When she returned from the shopping trip she had two large bottles of lemonade. After supper we sat around the kitchen and drank some of it out of tea cups and mugs. My father drank from a bottle of porter and when he was halfway into it he raised the bottle and said, ‘Here’s to Paddy.’ It was a toast to my name being read out on radio, and although I didn’t understand what it meant, at the same time I felt he was proud of me. It also occurred to me that the black stuff called porter was a powerful drink and privately I liked the idea of trying it out. After all, it could be said that its effect was a good one, since it turned my father into a man filled with words of love and kindness.
In 1956 I was a nine-year-old country gossoon who played cowboys and Indians with my schoolmates. We were filled with ideas about good lads and bad lads as we ran around farmyards, ducking in and out of doorways, hiding behind haystacks or luring our friends, the bad lads, into amateur ‘ambushes’. It was a great time in our lives but beneath it all were the sounds or portions of tunes that came and went, back and forth in my head. Small phrases of céilí tunes were teasing my memory and a very strong soulful feeling was beating in my chest. It was a long time before I understood it or could even speak of it. I also noticed that certain parts of tunes would remain in my head, especially if the tune had a name. From listening to the radio, I heard the name of a reel, ‘The Boys of Ballisodare’, and I became intrigued by where in God’s name was this Ballisodare. My parents began to realise that I was very caught up with music when they heard me lilting and humming waltzes or parts of jigs, reels and well-known patriotic songs.
Late one Sunday night, a frosty night in December, my father returned from his usual few drinks in Watt Nolan’s pub in Daingean. He had met a local lad there whose name was Joe Byrne, and Joe was ‘well on it’, as we used to say when a fellow had drunk too much. My father was a great believer in strong tea as a way to sober a man up, and because Joe’s home was a mile past our house, he decided to accompany Joe and walk home with their bicycles.
When they arrived at our gate my father invited Joe inside and the kettle was quickly put over the fire and a couple of sandwiches made. Shortly after the tea, my father said, ‘Joe, I heard you bought a new accordion.’ Joe bowed his head a number of times.
My father spoke again. ‘Joe, why don’t you bring it in – it’s not good for it to be outside in the cold.’
‘Aww,’ said Joe, ‘it’ll be all right.’
‘Ah c’mon,’ said my mother, ‘we all love music here, especially Paddy – he eats and sleeps music.’
Finally, Joe went out to his bicycle, and when he returned he was carrying a small mesh shopping sack that contained his accordion. Sitting on his chair he bent down and took the accordion out of the sack. When he straightened up he put its shoulder straps on. I was watching all of this in quiet astonishment and when I saw the accordion – the very first musical instrument I had ever set eyes on – I became transfixed. Its sound was pure magic and the colour of its bellows was a warm pink, and I loved how Joe pulled it in and out as he played ‘The Old Bog Road’. There were two rows of buttons on its right side, and two small rows of four buttons each on its left side. As I looked on I saw that Joe’s short, fat fingers were pressing buttons on the middle part of the keyboard. I was so captivated that I immediately knew that I had to have an accordion, come hell or high water! Soon after, Joe went home and I went to bed, but the sight and sound of this little music box kept me awake for a long time.
A week later Joe’s brother Tom came to visit. This time he had his accordion with him. He was the same fellow who had asked me to sing a song before I ran with my sister and hid under the table. To my relief, however, there was no mention of any songs. So after he had some tea, Tom played a few jigs, reels and waltzes. I can still remember their names, which were revealed to me in later years – reels like ‘The Maid Behind the Bar’, ‘The Old High Reel’ and ‘The First House in Connacht’. A few jigs that come to mind were ‘Gallagher’s Frolics’ and ‘Saddle the Pony’. I was struck by Tom’s fingers as he played because he would include a button on the inside row from time to time. He didn’t know, and neither did I, that this is how a player accommodates the inclusion of a sharp or flat note.
Of course the radio was proving to be a big influence on me, particularly the popular Take the Floor, and Céilí House. On Sunday afternoons we tuned in at 2.30 for a half-hour programme of various céilí bands playing a variety of selections before the Gaelic games commentaries began. This was a wonderful prelude to the various matches that were broadcast live by the great Mícheál Ó hEithir. It’s still true that radio stimulates the imagination with its many gifted personalities whom we grow to either love or hate. But no one had such a profound effect on the Gaelic sports world as the high and exciting voice of Mícheál Ó hEithir. His commentaries on the wonderful hurling clashes of the 1950s between Wexford, Cork, Kilkenny and Tipperary lifted people and spirited our imaginations to a point of delirious ecstasy that cannot be repeated in the world of today’s mass media.
Hurling maestros like Cork’s Christy Ring, the Rackard brothers of Wexford, Joe Salmon of Galway and Jimmy Smyth of Clare were names introduced by Mícheál, and his exciting descriptions of tussles in front of the goalmouth are still alive in my memory. When the ball landed in the square just in front of the goal line he would shout, ‘There’s a terrific shemozzle in the parallelogram!’ or ‘It’s a goal! It’s a goal!’ It was a sound that shook our radio on summer Sundays as my father, with right ear between his head and the radio speaker, kept shouting a fusillade of whishts. ‘Whisht! Whisht! Whisht!’ he would hiss, as gushes of soluble air blew from his mouth. It was his way of preventing interruptions. On one occasion, our kettle came to boiling point and began whistling and my father, taken by surprise, found himself shouting at it.
Mícheál Ó hEithir was at his best during a do-or-die game. His wit and humour and lively descriptions set the scene. The colours of the teams, the referee, the wonderful Artane Boys’ Band from Dublin, and the names of the fifteen players on each team – he brought it all into our humble country homes, and we loved him for it.
2
Hairpins and Combs
It was early spring in 1953 when I was sent outside in search of sticks – or ‘firan’, as my father would say. This was firewood that had to be gathered and brought home to our kitchen to dry by the fire. Much of it was small twigs, which were very useful for kindling and of enormous help in starting a fire. It was usually my job to keep my father supplied with enough of this ‘firan’ and any neglect of my duty meant an uncomfortable scolding.
One afternoon when returning with an armful of kindling I spotted a black donkey and cart outside our gate. The cart had no sideboards. A sackful of something lay near its tail-end, and several implements for farm work lay on the floor of the cart – pitchforks, spades, shovels and iron picks with their separate handles made of fresh ash. The man in charge was tying his donkey to our iron gate beside the road. Going back behind his cart, he unloaded a sackful of curios and hoisted it onto his shoulder. As I neared the door of our house I saw that he had beaten me to it and was already talking to my mother.
‘Well, Jim,’ she said, ‘come in, and let’s see what you have.’
I followed him inside and put my own load in the corner by the fire. He unloaded his sack onto the cement floor and, opening its neck, revealed a bunch of articles I recognised as mousetraps, spools of thread, and rat-traps. But when he turned his sack upside down I was astounded at the range of his other items: hairpins, brushes, combs, candles, Clarke’s tin whistles, rings for ringing the snouts of pigs, rattles for small children, shoelaces and mouth organs. I ran to my mother when I saw the mouth organs. ‘Mammy, Mammy, get me one, get me one!’ I begged. And she did! For one shilling. And so began my musical career.
She bought a few other accoutrements as well, candles and St Patrick’s Day badges. When
the pedlar began his departure I saw that he was a tall, lanky man wearing a peaked cap and a long grey tweed topcoat. Some of its buttons were missing and it was held together at the waist by binding twine instead of a belt. He had a hooked nose and small dark eyes almost like an eel. His Adam’s apple stuck out and his hands had very long fingernails, which my mother liked because this suggested he had an even temper: one of the many old wives’ tales of which my mother had a store. She was later put on the defensive regarding the length of the pedlar’s nails after he untied his donkey and climbed onto the front of the cart. With the reins in each hand, he gave them a short tug. ‘Gid up there, Bosco,’ he shouted at the donkey. The donkey stood motionless. The pedlar roared and shouted, ‘Gid up! Gid up!’ But Bosco the donkey stood still. Jim the pedlar reached behind him and grabbed a pick handle. ‘Now,’ he says, ‘see what you think of this, you miserable bag of fuckin’ glue!’ He began beating the donkey’s rump and was beginning to sweat himself into a frenzy when my mother came running up to the gate.
‘Stop! Stop!’ she yelled. ‘Jim, I’m surprised at you. This is cruelty. Stop it!’ She had a basin full of chopped turnips which she was preparing for dinner. ‘Let me try a little bit of kindness; it goes a long way.’ She stepped outside the gate and pushed the basin of turnips under the donkey’s mouth.
I was standing nearby and began testing the mouth organ, hooting it and running it back and forth against my mouth. Bosco was probing at the turnips but then he turned his head in my direction and his ears stood to attention. In two seconds he plunged forward and, jerking the cart up the small hill, he started to run. The pedlar’s cap tumbled from his head when he was suddenly pulled forward. I was still puffing at my mouth organ, a ten-year-old boy who didn’t know that his ‘music’ had frightened a dumb animal out of its wits. I continued to blow into my instrument, and walking up onto the roadside I was just in time to see the donkey and cart disappear around a turn in the road. That was the last I ever saw of them. It was a story that was told over and over in front of many a hearth in our locality.
The following winter we hosted a house dance and invited two accordion players and a fiddler to provide some music. My father said he would beat his tambourine. It was on a Sunday night and we turned up our oil lamp and added a couple of candles to give extra light in the kitchen. Sandwiches were made with sardines and ham. Armfuls of turf were stuffed into a bin and an extra kettle was brought along by one of my aunts. A tall, dark man with a brown hat played a Hohner Black Dot accordion. His name was Paddy McGrath and he was noted as a good player. A second accordion, a red-coloured C#/D Paolo Soprani, was played by Mick Hayes. The fiddler was a friend of our family, a very generous, very shy man known to us children as Dinny. His last name was Doyle, and his place of abode was a half-mile north of our house beside the banks of the Grand Canal. I never heard him play by himself and didn’t know until that evening that he had a fiddle. The three of them began playing together at about eight o’clock. I was sitting in my chosen spot in the corner by the fire. It was a good vantage point and I felt awfully happy as I waited for the proceedings to develop. My sister Moira was sitting near me and I could see her eyes open wider as the music was played. We had never heard musicians playing together like this and were convinced afterwards that it was better than the wireless. There were fourteen people, not counting my parents and the three musicians, and as the music was played four couples began waltzing around the floor. My sister and I were watching our aunts and their men laughing and joking. Moira and I thought they looked funny on account of not having seen them dance before. Soon other people took to the floor and in a short time the kitchen was crowded with people.
Later on in the evening, tea and sandwiches were provided; this gave the musicians a break but it didn’t last very long. Soon they began again with another waltz and five couples took the floor while others were calling for a half set. Our kitchen was a small space and could only accommodate five or six couples at a time. However, everyone had a mighty time and the highlight of the evening was the half sets danced to reels or polkas. These were my favourites because of the tunes and the basket swinging, which meant a group of two fellows and two women, swinging with arms entwined about one another in a tight circle. Tom Byrne loved to basket swing, and he would propel the swing until it went out of time with the music and one or two people would become dizzy and disconnect from the circle and fall away against the wall. Tom himself lost his balance and fell against the dresser, almost knocking over a number of my mother’s wedding plates. When the music stopped my father told everyone to keep calm and to desist from any unnecessary basket swinging during the sets. It was common in those days to remind dancers about unruly basket swinging because it ruined the continuity of the dance. When it got out of hand women would scream and lose their footing on the floor and would be lifted and left hanging out of the bunch as it spun around and around. It reminded me of the swinging chairs at a visiting carnival, which also produced high-pitched screams from young ladies.
During a break, a few bottles of porter were produced from somewhere. The musicians were the ones to get the first round and it energised them greatly. Paddy McGrath removed his hat because he was sweating, and Mick Hayes followed suit. When Paddy reached over and gave me his hat it made me feel important, and as a kindly gesture I held it close to the fire to dry. More dancing continued with a highland fling and then another half set. I heard a lot of different tunes that I hadn’t heard before, ‘The Sally Gardens’, ‘The Salamanca Reel’ and ‘The Echo Hornpipe’. An all-time favourite of my father’s was also played with all its four parts. It was a jig he drummed into my head for years afterwards. The name of ‘The Lark in the Morning’ made me cringe for at least twenty years, until I eventually realised that the tune was a nice piece of music and very well composed.
Our house dance lasted until midnight, when everyone began to leave and face the cold night on their bicycles. My sister and I had been escorted to bed an hour or so beforehand. I remember our mother tucking us in and reminding us to go to sleep. Meanwhile, the music carried on, and we could easily hear it through the wall between us and the kitchen. It was long after midnight when we finally fell asleep.
3
Turf Cutting
The following May my father and I walked with spade and sleán (a type of spade with an extra side wing used for cutting turf) the half-mile of a mucky pathway that led us to the bog. It was turf-cutting time and I was in charge of a short two-grained fork. My father had already prepared the turf bank during the previous weeks after he returned from work in the evenings. As we walked along the pathway, we passed old abandoned bogholes and I could see the high purple heather in the distance and furze bushes already in bloom with their luscious deep yellow flowers. The scent in the air was a breathing paradise, encouraged by a west wind that blew gently across the upper height of the bog. When we arrived at the freshly cleared bank, my father began by saying, ‘In the name of God,’ before pushing the sleán down and slicing the first damp sod. And then with a lift and a sweep he landed it in front of me. I dug my fork into it and, lifting it, placed it in a wheelbarrow that we had borrowed from a neighbour.
It was my first turf-cutting work with my father, and before noon I was beginning to tire. I was relieved when my father said we should take a break and make tea, which we had with buttered bread that we had brought from home. My father had a cigarette before he began again. Because I was tired, he told me to rest for a while. Working on the bog was hard, especially during the first couple of days. I was eleven years old, and tended to be frail. My mother was very aware of this, and as we left the house she reminded my father not to overwork me. As the day wore on I was given several ‘rests’, which allowed me to play a few tunes on the mouth organ. ‘The High Level Hornpipe’ was one I was keenly trying to learn, but I had to wait to hear it again on the radio. Later in the week with some help from a neighbour my father managed to spread
at least seventy barrowfuls of turf in rows where the grass grew on the edge of the bogland. The rest of the grass area was used as a pasture, which measured something like three acres. Earlier in the day, several cows and calves had jumped an adjoining drain that ran between our fields and our neighbour’s farm. The cattle were already grazing on our side, not far from the drain, and had probably been there a half-hour before we saw them. I was sitting on a blanket under a tree, deeply involved in playing my mouth organ, and didn’t notice the cattle as they ambled towards the source of the music – which was me. Soon they were at the edge of where our turf lay across the grass, and two or three cows were beginning to trample the sods of turf. All of a sudden my father and his workmate began shouting: ‘Paddy! PADDY! Stop the music!’ I was taken by surprise and stunned by all the shouting. ‘Hi, hi, hi! How, how!’ came more shouts as the two men ran towards the cows. ‘Hoo, howee! Hi, hi! Come on, whoosh. Whoosh!’ It wasn’t long before the cows were herded back across the field and eventually driven beyond the drain.
When the commotion ended, my father came over to me and said, ‘Paddy, Paddy, don’t play the mouth organ here again, wait ‘til we get home. Those cows almost trampled over the turf.’ I didn’t know what he meant, but said nothing.
‘Don’t you know that cattle are attracted to music?’ he said.
‘No, Daddy, I didn’t.’
‘Well, now you know! Cattle love music. Cattle love music,’ he kept saying as he walked over again to where his sleán stood deep in a fresh sod. I never forgot that experience with our neighbour’s cows and somehow it gave me a new respect for these gentle creatures, whose behaviour told me something about the power of music.
The Road from Castlebarnagh Page 2