Home-made Toys

Collected by Patrick Nolan, Kiltartan N.S.
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0047, Page 0090
National Folklore Collection, UCD.

A Fob Gun

Nowadays toy guns, made in Germany or Japan can be bought for a penny. Long ago boys made their own guns. This is how they did it.
First they got a piece of an elder tree. Then they would redden a piece of an iron and bore a hole through it. Then a piece of wet paper was got to act as a bullet. This was stuffed into one end of the gun. Next a stick was got to fit the hold. Another ‘bullet’ was inserted into the other end of the gun, and everything was ready.
The stick was then pushed through the bore of the gun. The force of the air through the gun would make a shot.

Spinning Tops
These were made by the boys themselves long ago. An empty thread spool was pared and shaped like a top. The hole through the centre of the spool was then filled with a piece of timber, and a nail (from which the head was removed) was then driven into the pointed end of the top. The top could be made spin by twisting several coils of twine around it.