facin's"- in spelling and calculations and then lecture their father and
mother with scathing severity for not keeping more closely at school such
discreditable calculators. And finally when he considers it time he orders
the household on their knees whilst he leads them in the Long Rosary-and
when it is finished, dismisses them to bed, after which he smokes at his
leisure, rakes the fire when he chooses, and stretches him on his own
shaketown (made of an armful of clean oat-straw) by the fireside, at his
leisure.
In every Donegal cottage on every night round the year the mother
(provided, of course, there is no tyrannical beggarman to supersede her)
leads the family in the Rosary before retiring to bed; and at the end of the
Rosary prays for all dead relatives and friends; for the boys and girls in
America, mentioning each by name and beseeching God to guard and guide them
amongst the stranger and bring them safely home again and for all who died
in war or at sea, and have none to pray for them.
Afterwards she rakes the fire, that is, completely covers the coals
with a pile of ashes (which preserves them alive till morning) sweeps the
hearth, cuts the sign of the cross on it with the tongs, and lays the tongs
lengthwise by it to ward off evil things, and then retires to peaceful
slumbers.

Copyright, 1900 by Seumus MacManus


Cathy Joynt Labath
The Irish in Iowa
http://www.celticcousins.net/irishiniowa/index.htm
Abstracts from Irish Newspapers
http://www.newspaperabstracts.com/Ireland/index.html

This thread:

• [IA-IRISH] Item on Co. Donegal...from 1900 Iowa Newspaper by "Cathy Joynt Labath" <>