electricity, just the big lamps. And she was knitting, and telling him in Gaelic all about her trip and what went on and what she found out and all this. And we were kids, and we used to laugh. We’d say, “What in the world are they talking about?” We wouldn’t know. I couldn’t catch the Gaelic at all.

Sisters? I had seven sisters. There was eight girls and four boys. There was 12 children. But, of course, I didn’t even know the older ones. There was five or six of them that had been gone to the States when I was little, I guess perhaps ’fore I was born. And I never knew them as well as the last ones.

I can remember when the ones that went to Boston, they used to make up a barrel, one of those big barrels —you remember those big barrels? — of clothing. They’d buy some here, different places, and they’d be gathering them and gathering them. That barrel was packed to the top with all kinds of clothing.

And [we] lived happy. We used to think we were poor, and we were rich compared to today. My father, in the fall, he’d always kill a great, big animal you know. And he’d kill a pork and we had our own eggs and hens and cream and butter and everything.

We had homemade bread. And I never liked porridge but my mother used to make porridge of the dark whole wheat. There’d be a glass of milk in front of me and I used to take the porridge — I’d take a spoonful you know — and pretend I was eating it and I’d drop it in my milk. Then I’d chuck the milk away. Cheating? But we had a happy life over there.

They had sheep and they’d take the wool to the mill... and they’d have it carded, I guess. But [my mother] used to have things herself she used to card with. And she’d spin it. And [she’d] make it into socks — long socks that’d come up to here. They weren’t little. The big, long, woollen stockin ’ s you know. We didn ’t have any of the riggings [of] today. We had those hard leather shoes and they were as cold as ice. And that’s why we had to have the big, woollen things, you see. That’s the way we lived.

We had no heat upstairs at all. I remember my mother, oh, it’d be awful frost then. Way below zero. If there happened to be a cobweb somewhere it’d be white, all white frost.

[We were] healthy as trout. Not a cold. But you’d have all those wool blankets. Sometimes she used to put hardwood sticks in the oven and they’d be good and hot. And she’d wrap newspapers around them and put them in your bed. You get your feet on that, you went right to sleep.

Go into the houses today, and everything is a push button... . But, you

—————___________ 26 BELFAST PEOPLE