Looking Under Stones

by Joe O'Toole

  ‘Kruger’ O’Toole, my great-grandfather, was born in 1843, just before the Great Famine. It was a terrible time in our history as a nation, a time when we lost more than half our population. The smell of death was everywhere. When I began looking into our history, I expected to discover that Kruger’s family had suffered badly during that time. The soil where they lived was very shallow, and even where there was some soil it was wet, boggy and infertile. Eanach Mheáin, the Middle Wetlands, lived up to its name. There was not enough soil for root crops and it was highly unlikely that they could have got potatoes to grow there. But, to my astonishment, I discovered that the Famine had little or no impact on the O’Tooles of Eanach Mheáin. The census of population for the area is more or less the same in 1851 as it was in 1841. The simplest explanation is probably the most correct. Kruger’s family were only two generations ashore and were fishermen; most of their food would have come from the sea. And because the waters around the island were richly stocked, the terrible hunger that afflicted so much of Ireland had little impact on Eanach Mheáin. They would have eaten well in those desperate times.

  Since most of the O’Tooles had moved on a few miles to Lettermore over the last century and a half, I did not expect to have too much luck when I went searching for the exact location of that original island dwelling, but I looked anyway.

  ‘Sure I know where it was,’ was the immediate response of my first cousin, Peter, when I told him of my difficulty. ‘Hop into the jeep and I’ll show you,’ he offered, before I could get around to asking him.

  In five minutes we had crossed from Lettermore to Eanach Mheáin and turned into the island. We continued through the golf course and down to the far end until we could see Rosmuc straight across from us.

  Peter stopped and pointed: ‘There you are.’

  Right beside the sixth green were the walls of an old fothrach or ruin, about ten feet high. No roof, no anything except the walls, which had been recently pointed by the golf club. There, in a beautiful location at the water’s edge, with Rosmuc just over a mile across the water and the imposing presence of Cill Chiaráin rising up in the distance over Inis Treabhair, was the source of my paternal gene stream. And it’s now in the middle of a golf course, for God’s sake.

  Kruger’s first wife died in childbirth and the child did not survive. He later remarried, by which time he had built a house beside the bridge in Lettermore, about two miles west of Eanach Mheáin. His second wife was Mary McDonagh, who came from a remarkable family, the McDonaghs of Crappagh and Gorumna islands, just across the bridge from Lettermore. Mary was one of twenty-three children, most of whom did not survive beyond childhood. Her brother, Tomás Reamonn, established the mighty McDonagh business empire and dynasty in Galway City. They became merchant princes and made a lasting impression on the business and social history of the west of Ireland. Some of those early McDonaghs in the late nineteenth century were, I regret to say, no friends of workers or trade unions, and there were many clashes over wages and conditions of employment.

  Another of the McDonagh sisters married Nicholas O’Connor and thus created the one-hundred-and-fifty-year-long relationship and friendship between the O’Connors and the O’Tooles in Lettermore. The first son of each generation was named Nicholas, and in a remarkable coincidence, more than a hundred years later, when I was elected to the Senate a newly elected colleague was Senator Nioclás Ó Conchubhair from Lettermore. Our great-great- grandmothers were the McDonagh sisters.

  A third sister, Sabina McDonagh, opened the famous Hotel of the Isles in Tierney, across the Lettermore bridge. In those days it was the only hotel in the area and was a magnet to many well-known people of the era, including Roger Casement and Eamon Ceannt. Much of the building is still intact and is nowadays part of a hostel.

  Kruger O’Toole lived a long and full life. He enjoyed himself and he liked his comforts. Having retired just before 1910, he lived on for another twenty years and was touching ninety when he died. By the end of his life he had become something of a local institution and he certainly played up to the role. He would regularly visit his widowed daughter-in-law, my granny. It was less than a mile from his house to Granny’s and the horse and cart would be harnessed to take him over. Kruger found the cart a bit uncomfortable and insisted that his armchair, with him sitting in it, be loaded up on the cart. They would then proceed to Granny’s, with Kruger saluting or waving regally to anyone going the road. In his báinín suit, big hat and pipe, and sitting on his ‘throne’, he could have been the Pope, or some great African chieftain. The local people talked about it for years afterwards.

  ‘Daddy, why has Uncle Henry got a funny hand?’

  I knew that I should not, under any circumstances, ask this question in front of Uncle Henry, but I was bursting to know and blurted out the question as soon as Myko and I were alone.

  Though my grandfather was long dead by the time of my birth, his brother, my granduncle Henry, was in Lettermore during my summers there. Henry lived life to its limits and enjoyed himself. He was Kruger’s youngest son and the oldest O’Toole that I had met. Henry used to fish under the Lettermore–Tierney bridge, but sometimes – not having the traditional fisherman’s patience – instead of using a fishing rod and line, Henry opted for sticks of dynamite. The method was to light the fuse on a small stick of dynamite and then drop it into the water, where it exploded. The shockwaves of the explosion killed or stunned the fish, which would then float belly-up in the water, to be netted and landed. It was quick, economical and productive. Conservationists will, predictably and with some justification, be appalled. But that was then, and that was the way of things. Dynamite was barely regulated and was an essential tool for opening foundations or clearing the rocky fields of Connemara. There was no shortage of it.

  Henry, like many young men, was a little careless. One time when he lit the fuse and went to throw the stick of dynamite, the fuse wire got entangled in the buckle of his jacket. With the fuse burning down rapidly, he desperately tried to free it. By the time he got it loose there was nothing left in the fuse. It exploded in his hand and blew it off to above the wrist. There was no doctor is the area, but his niece, Mary Clare, was a student nurse. With the blood pouring from poor Henry’s arm, someone ran for Mary Clare. Luckily, a van belonging to Corbett’s of Galway came along and it was flagged down. Henry was lifted into the back, and with Mary Clare trying to staunch the wound, they headed for the hospital in Galway.

  Henry wasn’t given any hope of surviving, but thanks to his strength and Mary Clare’s endeavours, he pulled through. His hand and wrist and part of his forearm were gone, but he did not let it stop him. Indeed, he married, had a family and lived until 1983, when he was in his late eighties.

  I remember Henry as being a pleasant man, with a word and a joke for everyone, but I will never forget my first meeting with him when I was a little fellow. I had never before seen anyone with an artificial arm and I just could not take my eyes off the plastic hand. Myko and Henry were in convulsions at my reaction.

  Henry was not the only one of the O’Tooles to lose a hand. Dick O’Toole had property both in Lettermore and on Eanach Mheáin. Probably because of connections to the St George family, who owned the ground rents in the area, the family went hunting and shooting. While out one day with a new double-barrelled shotgun, Dick neglected to ensure that the safety catch was engaged. The gun accidentally discharged and he lost his hand.

  The unlikely handless hat-trick is completed by my father’s first cousin, Dino Keyes. While still at primary school, Dino was brought to Galway City one day. This was during the troubled times of the early 1920s when guns were commonplace. The forces of law and order were edgy and shootings were not infrequent. Dino, who was a mischievous lad, curious and inquisitive by nature, went exploring around Eyre Square; taking everything in, missing nothing. His attention was drawn to a large building in the corner of the square, opposite the Imperial Hotel, near the junction with the Dublin Road. Ther
e was a marked military presence about the place. Soldiers everywhere. It was a magnet to the child.

  It was a bright, sunny day. Dino wondered what was inside, but the sun reflecting off the glass dazzled him and he couldn’t get a clear view into the guardhouse. He put his hands against the window to shade his eyes from the sun. As he raised his little hands to the glass, their shadow was magnified and projected onto the bright wall of the room inside. The nervous young soldier on guard duty panicked. With one instinctive movement he whipped around and discharged an automatic volley at the window. Both of Dino’s hands were hit. One of them had to be amputated completely and he was left with only two fingers on the other. It was a tragic accident, but he showed great courage in coming to terms with it. As a child and as a man, Dino was a great favourite with all the family. Popular and good-humoured, he never let his injury become an obstacle to his advancement. Myko loved him and regularly presented him as a role model to any of us who thought we had a problem in life. He was successful in getting through school and then graduated with a Law degree from University College Galway. He established a thriving legal practice in Galway and eventually became Chief State Solicitor for the county.

  These adventures seemed to me to prove that the O’Tooles were more devil-may-care than the Moriartys. The Moriartys made a virtue of minding their own business and keeping out of harm’s way, but the O’Tooles tended towards the centre of the action, sometimes with unfortunate consequences.

  However, it was a common approach of both families to look forward towards the next generation rather than back at the last. They did not hold with the notion that parents were the responsibility of their children. What we learned was that the past was the past and the real responsibility was to look after the next generation. ‘You owe us nothing. Look after your children,’ was the exhortation. I can see this now as a fundamental strategy for survival and the regeneration of the species. It could well be articulated like this: what we received from our parents, we owe to our children. That’s the payback.

  This paradigm very effectively passes on the values of one generation to the next. Not only does it maintain the species and the line but it also protects and transmits a culture. Put it in the context of a well-developed gene pool, which determines so much of the course of our lives in aspects as diverse as health, intelligence, fertility and creativity, and it is difficult not to conclude that, far from being discrete, independent beings, we are in many ways the creatures of our ancestors, following a well-trodden, pre-programmed path through life. So, how much free will do we really have? Do we influence our own children more than our long-dead ancestors do?

  Any general assessment of our children seems to show that the outcome of our rearing is far more transmissive of our own innate cultural values than it is transformative in the creation of a new and different generation. And, when you think about it, society in general supports that notion in its attitudes and expressed expectations. How often have you heard someone comment: ‘I cannot believe he did that; he comes from such a good family.’

  That sort of remark makes no sense unless we believe that the family is more influential than our so-called free will. All the indications are that we are born already possessing strong instincts and innate directors. It may well be that our whole learning and education experience, far from preparing our life’s path, is merely a liberation of those innate instincts to follow the well-trodden route of our ancestrally moulded genes. It could be that none of us has ever had a fully original thought, or come to an unprecedented conclusion about anything.

  This might be a deeply discouraging notion, but it concurs with a conviction of Seán the Grove’s that people remain fundamentally unchanged through the course of their lives. Could it be the case that the core truth of that belief stretches back much further and earlier than a person’s life and flows from the family generational gene stream? What it would seem to indicate is that when we are assessing situations and coming to conclusions, our thought processes are not nearly as independent as we might think. It may be that we follow a pre-determined logic, guided by our genes and developed through the experiences of our predecessors.

  On all sides of my family were busy people. Both my great-grandfathers had three jobs at the one time. Kruger O’Toole had a farm and a business, in fact, he owned the local Post Office and was also the Congested Districts Area Officer, from which position he eventually retired with a pension. In addition to his business, Old Johnny Moriarty was a rent and rates collector, as well as having a substantial farm. This was a tradition continued in their turn by both my grandfathers and it was a source of great amusement and private entertainment to me when I was regularly and publicly accused of being a ‘double-’ or ‘treble-jobber’ myself. That was at the time when I was both a politician and also running a trade union, as well as being involved in a myriad of other things. But it was bred into me to be doing things.

  Hard workers and busy people are not synonymous; indeed they are very different from each other. Keep me away from the hard workers. Even though they are well regarded in the community, in truth ‘hard workers’ usually have a very narrow focus and are too deep in the trenches to see beyond the now and the job in hand. Their chief characteristics seem to be that they are always breathless, rushing, and with never a minute to do anything. Rarely have they a moment to think. On the other hand, the busy person who is involved in many different projects feels and develops a synergy between them and transfers experience from one to the other as well as maintaining a freshness of approach. People with a number of different jobs tend, because of a broader set of experiences, to be more interesting and more likely to add to the community’s general productivity, creativity, commitment, energy and excitement.

  In many ways these two categories of people define the difference between a strategist and a tactician. The strategist identifies projects, thinks things through, plans the way ahead and anticipates the difficulties in achieving the objectives. He will recognise a number of routes to that objective. The hardworking tactician can’t wait to get started, jumps straight in and then finds himself facing obstacles that could have been avoided if he had taken time to first plan his course.

  The philosophers in Flaherty’s snug in Dingle have an allegorical tale that sums up the difference in a rather earthier manner. It is about an old bull and a young bull standing on a summer hillside, looking down at a bunch of attractive young heifers ruminating in a riverside field, with the warm sun on their backs.

  ‘Let’s charge down there and do a heifer each,’ said the hardworking, hormonal young bull.

  ‘Ah no, no,’ counselled the strategic, busy old bull. ‘Let’s stroll down and service all of them.’

  Perhaps crude, unsophisticated and inappropriate, but somewhere in there is a moral.

  My ancestors tended towards the strategic in their business affairs, but were less tactically disciplined in affairs pertaining to the joys of life.

  THE EMIGRANTS’ RETURN

  The young couple made their way down the gangplank to the dockside. She was hugely pregnant and he tried to shield her from the pushing and jostling of the excited crowds rushing to the familiarity of solid ground.

  ‘Ye had a long, hard journey. But thank God, tháinig sibh slán. Fáilte go Australia.’

  Glad as they were to see the familiar faces from home, the young couple barely heard the welcome from his two sisters in the noisy and sweltering surroundings of the port of Fremantle. It was all so bewilderingly different.

  ‘God Almighty, what were we thinking of, to leave Connemara?’

  A journey to Australia was a major undertaking a hundred years ago. The hazards of a long and debilitating boat voyage were a major concern. Still, many adventurous young took the risk in search of their fortunes. In those days no return was ever contemplated and the wrench from home, family and culture took extraordinary determination. The finality of the leave-taking was such that it had the moroseness of a wake.
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br />   As soon as they were married, my grandparents, Joe O’Toole and Margaret O’Boyle, headed off to Australia to his two sisters, Agnes and Sarah. It was a mighty voyage, including a passage through the Suez Canal. They located in Geraldton, north of Perth, where they worked in Agnes’s husband’s hotel. Every opportunity was open to them; the world was at their feet in a new and developing country and they were being sponsored and helped by a wide circle of friends. Their first son, Patsy, was born there shortly after they arrived.

  They had everything they could have wished for, but Joe missed home. It was something he couldn’t put into words. Surrounded by wide-open spaces of flat, traversable terrain, all he could think of were those rickety stone walls enclosing impossibly irregular, tiny patches of rocky ground in Connemara. Those walls that he had cursed so often when repairing the gaps, he missed them now. Basking in the comfortable climate of southwestern Australia, his thoughts turned to the rain-laden prevailing southwestern winds blowing off the Atlantic onto the Galway coast. An emigrant is never at home. Every week was a torture; no matter how he tried, no matter how much he was reassured, he could not settle away from his native place. Less than a year after their arrival, they turned for home, this time with their tiny son.

  Back in Galway, not exactly destitute but with very little in the way of material things, they took a lease on a pub in Merchants’ Road and optimistically started all over again. That first day back, Joe went to check that there had been no hindrance or objection to the transfer of the liquor license to his name. He had heard that the local sergeant, a recent arrival, was an officious bollox and a stickler for regulations. It would not do to fall foul of him before he had even sold a bottle.

  Even though they had travelled a world of distance and seemed an age away, Joe was immediately struck by the familiarity of his surroundings. As he strolled along Merchants’ Road, it seemed only yesterday that he had walked the same route. There was the same unchanging sign for Thomas McDonagh & Sons; he could have rhymed it off by heart: