The Road from Castlebarnagh
Growing Up in Irish Music, a Memoir
Paddy O’Brien
Published by
Orpen Press
Lonsdale House
Avoca Avenue
Blackrock
Co. Dublin
Ireland
e-mail: [email protected]
www.orpenpress.com
© Paddy O’Brien, 2012
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-871305-69-2
ePub ISBN: 978-1-871305-92-0
Kindle ISBN: 978-1-871305-93-7
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior, written permission of the publisher.
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
This book is dedicated to the memory of my parents, Christy and Molly O’Brien; to my sisters, Moira, Ann, Kathleen and Patricia; and to my wife, Erin.
Foreword
I’ve known Paddy O’Brien for many years and have known his music for even longer. He and I have spent many evenings in one other’s company both playing music and talking ‘til the small hours. Paddy is one of those rare musicians who love to talk about music almost as much as they like to play it. The philosophy, the history and the poetry of the music are second nature to him. Paddy has been a tremendous influence in my own musical life.
Paddy’s life has been rich with musical experience and filled with a wealth of stories, memories and anecdotes that inform his musical vision. Coming of age as an Irish traditional musician as he did, in the last half of the twentieth century, has helped to give Paddy a clear and visceral understanding of our musical culture. He reveals a great depth of insight into the wisdom of folk culture and into the richness of a way of life that to some may have seemed ordinary or commonplace. The characters he has come to know along the way and the insights gained have all made their way into his music and now into this book.
In this first book by Paddy, we are welcomed into his childhood life and mind in an engaging and entertaining manner. Music weaves its way all through the story, of course, and sheds light on a bygone way of life, but this story also details how the way of life at that time informed the music as well. Paddy is a great storyteller who knows his characters well; this book is full of the natural wit and humour that surrounded him and suffused his early years. He is passionate and poetic in his efforts to grasp the essential nature of the music, and of the many people who drew him in and nurtured his spirit as a young musician. Those kindnesses have never been forgotten and, throughout his musical career, Paddy has tried to honour the memory of those early influences by offering wisdom and encouragement to many younger players, myself among them, I am happy to say. May you find musical inspiration in these pages as well.
Martin Hayes
Preface
Three years ago, the idea of writing a memoir had never even entered my consciousness. Up to then, I suppose I looked upon authors as the possessors of a special kind of talent, a different class of people altogether. I had never considered chancing my arm at something like this, even though from time to time, some friend would say to me, ‘Paddy, you have great stories. You should write a book.’
As a musician performing onstage, I had developed a fondness for telling stories about tunes and tune titles – I’m fascinated by the history and the lore that goes with the music. I think it was a fellow performer, Peter Yeates from Dublin (now living in Portland, Oregon), who was the first person to say to me, ‘I know you have it in you, so when are you going to write a book?’ Somehow, Peter’s voice stayed in my memory, and it seemed that the longer I was living in the States (thirty-four years now), the more old memories of home began to emerge. Of course my father was a very good storyteller and had a large store of fireside material, as had many of the neighbours who rambled past our home during the 1950s and early 1960s. As a child, I would sit quietly in a corner beside our turf fire and listen for hours to the music and the chat with my sister Moira, never realising how much information we were absorbing.
I entered the world in 1945, the middle of the twentieth century, but my family’s way of life had not changed substantially for more than a hundred years. The house where I was born was an old thatched cottage with no running water or electricity. The area around our house is still known as Castlebarnagh, which is a small townland near Daingean in northeast County Offaly, in the midlands of Ireland.
My childhood days were spent working around our farm and going to school, cutting turf and thatching the house with my father. I grew up immersed in Irish rural culture – storytelling, music and house dances that traced a long line back into the past, with characters, customs and ways of life now long gone. The characters who people these pages are my parents and sisters, friends and neighbours, schoolmates, fellow musicians, workmates – all ordinary folk from the Irish countryside, who worked and played and squabbled and endeavoured to keep themselves and their families afloat in hard times.
When money was scarce, as it always seemed to be when I was young, people had to entertain themselves with local stories and conversation with visiting friends and ramblers. Our house had its share of people who stopped in for a chat or a cup of tea, and I was raised on stories – of hard work and ruined harvests, of Gaelic sports, little people, ghost stories and hauntings. I began building up my own repertoire of stories as well: about the time my father got our first wireless, and when my mother bought my first musical instrument – a mouth organ – from a travelling peddler.
Three years ago, I started to experiment – writing down a few sentences, just to see what would happen, mainly to see if I could actually do it. Two hours later, I had written thirty pages, and as I continued, I noticed that the stories were pouring out of me. What had begun as an experiment became an obsession, and an experience like none other I’ve had. And on a regular diet of history and crime novels, I started to become more aware of the actual work of writing – I became particularly interested in word choices, fascinated by how writers were able to paint a whole world through descriptive language and dialogue, how they could actually shape a story.
So I continued writing as more stories came to mind from a time in Ireland when we lived without plumbing, running water, electricity or even a radio. Those were poor times, but I remember them better for all the happiness and enjoyment and all the local characters who are now scattered or gone to their happy rewards. All of them were part of our country landscape in the area around Castlebarnagh, Killoneen and Daingean in northeast County Offaly. I hope my book does them some measure of homage to their historical contribution to the ‘Faithful County’ of Offaly.
Writing down these memories was almost like getting to know my parents and younger sisters all over again, from a time when we were all so young and seemingly more innocent. All the characters of my childhood were suddenly alive again, and despite all the hardship, the easy social give-and-take of that time still envelops me like a warm handshake.
I also found that through and against all the stories of daily life runs the strong counter-melody of an awakening creative consciousness, a slow recognition of the one vital imperative in my life: playing
Irish traditional music. The realisation of that imperative overtook me as a young child, so these are also the recollections of a young musician who had to learn tunes by ear from listening to the wireless – in those days my only source of inspiration. Without the aid of a tape recorder, my struggle to get to the heart of the music was an arduous journey, one of constant challenge and soul-grinding frustration.
And yet all of these things shaped me, the music and the stories by the fire, the hardships and the laughter. These stories are the reason you might hear the rasp of the corncrake or the howling curses of our neighbour Mick Hayes in the way I play a reel, or feel the cold wind blowing across the bog in the mournful melody of a slow air.
Paddy O’Brien
Acknowledgements
For their generous assistance during the writing of this book, I owe great thanks to Dan Donnelly, Tom and Juliet Clancy, Mary Bergin, Dáithí Sproule, Hughie Ryan, Alan and Conor O’Brien, Ethna McKiernan and Martin Hayes.
Table of Contents
Foreword
Preface
Acknowledgements
1. The Visitor
2. Hairpins and Combs
3. Turf Cutting
4. A Job of Journeywork
5. A Single-Row Accordion
6. Long Tom
7. Going Astray
8. A Ghostly Confrontation
9. Croghan Feis
10. National School
11. The Fancy Dress Parade
12. The Sure-Sures
13. Long Trousers
14. The Gallowglass
15. The Drowning of Shep
16. Thatching the House
17. The Banshee
18. The Power of the Cure
19. Mysterious Travellers
20. The County Final
21. The Boys’ School
22. The Matinée
23. Topping the Beet
24. Croghan CCÉ
25. The Grand Canal
26. Milking the Cow
27. The Hoax
28. Out with the Wren
29. The New Teacher
30. Singing Lessons
31. Céilí House
32. Making the Hay
33. The Piper and the Pigs
34. The Birth of a Calf
35. The Two Bulls
36. Joe Boland
37. Mr Coffey and Mr O’Connell
38. The Circus
39. Black Bob
40. Joe Delaney
41. Jimmy’s Return
42. The Man Who Didn’t Like Music
43. The Miracle
44. The Man Who Loved Himself
45. The Price of a Tune
46. Examinations
47. Offaly Football
48. Vocational School
49. The Meeting
50. Likes and Dislikes
51. A Gallant Friend
52. The Interview
53. The First Day of Work
54. The Banagher Group
55. The Scóraíocht
56. Winning and Losing
57. The First Pint
58. The First Céilí
59. A Surprise Result
60. The Drimnagh Session
Photo Section
About the Book
1
The Visitor
One of my earliest memories is of a neighbour calling by our house and being invited in for a cup of tea. Inside, he sat in front of our open turf fire. As it turned out, he was a musician, and played a little on a new Hohner Black Dot accordion. He didn’t have it with him, because it was early evening, and he was on his way home from work. As he was drinking the tea the conversation turned to songs that my father and mother sang and other songs that were being aired on Radio Éireann. He knew some of them, and sang one called ‘Mockingbird Hill’. Shortly after that, he looked over towards me, to where I was sitting in a corner with my sister Moira. He said, ‘Does Paddy sing?’ and ‘What about a little song?’
I was seven years old, my sister a year younger, and we were extremely shy. We usually said nothing when visitors called for a chat with my mother and father. As I was being pressed, my mother insisted that I should sing ‘The Pub with No Beer’. Hearing this was like a hammer blow; I had often sung the song, but embarrassment overcame me and I quickly looked around, trying to find a hiding place.
It was as if the whole kitchen was saying, ‘Come on, Paddy, give us a song.’ I jumped up, ran across the kitchen floor and dived under the dinner table with its oilcloth cover hanging low. My sister came right after me and together we huddled beneath the table, sitting on one of its crossbeams. I still remember how uncomfortable it was, with the table timber pressing into our behinds, but we were two innocent children who were intimidated by any attention from outsiders. Our songs were part of our private world, for when we walked through fields or went picking daisies or cowslips. Finally, when the pleading for a song subsided everyone began to laugh, with my father saying, ‘You’d want to hear him sing when there’s no one here!’
At that time, our family lived in a townland called Castlebarnagh, which is outside Daingean in County Offaly. We had a small thatched house with two bedrooms and a kitchen. It had no electricity and no running water. We had to fetch all our water from a neighbour’s well, a half-mile away. There was an extra room, with a tiled roof, attached to the back of our house, but it was too cold to sleep there during the winter.
One day when my sister and I were visiting our Aunt Mary in Daingean we heard her new radio for the first time and were amazed. My father was with us, and I remember my aunt saying to him, ‘Christy, you should get one. There’s mighty music on it on Monday nights, and it would be great for the kids. There’s a programme called Take the Floor, and an auld fella on it, and he’s a fierce jokester.’
‘I’ve never heard of him,’ said my father. ‘What’s his name?’
‘His name is Din Joe, and he’s a Corkman!’ my aunt replied with a mischievous grin.
Of course, my father didn’t care where Din Joe came from as long as he could tell a good joke. My sister and I were sitting on a small couch, sipping tea with a biscuit and listening to the conversation, and even then we had a curious feeling that our home in Castlebarnagh would soon have a radio.
It was about six or seven months later, during the winter of 1955, when Cavendish’s delivery van arrived at our gate with a mahogany-coloured radio. I remember it as a very exciting evening for all the family. When tuning in to the various stations, our parents’ first reaction was to stand back a little – ‘just in case’.
‘Just in case of what?’ Aunt Mary shouted. She had come on a small visit a week later because my mother was unsure of where to tune in for Take the Floor.
‘Just in case of what?’ she shouted again. My father stood biting his lip as he did when he was stuck for words. ‘It’s not goin’ to bite you!’ my aunt continued, ‘It’s harmless.’
Then my mother cut in. ‘Paddy thought he saw somethin’ movin’ inside of it.’
Aunt Mary laughed. ‘Ho, ho, ho,’ she roared. ‘Don’t let anyone outside ever hear a word of this. If the neighbours hear about ye, it’ll be away to the quare place in a straitjacket for ye.’
In the end, it was all figured out and my mother became used to turning the couple of knobs to find her favourite programmes, especially dramatised radio plays, which were often aired on Sunday nights.
I remember one particular play, which was called Murder in the Red Barn. The play was advertised on radio throughout the week leading up to its presentation, which was the following Sunday evening at 8.00 p.m. When the time came the announcer told listeners to turn up the radio a little and to turn down our lights at home and make ourselves comfortable. My mother
wasted no time in turning down our oil lamp and so we all listened in silence. A half-minute went by in almost total darkness except for the small turf fire on the hearth. All of a sudden an ear-piercing scream came from a woman’s voice right out of the radio speaker. We all jumped in our chairs and I could feel myself trembling.
‘Jesus Christ!’ said my father.
‘Holy Mother of God!’ cried my mother, and then the play began in earnest.
Our radio was not the most constant of country luxuries because we didn’t have electricity and so we had to recharge the radio battery every so often. In the beginning a recharged battery would last two weeks, but after about six months it would only last a week. Many people used radio batteries at that time, which meant that the local garage mechanic was inundated with requests to recharge them. As a result, lots of people (including ourselves) had to wait a week or more for their batteries to be ready, a huge inconvenience that caused us to miss many of our favourite programmes.
My love of the radio was especially inspired by the 5.30 p.m. children’s programme that encouraged us to sketch and paint pictures of rural landscapes with crayons or watercolours. These suggestions were explained to us by Marion King, the presenter of the programme, who also read out the names of children who had won prizes. I had already begun to sketch and paint when I was seven years old, and felt very enthusiastic as I listened to Marion. My parents were very encouraging, as were many people who often rambled to our home. As a child, I felt extremely pleased about being referred to as an artist, and when I began to paint copies of holy pictures that hung on the kitchen wall some people saw it as the first step towards the priesthood. I could hear them say, ‘Paddy is different from the rest of them around here,’ or ‘He has the face of a little saint.’
My mother noticed one of my paintings and said, ‘We should send it to Marion King and maybe win a prize.’ She posted it to Radio Éireann, and two weeks later my name was read out on the radio along with the names of other children who had also won prizes. My mother, who was getting ready to go shopping in Daingean when she heard my name read out, was excited and said we should celebrate when my father came home.
The Road from Castlebarnagh Page 1