Her floor fell in on her house she had, so the neighbours all got around and went in the woods and they cut the lumber and took it to the mill and got it sawed and built a little house for her. And then her sister got old: she came there, and she was there, too. They used the cradle hill1 for a cellar. The old ladies passed away later on. Trades I believe the first blacksmith there in Kilmuir was MacQueen. And I believe he was of some of them that came from Point Prim . I haven't got his first name, but we were working on the road some 40 years ago and we were widening it, and here was ashes and irons, and an old man told me that was a MacQueen had the forge there. So he got old, I guess, and he passed off and then Dan Fraser came on the scene - oh, it's 90 years ago. Any blacksmith in the country then, young fellows, would go to learn the trade: it was at Nelson's Blacksmith in Montague for a number of years, and there was a lot of them learned the trade there. There was Barney Docherty up in The Valley , Iona there. He learned at Nelson's. They didn't get any money, just got their board, stayed at the place, yeah. Barney told me he walked to The Valley every Saturday night and walked back Sunday evening. There was a shoemaker there - there was two shoemakers at one time - but this man was John MacDonald and they called him Shoemaker. I always thought that was his right name but his name was John MacDonald and he was a shoemaker, made all the shoes for people around. He lived to be quite an old man. I remember seeing him. He used wooden pegs. Probably you heard of that yourself. I don't know where they were made but they were of good wood and they put them in the soles of the shoes. They used to make the shoes up to the knees there, the leather shoes - just a leather boot with no lace, none at all. And they had to have wooden pegs, and there was a heavy squeak to the shoe. You'd hear them going along on the floors with them, going into church: that was their dress shoe, too. There was a tanner in Brooklyn , George Hume . He had a tannery there, quite a big place. And he used to make the leather for the shoemakers around and harness makers from the hides of the cattle from the area. I think his main chemical used was hemlock bark.... People used to knock 1. The terms "cradle hill" and "cradle hollow" refer to the hillocks and hollows in the ground resulting from the uprooting of trees. 16 BELFAST PEOPLE