School: Clooncullaun (roll number 13163)

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1. Bread

   

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   Bread nowadays is almost entirely made from wheaten flour but this was not so in the past.

   Wheat was always grown in Ireland and ground into flour locally and almost every parish in this country had its corn-mill.

   But the corn crop mostly relied on by the humbler classes was the oat-crop. Wheaten bread was more or less looked at as a luxury only to be enjoyed by the rich. The working classes mostly used oat bread as their staple food. This was considerably cheaper than wheaten bread and at the same time more sustaining for the hard working man. The farmer sent his oat-crop to the local mill and had it ground into oat-meal but in case of emergency the hand quern was used in almost every house for grinding the oats into oat-meal.

   It was possible - and very often was actually done in this parish - for a person on getting up in the morning to have no food in the house. He took his hook and cut a few sheaves of oats. These he struck against stones in his house or

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   Transcribed by a member of our volunteer transcription project.

   History Edit

   Topics

   1. products
      1. food products (~3,601)
         1. bread (~2,063)

   Language

   English

   Informant

   Mat Conroy

   Gender

   Male

   Age

   64

   Address

   Clooncullaan, Co. Roscommon