Listen to me tell my story:
My name is Moll. My father and mother had 13 children. My father was a tinsmith he made cans and buckets my mother would go off and sell them. She’d get good money for them, she would go to the houses begging what they needed, food and that. That’s what kept them going.
They would make soda bread when they came home bacon and cabbage from the country would be lovely. They would throw the potatoes into a big dustbin lid and everyone had a feed out of it. Anyone who was passing could have them it didn’t matter who it was Travellers or settled people it was there for everyone. There would be pots of this and big open fires it was lovely.
Soda bread was baked on a lid in a stand on the fire and then my mother used to bake boxty loaves she’d boil the spuds and grate the raw spuds and put them all into a basin and put the flour into it and mix them all up together and leave them for 3 hours cooking. That is what we used to live on.
We lived a good life as Travellers. We had no schooling we were moving every other day from one county to another. No education but we got our holy communion and conformation so that was the main thing in our family. They brought us up well.
My mother would put a big can over the fire and boil the can and put the real tea, the loose tea, and the sugar and the milk – it all went in and everyone had a cup of that tea. It didn’t matter who it was, it was there for everyone and when they were finished they left it beside the fire, it was lovely.
