Archive (11 life histories found)
'My father was adjusting a plough behind the tractor when it jerked and the middle finger of his right hand was severed'
My father and his brothers had purchased the Deerpark Farm from Lord Massareeue - it must have been around 1939 - and we children used to love going to Antrim and roaming free there. Unfortunately I have one unhappy memory among all the happy…
'The flood was rising'
I remember the day war was declared in September 1939. It was on a Sunday at 11 a.m. There had been very heavy rain causing the river Bann banks to overflow. The flood was rising in one of my father's fields. My father tried to get as much help as…
'I was born and brought up in a townland known as Lisnisk'
I was born and brought up in a townland then known as Lisnisk 2 £miles from Rathfriland, 10 miles from Banbridge South Down. I had two brothers. One older and one younger and a sister 5 years younger. When I was young my father was ill with…
'...my Grandmother came rushing down the road, dressed as always in her 'Widows Weeds', shouting frantically "Come out of there, the fairies will take you away"'
The farmland in Corragh is not great and there is a lot of bogland, so turf cutting and saving was a big part of the activity during the summer. In the middle of one piece of bogland was a raised brilliant green field with a single hawthorn tree in…
Tags: berries, fairy, fairy tree, Farm
'The taste of that hot soda bread with loads of homemade butter still lingers in my memory some sixty years later'
My Mother's Mother came from Co. Wicklow and her brother had the small family farm so that each year, when we were old enough we were packed off to the country for the summer holidays. Her brother, Tom Quinn was married to Judy Burke and they were…
'The farm was an excellent school of practical learning '
Clondaliever, the townsland where I was born in 1941, is in north Westmeath. It is the place where the three parishes of Collinstown, Taughmon and Delvin meet. As most facilities in rural Ireland were to be found at the centre of a parish, the…
Tags: Farm, father, horse and cart, poverty, tractor
Wooden Butter Churn
Tags: Butter churn, cow, Farm, milk