Tattie Hockers

The Scene

A large field of 50 acres, all spuds, on a Scottish farm in Ayrshire and Pertshire. Here the spuds will be dug and graded in the cities and towns of Scotland for export. The farmer gets the labour from the migratory workers recruited in Ireland. Large groups of Irish people crossed over to Scotland to gather potatoes. Women and children were also engaged in this work. Whole families would go from August to November. Conditions in most cases were appalling. Workers were put into cattle sheds to sleep on straw where cattle were kept during the winter. Food was scarce, and wages were poor. They went to earn some money because in 1930 money was scarce in Ireland after the Economic War. The dole for a single person was too small to live on. Three Shillings a single person 12s. 6d. for a family. This occupation resulted in workers acquiring health problems, such as Tuberculosis.

Roisin, Bridget, Rose and Mary's Story

People went to Scotland and England because there was more money. The comforts were very scarce. Mostly in Ayrshire and the borders in Carlisle. After the days work they had get-togethers and sing songs. Whole families went. This was around October. They worked very hard from morning until night. They were paid by how many baskets they gathered. They were mainly from Donegal, and they lived in sheds or barns with straw. If the farmers were good to them they would go back to the same place every year.

They used to have a certain piece of the field each to do, they were called drills. Sometimes they kerbed the potatoes with a space. The potatoes were called cuts because they were cut in half.

Frank's Story

A group of people from sligo and Mayo went to Glasgow in 1936 to the tattie hocking. In that particular place they slept in a shed on the farm, the shed caught fire and they were all burned to death. Frank was on the quay when the coffins were all loaded on the Scotch boat talking them back to Ireland for burial.

Their relatives were all waiting on the quay reciting the Rosary in Irish. This was called the Kirkintollagh Disaster.

James' Story

James went to Scotland when he was in his twenties as a helper on a lorry at the tattie hocking. They slept in a bothy in Kerrymuir. He said, "If you were too big to gather spuds you would get baskets and fill carts out of baskets". While he was there he spent seventeen weeks in Kerrymuir Hospital with a broken ankle. The driver of the tractor knocked him under a lorry and he was taken to hospital in a land rover.

When James was coming home there were hens on the boat and they crowed all night.

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