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Skeealyn Vannin, Disk 1 Track 10: Conversation: Annie Kneale, J.W. (Bill) Radcliffe and Mark Braide with Kevin Danaher

https://www.youtube.com/embed/Yw4FK8g-yIc

Date(s): 1948

Creator(s): Irish Folklore Commission

Transcript: A. Kneale
On the “Sally Greesagh” (hot ashes), yes. Salt mackerels. Yes, well, you could tell...

Interviewer
Breck sailjey.

A. Kneale
Mm? Breck sailjys, breck sailjey, jean er yn greesagh, jeant er yn greesagh. Aw. Oh, yes, the greesagh was the ash, you know. I never tasted anything sweeter than that in my life, and if I was home I wouldn’t have ate it, but aw, it was sweet. Rucking hay down in the meadow out towards Ashcroft there, all ripe sallies, you know, but they used to be putting the herring on the greesagh too to roast it. Always the men would be coming in from the field at night and they would get their porridge and a cup of tea afterwards and a herring done on the greesagh, that was on the fire, you know, but on the ashes like.

M. Braide
Well, what else is there now? What about the people who were in bed and the roof blew off?

A. Kneale
Aw, irree Thobm, irree Thobm, irree Thobm, ta’n thie ersooyl.
Aw’ rise Tom, rise Tom, rise Tom, the house is away.

Aw, cre’n boirey red ta...
Aw, what worry is...

Interviewer
Could you put that in Manx?

A. Kneale
But that was what he was saying......

but the old people used to be, Billy it was a ... they were making a living with going to pull bent, out to the shaslagh there (Shaslagh, Bent, or Marram Grass) pulling the bent you know, and making it in sheaves and selling it for a penny a sheaf, and there was twelve bundles in what they call a stook of bent and it would be a shilling and men used to do that in the winter time, when time would be slack, for to thatch houses, going to Douglas up way, and going to Laxey and different places. Two shillings and four shillings for four dozen sheaves of bent. Yes, and you know you put your hand down like that, and then you put your other hand on top of that and you pulled up the stalk and when you would have so many stalks together you would double them and shake them like this to shake the sand out, then put them all straight. I’ve seen my uncle, old uncle doing that and selling it at a shilling a stook. I think it was a yard or a yard and a half the band that you were tying. They were two long stalks of bent and you knotted them, and tied the sheaf with that, and you pulled it.

Didn’t Johnny Lace and them go one time? Was it up to Castletown? and Johnny, Johnny said it was growing so high, and he lifted his hands, the bent was growing so high. But he was telling about the thatching. Now, that old ... You’ll hardly get thatch houses now. Our old thatch house out there (on Ballagarrett Ayres) is some of the oldest. That’s a very, very old place, you know. Aren’t they waiting now to get a new roof on it, that’s the way it’s not thatched. But that’s - oh, I don’t know what age will that... There was two dwelling houses there one time and there was a school in a stable and old Danny Teare and Robbie Garrett, they went to school in the stable, she was an old Dame that kept it in.

M. Braide
How much did they pay for that - a penny a week or something like that?

A. Kneale
Aw no - shilling for about three months!

M. Braide
Shilling a quarter.

A. Kneale
Yes.

(Transcribed by Walter Clarke, Ramsey)

Language: Manx

Collection: Sound Archive

Level: WHOLE

ID number: SA 0579/1/10

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