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comb their hair, and undress and dress them up again. We just wanted to play with them. But like our good clothes and good shoes, we were never allowed to spoil them.
    It wasn’t all fun and games, of course. As I mentioned, we all had our jobs to do as well. Everyone on the island had a small farm. It was nothing to brag about, just enough to provide a family with vegetables, including potatoes, turnips, carrots, cabbage and other produce. We were very self-sufficient on the island for the most part. It was only small luxuries that were occasionally brought over from the mainland.
    Although there are many great memories, especially as the passing of time seems to play tricks with the mind and you only seem to recall the good things that happened, I don’t have a romantic notion about all of my life on the island. It was very hard most of the time, even when we were young children. I still remember the excruciatingly painful blisters on my hands from kibbin’ potatoes. The ground was like concrete, and you’d be down on your hands and knees with a kibbin’ iron, which was like a trowel, scooping out the soil to sow the potato seeds. I was only about ten or eleven years old at the time, but when I’d look at my hands they were like old people’s because they were covered in blisters and welts. Sometimes I’d feel so miserable working outdoors in the cold and the wet, or in the scorching sun, that I’d be praying for the day to end. But you’d never complain to anyone. This was normal life. I’d look around at all the other kids, and they were doing the same chores as myself. You’d be sowing corn, making hay, setting turnips or pulling carrots. There was always something to be done around the farm, even though it was small. There was no joy in it at all, but because all of the other kids of my age were working hard too, it never made me feel that I was some kind of a victim.
    As soon as I was old enough to help my mother around the house, I willingly attended to my chores. I never tired of housework. I actually enjoyed it, so it was no bother to me. I loved helping Mammy, and she never had to ask for anything to be done. I knew the things that had to be taken care of and went about doing them without giving it a second thought. It’s not that I was striving to be a good girl and trying to earn praise from Mammy. It’s just the way things were; you knew that you were expected to do whatever had to be done. There was no sitting in front of a television or playing with all kinds of gadgets that children have today. It was mainly chores that filled the time for us young folk on the island.
    One of my earliest household jobs was washing the clothes. Monday was wash day in every house on the island. All during the week a pile of clothes would grow and grow and form a mini-mountain in a corner; it would have sheets that were stripped off the beds as well as the dirty clothes that had been worn by members of the family.
    There was no electricity in those days and no mod cons like a washing machine or spin dryer. The washing was done by hand in a bath, using a washboard and plenty of elbow power. The water was heated in a pot over the fire, and you’d use Sunlight soap or carbolic soap and a fistful of washing soda to get out the stains. I’d scrub like crazy, working my hands to the bone on the really nasty stains that were picked up from the daily grind on the island and from the fishing. I’d carry the wet clothes to a nearby ditch, where I’d carefully spread them out to dry. When you looked around the stone ditches on a Monday afternoon, it was like carnival time. All the different sheets and coloured clothes in all shapes and sizes were spread out near every family’s home. They could be seen for miles around and were like flags in the distance.
    Naturally, living on an island, we survived mainly on fish supplemented by home-grown vegetables. It was a