In the old days they kept two or three best sheep back, usually a black one among them, for their wool for the family.

The wool would be spun and woven into blankets. These were very coarse and ill on you until they had been softened. This was done by gathering in a wheen of young ladies who, on a threshing floor or some other suitable surface, would sit down in a circle, feet inwards. The wet blanket would be placed in the middle in the form of a coil and then, singing and laughing, the girls would begin to force the thing round and round with their bare feet, giving it a pounding and pasteing in the process.

This greatly worked and rendered it, when dry, as soft as you could want.

(As told by the late David Mc Mullan of the Gove, Carnlough. 14.3.1972)