“Shroughlough” was the local Irish name for a fungus or moss that grew on rocks it gave shades of yellow, white and green. Also used for colours were heathers from the bog, roots of water lily and the roots of heathers, whin or gorse bush flowers and seaweed. To dye the wool onion peels were boiled in water and the wool was placed into it. You’d be delighted and even offer to do it because you’d get to wait up longer. As children we would wait for the spindle to be full up so that we could roll it up, especially if it was near bed time. When the spindle was full it was taken off and a new spindle was put on. Both hands were needed to ensure the roll was even and taut as it went onto the spindle. A band connected the wheel to the spindle, which turned the spindle. The roll of carded wool was put on the spindle and the big wheel was turned around. It might be a few days later when you got back to the spinning, you’d spend the night spinning, make two good balls of thread, then you wouldn’t be long running up a jumper. Once the wool was carded it was made into rolls and left in a big box for spinning at a later date. Carding the wool was done to get all the fibres even in it experience would tell you when they were even. ![]() The teased wool was placed between the teeth of the two cards and pulled back and forth. Cards are two paddle type implements which have wire teeth. The wool then needed to be teased and carded. Once the wool was washed it was taken out of the bucket and laid out on the grass or up on a stone fence to dry. It was amazing to see how all the dirt and bits of grass would come out by just using plain water. Soap was not used as it would take the natural oils out of the wool. The wool was then taken and washed in a bucket of water, very gently. Raddle was a paint used to identify one’s own sheep, usually red or blue colours, and applied on the sheep’s back or neck after shearing. Most sheep had “raddle” on them and this was also cut off. Once the sheep were sheared, the wool was prepared for washing. Every house around the area had a spinning wheel it was given a prominent place in the kitchen, people had to walk around it and nobody was allowed to touch it apart from the woman of the house as the big wheel was important but dangerous for children. You can search among surname clusters here.The spinning wheel was the main engine in the house, everyone depended on it. The * symbol can be used at the end of a search term to search all words beginning with that search term for example, ‘folk*’ will find ‘folklore’, ‘folktale’ etc.Īccent marks (‘fadas’) are ignored in the search. It does not recognise inflected or derived forms (a search for ‘year’ will not return ‘years’) and variant spellings of words are not recognised (a search for ‘centre’ will not return ‘center’). Please note that this is not a ‘clever’ search. You can switch from category to category by using the tabs above the results.
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