Azure Sky...now known as A.S...was wondering whether or not the people who lived in our cottage had been relatively well off...and the answer is that they were.
They had two cows and pigs and about ten acres of good land...there must have been a time when they kept a horse or horses because when I dug the garden over I found dozens of horse-shoes as well as tiny donkey shoes...
The land goes back beyond the cottage almost into the nearby village...we know for sure that the piece of ground immediately beyond the river bridge was planted with potatoes...further back were fields used for hay because there's actually a right of way right through our yard for the hay-carts...that's still in place...saw no reason to change it.
The bridge consists of rotting railway sleepers so I doubt anyone would be willingly to risk driving a fully laden cart and donkey across it...the wonky bridge is relatively recent...prior to it being put in place it was simply a ford across the water because a hundred years or so ago the level of the river changed when a new reservoir was built...further up stream is another ford where the old corn mill once stood.
We also know that our cottage was one of those frequently visited by Douglas Hyde...the first President of Ireland...he was a great advocate for keeping the Irish language alive and would come to our street to talk with the people who lived here in their native tongue...
The people who lived here may have been a cut above their neighbours but they still kept the cow indoors during the winter months...there is still the faint outline of the small door close to the hearth where the cow could come and go as she pleased. Remember those cows were not like the huge Friesians you see in the fields nowadays...these were small cows with long horns. Probably very tame as well, because they lived with the same people for all of their useful working lives.
So with milk from the cow to go to the creamery every day...eggs from the hens to sell at the weekly market and plenty enough land to grow enough potatoes and cabbages to feed a family...not to mention a crop of hay to either sell on or to keep for the cow and her calf and the donkey and horse...'our' people would have been thought well off.
We know too little about the people who lived here before Mikey and his family...all Mikey's sisters went to America...he stayed here after his parents passed on...but who lived here in the place we call home before Mikey's parents we haven't the faintest idea. Irish census records were destroyed...either from being pulped for the War effort or by fire in the records office...
So we have to put bits of information together...doors beside hearths were for the animals...children slept with the hens and the cats under the thatch...out-shots were used for those who were sick or for the old parents...Douglas Hyde came to our street because records say it was so...neighbours remember snippets from their childhood and from listening to the stories their grandparents told...Hubert and Paddy are brilliant for that...
It has been estimated that our cottage is probably about two hundred years old...that's according to the surveyor...I'd love to know who it was who built it...who was it that gathered masses of horsehair to mix with a rudimentary mortar to keep the stones in place...who gathered the reeds from the river bank for the thatch...
What happened to the dresser laden down with delph and the goose-wings to dust it...was there a Holy Water stoop just inside the back door?
We'll never know of course...not now.
Old Stone Walls And Ripe Damsons...And being Lucky...
~~~~~~~~~~TWO FOR THE PRICE OF ONE TODAY~ ACTUALLY THERE IS NO CHARGE
Keep walking Healthunlockeders, you might see something like this while your out.
