goodness. Well, oh, the material ’d be good, you know, better in a way than

it would be now. Well, the dye. The only dye that I would mean was this brown, right

brown. They call it crottle... . I’ve seen [people] go with a bag, and take a whole bag of crottle, just a kind of a moss that grew on trees. Hardwood trees. Maple.

You’d take it home and you’d have a big pot, not as big as the pot, I don’t think, [for] the soap. You’d put this crottle into this pot and you’d boil it and then you’d take it and then you’d put your yarn or whatever was going to dye — if you were making mats, perhaps, it’d be a blanket or whatever you like. You’d put it in and brown it. It’d never fade. It was the most beautiful brown you ever knew in your life.

Everybody had sheep. Not so very many — perhaps, 12 or 15. But in the spring of the year the sheep’d be sheared, and then the wool’d be washed; put it out in the grass and dry it and then you’d have to pick it, every little burr out of it. You know how sheep would be. In the pen there’d be chaff and everything. Pick it all off and send it to be carded to the mill. They’d come home in these long, long rows. Then they’d spin that.

Mother’d spin, she was great to spin. She’d spin for...cloth or blankets, or she’d spin to make knitting yarn. There’d be a difference, you know, different grade. There was a different tool.

I did a little bit but I wasn’t much of a spinner. After we were married I had an idea I was going to want a wheel. A spinning wheel. And up there, at the head of Orwell there, there was a, I forget his name, I think his name was Worth. He used to make spinning wheels. My husband went up one day and bought a spinning wheel. And you know what he paid for it? Five dollars. I forget now his name — whether it was Worth. But anyway, he used to make them and he’s now gone long ago. But he lived right up on top there... and I remember Joe buying the wheel from him for five dollars. I’m married 71 years so it must be, oh, perhaps 66 or 7 years. I’m awful glad to have the wheel and the wheel’s as good as new. But it’s a treasure, I’m telling you that now. Just five dollars. I was lucky to get it.

Joe Morrissey

There’s a race at Vernon, horse race, and I met [my husband] there. That was in the summertime; but in the wintertime he used to come across on the ice.... Really and truly, I just knew in no time the type he was. When he spoke of getting married, he told me what he owed on the place. Now,

132 BELFAST PEOPLE