The Road from Castlebarnagh

by Paddy O'Brien

  The lions were next, and when they were released from their cages the animals became emboldened and it was a struggle to get them onto their platforms. The lion-tamer abandoned his whip and began to use a chair as the lions roared in protest and all the while the hoop remained aflame. Then the animals began backing away and the lion-tamer succeeded in pushing one lion onto a platform and the second followed, but just as it did the first lion leapt to a nearby chair. Meanwhile the audience became concerned and the tent was becoming very quiet. Then all of a sudden the first lion sat down on the grass while the second lion took a short run, dived through the air and landed on the ground!

  Within the blink of an eye he had cleared the inside of the flaming hoop and I could hear a sigh of relief from the audience followed by more exciting applause. Things were then happening very fast and it was hard going for the lion-tamer but he had succeeded and everyone thought he was very brave. After he had caged the animals he advanced to the front of the ring and bowed several times, left, right and centre. Then he withdrew behind a curtain only to return again, and this time he wore a long black cape that he swept around the front of his body as a gesture of conclusion.

  On the way home we talked about what we’d seen. My mother was awfully impressed by ‘the man with the lions’. ‘He knows no fear,’ she said. ‘Nerves of steel, that’s what he has.’

  Moira was more impressed with the snake. ‘It gave me the shivers,’ she said.

  My mother asked me what I thought of the circus. ‘It was great,’ I replied, adding that walking the high wire made me tense and nervous and that I thought there should be a net or something underneath to catch anyone who might fall.

  The following Monday in school was a tough day for me. Mr O’Connell had called in sick and I made the mistake of sketching an elephant and a zebra on my copy book. I showed it to Gandhi and he passed it along to Willy Smith and soon everyone wanted one. Then several boys gathered around me to watch as I sketched more elephants and zebras. After an hour of it I began to tire. When I said I’d do no more and that I was tired a couple of bully boys took offence and threatened me. Willy Pilkington came to my aid with strong words of reason, and because he wasn’t a lad to tangle with, the bullies faded into the background. The effect of my drawing wasn’t lost on Mr O’Connell, who somehow heard of the quiet behaviour of our class when he came back to school the next day. Apparently he was impressed with me when he saw a sketch of an elephant that I had done for someone.

  39

  Black Bob

  I was getting a little taller and with that came a small promotion from my father, who saw me more and more as someone who knew how to work with a horse, and in this case it was Black Bob.

  My father had sold our young two-year-old pony and bought an older quarter horse. We had had the horse almost three years when I was given the job of yoking him to a cart so that I could work at hauling home the turf and packing it into a shed. My father woke me one Friday morning with a half cup of tea and said, ‘Paudgeen, drink this – it’ll wake you up.’ He had given me half cups of tea in bed before and I often wondered for years why a half cup. The stinginess annoyed me and I wanted to ask him why, but instead I reached for the cup and began sipping it. Then he said, ‘Paudgeen, do you think you can begin to bring home the turf from the bog? You can catch Black Bob and yoke him to the cart. Do you think you can do it?’

  ‘Yeah, I can give it a try,’ I said.

  ‘You can take it nice and easy, no need to kill yourself and don’t work the horse too hard.’ Then he left the room and prepared for his day’s work at Jimmy Mac’s farm. In a matter of moments I jumped out of bed and put my clothes on. When I came into the kitchen I looked out over the half door in time to see my father walking his bike towards the gate. He had his two-grain fork lying at an angle on the left side of the bike with its handle resting on the handlebars, and the fork went all the way down beside the centre of the back wheel to where one of its prongs was hooked between the chain case and the frame of the bike. It was a sight that was common during those days when people helped each other in hay fields or at thrashing corn. After he was gone I made myself more tea and cooked a couple of eggs in a cup that I balanced on hot coals. After I’d eaten and washed my face I went outside to the shed to find the winkers. It was time to catch Black Bob!

  He was grazing in what we called the L field and I’d no problem when I walked to where he stood and put the winkers on his head. I yoked him to the cart and then we were on our way to the bog. I loaded the turf bare-handed and started to cart it home. Black Bob was an easy-going horse and it was no bother driving him back to the yard, where I undid his belly band and lifted the shafts of the cart upwards. The load of turf keeled over backwards and tumbled down onto the yard beside the door of the turf shed. After five loads I threw the turf from the yard into the shed. It was around seven in the evening when I finished, not before I brought Black Bob back to the L field and turned him loose. I looked after him as he ran off and saw him tumble and roll on the grass. He made some snorting sounds like he was blowing his nose. Maybe it was his deep appreciation of his freedom that made him so giddy. Just when I thought he was finished he broke the silence with a litany of farts that seemed to echo their way around the field. I laughed quietly to myself and walked the short distance back to the house. I spent the rest of the evening with the accordion revising tune ideas that had been nagging me during the day while I was working with the turf. It was as though I found expression for the music through the loading and unloading of the cart, combined with the sweet smell of the furze and heather. All of it lifted my spirits as Black Bob and I cantered back and forth. The outdoors and the work involved stimulated my quest for new music even though I had little to go on except what I heard on the radio. The jigs and reels from Ciarán MacMathúna’s A Job of Journeywork programme were slowly coming alive in my consciousness amid images of heathery bogs, yellow-blossomed furzes and the ever-green sight of Killoneen Hill in the distance.

  Little Johnny Rourke lived with his family on Killoneen Hill, which was just over half a mile from our house. His father was one of our greatest neighbours and a friend of our family. Phil Rourke had often ploughed our front field with his strong iron plough and two sturdy horses. There were eight children in the Rourke household and their mother was a good friend of my mother’s. Mrs Rourke, or Bridgie, was the most stout-hearted woman that anyone ever knew, and never came to our house without something for us children. Apples, oranges, chocolate, a bottle of lemonade – and she once gave me a pen and coloured pencils because I did a painting of Blessed Marie Goretti, who was beatified by Pope Pius XII. When she saw the painting she became convinced that I had supernatural gifts and told my mother how she knelt and prayed in front of a painting I did of a saint. She said she prayed with a request to the saint after propping it up on the table at home. Afterwards she told my mother that her request was granted! I was listening to both of them talk about it and Mrs Rourke glanced at me approvingly many times. Her sense of appreciation drew me closer to her and her family and when my father asked me to go up to Rourkes’ and help Phil with dropping potatoes I was ready and willing and ran up the road after school to Phil’s bottom field where he was putting down his potatoes. Young Johnny was standing nearby watching us. He was just six years old and very tanned from the early summer weather. As we grew up we became firm friends and his appreciation of my accordion music consolidated my respect for him. On the evening after dropping the potatoes Johnny’s mother took a photo of the two of us in their back yard. Mrs Rourke began comparing our two very different heights and became a little impatient. ‘Johneen, Johneen,’ she said to her eldest son, ‘will you look at how tall Paddy Brien is, look at how tall Paddy is!’ She went on, ‘Johneen, Johneen. Wake up! Grow up! Grow up!’ Of course she didn’t expect an instant result but I do have a hunch that my painting of the saint was propped up again later that evening.

 
40

  Joe Delaney

  It was a late evening in September 1959, just after my thirteenth birthday. I was weeding mangels in our back garden when I heard something outside on the road. I stood up to listen and could hear the door of a car slam shut. I ran around to the front of the house in time to see Bob Lynch walking into our front yard.

  ‘I see you’ve been drawin’ home the turf,’ he said. ‘Oh, and by the way, I’ve somethin’ I want to tell yeh.’

  We went inside and sat down. My mother was busy combing Moira’s hair after shampooing and drying it with a towel. ‘Bob,’ she said, ‘tryin’ to rear four girls would test the patience of Jove.’

  Bob lit a cigarette and said, ‘Missus, it’ll be worth it when you get old. You’ll have someone to hand you a drink of water.’

  ‘That’s a poor consolation, Bob,’ she replied.

  Bob blew a burst of smoke from his mouth and nose. ‘I can’t stay very long. I thought I’d drop in since I was passin’ the house and tell Paddy about a fiddle player that’s married to my sister.’ I was listening very intently as Bob continued, ‘I should have mentioned it long before now but in any case I’d like Paddy to meet him and hear him play a few tunes.’

  ‘Who is he?’ asked my mother.

  ‘His name is Joe Delaney. He owns a garage in Edenderry and he’s a true blue traditional player on the fiddle.’ Bob was enthusiastic and went on to say that he had some business in Edenderry early the following week and that he’d stop on the way and pick me up. ‘You can meet him for yourself, Paddy,’ he said. ‘We’ll stop at Delaneys’ house, it’s near the square in the town and I’ll introduce you to Joe and his wife. I can go and do my bit of business and leave the two of you at the music.’

  I was delighted. It was something I really wanted. In fact I’d always be grateful to Bob for his kindness and great consideration to me as a young beginner musician. We settled on the following Tuesday night for Bob to call and take me to Edenderry.

  Bob arrived as promised shortly after eight o’clock. I was ready with my overcoat on and had my accordion in its black wooden case. I heard him pull up at the gate and rushed out the door so he wouldn’t have to get out of his van. I opened the passenger door and put my accordion behind the front seat and sat in. It was a twenty-five-minute drive and Bob smoked and chatted all the way. When we got to Edenderry he steered the van slowly all the way down its lengthy main street until we came to the Delaney home and parked directly outside. Bob lifted the heavy knocker and tapped gently three times. It was dark outside on the street except for a few lights here and there. We saw no light coming from inside the house and were beginning to think that Joe and his wife were gone to bed. But then a light came on and in a few seconds the door opened. It was Bob’s sister. ‘We were expectin’ you,’ she said, ‘come on in.’

  I was very relieved and followed Bob into the house. ‘Keep goin’ straight ahead,’ Mrs Delaney said, ‘he’s waitin’ for you. Turn left at the door.’

  Bob stopped and said to his sister, ‘I have to leave for an hour on business, but I’ll be back around half nine.’

  When he was gone Mrs Delaney introduced me to her husband. Joe had risen from his seat behind a table and was making his way towards me. He was leaning his right hand on the edge of the table as a sort of support. ‘I’m Joe Delaney,’ he said, ‘or what’s left of me.’ I didn’t know that he was referring to the loss of his left leg. It had to be removed many years earlier when it was mangled in a machine accident. When I met him he was using some kind of wooden leg. He was a big man, or he may have looked bigger to me because I wasn’t fully grown. He was also very matter-of-fact and very friendly. He was probably in his early sixties, with white hair combed from left to right. His strong facial features gave him the look of a man who was very comfortable with himself. Somehow he reminded me, in later years, of the movie star Lon Chaney. I saw that he had his fiddle lying flat on the table and its bow placed in line atop its four strings. A book of music lay open on the table in front of him. It was one of Francis O’Neill’s collections of Irish dance melodies.

  ‘Bob was tellin’ me you play the single-row accordion,’ Joe said.

  ‘Yeah, I try to,’ I replied.

  ‘Take it out of the box and try a tune,’ he said, ‘or maybe we can play somethin’ together.’

  When I had the accordion on my knee I began with a hornpipe that I had finished learning. It was ‘The Echo Hornpipe’.

  ‘That’s a nice one,’ Joe said when I had finished. ‘What did you say its name was?’ When I told him he said that maybe it was in the book. Reaching for his reading glasses he thumbed through the pages of O’Neill’s until he found the hornpipe section. Looking down through his glasses he moved the pages carefully back and forth, licking his thumb to catch an elusive page. ‘By the holy,’ he said, ‘look at it, it’s here.’

  He took the fiddle and bow from the table, checked the tuning and stroked the strings up and down. Then he was playing the hornpipe and I saw a slight touch of a smile on the side of his mouth. He was enjoying the tune. His playing of the hornpipe was a little different from the way I had it. Then he put the fiddle back on the table and asked me to play another tune, so I had a go at a double jig called ‘Saddle the Pony’. I was a little nervous, but the tune wasn’t too difficult and the second time around Joe joined in and we played it over about four times. ‘Well,’ said Joe, ‘we don’t have any difference of opinion on that one.’ He was referring to us both having the same setting of the tune. We played a few more and Joe talked for a while and remarked about various players that he heard on the wireless. He was especially interested in Seán Ryan’s fiddle music and was very impressed with Seán’s ability at composing jigs, reels and hornpipes. He told me he thought Seán was one of the best traditional fiddlers in Ireland. I wasn’t sure what he meant by ‘traditional’ and it would take me a number of years to find out. Then the door opened and Mrs Delaney came into the room carrying a tray of tea, currant cakes, sugar and milk.

  ‘Ah,’ Joe said, ‘my beloved, you are a gift to the music of Ireland.’ Mrs Delaney blushed a little and left the tray on the table. She was a pleasant sort of woman with black hair and may have been in her late forties. She withdrew without saying anything and gently closed the door. ‘Women love a little bit of a compliment,’ Joe said. ‘It goes a long way in a marriage. Now, you do the pourin’.’ We drank the tea and ate the delicious cakes. Joe spoke again about music and some other players. Suddenly he said, ‘Did you ever hear of the harper Turlough O’Carolan?’

  ‘Who?’ I said.

  ‘Turlough O’Carolan. He was born not too far from here, just inside the Westmeath border.’ I had never heard of O’Carolan and Joe continued, ‘His music is in O’Neill’s book, and wait ‘til I see. Yes, yes, here it is. He was born in 1670 and died in 1738.’ I was amazed at hearing this piece of news. ‘Wait ‘til I play you a few of his tunes.’ He began with ‘Planxty Irwin’ and followed it with ‘Planxty Drury’. He also played ‘O’Carolan’s Concerto’. When he finished he said that O’Carolan composed the concerto as a wager and won the bet because he was able to compose the tune in the same style as an Italian harper who was touring Ireland at the time. Joe told me that O’Carolan composed in the old Gaelic style of melody and also in a baroque style that was all the rage in Ireland during those days. I was fascinated by all of this, and the experience with Joe consolidated my instincts regarding the strong feeling I had when hearing some of the tunes he played. After a short while he put his glasses back on and began playing more jigs and reels from the book. One jig that stood out was ‘The Old Grey Goose’ and Joe told me it had been recorded in the USA by the Sligo fiddler Michael Coleman. I hadn’t heard of him either, but Joe set me right and then switched to talking about the piper Barney Delaney, who recorded on some cylinders for Captain O’Neill and Sergeant Early.

  ‘Was he a good player
?’ I asked.

  ‘He was,’ said Joe, ‘and very stubborn. O’Neill wrote about how difficult it was when he tried to get him to play.’ Joe began to laugh. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘Barney Delaney was a cousin of mine.’ I hadn’t heard anything about Sergeant Early or Barney and I must have looked very engaged because Joe kept talking. ‘Yeah,’ he went on, ‘a second cousin; and you know he was born and reared between Geashill and Tullamore. He emigrated to America in 1881, probably for the same reason that so many people left this country.’

  Then we heard a knock on the front door. Bob Lynch was back and he came in and sat down beside the table. ‘How did you two get on?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh,’ said Joe, ‘we played a few and we were just talkin’ about Barney Delaney the piper before you interrupted us.’

  Bob laughed. ‘A piper, you said?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Joe, ‘not the bagpipes but the Irish uilleann pipes, and a great instrument, especially for the playin’ of slow airs. And another thing – people years ago were known to say that the Banshee will stop cryin’ when she learns to play one.’

  ‘Holy smoke,’ said Bob, ‘I’ve never heard of that one.’ I was hoping that Joe wouldn’t go on too long talking about the Banshee. I had heard enough about her from people whose stories gave me the creeps. So I was relieved when Mrs Delaney came into the room to retrieve the tray. She said she had made more tea and asked Bob if he’d like some. ‘You always had an eye for a man in want,’ he said to his sister. Joe laughed when he heard Bob. A good sense of humour was important to Joe, and his brother-in-law had a way with words. There was plenty of chat while we drank more tea and Mrs Delaney brought some extra currant cake and some brack. This reminded me that Hallowe’en would soon be upon us.