大象传媒

This story is taken from an interview with Adela Tinsley nee Griffin, 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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We had to go to school with our gas masks and different things. We just had to soldier on, and you know, until the war was over. It was very hard, and it was the ration books and all. We got the wee sweeties, we got wee coupons and we had to save them, to go for the sweeties, to get a wee sweetie and everything. And they had to, my mother-in-law, she used to go to, down the Free State and get the butter and bring it up. She used to have a thing round her, and she used to bring butter up. We had to take margarine, I tell you. We didn鈥檛 get the good butter. And we had to take the scrambled eggs, it was all powder and it was scrambled eggs. But we鈥檙e here today, and that鈥檚 the way the war went then. You know?

[smuggling]
Oh, we didn鈥檛 get bananas and oranges. We didn鈥檛 get any of those things. It was always the scrambled egg and the toast, the margarine. It was none of them things, it was no way did you get anything that was 鈥� and it was just potatoes and things like that.
Then we got evacuated. It got so bad that we got evacuated down Mucramore until my uncle鈥檚 brother, his wife took us all in, and we went down there and we got evacuated down there. But it鈥檚 very very hard down there, because we didn鈥檛 like it down in the country, we wanted home. But it went on and my older sisters and my brothers, they had to stay. But my younger sister Agnes and my brother John and I, we were evacuated during that time. And all I can remember is getting cornflakes when we went to the country. And porridge, there was porridge every day, and cornflakes. We were really hungry. But there again.
You got eggs out there every now and again, and you got good milk. And you got the buttermilk and the eggs and so on. But at home you used to have to save up. We weren鈥檛 fortunate enough to get the good butter, it was always margarine.
With me being so young, I wouldn鈥檛 remember a lot of things about that. But really, they haven鈥檛 got the money to buy the black market stuff. They鈥檙e all working families, and when you have a big working family you have to do what you had to do.

My mother-in-law always went up, and she always got 鈥� when I married my husband, my mother used to say to him 鈥淐ecil, that鈥檚 good butter鈥� 鈥� because he always was used with good butter, but we took margarine. We were just glad of what we got. But his mummy always went down, and she鈥檇 this bag around her, and she used to bring up this, she鈥檇 a big skirt on her and she used to tell us the stories about it. What she done. She went down the Free State and got all the 鈥� she brought everything over. Bacon, things like that. Sausages and bacon and all the, whatever was going, whatever you could get by the border. You had to be searched, but she was very lucky. She was one of the ones that always got by, you know? But you had to get searched during the war coming over the border.
That was Dundalk they were going to. It must have been [a pretty thriving town]. There must have been plenty going on there. It was the train, she went on the train. My father-in-law worked in the railway. He worked on the LMS railway, so she always got a pass. With him working there, you see, she got the pass.

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