A latched door gave way to a stone flagged room, whitewashed and divided by a counter. Large buckets held the packet and tripe. Tripe is sheeps belly and is very much an aquired taste. A time honoured way of cooking tripe is to chop in into small cubes and steep in water overnight. Then, cooked in water, its cooked again a second time in milk with onions and breadcrumbs and the packet added with a knob of butter.
Packet is a blood sausage,or pudding and dark in colour.
Sheeps' blood is poured into a skin taken from the intestine of the sheep, with spices and chopped onion added and boiled in a vat. Thereafter boiled again in milk with the packet and breadcrumbs. Packet and tripe no longer comes from Limerick but is brought from Cork a few times a week and a small number of butchers sell it to an older and older customer base as each year passes. And for a hundred years and long before, it helped to make life a bit more bearable in poverty stricken streets and lanes of the city in long gone days. A little addendum.