The Road from Castlebarnagh

by Paddy O'Brien

Mrs O’Neill stood looking down at me with a pretentious smile and I could see a wooden one-foot rule in her right hand. She was a small, stout woman in her mid-forties, and she wore a blue costume with a skirt and buttoned jacket and blouse. She was my very first teacher of Christian doctrine, sums or maths, English and Irish reading. When my mother was gone I began to cry, as did other children in the classroom. We were all separated from our parents and a feeling of being lost to the unknown overcame us. It may have been an hour before I tired of crying, at which point I began making chalk marks on a black slate. This amused me and I was enjoying myself when I heard Mrs O’Neill raising her voice. ‘Now, now,’ she said. ‘This won’t do. It won’t do at all.’ She was looking towards a sobbing child who sat at another desk. He hadn’t stopped crying. He was sitting on the other side of the classroom and was lying face down on his desk. I looked up at the teacher and said, ‘I’m not like him. I wouldn’t cry like that.’ The teacher grinned and pointed her finger at me. It was a subtle warning, but I didn’t know it.

  At midday we had a half-hour break for lunch. We all clambered outside to the school yard and sat on the grass. Some of us had schoolboy satchels and others had biscuit tins. My mother had given me two sardine sandwiches with a small bottle of milk, but I wasn’t very hungry and only ate half a sandwich. I drank almost all of the milk, though, just in time to hear the school bell ringing. It was time to return to the classroom! I spent the next two hours scribbling on my slate. The boy on the far side of the room had stopped crying and was playing with crayons on a piece of white paper. Our teacher spent most of her time asking us our names and where we lived and if we believed in Santa Claus. This was her way of reminding us that Santa was very nice to good children, and that he’d be rewarding us for paying attention in school.

  We were all dismissed from class at 2.30 and when I came out the front door I saw my mother waiting for me at the school gate. She carried me home on the carrier of her bicycle with my legs hanging down each side. I would be six years old in less than two weeks, and my little head was alive with images of the teacher, the chalk and the slates, and the little boy who was crying became one of my earliest memories. When we arrived home my mother heated chicken soup and I ate that along with some buttered bread. I answered lots of questions from my mother and my eldest sister, Moira. Later on, when my father came home, he too wanted to hear how I had got on. I went to bed early as I was tired of the attention and craved the quietness of the bedroom. Before I fell asleep I heard my parents say my name in the kitchen. As I lay there I felt very secure, but I knew tomorrow would be another day, because I heard my father say, ‘A good sleep and Paddy should feel better tomorrow.’

  Over the next few days I became more confident, until one day I was caught looking behind me and Mrs O’Neill with her wooden rule stung my forefinger where my hand was resting on the desk. This woke me up to the reality of what kind of a person she was, and as the months passed I was shocked by some of her treatment of other children. Vicious slaps on the hands were prevalent, and hard, open-hand slaps to the sides of our faces turned normal children into resentful little rogues. If the children didn’t remember something she would pull their hair, especially the little girls. She was more forgiving of the town children and looked down her nose at children who came from poorer families. Whether country children were favoured depended on the financial status of their parents. We weren’t aware of how much class discrimination touched our lives and our parents knew little about it either.

  A large percentage of Irish children who are now grown up have their own stories of schoolroom neglect by teachers who ignored them in their belief that some children were incapable of learning. This was a situation that was never addressed by the clergy, teaching authorities, or the school principal. Teachers were never properly trained in communication techniques or how to coax or give children some sense of accomplishment. Instead, our years at national school were times of extreme intimidation and fear and a lot of us have never fully recovered from the experience. Many of the teachers had secured employment because they spoke Irish, but were totally inadequate at teaching us how to put together (in Irish) the words necessary to form ordinary comments on the weather, how to get from here to there or to describe what a cowboy did in a film. I suppose it’s easy to be critical and yet the very idea of a method for teaching children was never considered, never mind as a means to an end.

  The tragedy of it all was that we grew to dislike the Irish language because we associated it with the grim faces of our teachers who beat us, called us names and generally made us feel worthless. Particular pupils were also singled out and humiliated in front of an entire class of twenty to thirty children. It was a devastating time in our young lives.

  Slowly but surely, we all settled into our low infants class until one day we were told that we were being moved to another row of seats that gave us the honour of becoming high infants. Mrs O’Neill made it her business to warn us that a better standard was expected, and she would remind us several times what it meant. She would walk up and down between our seats, looking over our shoulders as we wrote short essays. If we spilled ink or blotted our pages we were dealt an unexpected slap on the back of our heads. We were all seven years old and this woman was overseeing us like a prison guard. The result was poor concentration, nervous tension, and some children developed stammers or stutters when she questioned what they had written in their copy books.

  About this time I became friends with a few other boys who would talk about cowboys and Indians. I had never heard about Indians and had never seen the pictures that were being shown in the new courthouse, which also served as cinema and dance hall. My friends spoke of the Durango Kid and Roy Rogers. I was fascinated and wanted to know more.

  ‘What are Indians?’ I enquired.

  Seamus Carr was only too glad to inform me. ‘I saw them,’ he said. ‘They wear very little clothes, just a bit of a towel around here.’ He pointed to his crotch. ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘and they have horses and they circle wagon trains.’

  ‘They have bows and arrows,’ said Willy Smith, who had joined us. ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘I’ve made some. Bows and arrows. What—’

  The door was opening; she was back. The whole class went silent. ‘Now,’ she said, ‘let’s begin again.’ Then all of a sudden she addressed my friend Seamus. ‘Carr! What were you talking about when I opened the door?’

  Carr lifted his English book to his face and was hiding behind it.

  ‘O’Brien,’ she shouted, ‘what was Carr talking to you about?’

  ‘Nothin’ ma’am,’ was my answer.

  She said, ‘If I see you two talking again, I’ll brand your ears for ye.’ Willy Smith had disappeared under our desk and then reappeared behind us at his own desk. Mrs O’Neill shouted, ‘Smith! Where were you? What are you doing, you little ferret?’

  ‘I found my pencil, ma’am. It was on the floor.’

  Mrs O’Neill had put on a fresh colour of lipstick. It was a darker blend of red. It made her look very stern and bossy, and for the rest of the afternoon we were as quiet as lambs in a manger.

  Mrs O’Neill prepared us for our first Holy Communion and brought us all to the church in preparation for the big event. She played the role of the priest in the confession box and each one of us would go inside and wait until she pulled the sliding door of the hatch open.

  Willy Smith was first. ‘Bless me, Mrs O’Neill, for I have sinned—’

  ‘You little nincompoop!’ she yelled. ‘You half-baked dummy. It’s “Bless me Father, for I have sinned.” Now,’ she said, ‘I’m closing the door and when I slide it open you are to say, “Bless me Father, for I have sinned. It’s my first time at confession.”’

  They began again, and the second time Willy had his lines right until he came to his list of sins. She shouted, ‘Don’t tell the priest any such thing or he’ll send you away!’

 
; Finally, Willy came out. His face was white as he turned and walked slowly to the back of the church. Soon it was my turn, and in I went. She pulled back the sliding door of the hatch.

  ‘Bless me Father, for I have sinned. I have never been to confession—’

  ‘Just say it’s your first confession,’ she urged. Then she said, ‘Tell me your sins.’

  ‘I stole such-and-such—’

  She interrupted me, saying very slowly, ‘You . . . must . . . say . . . WHAT IT IS YOU STOLE!’

  I began to understand and said I stole sugar from my mother, and that I stole socks from my father.

  ‘Stop,’ she said. ‘You are forgiven. And for your penance, say three Hail Marys.’

  I blessed myself and opened the door. When I stepped outside I was sweating from the heat of the confessional and I could feel the cold air in the church.

  When we returned to the schoolroom Mrs O’Neill removed her headscarf. Then we saw she had her hair permed and it looked shorter. A couple of the girls giggled.

  ‘What are you giggling at, Miss Hickey?’ Marie Hickey blushed. ‘And Greta Hanlon – what’s so funny?’ Greta lowered her head and said nothing. ‘Lift your head and look at me,’ shouted Mrs O’Neill. ‘My sly little damsel, it’s your prayers you should be saying. Don’t you know your parents expect you to be a nun?’ The little girl was embarrassed, and began to cry. ‘Someone give the pet a hankie,’ teased Mrs O’Neill.

  First communion was a big occasion for us children and an expensive one for our parents, who had to buy us boys first communion suits, with new shoes and stockings and a new shirt and tie. My mother and father were in a quandary about the cost. ‘Where are we going to get the money for this?’ my mother was saying.

  ‘My father might be able to help,’ said my own father. ‘I’ll go to Ballycommon and ask him.’

  A few weeks later we were confirmed, with a large turnout of spectators at the church. There was a group photo taken and my aunts gave me half-crowns, and our neighbours were also generous with ten-shilling notes and coinage of varying kinds.

  ‘Look at him,’ said a friend of my mother’s. ‘Isn’t he the purest little angel, and not as much as one little stain on his soul. Imagine,’ she said, ‘if he died now, he’d go straight to heaven.’ This made me feel uneasy, and I began wishing she’d go away and leave me alone; and besides, I wasn’t ready to go to heaven any time soon!

  After church we all went home and my Aunt Maggie came with me and stayed at our house until late in the evening. She was very proud of me and gave me several hugs, then held me out at arm’s length so she could see me and she would cry a little and then laugh in the middle of her tears. It was her way of expressing her kindness and affection. I would never forget her demonstrations of how she felt for me on that particular night.

  I didn’t get to see Roy Rogers at the pictures for some time, but I remember hearing him sing on one of my grandfather’s records. On the label was written ‘Roy Rogers and the Sons of the Pioneers’. From talking with Seamus Carr I knew that Roy Rogers was a cowboy and that Seamus had seen him in the pictures. ‘What is it this fellow does?’ I asked Seamus.

  ‘He’s a great gunfighter, and his horse is Trigger and he rides all over the West.’

  Upon hearing this, my curiosity knew no limits. On the other hand, I wasn’t so sure about how much Seamus knew about Roy and his horse.

  Seamus was a fair-haired boy whom I sat beside in the girls’ school. He had a nasty habit of eating his nails and picking his nose. He also liked to eat the bottom ends of his school books. I remember his English and Irish books having been eaten in a half-moon shape through all of their pages and the widest part of the half-circle being at least two inches. His books were damp from his saliva, and I could see him biting little bits of wet paper and very often he would pick small pieces with his thumb and forefinger and roll them into a tiny ball before transferring it to his teeth for more squeezing and chewing.

  It was on rare occasions that Mrs O’Neill said a word of chastisement to Seamus. On one occasion, when he got bogged down in his reading, she walked down the little aisle in the classroom and asked him for his English book. When she looked at it she yelled, ‘No wonder you couldn’t finish reading your book – it’s because you’ve eaten it!’

  We always looked forward to lunch break and began devising ways to shorten our meals so as we’d have more time for playing on the grass or running around the two huge oak trees that stood in the playground. Our games included tig and blind man’s bluff, but when the weather was sunny we loved to push and wrestle with each other. We were having a delightful time rolling in the grass when a stout little boy came running at me with a wide grin on his face. I pushed him away and he fell. As soon as he did he began to cry and bawl so loudly we thought he was hurt. He created such an outburst that some of the older girls gathered around him. I thought I’d done something terribly wrong, and without thinking I ran across the school yard to the wall by the road, jumped over it and ran and walked as fast as I could, and in less than fifteen minutes I was home.

  Sitting in the kitchen, I told my mother what had happened when I pushed Martin Lynch in the school yard. When she asked if he was hurt I said I didn’t know. The following morning my mother spoke with the headmistress. Martin was fine, but the teachers were keen on making me pay for pushing another child and, more than that, for leaving school during school hours. My mother was guaranteed leniency for me, however, when the headmistress considered how my father had given the school a load of free turf the previous winter. My mother came home and brought me back to school and as soon as she was gone I was confronted by Mrs Phelan, the headmistress.

  ‘You are a bad little boy,’ she said. ‘Now hold out your hand.’

  She hit my palm five times. ‘Hold out the other hand.’ And then five more painful slaps. I was crying a little as I walked down the hall to my room. I remember hearing Kitty Pilkington say to another girl, ‘The poor little devil.’ Later on it became common knowledge that Martin Lynch was in fact a crier and would burst into tears if someone looked at him without a smile. It was so common that many of the other children avoided him during play time and teachers were careful not to cause him any upset. Indeed it was a very sensitive issue.

  One of my favourite schoolmates was Vincent Cuskelly, who was the same age as myself, and then there was Seamus Carr, Willy Smith and Jimmy Quinn. We loved to play cowboys and Indians and hide-and-seek. Willy Smith on occasions came to school wearing a belt, holster and cap gun. As soon as our new teacher saw him she said, ‘Come here, you. Yes, you,’ as she pointed her finger. Willy marched up to her desk. She said, ‘Who told you to bring those to school?’

  Willy didn’t answer. ‘Take them off and I’ll return them to you after school.’ Near the end of the class she told us she had something to tell us and to wait for five minutes. We all watched as she removed Willy’s belt, holster and cap gun from her desk and laid them on a chair under the blackboard. Then she began.

  ‘Listen, everyone. I have been told by Father Doran that he and the other priests are organising a fancy dress parade and that all the children in the boys’ and girls’ schools are invited to take part. In other words, you can all dress up in your funny clothes and walk in the fancy dress parade, which will be from the top of the town all the way down the street until you get to the square outside the courthouse. There will also be judges who will decide who the winners are, and prizes for first, second, third and fourth. By the way,’ she added, ‘the parade will be held on the second Sunday of next month, which is September. Any questions?’

  Several children raised their hands. She looked around and said, ‘You!’

  ‘Can I be a cowboy?’

  Another said, ‘Can I be Robin Hood?’

  A little girl asked, ‘Can I be Saint Teresa?’

  There were lots of questions, but instead o
f answering she told us all to hush. ‘I know many of you boys will want to be cowboys or Indians, so let me say that the parade committee wants you all to dress in different clothes, and to have new ideas, like dressing up as a clown or a scarecrow. One of you could be a beggarman. Little girls could dress as angels or one could be a queen from the Hill of Tara.’

  Seamus Carr gave me an elbow. ‘I know what I’m goin’ to be.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘A leprechaun.’

  ‘What’s a leprechaun?’

  ‘It’s a fairy chief,’ said Seamus. ‘And they have magic.’

  I hadn’t heard anything like this before, but had to wait until another time before asking Seamus more about it.

  In the meantime, our school day was finished and we all headed home. At this time I was walking back and forth to the school by myself and occasionally I would be treated with a lift from a neighbour. On one such evening Richard Daley’s father Dick called at the school to collect his twin sons Paddy and little Richard and take them home. The boys were in the same class as me and I knew them as neighbours and schoolmates. When their father came he had a horse and cart that he’d used earlier in the day for carrying pigs to the fair in Daingean. The cart was empty as we climbed onto it, but the smell of pig manure was still very strong. Dick Senior had sold his pigs, but had neglected to sweep the bottom of the cart. All four of us stood near the front, looking down on the horse’s back as it trotted along up the side road, and then up the main street of Daingean. Dick Senior reined in the horse off the street to an alleyway and we all climbed down.

  After he tied his horse to a gate, young Richard enquired, ‘Where are we goin’, Daddy? Where are we goin’?’

  Dick Senior pointed to a side door. ‘In here,’ he said. ‘Come on.’

  We all walked in and I looked around. It was a public house and men were sitting or standing at the bar counter drinking and talking. I had never been in a pub before and everyone looked so tall, and the counter was too high to see over it. Dick Senior looked down at me and his sons. ‘What would ye like to drink?’