by Eamon Kelly
One evening Mr Ó Riada mentioned to me that if I kept making headway in my studies and passed the senior grade in the practical and theory papers he would enter me for a scholarship examination to train as a manual instructor in Dublin. In the meantime, as well as the theory of building and craft work I would have to study English, Irish and maths. I would need a good grounding in these subjects as I had left the national school when I was fourteen. Since then my secondary education had been taken over by the editor of a daily newspaper.
I wasn’t long working with my father when the Irish Press came out. It was a bright paper with news on the front page instead of advertisements. Newsboys, the first we had seen in town, were on the streets with it on fair and market days. Later during the economic war which raged between Ireland and England and which was brought about by de Valera’s withholding of the land annuities, the English put an embargo on our cattle and small farmers had their backs to the wall. Animals were brought to the fair so often that they knew their way in and out of town. In the middle of the Fair Field a newsboy said to a dejected farmer standing by a cow he had failed to sell, ‘Press, Sir!’
‘Be off,’ the farmer replied. ‘We have presses at home and nothing in ’em!’
But still the bulk of the people stood behind de Valera in his fight with the British. On his second or third election victory I marched with those same farmers to the village. Each man had a two-pronged hay fork on which was impaled a sod of turf steeped in paraffin oil. At the outskirts of the village the sods were set on fire and we marched down the street in a torchlight procession, stopping and jeering outside the houses of those we knew didn’t vote for de Valera. An older man in the company, who had fought against the Tans and the Free Staters, carried a shotgun. Under the light he dismantled the firearm and gave me the stock to conceal inside my coat in case the guards would spot it. But the guards, drawn from a pro-treaty background, kept well out of sight this night. Later on when we had left the barracks behind us, the old IRA man reassembled his gun and discharged both barrels in the direction of the residence of a well-known Cosgraveite. The band played more loudly, smothering the report.
A large bonfire was lit by the ball alley which, with the torchbearers ranged about it, made a memorable scene in the surrounding darkness. There were speeches and tributes to the tall gaunt man with the foreign name who stood against the might of the Empire. Amid the wild cheers and cries of ‘Up Dev!’ a poor travelling woman, the worse for drink, threw her black shawl on the bonfire. It spread out in the air before landing, then for a moment the fire was blotted out. Soon the flames came through the shawl and a shower of sparks went up. Hannie, for that was the woman’s name, pulled out her combs so that her long grey hair fell down over her face, older than the Hag of Beara’s. With her arms raised as if in supplication to some strange god she danced around the fire as the Millstreet fife and drum band struck up another tune.
The blood coursed warmly through our veins. There were shouts of ‘Up the Republic!’ and ‘Smash partition!’ Stones were thrown into the fire and sent up sparks. The band marched off and Hannie’s ancient feet grew weary of the dance. As the music died in the distance the hilarity subsided. Gradually the sods of turf on tops of the pikes burned out and so did the fire. As the light faded from the faces of the crowd anyone who had the price of a pint went with the old IRA man to John Dan’s public house. There he demonstrated again, as he had done many times before, the correct way to dislodge a horse policeman, and told how with an old cannon mounted on a railway wagon he and his comrades captured Rathmore RIC barracks. He called for a glass of whiskey for Hannie. The artist deserved her fee. She sang a verse of ‘When Sandy Heard the Rifle Fire’, but tomorrow without her shawl she would feel the cold, and the small farmers would feel the pinch of the economic war.
Whenever we worked in town or passed through it, I spent a precious penny on the Irish Press. At night I read it from front to back. The sports pages, the book page on Saturdays and the daily contributions of Roddy the Rover which had characters like the garda called Sergeant Gasta MacCliste. There was a section devoted to the Irish language and it galled me that I could not read it as well as I could the English. I was embarrassed by the fact that as a young Irishman my own language was almost a closed book to me. I went back to my old teacher at the national school one night a week to study Irish for the examination. Micheál Ó Riada asked me to come to his house another night to study maths. He gave me some tips on how to write an English composition and helped me with grammar.
All this extra interest outside my work, going to the tech two nights a week, a night studying English and maths and a night at Irish helped to heal the wound caused by parting from my sweetheart Jude. But she remained forever in my mind and in the mornings when I met the postboy I saw him as a link between us. I always expected him to have a letter from her but one never came. I hadn’t much time for dancing but I did go to the local house dance on Sunday nights. But the dancers were drifting away. A new dancehall had been built in Barraduv village, a concrete affair with a corrugated iron roof and a boarded floor. The dancers seemed to glory at the effect their dancing feet had on the timber. It sounded like a drum and was a change from the stone-flagged floors of the country kitchens. Visitors from the town introduced old time waltzing. It took some time before I had the courage to venture out in that. When I did we waltzed to the strains of ‘Oft in the Stilly Night’ and the sound of our feet was quieter than the pounding we gave the floor when out in a set dance. The hall of laughter and music was directly across the road from the church and was the subject of many a sermon by Fr Browne.
‘The house of God,’ he thundered, ‘is on one side of the road and the house of Satan at the other!’
A mature spinster from out the Bower claimed as gospel truth that while dancing with a stranger in the house of Satan she looked down and saw a cloven hoof and his hands, she said, were burning hot. The dancehalls were licensed by an Act of the Oireachtas and that notice was prominently displayed above the door. The halls in time sprung up everywhere, putting an end to the house dances which the clergy themselves had been trying to do for years. Many is the time the parish priest and his curate raided the houses where Sunday night dances were held. And even though scouts were posted outside to watch for the beam of the headlights those headlights were turned off at a distance from the house and the raiding party was down on top of the dancers before they knew where they were. One night when the curate stood in the front door the back door wasn’t wide enough to take the outflow of dancers into the dung-stained yard in front of the cowhouse. The women, fearful of being recognised by the priest, in an effort to retrieve their coats and shawls from the room got caught in the narrow door. The last lady was so dazed after leaving the light that she ran straight into the parish priest who was coming in the back way. To save himself from falling in the dirty yard and ruining his new top coat he had bought in Hilliard’s cheap sale, he put his arms around the young woman and she, struggling to free herself said, ‘Bad luck to you! Isn’t it hard up you are for your hoult and the priest coming in the front door!’
One young man, our famous full-forward in the football team, remained oblivious to all this. He was courting in a dark corner under the stairs. He never felt a bit until the curate shone the flashlamp on him. He got such a fright it was said that he never scored after!
I never heard of a dancehall being raided by the clergy, but the priest in our neighbouring parish succeeded in persuading the dancehall proprietors in his jurisdiction, as you might say, to close their premises during the hours of darkness. Béalnadeega hall, the nearest one to us until Barraduv hall was built, opened only on Sunday afternoons. We flocked there and danced until it was time for the farmers’ sons and daughters to go home for the evening milking of the cows. As well as the economic war, de Valera had another thorn in his side in the shape of the Blueshirts. These followers of General Eoin O’Duffy arrived in force at Béalnadeega hall one Sund
ay. They were dressed in their military type shirts and were accompanied by their women, the blue blouses as we called them. Young men of the new IRA and members of Dev’s political party resented this intrusion into what they held to be a Republican stronghold. They jostled the blueshirts and the blue blouses while dancing. One provocative shoulder borrowed another, tempers frayed, and while you’d be saying Jack Robinson fists started to fly. The blueshirt women screamed as strong daughters of the Republic tore the blouses off their backs. The blue army retreated, leaving behind the torn shreds of their fascist uniform. Despite what seemed like a murderous onslaught, no blood was spilled and no bones broken. The musicians struck up a dance tune called ‘The Cat Rambled to the Child’s Saucepan’ and with order restored, the dancing continued till the cows came home.
On Monday morning it was back to work for me and that night to my lessons in English and maths at Micheál Ó Riada’s house in Rock Road. Wednesday night was given over to the study of Irish and on Tuesday and Thursday nights I went to the tech. I worked hard for the next two years until the time came for me to sit for the scholarship examination. I did my best when the day came and finished the practical test on time. I had to make a joint used on a stairs landing known as a tusk tenon, an intricate affair. Time went by slowly until at last the results came out. I was over the moon. I had got through the test and passed the interview in Dublin as well.
September was now approaching when I would be going from the valley where I grew up. My father was sorry to lose me when I could be of most help to him. But the third son in the family, Laurence, was working at the trade and showing a real talent for the job. The second son, my brother Tim, who was always better than me at school, was in a seminary in Cork and going on to be a missionary priest.
The night before I was due to leave for Dublin I went around to all the neighbours’ houses. In each house I sat by the fire and everyone’s attention was on me; a kind of curiosity as I was the one going away. We talked about the little incidents, that for us loomed large, incidents that had happened in the district in the twenty odd years of my life. Then it was a hearty shake hands and a good wish for my success. Next morning my mother and father went with me in the pony and trap. I had a new travel bag, a valise my mother called it. The last time my father had driven me to the railway station was when my brother and I were going on the school outing to Rossbeigh. From the platform where we now stood I had seen many young men and women leave for America and I recalled the tearful partings. From here Jude went out of my life. But now as the train from Tralee reversed into the platform I put mournful thoughts aside and got into high spirits, thinking of the new life that lay ahead. No need for fond farewells, my mother said laughingly. I would be home on holidays for Christmas. My father fell silent and, noticing him, I fell silent too as the reversing train blotted out my last look at the tower of the friars’ chapel. The guard’s green flag was waving as we warmly shook hands. I stood by the carriage window of the moving train until my parents turned to go. I watched them walk slowly away.
We passed under the Countess Bridge where Nelligan’s soldiers blew my countymen to bits. Soon we were in the open valley and I could see houses built by my father and myself. I could see houses where I had danced all night and I could see the river Flesk where Jude and I crossed the stepping stones. Things to remember in my old age, and fresh in the mind’s eye forever would be that half-ring of hills like a ground row on the stage where my youth was acted out. Nearing Millstreet I put my head out the window and looked westwards towards home. In the distance I could see the twin mountains, An Dá Chích Danann, the Olympus of Ireland. And as the train sped on, the glorious breasts of the goddess Dana gradually sank out of my view.
SEA SHANTIES, SHAKESPEARE AND POITÍN
‘Little paint and many waters!’ the Dutch professor who gave occasional lessons on furniture design advised us when he wanted a transparent colour to wash over a pencil drawing. Mr Romein was a big man with large hands, yet with a few deft strokes of the brush he coloured in a sideboard or a Chesterfield suite in a jiffy. His English was as colourful as the paints he used, but he had a good sense of humour and smiled with us when he made a language blunder. One day as he came in and found us in a merry mood in the classroom I saw him cry.
‘How can you laugh, gentlemen,’ he said, ‘when my country was invaded by Germany this morning!’
We calmed him down and said we were sorry. To see this huge man so distressed had a sobering effect on us. His tears brought me back to the time when as small children we dived under the table at night when we heard the Tan lorries approaching. I could visualise the German tanks thundering over the Dutch border and people who yesterday were free now looking for some place to hide. I was twelve months in Dublin and the Second World War was raging. The windows of the College of Art, where we were housed, had had dark blue shades recently fitted and these were drawn when darkness fell, so that no light filtered through to the sky to tempt the Nazi warplanes to release their deadly cargo – as they did later on the city’s North Strand.
There were twenty of us, trainee woodwork teachers on a course in the National College of Art which was situated between Leinster House and the National Library. Military stood sentry by the Dáil, and on our way to and from class we often paused to watch the changing of the guard. In the college two large rooms had been set aside for our training course. One was the workshop where the sound of saws, planes and hammering often disturbed the quiet of the place. The other room was the drawing office where we learned draughtsmanship. The personage in charge of us was J. J. O’Connor. A large man too with a pockmarked face and a bulbous nose, he was bald with a straggling wisp which never remained plastered across his head, and stood up like an off-centre cockscomb.
He was wall-eyed, with a short upper lip from which sprung a bristly moustache. In class he was a strict disciplinarian and had a tongue so caustic it would nearly take the paint off the door. On a bad day when his temper got out of hand he hissed like a rattlesnake and could get much venom into a word like ‘lout’. But on a good day his face lost its bulldog appearance and became soft and almost comic as he reminisced about the characters he knew in the trade in his native Cork. It was there J. J. and his assistant, Nicky Hartnett, started their working lives as carpenters, and fine craftsmen they were. J. J. had good stories about his apprenticeship and told of the man who when making a lavatory seat from a plain board marked the hole by drawing a line around his hard hat. He then auger-holded it, cut it out with a lock saw, and rounded it off nicely with a spokeshave.
J. J. read widely and often talked about Frank O’Connor and Sean O’Faolain, whom he said he knew. Like Mícheál Ó Riada, my teacher in Killarney, he talked to us about the theatre and was stone mad on Shakespeare. When a backward student mutilated a job of work, J. J., taking the damaged exercise, would intone:
O, pardon me thou bleeding piece of earth,
That I am meek and gentle with these butchers.
Thou art the ruins of the noblest man
That ever lived in the tide of times …
and standing back from the bench, and in the best tradition of a Fr O’Flynn loft player, he would continue Mark Anthony’s speech, and when he came to view the wounds on Caesar’s body:
Which like dumb mouths do ope their ruby lips
To beg the voice and utterance of my tongue.
A curse shall light upon the limbs of men;
Domestic fury and fierce civil strife
Shall cumber all the parts of Italy …
he would raise his voice to such a terrifying climax that passing professors would open the door and look in to see if all was well.
One day he made a collection and put in some money himself. I was dispatched down to Fred Hanna’s to get twenty-one copies of The Merchant of Venice, which cost sixpence each and were in the Penguin series. Woodworking came to a halt and in the midst of wood-shavings, sawdust and chips we settled down to read the Merchant. I r
emember reading the part of the elder Gobbo, while two refined Corkmen were cast as Portia and Nerissa. Portia describing one of her suitors says: ‘… he doth nothing, but talk about his horse, he can shoe him himself. I am much afeared, my lady, his mother played false with a smith.’
The reader made a bad fist of the speech. What he read was ‘I am much afeared me mother played false with a smith.’
‘Judging from the way you are stuttering over the text I don’t doubt but she played false with a forge full of smiths!’ J. J. said.
When the mood moved him, whatever work we were engaged in, J. J. got us to read Shakespeare. He fancied himself as an actor and often, as one of the lads used to say, he gave us a ‘blaist’ of Falstaff. Of course reciting Shakespeare was a useful exercise for young men who would yet have to stand before a class. To improve the voice he also got us to sing. In the storeroom where our stock of timber was kept he installed a piano; we paid the rent. One of the students was a good pianist and once a week J. J. herded us in there to sing sea shanties. He sang shantyman himself in as deep and salty a voice as ever came from a man of the sea. We joined in the chorus.
J. J.:King Louis was the King of France
Before the Revolution.
Students:Away! Haul away! Haul away, Joe!
J. J.:King Louis had his head cut off,
Which spoiled his constitution!
Students:Away! Haul away! Haul away, Joe!
Each student in his turn became shantyman and we sang such songs as ‘Blow the Man Down’, ‘In Amsterdam There Lived a Maid’, ‘Johnny Come Down to High-lo’ and ‘What Shall We Do with the Drunken Sailor’, which had the chorus of: