three acts or meals, breakfast, lunch, and dinner. By the_ last is not
to be understood the noonday meal» but the chief meal of the day. The
lunch is participated in only by the children and invalids. The healthy
and full-grown are excluded from it. The hours at which these meals are
taken are later than with us in Germany. Nine o'clock is the hour for
breakfast, and four in the afternoon for dinner. The breakfast, as
inmost parts of Ireland, among those who have the means of decent
maintenance, consists of new milk and stirabout, a kind of porridge of
oatmeal ; the dinner is composed of potatoes and buttermilk. The
children, for their lunch, receive bread and milk. On Sundays, holidays,
and on every Thursday, a little brose, or soup, is given, in addition to
the customary diet. An adult receives seven ounces of oatmeal and half a
pint of new milk for breakfast, and four pounds of potatoes and a pint
of buttermilk for dinner. The board of an adult is calculated to- cost
one shilling and fourpence three-farthings weekly. That of the children
is more expensive, on account of the bread, and the more liberal supply
of milk. The most costly of all is the board" of the children under two
year» old, who cost one shilling and sixpence three- farthings a week,
for which they receive one pint of new milk and a pound of bread daily.
There is therefore a potato diet for adults, ะป bread diet for children,
a rice and meat diet for the sick, and lastly, a fever diet for the
class of patients always most numerous in an Irish
workhouse-From:Ireland:Dublin, the Shannon, Limerick, Cork, and te
Kilkenny Races…,,Johann Georg Kohl, 1844.
I was astonished by the appearance of the potato-kettle at this house.
No less than 167» pounds of potatoes are boiled at once. This enormous
quantity is all divided into portions of three and a half and four
pounds, and eacli portion is enclosed in a small net. All these nets are
laid together in a large basket, and. this basket, with its nets and
potatoes, is deposited in the boiler. When the potatoes are supposed to
have been sufficiently boiled, the basket is wound up again by a
machinery^ constructed for the purpose, and the poor are then marched up
in military order, when each receives his net and marches away with it.-
-From:Ireland:Dublin, the Shannon, Limerick, Cork, and te Kilkenny
Races…,,Johann Georg Kohl, 1844.
