Two Geese

Schools food heritage project 2018

Padraic Mannion, Brierfield NS Aged 12

The two geese flying away
Padraic Mannion

Getting ready for Christmas

When my granny was younger, she lived in Kilkerrin near a lake.  Back then, Christmas was even a bigger deal than it is now.  Before Christmas, their whole family would save up so they could afford two geese to kill and eat on Christmas day.  Every year, they bought the geese in Glenamaddy market.  The geese usually cost £2 each which was a lot of money back then.

Disaster struck!

However, on Christmas Eve, disaster struck!  My granny’s father Roger went out into the yard to check on all the animals and every animal was there except for the two geese.  Roger raised his eyes to heaven in despair and when he did, what did he spy high in the air only the two geese.  He quickly got the rest of the family as they watched their dinner fly off into the sunset.

As their plan A dinner flew away, that forced Roger to kill the plan B dinner which was the big cockrel.  The next evening, they had Christmas dinner.  In the end, they had the cockrel for dinner.

Wings clipped

The next year, it was Christmas as normal.  They bought two geese again, one for Christmas day and one for small Christmas day on January 6th.

They killed the geese, plucked the geese, cooked the geese and ate the geese.  They had feathers for their pillows and a quill to sweep the hearth.  That year, my granny’s mother had Honora cut the geese’ wings off so they would never fly away again.

 

Original handwritten recipe

 

Cover page

This page was added on 27/06/2018.

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