by Jack Lynch
Bastable and caraway seed cakes also came with our uncles and aunts from Kanturk, though sometimes they were sent ahead by postal delivery, in which case we knew before opening the package that they would be all crumbs by the time we got them and were devoured with the same relish as if the cakes had been whole. My uncle, John Riordan from Fota, brought potatoes and other vegetables, as well as edible chestnuts when he came to us. Uncle John was a gamekeeper in Fota estate and had been badly gored by a bull some years back though he was now recovered. Aunty Lina used to arrive from Ballymore, with a brace of hens, or cocks, and sometimes a duck and these were gifted to us. They were a nice change from mutton, corned beef, bacon, fish, and stews, which we were used to eating.
The ham was boiled slowly and all the children tried to take pieces when it was removed from the pot. These were the tastiest pieces of ham, perhaps because they were illicit gains, and we had to be stopped short in this, otherwise there would be none left for Christmas day. Hams were always boiled then and never baked; in those early days we only had an open stove and no gas or electric cookers.
It was an annual ritual to watch mammy mixing the ingredients for the Christmas pudding. When the mixture was finished, it was put into a silk stocking and cooked. I always wondered if the stocking was washed beforehand, but never really minded, the pudding tasted delicious every time. One Christmas day mammy went into daddy’s office to bring in the goose from where she had left it overnight she found that a rat had been chewing on the goose. ‘Not to worry,’ said daddy, as he cut away the damaged part and rewashed the goose. It might seem terribly unhygienic now but I can’t remember any of us turning up our noses at it then, and not one of us ever got sick from the cooked goose. A local woman, named Lou Lake, used to call every Christmas for the ‘Pope’s Nose.’ This is end of the goose where the tail feathers were fitted by nature, and we were all disgusted, as it was, in short, the ass of the goose.
On Christmas Eve the house was a hive of activity. People smoked, chatted, and cooked. Drinks were available for neighbours, and friends. Nobody in the family drank alcohol. Mammy very occasionally took a sherry, or port. Daddy had taken the ‘Pledge’ and had given up drinking after he got married. Amid all the decorations, and the Christmas tree, I enjoyed myself as I got money, presents, sweets, and kisses. Sweet memories are made of these times.
One Christmas, a British Army Officer, who was stationed in Spike Island, gave daddy a big box of surplus toys for us. The man was returning to the UK, and did not want to bring surplus toys with him. We had great fun as the toys were in perfect condition. There were pistols, games, hats and other goodies.
As the family got a little bit older, Christmas started with midnight mass, at the Cathedral, and this was a wonderful night. Everyone in the area walked to mass together and there was great chat along the way. The choir in the church had practiced for weeks for this and the beautiful singing made everyone’s spirits soar. It was truly a family outing. In order to receive the Host, we fasted for twelve hours before receiving, and this meant fasting from noon for midnight mass. This was a precept of the Church, and was binding on anybody who made their first communion, and those who were not yet sixty years. After mass we walked home, nibbled some ham, drank cocoa and went to bed. Experience made us realise that tomorrow was going to be full of excitement. It was difficult to get to sleep.
Christmas day dawned and we anxiously opened our presents. We squealed with joy at our goodies and suddenly it was dangerous to be around us as some of the toys; like roller skates, and guns that fired corks or stickers, were in constant indoor use. There were no plastic toys and most were made from tin or wood. Christmas crackers, sweets, and tins of biscuits added to the excitement. Mammy and daddy enjoyed watching us, and we usually had a big fire in the grate where mammy and daddy sat and smoked their fags; Woodbines for mammy and Player’s for daddy. We roared with excitement and ran around the house for the entire day thrilled with our new toys. In the evenings we all played games like Snakes and ladders, Ludo, and various card games such as Beg off my neighbour, and Donkey. As the family grew larger the excitement became intensified.
One Christmas evening the red candle was lighting on the kitchen table as it usually was and we had all gone upstairs, to the back bedroom overlooking the backyard where we were saying the rosary. Suddenly, daddy gave a yell, and shouted, “There’s a fire in the kitchen.”
We all rushed down, to find that one of the cats had got into the kitchen, and knocked the candle over, and it was beginning to burn the wooden table. Fortunately, no serious damage was done by the fire. However, over the years one leg of the table had taken on a distinct shape of its own. The cats had used it to sharpen their claws and it had one section, about five inches in length, reduced to half its original girth!
Easter Sunday also was a fun day, never as good as Christmas of course but still wonderful. We got Easter eggs and other goodies as gifts. We also each got two hen eggs or a duck egg. Later, in life, the Easter Holidays from school were the best, we got two weeks off school and it was heaven.
As a child I admired my father a great deal. He was a very strong, capable man and I looked up to him. I used to love watching him as he stropped (sharpened) his cutthroat razor on the leather strap, and wondered how he didn’t cut his face more often when he shaved. Like most men, he always had one or two bits of the ‘Cork Examiner,’ or ‘Echo’ stuck to his face, where he nicked himself shaving, mind you, some of the other men in the town could have been wallpaper hangers - judging by the amount of paper stuck on their faces! Daddy used a shaving brush, and a bar of soap, to create thick creamy foam which entertained us no end. He took great pleasure in daubing our noses with the soapy brush. He waited until he knew our attention was elsewhere, and then the soap splurged our noses. No matter that he did this almost every day to us we always enjoyed it and laughed ourselves silly. It was great fun!
Despite the fun and games in the house we were still ordinary children who managed to get ourselves into trouble on the odd occasion. Eileen and I used to play together upstairs in the top bedroom. Once I tied a necktie around her neck, using it as reins to play horses. Unfortunately it was a slipknot and I hitched her to the dresser to wait whilst I went to the loo. While I was away she pulled on the tie, and naturally the noose got tighter. Suddenly, I heard mammy calling daddy and I rushed up to find out what was happening. I should have stayed away! Eileen’s face was blue, and she was choking from the tight loop. After releasing my sister from strangulation Daddy let out a roar and came after me. As I scarpered for my life, heading for the stairs to make a quick getaway, he lashed out in his stockinged feet but as he tried to give me a kick in the rump he missed and instead his big toe caught the staircase with a loud thwack. He let out an even bigger yell and I knew I was in serious trouble. For what appeared to me to be ages, he hobbled around with a walking stick and a cracked toe. I drew scowls and grimaces when I’d ask him how his toe was today. I was not his favourite around this time!
Harbour Row, our play area, stretches between The Bench and the junction of Harbour Hill and East Beach. It is one of the few flat long stretches of road in the town and most of it overlooks the beautiful Harbour. Some houses were built on both sides of the road, thus obscuring this lovely view from the lower part of some houses. All houses are joined together, and are three stories high. Most had shop fronts, which were beautifully maintained. In those days it was the best street in the town to live in and I loved it. Our house was very central on the row and still has an unobstructed view of Cork Harbour, and the islands in it. There were about fifty-six houses on the Row including the Sailor’s Home.
The ‘Sailors’ Home’ was at the top of Harbour Row, near the Bench. Up around this area was known as ‘Dead Man’s Wall,’ where people met. British sailors went there, but it was not as popular, and did not last as long as the ‘Soldiers Home,’ which was down on the Beach. Some of the houses have been knocked down since and some rebuilt i
n a very different way. At the Bench junction, four roads converge; one goes up East Hill, another goes up Harbour View, the third is Harbour Row, and the fourth is another long straight road called the ‘Holy Ground,’ which skirts the sea-front, and has a long nautical history. This is where Queen Victoria landed. Hence the name Queenstown was bestowed on the town.
There are three gates on the Row. One accesses Kidney’s Strand. This was apparently named after a Mr. Kidney, who owned the ‘Brickworks,’ at Belvelly. The other two gates allowed people to get down to the Baths’ Quay, on the waterfront. These gates have now been closed to the public, and the little pathways are overgrown with weeds. We used these extensively during my youth, and even up to my late teens. There was only one day in the year I believe when these gates were locked, to prove the ‘Right of way’ was not bestowed on the public. Now it looks as if this ‘Right of way’ is totally withdrawn.
The grownups that lived in our neighbourhood when we were children were fascinating to us. There were three sisters, the two Misses Iretons, lived on one side of the street, and the third sister lived on the other side of the street. Two used to walk elegantly up and down Harbour Row each day, dressed in Victorian clothes. They were very close to each other, and they had constant arguments with the third sister. They left an indelible mark in my memory. They wore long beautiful coloured, silk type dresses to their ankles, coloured straw hats, and umbrellas on their arms. They were gentle people and I remember one of them ‘told off’ daddy, for whacking me. He told her to mind her own bloody business! She was disgusted, and turned on her heels, but it stopped my whacking.
Further down the street, close to the Iretons lived a dwarf named Mr. Browne. He used to ride a boy’s two-wheel bike and he fascinated and scared us in equal measure. Miss May O’Sullivan had a grocery shop and she always used the stub of a pencil and a well worn note book for those who had a little credit. It was a ritual to see May remove the stub from behind her right ear, lick the tip of the lead and then record the details of the purchase. Another lick of the pencil before it took its place behind May’s ear ended the transaction. May was always good for the occasional empty tea chest which was used to store various household bits and pieces.
Down the road Mr. and Mrs Cull were Shopkeepers. Mr Cull was also the Town Clerk. Tom Farrell, a tailor, lived with the Culls and he used to make and alter the guards’ uniforms. My sister Eileen used to get a shilling from him for delivering the uniforms to the guard’s house. Mr Dockery had a house with a little railed front garden at No. 37. He never returned any balls we lost in his garden so we didn’t like him at all. He, like many others, kept rooms for emigrants who were going to the States. Many of these people had to go through delousing prior to boarding the liners and they stayed at this house. I don’t remember a Mrs. Dockery so I am assuming he was a widower or single man. Bob Forde from No.52 had helped deliver the Scott expedition to the Antarctic in 1910 to 1913. He was a Sergeant in the shore party from the ‘Terra Nova’ expedition. Unfortunately, at the time, I did not understand the fantastic achievements of this man. He seemed so unassuming. Of course now I realise what it meant and wish I could go back and find out more about it from him.
At No. 40 was O’Kane’s grocery shop. Denis O’Kane was a great boyhood friend of mine until he died of meningitis when he was very young. He and I used to bring gallon tins of hard boiled sweets to the school to be handed out at Christmas. We felt like kings as each of us had a tin, and gave them to the teachers for distribution. Mrs Finn had a sweet shop, which of course we couldn’t pass by without paying a visit, even just to inhale the delicious smells. Ben and Redmond Purcell were ‘Painters and Decorators’ and did all the local work around the neighbourhood. Packie Purcell, another brother of theirs, worked in a chemist shop in East Beach. Packie always wore white gloves, even out walking. He had few friends and seemed to be alone a lot. Ben used to give renditions of “Off to Philadelphia in the morning” at all the local concerts. Lena May Connor, and her brother Willie, were shoe repairers and Lena May was the boss and everybody knew it. Even poor Willie who was about 30 years old, and an ex Merchant Marine Engineer, was like a schoolboy with her. When she yelled, he jumped. Mr Hynes had a sweet shop, located at the top of Harbour Row, near the Bench. This was a great favourite shop with children. The shop was the smallest in the street but Mr Hynes gave extra quantities to us and had a great selection of toffees, liquorice and soft drinks. Their son, Seanie Hynes, was a well-known and friendly boy.
There was Tommy Enright’s barbershop, where we had to sit on a board placed across the chair arm rests, because we were too small to sit on the seat. I heard Tommy tell one youngster to get his mother to clean his hair before he would cut it. Lice crawled in the poor boy’s hair. He went home crying with embarrassment. Nicholas O’Keefe was a shopkeeper, and wholesaler. My father used to buy sweets and chocolates from him to stock our shop. In Miss Dillon’s Gift shop I used to buy stink bombs, and had great fun setting these off in enclosed areas, and then, of course, making myself scarce! The expressions, and looks on people’s face were a source of side splitting laughter. Miss Dillon was old and frail and a lovely person. In her shop I also bought mouth organs, caps for guns, chalk crayons, and various other little things. In later years I bought clay pipes. These pipes were used by old ladies and men for their smoking. They were cheap to buy and easily replaced. Even though many had the stems broken the men continued to use them. I used them for other purposes. One time I put a new one in my mouth and the stem partly stuck to my lips. It took some time to get used to a new one. I used to fill the bowl with coal dust, plug it on top with wet clay, and heat the bowl over the fire. After some time gas used to come from the stem and I lit it. A lovely blue flame kept flickering until the gas was used up.
A little ditty we kids used to sing comes to mind when I think of the names of people, in Harbour Row. It reminds me now how the neighbours and people in the area were such a part of our lives and saddens me now that this is not the case in modern neighbourhoods these days. The song went;
As it happened these people lived quite close to each other, whilst our house was more towards the center of the street. Daddy bought our house from Rev. Titchburn, the local Protestant minister to whom, I was told it had been donated in a Will left by the previous owner, Mr. A. Olsen. Now that we were in occupation of this house daddy had the priest come and bless it, and say mass. This happened for a few years. In those days a lot of the locals were Protestants, and we could not take part in their religious services. We could not attend their funerals, or enter their churches but that was normal then. We had our own masses and churches and the two religions didn’t cross paths.
There were two doors for entry into our house. One led into the main hall and the second was the entry door for the shop. We had a lovely big picture of St. Patrick on the left wall, and a large picture of the Eucharistic Congress, held in 1932 in Dublin, was hanging on the right wall leading into the main hall of the house. As in most houses a holy water container was at the front door. A glass door was halfway between the front door and the kitchen. Going past the glass door, the hall continued into the kitchen, which had red floor tiles and dark blue wood panelled the walls. There was a sash-window allowing a view into the backyard. At one end there was a cast iron stove and oven, which mammy regularly polished with black lead. A door from the kitchen led out to the concrete back yard. On the outside of the sash window there was the white ceramic sink, where we washed every morning, or whenever necessary. This sink was originally situated in the kitchen, at the sash-window, but daddy had the bright idea to put it outside, and make everybody miserable, including mammy, who had to do the washing outside. Under the stairs daddy kept coal, and firewood… and fleas.
I used to watch the coalman as he came in through the hall with the bag of coal on his back, and over his shoulder he grasped the front of the bag with his hand. As he approached the coal house he turned his back to the opened coalhouse and left t
he bag of coal fall into the space. This was accompanied by a lot of coal dust going all over the hall floor. More dust appeared as he shook the remainder of the coal and dust from the bag.
There were dangers everywhere in this house, and probably in all the houses in Cobh. Utilities were simple and in those days there was no talk of safety in the home and all that. We just got on and dealt with things. For instance, all the piping for water and gas were made of lead and Mammy used black lead polish for the stove. We had no idea then it was dangerous, but still, it didn’t seem to affect us in any way. There was constant dampness on the walls in the house too. I heard this was due to the fact that sand and stones from the sea were used to build the houses.
The front door entering the shop led to a second door, about four feet further into the shop. Here again there was another picture hanging on the wall; it was large gilt framed oil painting of a wood, or forest, in Canada. This painting seemed to be part of the contents of the house when daddy bought it. Certainly, daddy would not have spent money buying it as an antique. He was not into collecting paintings! The shop had a back room, and there was a door which led to the stairs and also into the main hallway - just inside the glass door. This back room was later divided into two sections and was partitioned by beautiful timber, - which daddy got from dismantled ships in Haulbowline shipyard, and a bathroom was built in one-half of it. The bath was also bought in the shipyard and the new bathroom seemed like pure luxury to us but wasn’t to be after all…