Back then

"On Cable Street we lived in a tenement house where there was ten families in the same house and one toilet in the yard. It was so difficult to get a job, and most people had six, eight or ten children in the same room. Eventually we got two rooms, which was heaven."

"On the other hand, everybody helped everybody else -- you could trust anybody then. When we were barefoot children in winter going to school … they were hard times, but there was a community spirit -- women helped each other to have babies, and if a women went to hospital to have babies, everyone looked after her children."

"This Wednesday Club , making their own entertainment, goes back to a tradition of singing houses and house parties that used to be the norm in Ireland. They used to have hoolies and house parties, with everyone gathering around and singing, but that’s disappearing now. Somebody would start playing the piano or some instrument, and everyone began singing together – they all knew the same songs."

-- Elderly pensioners in Dublin reminiscing about their childhoods, in the RTE documentary "The Wednesday Club," aired 10 August 2012.

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"The noise of wheels on cobbles, the crunch as it turned to clay outside our lane, the sound of the tumble churn, the jingling of harness, hobnail boots, the smells of horse sweat, cow dung, new milk, wet grass, sour milk, buttermilk, bacon and porridge. Our house was like a railway, people coming and going at all times."

-- An elderly Dubliner remembers his early years in a dairy family, from RTE documentary "The Cowslips," first aired 1978.

Photo courtesy of Irishistorylinks.com