By Kathy Ryder

Like most rural households in mid-twentieth century Ireland, my family had to provide our own turf, but in our case, there was massive manual labour involved.
There was only a rough path to our patch of bog, so having saved it all, we had to bring every sod home with a donkey and cleeves.
Because my father worked away from home, a neighbouring man was employed for seven days to cut the turf with a sléan – a spade-like implement with an extra wing on one side that slid through the bog and separated the wet sods.

The turf bank had to be scrawed (the top layer of grass taken off) to access the layers of bog underneath. There were four layers called spits.
Three of these were thrown up on to higher ground, spread over that grassy area to dry, the fourth was thrown where previous years turf had been cut, we called that the logful. Footing came next. That involved standing five or six sods upright against each other with one across the top. This allowed the air through and helped the drying process.

On one occasion, when my three oldest sisters were on the bog footing turf, and I presume out of boredom, they decided to have a screaming competition. Mary and Teresa were the screamers and Bridget was the judge. Unfortunately, they seemed to have been quite exceptional screamers and could be heard at home. Daddy, who was home on holidays, came rushing up to the bog to see what was wrong.
He wasn’t amused, “I thought ye were on fire” and “I could hear Bridget’s voice distinctly” he said. I’m not sure if the others let her take the blame, or if they were honest enough to tell him that Bridget had been the judge.

When the turf was dry, the process of ‘putting it out’ to a central secure dry place, where it was built into a stack, began.
From there it was safe and accessible, regardless of how wet the ground got. The ‘putting out’ was done with a donkey and (cleibhs) cleeves – they were square baskets made from sally and willow rods.
Firstly, we had to straddle the donkey, which consisted of a straw straddle across her back.
Basically, that was a Hessian bag, filled with straw that had been plaited very tightly, woven into a very sturdy mat, and sewn at each end. It had to act as a buffer between the donkey’s body and the cleeves.

Then there was a wooden contraption called a crutch, which was permanently attached to the straddle, by ‘sewing’ with rope, or with thatching twine.
The crutch was made from two pieces of solid wood about fifteen inches long, with a curved piece over the top, which joined them together.

On top of the curved piece, two wooden pegs – scurógs – were inserted. Attached to the crutch was a strap that crossed underneath the donkey’s belly called the ‘bellyband’, that was pulled tight in order to keep the straddle centred.

The scurógs, were used to hang the cleeves on, one each side, hung by a sturdy piece of plaited rope, which was woven into the cleeve. Then there was the cherach; that was a strap that was attached to the back of the straddle and went under the donkey’s tail, to stop the straddle falling forward over her head.
The path from the banks to the ‘putting-out stack’ was short but could get very wet and boggy; we had to do repair work on the worst part of that path every year, by building flags across drains and bad patches, these were called keshs.

Despite our best efforts, the poor donkey often went boggin’ and we had to empty the turf, or take off the cleeves, in order that she could get up. I worried constantly about that happening. A spell of dry weather was the only solution.

There was a lot of filling and emptying turf involved in the putting out, and for this pardógs were very useful; they were like cleeves but had a wooden bottom, which was held in place by a wishbone-like piece of a tree branch, called a thónóg, the single end of which, could be fitted into a looped rope and attached to the upper part of the cleeve.
When you pulled the rope off the end, the loose bottom dropped down and all the turf fell onto the ground.
This made for quick emptying. You did, however, always need a person each side for balancing purposes.

Continue reading in this week’s Ireland’s Own