'Rhubarb, morning, noon and night.'

'Rhubarb, morning, noon and night.'

Billy Gallagher remembers the food that he ate regularly in Castleknock Boarding School.

Billy Gallagher

Trinity College Dublin

1945

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Billy Gallagher

Childhood and Early Life

Life Story

Dublin, Castleknock College

1940's

Meals in boarding school are basic and some of the delicacies were shepherds' pie (known as shepherds shit); kippers and parsnips on a Friday (the smell pervaded all the buildings for the day); and rhubarb, morning, noon and night in season (they had own vast rhubarb patch). There was a chap Brendan from Killenaule in Tipperary, he loved the shepherds shit because it 'repeated' on him for several days (the modern term is heartburn). He used take as much as he could garner from the rest of us and keep it hot under the huge heavy teapot with the convex bottom. Remarkably Brendan is still alive today as those huge teapots had been in the school in the 1930s when my 'uncle' Oliver (Butler) was at school there. Tapioca was another stodgy favourite, stiff, solid with a lump of rhubarb jam on top.

Irish Research Council for Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences (IRCHSS)

Dr Kathleen McTiernan (Trinity College Dublin)

Dr Deirdre O'Donnell (Trinity College Dublin)