Eating Outside

Margaret Heagney 21^st July 2017 Deerpark Social Services Centre, Ballinasloe, Co. Galway

Eating Outside

Interviewer: Clare Doyle (CD)

Interviewee: Margaret Heagney (MH)

CD: Do you remember going out, maybe saving the hay and bring out food…?

MH: Oh, I do! I followed the horses, I loved going out at hay! Getting out of the kitchen! I was never a person for the kitchen. There was two, me and my sister and one of us would have to stay in to wash up after the meal and sweep the floor and tidy up…

CD: Tidy up

MH: Yes, and whatever. I didn’t want that and I said no, I’m going out into the field…

CD: You liked being outside?

MH: I did, I loved it! To be out with the horses.

CD: What, what kind of food would you have to bring out to the men in the fields, or would they come into the house for it?

MH: For a meal?

CD: Yeah, after when they were saving the hay

MH: Oh, the tea out in the field was lovely, just Christmas now! Well, mammy and my sister, God rest her, would come and maybe she might have made a spotted dog, cake or something and bring out the tea in the field, she’d bring the teapot and bring the mugs.

CD: Ah, fair play to her!

MH: I used to think this was lovely. Sitting down with your mug of tea and the hay, the hay going into your cup. But you didn’t mind!

CD: It was like a picnic!

MH: T’was lovely.

CD: It was like a picnic!

MH: T’was like a picnic. Oh, it was, even better, oh, we enjoyed it

CD: And did you save turf from the bog?

MH: No, my father wouldn’t allow us. He said it was no place for girls. But instead, he said, you can have your little job. Myself and my sister would go out into the fields and we’d have turnips and mangles, you thin them.

CD: Oh, you’d have to thin the carrots as well, did ye?

MH: And the carrots and the parsnips, everything like that

CD: So, that was your job?

MH: Yes, that was our job, he wouldn’t let us go to the bog.