by Eamon Kelly
At ten past ten Guthrie saw through the glass Roisín Ní Shé, who provided the harp music, arrive. Putting down the talk-back button, he shouted, ‘Mrs Harp, you’re late!’
Lionel Day (Lal O’Dea in real life), Arthur O’Sullivan and I were cast as a kind of ancient chorus. If we weren’t on the mike dead on cue Guthrie wanted to know what had happened to ‘these three old drearies’. He was quite uncomplimentary in his references to the men, and the women too, and had no compunction in using the soldier’s word in front of them if things went wrong. But nothing did … on the night. The two shows went out on consecutive Sundays and were rightfully acclaimed.
After the second show we had a party in the studio where we all became very pally. Because of a shortage of containers, Guthrie and I drank out of the same glass, what he called ‘sup chum’. I remember him telling us that he had been connected with a radio production of Journey’s End for the BBC. It was before the days when effects were put on disc and all sounds had to be manufactured in the studio. The producer wanted the tramp of marching men for a few seconds at the opening of the play. Extras were employed to mark time in a gravel rectangle in another studio. The red light went on, they were on air, the men were cued and began to march. At the end of the show the producer went to the other studio and there were the men still marching! He had forgotten to cue them out.
Actors are the worst in the world to do party pieces, but that night Arthur O’Sullivan prevailed upon me to tell a humorous folktale I had heard in Kerry. I don’t think it meant a lot to Guthrie but he wasn’t dismissive. He pronounced it a prime piece of clowning. Mícheál Ó hAodha was at the party and asked me if I had many more stories like that. I had, and he gave me a spot on Din Joe’s Take the Floor. Like Guthrie’s Peer Gynt, it was a success and that was the start of my storytelling career.
THE RAMBLING HOUSE
Din Joe’s Take the Floor was the only radio programme with dancing. Dancing on the air seemed in no way odd at the time. The rat-a-tat-tat sound of the Rory O’Connor troupe was refreshing, and was achieved by the tapping of well-shod dancing feet on thin wooden laths backed with strips of canvas – a little like an extended roll-top desk cover. The laths moved under the dancers’ feet and made an unbelievable clatter lifting off the floor. Rory O’Connor was the foremost dancer of his time and had the doubtful distinction of having danced for Hitler during the 1936 Olympics in Berlin.
One night in 1956 I had a story in Take the Floor about the Killarney man who fell into the bottomless Devil’s Punch-Bowl and came out in Australia. To which Din Joe added, ‘He walked down the road to Melbourne and was just in time to enter for the swimming competition in the Olympics!’
By this time, 1956, electricity on tall ESB poles had marched into the remotest valleys and people were able to dispense with their (only for the news) dry battery sets. On the new plug-in radios Take the Floor had a huge following in the country, and every new show brought me a sheaf of stories in the post. Not all of them were suitable for the microphone, but many came up trumps in the retelling.
I became so well established that Mícheál Ó hAodha gave me a programme of my own. It was called The Rambling House after the houses I knew in Kerry in which people collected at night for news, stories and entertainment. Donnchadh Ó Céilleachair wrote the script and the occupants of the house were singers Teresa Clifford and Seán Ó Síocháin; Éamon Keane recited poems from Around the Boree Log and the ballads of Sigerson Clifford. Maura O’Sullivan and Kevin Flood were the son and daughter in the family, who welcomed and chatted with the performers as they entered, exchanging the news of the day and the happenings of the locality. With them I was the man of the house, the seanchaí, sitting in the corner adding gems of wisdom to the general conversation and telling a story when my turn came. Albert Healy provided the music on the accordion. As with Take the Floor, we had listeners throughout the land and across the sea in Wales.
Because of our radio popularity we actors were invited to perform at functions in Dublin and elsewhere. Ulick O’Connor introduced me to the Bohemians, a brotherhood who met in Jury’s Hotel in Dame Street every Tuesday evening. A condition of one’s membership was the ability to sing, make music or otherwise entertain. There I learned to work with a live audience and endeavoured to perfect the art of timing. Éamon Keane was invited to the Donegalmen’s Association one night and in the course of his party piece Neil Blaney, the then Minister for Posts and Telegraphs, passed some remark about Radio Éireann at which Éamon took umbrage. One word borrowed another and the upshot of it all was that Éamon was dismissed from the Radio Éireann Players and ordered to go back to the civil service from which he had been seconded.
Éamon refused and went missing. Somebody wrote somewhere that his associates didn’t stand up for Éamon. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Rambling House was taken off the air as a protest at his treatment. Conor Farrington and I searched Dublin for him and finally found Éamon in An Stad, a Republican lodging house in Frederick Street off Parnell Square. We gave him his weekly cheque, which had lain uncollected in the Green Room.
We advised him that the best thing to do would be to rejoin the civil service and, when the storm blew over, wheels could be set moving within wheels to get him back to the Rep again. He wouldn’t hear of it. He was angry at his treatment but he didn’t blame Neil Blaney. He thought the decision to sack him was that of some official in the government department showing a little muscle. The next thing we heard was that Éamon had gone to England. He remained there for a while until he came back to Cork to take part in his brother’s play Sharon’s Grave. He worked on the stage for a time and then, as Conor Farrington and I had predicted, he was taken back in the Rep where he remained until he retired.
Without Éamon Keane The Rambling House was not revived. Later Mícheál Ó hAodha had the idea of bringing together Seán Ó Riada with his famous orchestra, Ceoltóirí Chualann, the singer Seán Ó Sé and myself in a programme called Fleadh Cheoil an Radio. The music, singing and storytelling proved a successful combination and it ran for ages. We taped the programmes in the O’Connell hall opposite the Gresham Hotel and if we had some minutes to spare between rehearsal and the time of recording, Seán Ó Riada and I went across to the hotel and had a cup of tea – nothing stronger before a performance. Seán, who gave a new lease of life to Irish music, was one of nature’s gentlemen. He was high good company, a keen observer of humanity in all its moods and ridiculous tenses. He had stories he had heard from his mother and in the Coolea Gaeltacht where he lived. I was welcome to use whichever stories of his suited my book, and very welcome they were, for at this stage I was running out of material. And I told him so.
‘When hard pressed,’ he said to me, ‘why don’t you do what de Valera does – go to the country!’
I took to the roads and of all the places I halted, Gougane Barra in West Cork was the best. It brought flooding back to mind all that went on in my own district when I was growing up. Dinny Cronin, the proprietor of the hotel of that name, sent out word when I was in residence, and the neighbours arrived at night and sat in the big kitchen behind the bar and in front of a roaring fire. They were, as the man said, taking the legs off one another to tell me stories. Dinny, rising after putting a sod on the fire, would set the ball rolling.
‘There were these two women west here in Kerry. One of them was going to town and the other one was coming from town after a heavy night’s rain. This was away back in 1922 when the I. R. aye were fighting the I. R. ah and all the bridges were blown down, and people had to ford the river to go to town.
‘The woman going to town said to the woman coming from town, “Were you in town, what time is it, what price are eggs, is the flood high?”
‘The fleetness of a woman’s mind when it is in top gear! And as quick as lightning the woman coming from town answered, “I was, two o’clock, one and fourpence, up to my arse, girl!’’’ – at which point Dinny would hit the patched backside of his
trousers a most unmerciful wallop.
Dinny claimed that the Free State soldiers were the first to bring bad language to Kerry. ‘They were billeted in a certain village not a million miles from where I’m sitting, and a private soldier took a woman’s bucket without her permission. He wanted it for drawing water from the well or something. An officer saw what happened and, wanting to keep good relations between the military and the community, ordered the private to return the bucket to the lady and apologise for taking it. The soldier took the bucket back to the woman and said, “Here, Mrs Tuckett, here’s your bucket and fuckit I’m sorry I took it!’’’
One night as the rain came down in bucketfuls the conversation turned to St Patrick. According to one man, when the saint had converted the Irish they became curious as to how the world would end. St Patrick told them it would go up in a ball of fire. His listeners didn’t like one bit the idea of being burned alive, and they wanted to know if the saint could save them from such a catastrophe if the end of the world came tomorrow. (Still the rain came pouring down, which drove one wag to remark that if the end of the world came tomorrow the place’d hardly light! He was called to order and we got back to the narrator.) The holy man pondered the people’s question and after some consideration told them he would give them a pledge that God would drown Ireland a year before the end of the world. The people were pleased with that. If they had to go, drowning was a better end than being burned alive! At this point the wag got up to go home and when he opened the door you could hear the rain lashing down on the corrugated iron roof of the cowshed. He poked his head back into the kitchen and said, ‘It looks like as if St Patrick is keeping his promise!’
The cottage where the famous Tailor Buckley and his wife Ansty once lived was only a short distance from the hotel, and Dinny had many of the Tailor’s stories. According to Dinny, a wealthy farmer put an overcoat making to the Tailor. The farmer after a few days came for a fitting. He liked the way the job was turning out, and as he had the money handy, he paid the Tailor. When the coat was finished the rich farmer didn’t come for it. The weeks and the months went by and winter arrived and at last the farmer came for the coat. But there was no coat. The Tailor had given it to a raggedy poor man going over the hill into Kerry on a cold night. ‘It struck me,’ the Tailor told the farmer, ‘that he needed it more than you! Didn’t our Lord say to clothe the naked!’
‘A man died sitting on a chair,’ Dinny said one night, remembering a Tailor story. ‘Dammit if rigor mortis didn’t set in, and when it came to waking him he couldn’t be straightened out on the table, and a sitting corpse could look bloody awful comical. One neighbour thought of a plan. He tied down the corpse’s feet under the table and put another rope hidden by the habit around the dead man’s chest. A couple of men put a good strain on the two ropes and secured them well. When he was straightened out if he didn’t look as fine a corpse as you’d see in a day’s walk. As the night wore on people came to the wake. There was plenty to eat and drink there. Too much drink, maybe, for in the middle of the rosary a blackguard got under the table and cut the rope around the dead man’s chest.
‘The corpse sat up like a shot, saying “Ahhh” as the wind escaped from his stomach. There was a gasp of horror from the mourners and they skidoo-ed out the door the same as if the plague had hit the place!’
Even though the people in the kitchen had often heard the story before, there was a big hand and praise for the storyteller. Listeners often joined in with words of encouragement during the story such as ‘Maith thú!’ (‘Good on you!’). On his uttering a truism they’d say ‘Is fíor dhuit!’ (‘True for you!’). Or telling of some terrible tragedy someone’d say, ‘Dia linn go deo!’ (‘God be with us forever!’). When the storyteller made a very telling point the audience would all chorus, ‘Go mba slán an seanchaí!’ (‘May the storyteller prosper!’).
To Dinny I was always the seanchaí, and he’d greet me when I arrived with one of the jingles which used to introduce my own programme on the air:
Lift the latch and walk straight in,
There’s no better place for glee.
You are welcome to the Rambling House
To meet the seanchaí!
The first night I came to Gougane Barra he brought my bag upstairs. There was an occupant already sleeping in the room. Throwing down my bag, Dinny said, ‘That’s your hammock and that’s a hoor of an Englishman in the other bed!’ To call me in the morning Dinny threw pebbles from the loose gravel of the yard at my window and shouted, ‘Get up, seanchaí!’ Dinny was as famous a character as the Tailor Buckley. He hadn’t as many stories as the Tailor, but he felt that his mission in life was to put me in touch with those who had. He took me in his car at night to farmers’ kitchens all over the parish where people gathered to talk after a day’s work. I was as welcome as de Valera, a small God there then, and who had had a safe house in nearby Gortaphludig during the civil war. I told tales, some tall tales, and heard tales, some taller. I had to cast a sprat to catch a salmon. I came home with my head bulging with stories and ideas for many more.
I went to Dinny’s mostly in the winter when there were no tourists to distract the locals or take up Dinny’s time. He had no staff in the winter and he and his wife Nellie saw to my simple needs. Seamus Murphy, the sculptor, told me that he took Milan Horvat down to Dinny’s hotel in the middle of winter. Horvat, a Hungarian I think, was the conductor of the Radio Éireann Symphony Orchestra. It was playing in Cork and Seamus was given the job of showing the conductor the hidden Ireland so he brought him to Gougane. Dinny showed them into the sitting-room. He knew Seamus well. Seamus had been to the Tailor’s cottage and had made a now famous bronze bust of that storyteller. Seamus introduced the conductor to Dinny without mentioning the man’s occupation. Dinny sensed the imperial foreignness of Milan Horvat and was as curious as hell to know ‘where he came out of’.
He set about putting down a fire, a gesture of welcome, spattering talk all round him as he brought in papers, sticks and sods of turf. Every now and then he cast an eye in the direction of Horvat, who was standing by the picture window: a tall, aloof man in a long black coat, holding a fairly wide-brimmed hat behind his back, his eyes taking in the treacherous and dramatic sky tinged with red, the mountains, the lake and the monastic ruin on the island, seeing them we may presume in musical terms. The fire wasn’t lighting for Dinny and he took off his cap to blow it as Seamus sat beside him. Finally Dinny’s curiosity overcame him and nodding towards the window he said to Seamus, ‘Who’s this hoor?’ Seamus, grateful that Horvat didn’t get the significance of the word, explained that he was a conductor. Dinny eyed the stranger, and with a modicum of incredulity enquired, ‘On the buses in Cork?’
In Milan Horvat’s eyeline across the lake was Timmy Callaghan’s house. During my visits to Gougane, Timmy and I became firm friends and I was invited to his house. I am still not sure whether he expected me to believe all the things he told me. Timmy didn’t fight for freedom when his age group was out in the hills, but he carried dispatches hidden under the saddle of his bicycle. He was, as he said himself, a handy footballer and played in every position in the field including the mark. Because of a falling off in speed as the years went by, he found himself in the goal.
‘We were playing in the final of the parish league,’ he told me, ‘and the opposing team knowing my weakness placed all the good looking women they could find at the two sides of the goal. Blast it,’ he said, ‘watching the women I left everything in, and we lost the match!’
Timmy believed in fairies and told me that if you met them they looked the same as you or me. You wouldn’t know the difference. Then he continued: ‘I went with my own horse and butt to Bantry for fish. I set out the night before, so as to be among the first at the market in the morning. The night was bright except when great banks of cloud scudded across the face of the moon. After some time on my way I put my hand in my pocket and found I had no matches to light my pipe. Around the ne
xt turn of the road I saw a fine house all lit up. It must be new, I said to myself, for I hadn’t noticed it going to Bantry before. Maybe an ex-policeman built it.
‘I tied the horse to the butt of a whitethorn growing on the ditch and went in. A great crowd inside; all strangers to me and they made no wonder of my presence. There was music playing and young men and women dancing as wild and as airy as they would be at the pattern below in Gougane. I filled my pipe as I watched them stepping it out. With the crowd I couldn’t get near the fire to light it so I put the pipe on the table in front of me. When the quadrille was over the lady in charge asked for a donation for the piper. I put what loose change I had, a couple of pennies and a threepenny bit, on the table. Some men were slow in parting with their money, and some refused to give anything. An altercation arose and while you’d be saying trapsticks fists began to fly. Women screamed as someone blew out the lamp. I gathered my legs out of the place as quick as I could, ripped the cob from the whitethorn and drove away.
‘Halfway down the road to Bantry I put my hand in my pocket and found that I had left my pipe behind on the table in the new house. There was nothing for it now only grin and bear it. I’d call in on the way home and ask for the pipe. I did my few commands in Bantry, bought the fish and hit for home. When I came to the turn in the road, that I may be as dead as my mother, but there was no house there. And I couldn’t mistake the place. There was the whitethorn tree where I tied the cob, there were the fresh horse-apples and the mark of the cob’s hooves in the mud. I went in the gap I had gone in the night before and there on a flat stone was my pipe and the two pennies and the threepenny bit.
‘Who were they, those people I saw dancing in that house? Were they the fairy horde? Or the people who have gone before us? Or did I for a short time visit the afterlife?’