Volume: CBÉ 0463 (Part 2)
- Date
- 1937–1938
- Collector
- Location
Archival Reference
The Main Manuscript Collection, Volume 0463, Page 0142
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- Year 1867
Taken down from a woman born in 1867.
My father and mother went through the famine. My father got for his week's wages making roads, one St or one 1/2 St of Indian Meal. That was after the famine. The women did not know how to cook the Indian Meal - when boiling, it spattered all round. They did not know when it was cooked. Some people saying, the meal should be left cooking all night - some going as far as saying, the Devil's mother had a hand in it - thus preventing the Indian Meal from getting cooked. So the women got instructions how to cook it, but as many had neither oven or pan on which to bake the cake they baked it on a green leaf of cabbage covered by another leaf of cabbage on the hearth.
The women did not know how to use the flour. When making a cake they frequently put a cup of soda to a saucepan of flour - or sometimes half to half. It took the women some time to learn how to make soda bread.
