them very well, and one of the little farmers would be lending the plough to the other.
The old folks of Cregneish were very different from the present generation; they only spoke the Manx language, and were clothed with their manufactured clothes. They had a pair of cards in every house to card the wool, and a heckle to heckle the flax, and cards to card the tow. They very often spun the tow, and made sackcloth of it, and some of the hard-working men had shirts of it. The women spun the flax and the wool, and there were plenty country weavers. I recollect five weavers in Cregneish alone——John Gale, nicknamed Joan Vese[illegible]; Richard Keggan, or Dick mooar; Billie Taubman, often called the "fidder"; and old Jenny Quark, and John Watterson (Jack Illiam)- They made woollen cloth and flannel for singlets for the men that were going to sea, and petticoats tor the women. Then they were sent to the mill to thicken it for drawers and coats to work in: the coats were white and bound with black braid, and looked very stylish. But the "perree bane" is gone out of date for many years. I often think of the old men of Cregneish when I see the Irish in the West of Ireland with the "perree bane," both old men and young. They were mixing wool of different colours, as black and white, and spinning and weaving them, and then milling the cloth for trousers, "breeechyn glooinagh," or knee breeches. They called the cloth "keeir-lheeah," or brown grey.
