School: Robinstown (roll number 9039)
- Location:
- Robinstown, Co. Meath
- Teacher: Teresa Coyne
Archival Reference
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0698, Page 438
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- XML “A Flail”
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- A flail was the old means of threshing corn. It was made of two pieces of wood one called the hand staff and the other called the bolchin. The hand staff which was the thicker of the two was about four feet in length and the bolchin about five or six inches shorter. To one end of each of them a kind of split scollop was bound leaving a space at the top through which they were tied afterwards. They were joined together by a medilan generally made of an ell skin.
The hand staff was the part that the man held in his hand when threshing tand the bolchin was the part he swung over his head. After it had been threshed by the flail it had to be put through a whinning maching to remove the chaff from it. The first threshing was done in Winter and second threshing was done in Spring.
- Collector
- Moira Carroll
- Gender
- Female
- Age
- 13
