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This story is taken from an interview with Mary Mulligan, and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions. The interviewer was David Reid, and the transcription was by Bruce Logan.
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My sister was married that day. When we lived in the country then and she was expecting her first baby. And then there was no electric, no running water — it was oil lamps to the end toilet. And she was having her baby. And this wee country man we knew, and it was an awful night. And then it wasn’t so many cars, it was all bikes. And this wee country man drove 3 miles into Kirkoven, brought the nurse in the bar of the bike. Our Kathleen was having the baby. And the old country woman that owned the house, her and my mummy and all. The baby was born — a big, big baby, I remember it, like. A wee boy, it was. And my mummy and the midwife were rubbing whiskey on it, trying to bring the baby round. Now, could you …
“ach, yer wain’s gone, you needn’t, the wain’s gone”. They were rubbing whiskey on it to try to bring the baby, but it died. It was buried. It’s buried down there in Ballycran.

Well, I remember, whenever we went to the country after the blitz, the milkman used to take the pony and trap out on a Sunday for going to church. And we used to try and catch him. And my mummy used to say “Yous’ll walk”. It was about a mile and a half we had to walk. And we always tried to get the pony and trap so we didn’t have to walk straight up the hill. The pony and trap, we loved that.
We used to have the bread man, then. Not so much even now, but this was in the country where you lived so far away. Every Saturday, and wee Jimmy the baker we used to call him, and he used to pull out the tray with all the lovely buns and we used to all picked a wee bun for our tea, like.
After the blitz when my father was here on his own, Barney Hughes put their hampers on the train. The train went to Draperstown, and they used to put the hampers on. This morning the train wasn’t running, and they were sending a van up. And my father got a lift in the van, up to safety. So he came up with Barney Hughes’ bread to Draperstown. I’ll always remember that, he arrived with Barney Hughes’ bread.
Of course, my younger was an agent for Barney Hughes’ bread. But it used to come in the hampers in the morning. A ticket a loaf, and six loaves. No sliced bread. And the baps and all that.
What was the last thing that was rationed? Meat? No, bread.
Because there was no wheat growing to make the flour, and it was brown bread you were getting. I loved the brown bread, it was a brown loaf. Plain loaf, it was brown.
Very coarse.
And that was the last thing to come off the rations. It was because there was no white flour. There was no fields growing it or anything like that.
Sweet coupons were always a nuisance, weren’t they?
But I used to love the bread. Do you remember it? I loved the taste of it.

[Is that like wheaten bread now?]
It’s plain bread, only it was brown. Whatever kind of flour or whatever was used in it.
2 ounces of butter.
There was no such thing as sliced bread back then.
And then there was what they called “dried eggs”, powdered eggs. I think you could probably still get them. But in them days there was no soft powdered eggs, you know?
Just put a taste of water on them and heat it up. You could only get scrambled eggs. A big tin of dried eggs, that’s what you called them.
Wasn’t it about 2 ounces of butter we got? 4 ounces of sugar, was it? One egg.
And there was no bananas. I remember our Brendan, it was only when Brendan was a baby, and only if you had a baby in the house you were allowed bananas. He never would eat bananas, so we ate the bananas. And he was born in 42, so that was after the blitz and that. But there was no bananas, and kids didn’t know what a banana was. Anybody who was a baby then did not know what a banana was, and our Brendan for years wouldn’t touch bananas, and now you couldn’t stop him eating them. And you were only allowed so many bananas for the baby, so whatever … Potassium … Under 5, it was, something like that. There was things that babies got, they didn’t eat them because they didn’t know what they were.
[no apples from Armagh, the “Orchard County”?]
You maybe would have got the odd apple, yes. Because they would have come from Armagh. And pears maybe as hard as bricks.
Crab apples, we used to call them.
They were as hard as bricks. You couldn’t … sure, there used to be orchards around here.
At Garwood Barracks there used to be an orchard, then another one up the waterworks. At the back of the waterworks.
Sure we used to get caught robbing the orchards. And there was one down here somewhere we used to go to as well.
Well, I remember the one at Garwood, cause we used to get chased out of that there.
No, we used to be around the waterworks, that was where we used to play. That’s where we used to get the apples and pears, robbing the orchard.

[was land put over for agriculture?]
Oh yes. There’s houses built on all that land now.
There used to be what you called “Double Summer Time”, after the war and during the war. That was to let the farmers get anything in. Clear for the brightness. You know it’s only one hour, but it used to be what you called “Double Summer Time”. That was 2 hours, and that was to give the farmers a chance to get all the crops and all in.

[Like when you put your clocks forward?]
They made it double summer time. It went 2 hours forward in the summertime to give the farmers and that time for all the crops and that.
If you think about all the fields and all that were in the country then, and they’re all houses built in them now. They’re just taking the fields. I mean, the farmers are just selling off their land for building property on.
Roads and all.

I was just reading statistics …
France and England
France has more farmers, England has more land.

Even take the big houses up the Antrim Road. Then they were all very well-to-do people, they maybe had 2 maids or a housekeeper, whatever you like to call them. And now they’re being sold, and there’s maybe 2 detached houses and 6 apartments in the same space where there was one house. That’s the way land is going now, and has been for the last 20 years gradually. It’s getting like that, where it was green fields and things like that, it’s now, property’s all going up on it. And even in the country, when I go down to Ardglass every other week and, it’s surprising. When I started going down there 30 years ago, and now, you wouldn’t know the place — with all these houses going up here and there. The fields are going away by degrees. It looks more like towns now than the country.
Where we go to it’s still all land, still all farmlands. Our house sitting on its own with all that.

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