School: Cúl an Dasain (Cooladawson) (roll number 1620)
- Location:
- Cooladawson, Co. Donegal
- Teacher: Pádraig Mag Uidhir
Archival Reference
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 1100, Page 35
Image and data © National Folklore Collection, UCD.
See copyright details.
DownloadOpen data
Available under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
Note: We will soon deprecate our XML Application Programming Interface and a new, comprehensive JSON API will be made available. Keep an eye on our website for further details.
On this page
- (continued from previous page)of the family.
Owing to the increased number of plated and tiled and corrugated iron roofs, the thatcher's trade is not so much in evidence now and the scolb gatherer is seldom seen around our fields raking the strong tough briars from which the best scolbs were made, and on which depended so much of the thatcher's efficiency.
The past generation knew very little of the travelling spinning women and the present generation never saw the going from farm house to farm house with her little treadle wheel on her shoulder spending a week or so converting their sheep's wool into knitting and weaver's yarn for the looms of the country weavers. Near to the village of Killygordon in the townland of Dromore, a 'tuck mill' as it was called was at work for the purpose of 'thickening' cloth. It was owned by a man named Scott. This man visted the village houses with a couple of pails every morning and collected the urine from the slop vessels and in some way utilised it in the thickening of cloth, blankets and other woollen fabrics that required to be so treated.
When old country women wore woollen bonnets it was customary for some other younger woman in the district to specialise in the knitting or rather crocheting of them. They were usually made from black wool, little trimmings of puce or blue or crimson wool, had two crocheted strings to tie under the chin but the most essential part of all was a little net which was crocheted at the back to hold the bun of hair above the nape of the neck(continues on next page)
