Food People Used to Eat

For the dinner, the family would sit on the floor around a ‘skib’ which would be left on a pot. They would have a ‘nogging’ full of sour milk and sometimes herring roasted on a grid iron. There would also be oaten bread called ‘aran coirce’. There wouldn’t be much meat except for fowl’s meat.

Long ago people didn’t eat much food on Good Friday except for oaten bread baked standing and tea without milk or sugar.

When Christmas would come the man of the house would go to town and buy a stone of flour.

When tea first came to the area the people used to boil it and eat the leaves and throw away the tea water.

People had no delph but had a metal vessel called a nogging and a wooden pail. When delph came first they were all brown and blue and they were very heavy.

Glenamaddy, Co. Galway

Collector: Maggie Gibney

Informant: Tom Diskin, Kiltullagh, Co. Galway

Duchas, ‘The Schools’ Collection’, www.duchas.ie