User:Irelandsownarchive

Heres a little bit of Irish folklore.

"They say it was invented by a Belcoo Fermanagh man, by the name of John Farmer back in the 1700s. Invented so that it could be cooked, stored and furthermore easily hidden from the Redcoats. And in those times, the only thing worth taking from a man was his house or his spuds,

and them Redcoats made great efforts in seeing to both".

So as legend has it. A fella by the name of John Farmer came up with this idea and been that he spent most his life fishing eels on Lough MacNean, he was well experienced with the ways of salt. So, knowing he could preserve eels in a salted box for long periods of time. he reckoned he could do the same with the spud. his task was to find a way he could cook it, hide it and preserve it. His plan turned out to be very simple! First he’d grate the spud, then mix it with flour to bind and flaten it to a circle. finally frying it on the pan. and by flaten'ng them he could stack them high in the salt boxes. The box could store up to four dozen pieces and could be kept in one of these boxes for quite a long time. The salt served two purposes - preserving and adding flavour. These old salt boxes could be buried for a number of weeks without the boxty spoiling. So when the Redcoats came looking for the spuds, all they would find was a selection of auld bad spuds, while all the good ones were cooked into boxty and safely hidden or buried. Farmer wrote the letter T on each box to represent the sign of the cross and blessing it from all harms way. The T was written in ash just like on Ash Wednesday. The makin of boxty soon “caught on”. in areas around Leitrim, Cavan and parts of south Donegal. There’s even a place high on the hills of Leitrim called Boxty Cloone, “as good a place to ate it you’ll ever find”. And then ye can boil it, make a loaf out of it, but the most popular is the pan fried boxty salted with a bit of butter. It’s the one we all know, and I have a lot of fond memories of making it and ate’n it. So that’s it, that’s Farmers boxty story for ya. The box with the T. I was told that story by my own Grandfather when I was a small cub back in 1918, it was Christmas and the great war had just come to an end.

Paddy Farmer ...from Belcoo co Fermanagh spoke these words on a live broadcast for Radio Eireann from a mobile unit on the streets of Bundoran 1977. Up Belcoo