Looking Under Stones

by Joe O'Toole

  ‘Because Mrs Spillane’s bitch is in heat. The dogs are chasing her.’

  Adequate, perfectly accurate, and reasonable to the young mind. Next time the query would be taken a stage further: ‘What puts the bitch in heat?’

  And so it would go on, a layering of information that built up to a broader understanding.

  It allowed us to recognise similar behaviour in other animals. No need now to ask why the frustrated old bullock was jumping up on the young heifers.

  A lesson I could probably have done without was the one delivered by Pat Neligan’s father in the shed beside the creamery, where he showed us how to castrate a young ram. And at least I was only a spectator; poor Pat had to hold the lamb while his father did the deed. While Pat kept the unfortunate victim still, Mr Neligan took hold of its penis and slapped some horrible, green gungy stuff on it. It was called Friar’s Balsam and it had a sweetish pungency about it. Then, just above the testicles, he clamped the penis with two small, flat-sided cipíns of wood, which had been bound together at one end. For some reason, the wood had to be cut from the Sally tree. Now, with the penis clamped, he looped twine around the open ends of the two pieces of wood and began to squeeze and tighten them together. The poor lamb let out a squeak of pain as the knot was finally tied with a last, firm tug. Another dollop of the Friar’s Balsam was lashed on, and then Pat let the lamb away before turning his attention to the next patient.

  ‘What happens next, Mr Neligan?’

  ‘Well, we’ll come back in a week to check that they have all dropped off.’

  ‘What!!?’

  ‘You see, we have stopped the flow of blood with the clamps, so the flesh without the blood will simply rot away and fall off.’

  Seeing the pain that both Pat and myself were feeling, he went on, ‘Some fellows in the old days would just bite it off, and spit it out as soon as it was clamped!’

  We were both dumbfounded, and for my part feeling more than a little bit sick as we headed home some time later, with clenched scrotums, both of us surreptitiously checking that all our genitalia were intact.

  On the last Saturday of every month, while the fair was in progress, Jimmy Terry would arrive from Annascaul with his stallion. The stallion stood and serviced mares in a little garden off the laneway connecting John Street with the Brewery field, where the fair was held. Farmers brought their mares to the garden by appointment. We could be there legitimately, agog at the jaw-dropping activities that ensued.

  ‘Jesus! He’s washing the mare’s arse with sudsy water.’

  It was a functional rather than a cosmetic exercise. The black stallion would nose up to the mare as she was being paraded before him. When he showed a bit of interest after smelling the mare’s sexual readiness, the farmer and Jimmy would tease them for a bit, separating them and then bringing them back together, to get the stallion excited. This part of the exercise we knew was called prick teasing, a term which, indeed, a few short years later we would use contemptuously and, as I now know unfairly, about young women who led us so far and then stopped without granting us full sexual satisfaction.

  All the time the stallion’s manhood was stiffening and strengthening for all to see. He showed all the signs of wanting to mount the mare, and would be bouncing on his hind legs trying to get his forelegs up on her. Jimmy made him wait, holding him back until the crucial moment, then he allowed the stallion to get his forelegs on the mare’s back while he personally took hold of the stallion’s giant penis and guided it into the receptive mare, before letting them get on with it. It was mighty stuff and apparently the little stallion had a great record and became something of a legend. The crowd always gave him a bit of a cheer when he dismounted.

  ‘Well poled!’

  The introduction of Artificial Insemination Officers, or the AI men, as they were called, created great confusion. Their precise job was never fully explained to the farming community, and because of the sheer embarrassment that a discussion on the technical aspects of sex might create between a married couple, many farmers’ wives were left in the dark. This led to the, no doubt apocryphal, story of Steve White, an AI man, arriving at a farm where there was a cow to be bulled. The farmer being absent, he was met by the lady of the house who brought him across to the cowshed, showed him the cow and said as she departed, ‘Sure I’ll leave her to you, Steve, and there’s a nail there on the back of the door, if you want to hang your trousers on it.’

  As we grew older the jokes about Jimmy’s stallion became more relevant. There would be regular references to him outside the church, at the back of the dance hall, on the bridge, or wherever sexual prowess was being hailed, described or boasted. It could also be used to put down the guy who was talking up a mighty conquest.

  ‘Don’t mind all that bullshit, just tell us did you leave it in her?’

  ‘Well, I nearly did; next time for certain.’

  The riposte was deflating and deadly: ‘Ask Jimmy Terry’s stallion. “Nearly” never bulled the mare, but “Barely” always made it.’ Crude but effective.

  There was one well-known auld fellow around the town who was always boasting as to what he had done and what a mighty man for the women he was in his day. The received wisdom was that he had never been ‘within a mile’ of a woman. He was very low-sized and butty, and the lads would always be rising him about big, attractive women, ‘You’d hardly have the equipment for that class of a woman’, or ‘Who’d put you up to it, Murt?’ He had a tried and trusted repertoire of answers ready for all such taunts.

  ‘Long and thin goes too far in and does not suit the lady,

  Short and thick will do the trick and surely bring a baby.’

  These exchanges, crude and graphic as they were, hinted at experience, but it was often the case that they were rooted in ignorance or innocence. The main contributors were rarely the Casanovas of the town. They were generally those whose race was run and who were dried to cynicism. Their audience usually comprised young bucks for whom it had not happened yet, and ‘over the hills’ for whom it would never happen again. No doubt it started the youngsters off with a questionable and irresponsible attitude, and probably contributed to later insensitive approaches to women. The matter of feelings and affection, not to mind love, never entered into consideration. On the other hand, those same men who could express such vulgarity in male company, would display restraint and respect towards women when they were in their presence.

  As for myself, although I was taken by surprise by the arrival of my sister, Phyllis, I had reached a stage where the ‘cabbage plant’ tales were wasted on me. I knew where babies really came from, even if I didn’t know the full details. By the time Teresa was pregnant with my youngest sister, Grace, I was in secondary school and wise to the ways of the world, so I was well aware of the impending arrival of another baby. There was not a lot more to learn in that area.

  I was uncomfortable with the attitudes expressed by the gatherings on the bridge. Being raised with four sisters, and very much influenced by two strong and independent grandmothers, and a mother of similar type, I never saw women as easy. The genuine respect and deference of my father and grandfather towards women, as well as the equality of roles in their households, all combined to suppress my nascent machismo. It never recovered.

  Sad to relate, my own sexual development was slow and my experiences in that area hard won. The very many ‘Nearly’ occasions have confusingly fused with a vivid imagination, so that my subconscious refuses to yield any recollection as to when, precisely, my virginity lapsed. It might be more correct to say that it was erased rather than lost. In fact, maybe I never really lost it.

  A TAILOR ON EVERY STREET

  ‘Go down to Tailor Lynch and collect the suit for John Sheehy.’

  ‘Run up to Tailor Ferriter with that suit length, and while you’re there ask him if he has the makings, or will I send him up some.’

  Tailors are central to my memory of Dingle. There seemed to be a tailor on every
street in the town. My grandmother had been doing business with them for years. Teresa recalled how, as a child, she looked forward to being sent to Tailor Lynch, because even though it was almost the last cottage back towards Milltown Bridge, Ellie Nora, the tailor’s wife, would always give her a sixpenny piece. Extraordinarily generous for the times.

  The tailors’ workshops were surreal. You had the impression of being surrounded by semi-dressed people. Suits in various stages of completion hung all around, some sleeveless or legless, others turned inside out, with the lining and paddings on view. The wide, low work table would be covered in material, on which the tailor chalked out the design and the customer’s individual measurements. A good tailor would mark out the pieces and cut them in such a way as to leave very little waste material. The tailor’s shop was always quiet and never had the bustle of other businesses. The tailor himself often worked cross-legged, stitching and finishing so that there would be no puckers or pulls in the completed garment. In the Corca Dhuibhne dialect, táilliúir, the Irish word for tailor, was sometimes used to describe people who might have had a short leg or a club foot. The reason may be that any such defect was not an impediment in tailoring, and those people could earn a good living in that trade, whereas other jobs would not be open to them.

  With the advantage of hindsight, and even though its graph of commerce was firmly heading downwards, Dingle of the early 1950s was a model of self-sufficiency and entrepreneurship. The water supply came from a reservoir on Cnoc a’ Chairn and was totally reliable. I can never remember a water shortage or serious difficulty. There was a waste and rubbish collection every week, even though everyone was also expected to have a dump area in their back garden where some waste was burnt or rotted. All the shops would accept dollars as legal tender across the counter. For as long as I lived in Dingle the dollar was worth 7/6d, seven shillings and sixpence, and there were always dollars in circulation. Everyone seemed busy. Every second house in the town was either producing or servicing.

  There were the pubs, of course. I remember as a youngster counting all fifty-six of them. Then there were the busy shops, mainly owned and run by generations of the same local families, but there was also Latchford’s and Atkins’ – the largest shops in the town – owned by some of Cork’s merchant princes.

  As well as the tailors, there were numerous harness-makers, carpenters and shoemakers. Billy Neill, the cobbler, lived across the road from us in the Mall. When studying in my bedroom I had a clear view of him inside his big shop window, working away. On calm days during the summer term I would be distracted by the distinct sound of Billy’s hammer, tapping in tacks, or smacking on the leather. Although we called all cobblers ‘shoemakers’, they didn’t all make shoes. In fact, only a few of them did and they were hobnail boots rather than shoes. As kids we hated those boots, but they were a great favourite with parents because they were so serviceable and lasted forever. In many ways, getting the pair of hobnails was a mark of growing up; they would normally be worn from late primary school age. They were so stiff and unbending that for the six months it took to break them in, the hard leather would be blistering your heels and grazing your ankles. But there was one compensation. When a pair of hobnail boots was sent to the cobbler for new half-soles, they also came back with a new set of pristine hobnails. Well, we had some fun then, walking the town and knocking sparks out of our hobnails against the flagstoned footpaths.

  The cobbler’s new leather hung from the ceiling behind the row of lasts. Even though it was thick, stiff, light-coloured leather when it arrived, it still retained the outline and size of the cowhide. When he set about half-soling a shoe, the cobbler would cut off a rectangular section of leather, slightly larger than the area of the sole. As time went on and more and more was cut from the large piece, it began to look less like a cowhide and more like a gigantic jigsaw piece. Billy, sitting in his leather apron on his little workbench, tacks in his mouth, would arrange the rectangle of leather against the sole of the shoe. Then he would nail it on to the shoe, taking each tack from his mouth and using his hammer to strike home the nails in a rapid action which was a combination of strike and stroke. There was a recognisable and unfailing rhythm: Tap, Tap, Tap, Smaaack. Four beats of the hammer, rising to a crescendo, and finally the fourth long hammer blow, driving the tack deep into the leather. Only when firmly attached would the corners and sides of the rectangle be rounded, shaped and skimmed to the shape of the shoe.

  Billy Neill’s was a place of exotic smells: new leather hides, the wax through which he pulled the thread in order to strengthen it before stitching the upper to the leather sole, the dye he used on the cut ends of the leather and the smell of the polish with which he finished the job. We loved those smells.

  Billy claimed to have saved my life. One warm sunny day he was working away on his bench, facing out the window, when he saw Teresa putting the infant me in the pram outside the door. She then went back indoors, leaving me to take the fresh air. Billy and Hannah had no children of their own and they always took a great interest in us. By the path beside our house there was an open area that sloped down into the Mall River, which flowed under the house. Didn’t Billy notice the pram beginning to roll towards the water. He bolted across the road and reached the pram just as it turned over into the water, whereupon he fished me and the pram out.

  Now, it is not for me to say whether or not he did the world a favour. But I owe him.

  There was fairly serious competition between the shoemakers, and for a family to change loyalties from one to another would be a matter of local comment. Not that tey did not try to woo business.

  ‘Saor, Slachtmhar, Tapaidh’ (Cheap, Tidy, Quick) read the sign on one shoemaker’s shop in the Holyground.

  ‘Three damn lies,’ agreed all the others.

  There were three bakeries and four forges in Dingle. For anyone who grew up near the sound of a forge there is a resonance to the clang of a lump hammer on hot metal which never dies. As a magnet for children, passersby and layabouts there was nothing to match a working forge. The wheeze of the bellows, the heat and flame of the fire, the music of metal on metal, the whinny of nervous horses awaiting shoes, it was all orchestrated by the leather-aproned blacksmith as he tapped nails into hooves held firmly between his legs.

  Tommy Barry’s forge in the Holyground was irresistible. Apart from being a busy place of work, it was also the repository of all the news, rumour and gossip of the town. From the forge there was a clear and unhindered view out the Mail Road, and the schedule of the town was marked with definitive accuracy.

  ‘Dinneens should have the papers by now. The bus came in ten minutes ago.’

  ‘Run down to Paguine and tell him the funeral is just at the football field, so he can close the pub door while it’s passing.’

  ‘Did anyone see the mail van? Is it late again today?’

  In Barry’s they could tell you exactly how many carts of coal had gone from the quay up to Atkins’. But it was not Tommy who was the purveyor of news and gossip; he was always too busy. There were a few who could be found at the forge door most days of the week, accumulating the news and passing it on to all and sundry, with a word and a question to every passerby, so that they got a new piece of information for every bit that they gave out.

  ‘What was the fishing like today, Babs?’

  ‘We filled a few boxes of plaice and dabs, but the mackerel is finished.’

  ‘How was the fair?’

  ‘Hopeless! There wasn’t a buyer in the brewery today. There’s more sheep gone home than came in, by all accounts.’

  On it went, and all the information would be filtered, edited and regurgitated across the tables, across the counters, over pints of porter and at corners during the next few hours. From a social point of view this was the way people learnt about each other. Information flowed and was traded wherever there was interaction. It also led to a caring and supportive community. The tailor making a wedding suit for a man who was kno
wn to be going through a slow patch in his boat or on his farm would not be rushing out the bill. When partial payment was made, with the request: ‘Will that be enough until after the September fair?’ it was accepted respectfully and with dignity.

  It also gave everyone an interest in the September fair of course, and if that was a disaster then everyone felt it and adjustments had to be made. It may not have had the modern vocabulary or jargon, but debt restructuring and contract renegotiation were part and parcel of daily life. ‘Ar scáth a chéile a mhaireann na daoine.’

  Youngsters hanging around the forge were in the middle of commercial activity and saw labour being exchanged for wages. They learnt about people and they learnt how to react to people’s difficulties. They learnt to differentiate between wit and insult and they also shared the imparted wisdom of highly intellectual, but barely educated seniors of the community.

  ‘It was our university,’ said Ciarán Cleary.

  How about Barry’s Forge University College? Not bad. I can see it now: BFUC.

  Uncle Patty, like all the butchers in the town, slaughtered his own meat and it was usually from his own farm. He took great pride in having the best quality cuts. Sometimes I would wander back the yard to watch the slaughtering. There were different slaughtering days for the different animals. Tadhg Lynch worked with Uncle Patty at that time and it would be Tadhg that I would watch in total fascination as he went about his work in the slaughterhouse.

  ‘Ah young Joseph, do you want to learn how it’s done?’

  The sheep were slaughtered by a knife incision through the neck, cutting the main artery from which the sheep’s lifeblood would spurt, to be collected in a container underneath. This would later be the basis for Aunty Sheila’s delicious black pudding. Sheep were docile creatures, veritable lambs to the slaughter. Each one was lifted on to a sort of wooden cradle where it was held on its side, feet fettered. Tadhg handed me the knife and showed me where we would stick it in the sheep’s neck to make it quick and easy. Then, taking my hands in his, he plunged the knife and withdrew it immediately. The sheep moaned.