Founded on Fear

by Peter Tyrrell

  On Easter Monday, we get a surprise. As the whistle blows at about ten o’clock the superior tells us that we are going to Tully strand. Easter Monday used to be the day for the trip before Keegan came to the school, but he thought it too cold and changed it to the summer holidays. We had a most enjoyable day and played football on the beach, and Brother Murphy the office Brother organised racing and games for the young children. Afterwards there were paper bags of bread and jam sandwiches and cakes distributed. It was much too cold to bathe so we continued with our games, after which there was a sing song, and all those who entertained got prizes of sweets. On arrival back at the school there was a hot meal prepared of stewed meat and vegetables.

  There is very little change until the summer holidays, which is always a time of joy and bliss. It is a time, and almost the only time, when life is worth living. The warmer weather adds to our pleasure and happiness. The winter is the most unpleasant time of the year, because not only are we cold, but hungry as well. We are not very hungry during the holidays, because we can get potatoes from the farm or from the back of the kitchen and roast them in the forge or our own work shop, and we can also get blackberries and strawberries in the football fields.

  The holidays is a time of complete relaxation, when we enjoy every minute of each day. In the evening we go to the football field or go swimming, but we are not compelled to do either. We wander about the farm or go fishing for eels in the stream. We can go and climb trees near the haunted house or just go across the road from the haunted house where we always get the chestnuts.

  After supper we play handball until it’s almost dark, and the night man chases us off to bed. The weather is blazing hot and I fall asleep in the yard, and Tommy Gordon calls me to go to the workshop. Mr Griffin takes us for long walks up Diamond Hill, which is about a mile east of the school. Mr Griffin is almost seventy and is getting bad on his feet. We stop for a rest, as he fills his pipe, the tobacco smells wonderful. Mr Griffin never smokes in the school or the yard. The tobacco smell reminds me of when I went with my Dad for the first time to gather sticks in the wood. It was a day just like now, warm and sunny, we went further on up the hill and took a drink from the stream.

  After a rest Mr Griffin looks at the sun and says it’s time we went back for tea, he can always tell the time by the sun. I asked him if he had a watch and he said he had, but it stopped twenty years ago. In the workshop I am making a suit for my brother Jack, who is due to leave the school before Christmas, he will be only fifteen and a half and is lucky to be able to get away so early. McGrath the shoemaker is also leaving soon. Cunningham, the boy who used to make the toys, has now left. He never learned to read or write and Jack is the same. A great number of lads never learn to read or write, and Brother Murphy said ‘It’s because too much time is spent on learning Irish, and beating the lads.’

  The holidays are over and I am in fifth standard. We don’t do much the first day. We are given new books, pens and pencils. Brother Fahy explains what is expected of us during the coming year. There will be an exam in catechism shortly and he asks everyone a few questions to find out what we do know. He is not satisfied with many of us and explains that we must work very hard during the next few months.

  After a few weeks when we are finished our breakfast, it is discovered that there is a fire in number 2 school (or Brother Byrne’s school). There was a box of coal left in front of the fire and the box caught alight and quickly spread to the floor, and the wainscot, or the woodwork along the wall, which goes up about 3 ft 6 inches, and Vale orders the boys to bring buckets of water from the kitchen to extinguish the fire and as the lads get excited at the sight of the fire he beats them, and as they are running to get water he chases after them with the rubber swinging to make them hurry. After twenty minutes the fire is under control, and there is very little damage. Brother Kelly now comes around all the schools and orders all inflammable materials to be moved well away from the fire.

  At lessons Fahy is very severe on those who fail, especially at sums and catechism, and we are lined up after each sum and slapped, usually about three slaps with a very heavy stick. He always aims for the thumb or high up on the wrist. Writing is usually the next subject and my hand is so painful that I am unable to write. We are usually beaten about four times a day for failure at lessons. When I go to the tailor’s shop I am unable to do my work, and am sometimes reported for that. The beating is severe if we are reported for bad work.

  It is now Halloween and the usual excitement, but this year I am not very happy about it, because we are beaten at school and sometimes after meals as I am back on serve duties, so that life again is almost unbearable. This goes on until Christmas week. I failed at catechism when the priest came round, and now I have to stay behind when the other lads are at play, to learn catechism. The missioner is now here and is preparing us for the happy event of Christmas by frightening us with his awful stories. He is a Redemptorist father. As usual he always talks about hell. This time he tells us about a young couple who committed a sin and were found together dead the next day.

  I am again terrified as I was last year. I go to confession again and again, as well as confessing I also ask questions which have been puzzling me. The answers sometimes put me at ease for a while until I start thinking again, usually in bed and I remember that I asked that question before and got a different answer from another priest. I am now completely confused, and my imagination is playing tricks with me. When I go to sleep I have terrible and frightening dreams, the same dream as last year. There is someone running after me and I can’t get away. It’s always dark, and I can’t see anybody, I am terrified to look behind because I know there is somebody there. I wake up sweating and I try to remain awake, by pinching myself, and biting my lip, it’s no good. I sleep again, but am more afraid this time. I am up a great height and falling. I wake up screaming. I am now really worried because I have never screamed before.

  It is Christmas day and I try to pull myself together. My brother Jack has left school and I am alone, really alone. Never have I felt so lonely and miserable before. There is someone speaking to me, it is Con Murphy, he is wishing me a happy Christmas. I am dazed and he repeats what he has been saying. As I look at his face, he is smiling, and I can see his gums. They are in a sickly condition, his teeth are discoloured and decayed, his gums are just full of mucus and I advise him to go and see the nurse, but I know he won’t go, because I told him before. Many of the children have this complaint or disease, others have running ears. Many suffer from sores on the head and face and in the ears, the legs and the hands. Many walk with their heads down, and some are very round shouldered.

  Dr Lavelle, a man of about forty, comes to see us about once a month, but he just walks around the yard with a dog at his heels. The dog is the biggest I have ever seen. Lavelle always wears a plus-four suit of tweed, and I have never see him without a cigarette in his mouth. My younger brother Laurence has been in the school about a year, but I do not recognise him. He was too young to come to Letterfrack so was sent to the nuns at Kilkenny. He is a year younger than me, but is now much bigger than I am and is good at school. He was in the infirmary six months ago with poisoned hands and had to have both lanced in several places in order to let out the pus. This was due to chilblains which became septic.

  The Christmas dinner is really good. Roast chicken and roast pork, green peas, followed by plum pudding and custard. There is less excitement than last year as Father Christmas did not come. I am now feeling a little better than for the last few days. It’s most remarkable how the Brothers change at this time of year. Vale has been up half the night preparing the dinner, and it is really good. Brothers Fahy and Byrne, Murphy and Conway are waiting on the children. Vale, his clothes dirty and full of grease, is bringing out the trays of chicken from the kitchen. His face is sweating and he looks tired. Brother Kelly is going about giving everyone sweets from a very big tin.

  I have not received a letter this year becau
se I have not answered the last two. Now I know why many of the other lads stopped writing. I now feel bitter towards my parents. I want to write home and tell them everything, but always change my mind the last moment. I now feel glad that I never wrote. I think it’s much better that my parents forget about me. I shall soon be fifteen and will then have only a year to do. However bad the last year is it can’t be any worse than the last five and a half years, so I make up my mind to try and have fun for the next few days like the other lads. I tell myself that I am not going to worry about the awful and terrifying things the missioner has been telling us, besides they may not even be true. I find it hard to believe that the priest has seen a boy who is in hell, and I remember the last year how the missioner explained the exact position of the chains on the condemned boy’s legs.

  After dinner, we go into the village. Martin Mullins and Tommy Gordon have some money and we want to buy sweets. We come to the post office and it is shut. We go across the road to the pub, and Mr Griffin is there, so the lads give Mr Griffin a shilling for a drink. He is now looking old and shabby, since his wages were cut down to sixteen shilling he has not been able to get any new clothes. We asked for sweets in the pub but they didn’t sell any, but they had bottles of lemonade and ginger beer, so we had three bottles of ginger beer. Mr Griffin now teaches infants because he is unable to read the third standard book owing to his failing sight.

  We stood at the door drinking the ginger beer straight from the bottle. When John Cusack and Tommy Mannion arrived with another farmhand who I do not know, they bought a pint for Mr Griffin and asked us to have something, but we thanked them very much and said no.

  We walked along the road towards Kylemore. We were making for Rankins, because they were always open. Martin Mullins asked Gordon if ginger beer would make us drunk, and Gordon admitted he never drank any before. I didn’t know because I had never been in a pub before. Just before we came to the sweet shop we met a lady who smiled and spoke to us. Tommy Gordon said she was the Protestant woman Brother Byrne used to talk about, and I then remembered a sermon a few weeks before in the chapel. It was the priest from the convent at Kylemore Abbey who said a Protestant had as much chance of going to heaven as would a rowing boat crossing to America in a storm. This made me think a lot because this lady, although I never met her before, was very good and kind. I could not remember what Brother Byrne said but I should like to find out, and feel certain that he would say nothing wrong about her.

  After buying a lot of canned sweets we made our way back and found the boys having supper. After which there was a picture show. It was the same picture we seen about two years before, when it broke down several times. It was Charlie Chaplin.

  11

  I Leave Letterfrack

  My term is up about June 1932. Although it’s only January 1931,I call this my last year, hoping they will let me ‘go out’ before I am sixteen. About one in three manage to ‘go out’ before their time is up. This can be anything from three to six months early. So far two of my brothers managed to get away before their time. I have known lads to leave school when they were fifteen. The P.P. at home just drops a line to the superior, I am told that a few pounds change hands. Some lads are claimed by their parents, and of course the priest must call to see if the home is suitable for the boy’s return. The essential thing is that the parents attend mass and contribute generously to the priest when he calls.

  Almost all the old bullies have now left, that is the kind who ran the place when I first came. They were usually monitors who sat at the end of the table in the refectory. They distributed the food, and after everyone was served then went round and demanded a portion of food from the young kids. These monitors were usually fifteen, but George Gordon, our monitor, was only fourteen.

  The monitor often copied the Brother who was in charge of him. That is in respect to beatings he beat the younger children under him in the same manner as he had been beaten himself. Ackle, a boy of about fifteen and a half in 1925, was a monitor and even worse than any of the Brothers. He was in Brother Dooley’s class, and Dooley used a heavy cane walking stick, so Ackle got himself a cane. Cavanagh, who had been several years under Brother Walsh, used a leather strap because Walsh used one. When I was ten I was polishing the floor in St Michael’s dormitory one day, when there was a boy left in charge of us. He was only about thirteen. He worked in the shoemaker’s shop and he used a strap to beat us exactly the same as the one Walsh used. He had made this strap himself, it consisted of two pieces of sole leather sewn together by hand. This boy was with Walsh for three years. Not only did he beat us in the same manner as Walsh but he pulled our hair the same. In 1925-26 it was not an uncommon sight to see a lad of twelve to fourteen having five or six very young children in line and beating them with a stick or strap. At that time it was fashionable for boys of over twelve to carry some kind of weapon. During my first few months at the school I can faintly remember seeing monitors using three heavy leather laces which were plaited together. The night man of that time used a number of leather laces which he used to flog the kids when he put them across the bed. Another method used was to lift the child off the ground by catching the hair just in front of the ears with the forefinger and thumb of each hand.

  In the yard the band is practising marching to music. I don’t remember seeing them marching before, and every few minutes Hickey stops them to hit some with the drum stick. This Hickey seems to love beating the youngsters, but he does not beat anyone over fifteen, because he is afraid. Instead he sends them to Fahy, who makes a good job of it. Hickey has now become a real swelled head. He gets a lot more money since he became an A.R.C.M. He gets four pound a week and he has only been here three years. Yet Mr Griffin, who was a schoolteacher many years before he was born, earns 16/- a week because he is an old man and can’t get another job.

  Several of the staff are now over 65. Mr Moran the blacksmith, Mr Flanagan the shoemaker, and the carpenter whose name I can’t remember, Festy McDonald the butcher. Annie Aspel is also looking much older. She said she was 48. That was about three years ago, but I think she is much more. Lydon the tailor is over fifty. He’s getting big and fat now and can hardly climb on to the table. He used to sit with his legs crossed but now has to stand. His son Martin Joe has stopped coming to the workshop. He is finished with tailoring and is now running a Ford car. He said tailoring is only a trade for cripples. His father is very angry because his son was a good worker. Tom McDonald has now left and I am the most senior tailor in the shop, and Lydon wants me to work full time in the shop instead of going to school in the morning at nine, but Fahy has chosen Tom Thornton the lad with one leg because, as Fahy puts it, Thornton needs a trade more than me as he is handicapped.

  I am back on serve duties again and the beatings still go on. But Vale now beats the younger lads more. As I am now almost fifteen, he leaves me alone and concentrates on the little boys between ten and twelve, using the same methods as before, pinching and beating with the boy across his knee. We are allowed to talk more often now, about three times a week. Vale talks to himself a lot now as if he is praying. He is always swinging the rubber and hitting tables or the wall. He hits almost everything he comes to. He had a lovely black cat called ‘Nigger’ which he carried on his shoulder, and he looked after the cat for about a year and then got tired of it, and started to beat it, until the cat went wild and used to scratch anyone who touched it. Eventually it left and is now wandering about the wood. ‘Nigger’ sometimes comes to the tailor’s shop at night, and sleeps under the bench, and I have not see any rats lately.

  Fahy has fallen out with his girlfriend, and he is always in a bad temper now. When he was meeting her we had a good time. We could always tell when she was coming. It was usually after dinner or late in the evening when the horn of her car would blow, and he would look through the window. He always shaved the day he had a date and he would put oil on his hair. Fahy was getting grey at the sides but some days we couldn’t see any grey.
Joe Kelly said he used to blacken his hair with boot polish. Fahy always came back with a very red face after being with the girl, some of the lads said he used to go to Clifden drinking.

  It’s St Patrick’s day and a special service is being held in the chapel. The P.P. usually conducts the service on holidays, but is now ill with his leg, and Fr McDonald takes it. The priest reminds us that it was St Patrick who brought the Catholic faith to Ireland. He tells us that Ireland before St Patrick came ‘was a country of pagans – what a terrible place it must have been then, when the people adored idols. The pagans were savages and barbarians, but today we are a great people, we are known the world over as saints and scholars, “the island of saints and scholars”.’ The priest, now in a loud voice said ‘We must thank God to-day for that great honour he has bestowed on us. There are still very many nations which are backward like we once were. But one day my dear brethren the whole world will be united in the faith, our faith in the name of Christ Jesus.’ St Patrick’s Day was cold and wet, so we remained in the hall. In the evening after supper we played whist. The band master was my partner and I played badly so he blamed me because he did not win a prize.