"The
Scallion-Eaters"
The following was re-published in "The Irish
Times", sometime in the mid 1990's. It was originally published in "The
Irish Times", June 1st, 1934.
For years I have wondered why the people of
Carlow town should be referred to, on occasion, as scallion-eaters,
especially by the dwellers in neighbouring towns. Now I know, and for
the information I am indebted to an old book on the public shelves of
the National Library. It was published early in the nineteenth century,
and here is an extract: "A hundred acres of land about Carlow are
parcelled out in two and three-acre pieces to a number of cottagers, who
supply Dublin and most of Leinster with onions. The people are well
clothed, in comfortable habitations, and, if their industry was
generally practised, the cry of poverty of the Irish peasant would soon
cease. The grower of onions divides his garden into quarters, the
succession being onions, potatoes, barley and clover. He puts all the
manure he can get on his onions, and he prefers street scrapings to all
other. Here is industry, here is exertion; no price will stop the
onion-grower in the purchase of manure."
The Carlow onions may be things of the past,
but in Ireland the nickname inspired by those crops of long ago will
never die.
Carloman
Sent in by Peter Walker Jan 2007
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