by Joe O'Toole
He turned into Quay Street on his way to the courthouse. All the faces were familiar; he felt he wanted to tell people that he had been away, but was back now for good. But would anyone care? Certainly the business and commerce of the city had not been disadvantaged by his absence and had no great need for his return.
Every Monday morning was the same at the Petty Assizes: retribution imposed for the excesses of the weekend; drunks, tramps and loiterers waiting their turn, miserable, pitiable and harmless. Be better to leave them off, thought Joe.
One of the assembly greeted him.
‘Joe! Dia dhuit. I didn’t see you for a while. I heard you got married.’
Joe was irrationally embarrassed to have to explain, ‘To tell you the truth, I was away in Australia.’
He could see the unspoken comment in the man’s eyes: you musn’t have done too well over there to come back so soon, with your tail between your legs. But all he said was, ‘You didn’t find any of that auld gold over there, then?’
‘Indeed and I did not.’
‘Well, you hardly came back with pócaí folamha all the same.’
The clerk of the Assizes, old St George, told him that his case would be processed, without query or question, later in the day.
Joe didn’t like the St Georges and they did not like him. They had land and ground rents all around Lettermore, but because their agent, Sabina O’Malley, was married to John O’Toole, the relationship was protected. Joe knew that he could depend on St George.
That morning, the courthouse was busy. When Joe arrived in, a local publican, Nora Healy, was being prosecuted for a breach of the licensing laws.
Sergeant Horgan was well into his evidence: ‘Your Honour, as I approached on Sunday evening, I saw a can of porter being handed out through a back door of the pub in Forster Street …’
Joe had a sudden and vivid memory of making purchases through that same back door in the past.
The sergeant continued. ‘There were two men on the premises and two half-empty glasses of stout on the counter–’
Nora was loud in her defence. ‘Well, that it might choke you to tell the truth!’ she challenged the sergeant.
No doubt she would have continued in the same tone if the chairman had not intervened. ‘I cannot allow that kind of comment to a man who was only doing his duty.’
Joe somehow got the feeling that the magistrate’s heart was not really in it, and that he had no great love for the puritanical, temperance-driven sergeant.
Nora was undeterred. ‘That can of porter was for an expecting woman who was a bit delicate and under doctor’s instructions to have a drop of it every day for medicinal reasons.’
According to Nora, the two men ‘found on’, who were named Hartnett and Joyce, had come in to set rat traps because the place was infested. Sunday was the only day it was safe to let the traps around the place, as there were no customers.
Joe was mightily impressed by her argument; not so the bench. She was fined £5 and a note was put on her license.
‘In God’s name, sir,’ Nora protested, ‘the business is not going well at the moment. It’s only a small pub – five fivers side by side would cover the whole place.’
The magistrate had heard it all before. ‘Next case.’
The pub that was leased by Joe is still in operation in Galway today. It is called ‘Padraig’s’ because it was where Pádraig Ó Conaire, probably the best-known Gaelic writer of his time, was born. His parents owned the pub at the time. But a tenuous O’Toole family connection is still maintained. As my daughter Áine, a student in Galway, told me, ‘That’s the early house – the first Galway pub to open in the morning. We always go there after college balls.’
I had thought that the pub was the only Ó Conaire link until my friend Austin from Galway asked me, ‘Did your side of the O’Tooles, by any chance, have a connection with Pádraig Ó Conaire?’ Well, far be it from me to disclaim a family connection with the famous, but this was one of which I had never heard tell. But Austin was fairly sure of his ground. ‘There is a clear “O’Toole” reference in the Ó Conaire biography. I’ll show it to you tomorrow.’
He did and off I went to investigate. In the biography there was a number of references to a letter that Ó Conaire had written to his cousin, Máire O’Toole, thanking her, as his former teacher, for teaching him his Irish (Gaelic) alphabet and for giving him his love for the language when he lived in Rosmuc.
This was very interesting, but could she really be part of the family? Could Ó Conaire be connected to us? It would be heartening to find that our family had given a kickstart to Gaelic literature at a time when it was seriously in the doldrums. I continued my research and discovered that Pádraig had attended Eanach Mheáin National School. Now that was where my great-great-great-grandfather John had settled and it was from there that the family tree expanded. Eanach Mheáin is next door to Lettermore and the O’Tooles in both places are closely related. The odds of an O’Toole teaching in Eanach Mheáin not being part of the family would be very long indeed. Máire O’Toole had to be one of us. Ó Conaire had said that he was taught by her in 1895, so I checked the dates against the family tree and there she was – Mary O’Toole, born in the 1870s. Mary, or Máire, was one of a family of sixteen, including a sister, Catherine M O’Toole, and thereby hangs a fascinating tale.
Catherine O’Toole was Priomh Oide (Head Teacher) in Eanach Mheáin primary school. She was a popular and successful teacher, and when she died suddenly the locality was grief-stricken. To keep the school in operation after the funeral, Catherine’s younger sister, Máire, acted as substitute teacher. She enjoyed the role, and the local community, who would all have been O’Tooles or their relations, were happy with her. So they took the pragmatic course. It was decided not to inform the authorities of Catherine’s death. Máire would continue to teach and would sign herself Catherine M O’Toole and nobody would be the wiser.
It worked for a few years. It was only noticed when an Inspector’s report made reference to the curious fact that the teacher looked at least five years younger than the age given for her in the report of the previous Inspector. Dublin sent the sniffer dogs to do a full investigation. Máire vanished to the United States. Even though they suspected treachery, the authorities never unearthed the full story. They could not trace the teacher and could not piece the jigsaw of clues together. Not surprisingly, local cooperation was not forthcoming. Finally they closed the investigation by issuing a notice withdrawing recognition from Catherine O’Toole and forbidding her from ever again teaching in a national school, little knowing that the poor woman was five years dead and not having a clue as to the real culprit. Máire O’Toole’s identity as the teacher was never disclosed.
At the time when Máire was illegally acting as principal in Eanach Mheáin, the young Pádraig Ó Conaire was sent to his grandparents’ house in Gairfean, following the death of both of his parents. Rosmuc would have been the local school, but Eanach Mheáin, though thirty miles distant by road, was just over a mile by boat across the narrow eastern end of Cill Chiaráin Bay. It was a huge upheaval for the young lad to be transferred from the busy city to the rural countryside. It would be some compensation for him to be with his relations and acquaintances in Eanach Mheáin, so every morning he was rowed across by currach to the school. If the weather was too bad for the return journey, he stayed with the O’Tooles overnight. His grandparents’ house and the O’Toole house were in full view of each other across the water. That was where Máire taught him and introduced him to Gaeilge before she had to beat a quick retreat out of the jurisdiction to the United States. From her he received the great love of Irish that he put to such good use in his later writings.
But the exiled Máire did not stay too long in the US. As soon as was prudent, she returned to Connemara and to teaching. She had a clean record because the authorities had never discovered the identity of the imposter who had posed as the principal of Eanach Mheáin. She was a
natural teacher, and the records now show that, despite her unorthodox and illegal entry to the teaching profession, she became the first Head of Gaeilge in Coláiste Chonnacht in Tourmakeady, where she spent the remainder of her career.
All of this story was confirmed for me by my elderly cousin Tomás O’Toole of Tourmakeady, who knew her and who showed me a number of photographs of her, including one with a very bohemian Pádraig Ó Conaire. More pertinently, he lent me Máire’s book of notes on the teaching of Irish. Apart from telescoping the generational gap, it was an amazingly poignant feeling to probe through this tangible evidence of the life of a most interesting woman whose fascinating story I had just discovered. It would have been a privilege to have met her, but in her neat notes and guiding principles for teachers I felt a real sense of engagement.
Máire led a full life. She beat the system and then she became the system.
And because of her, walking past the statue of Ó Conaire in Eyre Square, Galway, has never been the same. I’m claiming Pádraig as part of the extended family, and indeed am likely to feel indignant at how little recognition he has received in recent times.
It seems extraordinary now, but in those times authority – ‘the system’ – constituted the opposition and people felt challenged to get the better of them. Beating the system was a constant theme, and for people who had very little, success against the system could make the difference between mere survival and a level of comfort. My innocence in these matters was brought home to me once again during my research of Máire’s story. While examining the census returns of the 1891 to 1911 period for the Eanach Mheáin and Leitir Mór O’Toole households, I came across a number of errors in the ages for the heads of households. The census was carried out every ten years, but in 1911 some of the late middle-aged O’Tooles seemed to have aged by more than the decade that had elapsed since 1901. It wasn’t just in one case; it was a trend.
I was discussing it with Tomás O’Toole, wondering aloud at the inaccuracy and speculating whether it was carelessness, ignorance or just that the census enumerator, who checked each form, was at fault. Tomás gave me the sort of glance one would normally reserve for a simpleton.
‘Well, that’s innocent rearing you’re getting down there in Kerry,’ he declared. ‘Wouldn’t you think a man of your education would be aware of the major social change that took place in the first decade of the twentieth century?’
I hadn’t a clue. What was it?
‘The introduction of the old age pension.’
The penny dropped. ‘Christ, we O’Tooles had no conscience at all.’
The history book confirmed Tomás’s information. Courtesy of Prime Minister Asquith, the Old Age Pension Act of 1908 delivered the goods. More relevant to the times is the fact that the Chancellor of the Exchequer who sponsored the bill through the Commons and the Lords in Westminster was none other than Lloyd George. And it didn’t get an easy passage, because the Lords initially objected and only reluctantly relented when he threatened to strip hundreds of them of their titles. We should have seen then that he was no bargain, and would make trouble for us in the end!
But in the meantime, could anyone blame the Connemara folk for making a minor technical adjustment to their official age when it qualified them for a present of five shillings a week from the Crown? It was a blow for Ireland, for God’s sake. The O’Tooles were simply getting their reaction in first, even though they could not have known that fourteen years later Lloyd George would sit opposite Michael Collins as head of the British side in the negotiations which resulted in the Treaty. A treaty that partitioned Ireland and started a civil war.
For those living in poorer areas of the country, like Connemara, every opportunity that could make life that little bit easier had to be grasped. Tomás gave me a simple example.
‘One day, back around the late 1890s, my grandfather was walking the beach on Dinish Island, southeast of Lettermore, as was always done after a bad storm, to check for any stuff that might have been thrown up by the Atlantic. Sure enough, there was a huge block of wood just above the low water mark. It was a magnificent piece of hardwood, and he thought it might be mahogany. It was. A few of the family manhandled it up the beach and eventually carted it home. Then they brought it in to Galway City to the McDonagh cousins who owned a saw mill. They planked, planed and polished the wood. Some of it was sold for good money and the rest was made into a fine table for the house. It was a fine piece of furniture.’
‘Fair play to them,’ I said, and added offhandedly, ‘I wonder whatever happened to it afterwards.’
‘Lift up the tablecloth there,’ he instructed.
And there it was, more than a hundred years later, sound and well polished, having given a century of great service and still doing the business in the kitchen of the O’Toole household in Tourmakeady. Here was another generation of the family, breaking bread together across the wood salvaged by our ancestors. I found it intensely moving. It is the kind of experience that telescopes history and makes reality of stories.
All the islands off the west coast relied to some extent or another on the materials brought in by the tide. Trees were non-existent, so wood was especially valued. The flotsam and jetsam of unknown ships or wrecks of ships became the tables for the food of islanders. It also became the base of beds on which life was conceived. And in hard times when they could not get ashore, the bed or the table might be taken apart again and reassembled as a coffin to bury the body of a drowned son or husband. In those salty places the sea giveth and the sea taketh away.
But we have strayed away from Granny and Joe on the dock road in Galway. The pub where they set up is right on the docks, looking out at the ships, big and small, local and foreign, that lock into Galway harbour, and it is regularly dwarfed by the giant freeboard of the vessels. From this busy and noisy port, cargo and passenger ships departed for all parts of the world, but especially America. And whether it was to Philadelphia or the Aran Islands, the last pitstop for deoch a’ dorais before boarding the boat was Padraig’s on Merchants’ Road. It was a teeming place at that time and the business was quite successful. Margaret gave birth to a second child, Mary Clare, there.
But the pair were country people at heart and city life was unattractive. They missed the familiarity and the reassurance of Connemara. So, when the opportunity arose, they returned to Lettermore and sold their interest in the Galway public house.
At that time, Joe’s father, Kruger, was retiring from his position with the Congested Districts Board, and in typical O’Toole fashion he managed to wangle the job for Joe. With his position secured, Joe bought a house and small business from his cousin about half a mile west from Lettermore bridge, on the Lettercallow road.
‘The house was only a storey and a half when we came here,’ Granny O’Toole used to say.
Those few years were probably their happiest. Joe purchased a Baby Ford and travelled the countryside on behalf of the Congested Districts Board. Margaret kept the business going and their family increased. When the twins arrived in 1915 my father, Myko, was hale and hearty, but his twin brother, Jack, was sickly and delicate. He was not expected to live and Margaret was under such pressure that her mother, Annie, came down from Kilmaine for a few weeks to help her out. She nursed Jack diligently, but with no expectation that he would survive. Margaret had already lost a baby two years earlier; families generally were conditioned to a high rate of infant mortality. While the mother fretted, the older generation and the extended family took a more detached view. A sickly child, no matter how much wanted, or how much loved, was an enormous burden. Usually it was better for nature to take its course. Many believed that to interfere with the natural way was perverting the will of God and could only bring bad luck. Live and let die.
What great-grandmother Annie believed is not recorded, but what is known is that as she nursed and lovingly held young baby Jack, á luascadh ina baclainn (rocking him in her arms), she would croon softly and gently to him, �
�Maybe in God he’ll take you tomorrow.’ Harsh words leavened in iambic pentameter.
But it was neither cruel nor heartless. It was driven by survival and concern. It was the way things were. To eke out an existence was a huge challenge on the infertile lands of the west coast of Ireland and the offshore islands. There has always been a question as to whether or not communities took a hand in ensuring the survival of the fittest. While there is no concrete evidence to support the theory, it is certainly true that very few physically disabled persons survived. Was this just nature, or was nature prompted?
In Uncle Jack’s case he defied them all, and not only survived, but eventually qualified as a doctor for the Connemara area and is still living, in his late eighties.
The 1916 Easter Rising was over but still fresh in the minds of the people when Joe and Margaret’s last child was born in 1920. Granny did as one of her sisters, Annie, asked of her and called him Plunkett, in memory of Joseph Mary Plunkett, the poet and 1916 martyr who had been executed in the stonebreakers’ yard in Kilmainham Gaol on 4 May 1916.
Joe in his Baby Ford enjoyed the work and enjoyed the life. He was friendly and affable and easily absorbed into revelry. Unfortunately, he had, as Granny used to say, too much of a ‘grá for the deorum’ and he loved the poitín punch. He was often away from home for days and eventually the drink got the better of him.
He was also, as so many were at the time, involved in republican activities and had to go on the run from the Black and Tans, the notoriously undisciplined ex-British Army force drafted into Ireland in 1920, during the War of Independence. By now his health was deteriorating and the fugitive lifestyle – poor, damp accommodation in ‘safe houses’ – did not help. Joe never really recovered from this period. His health was broken and it was no surprise that he eventually developed tuberculosis. He died in 1925 at the early age of forty years.