by Joe O'Toole
‘Now, hold the sheep’s neck down so that the blood won’t splash all over the place.’
Holding the dying sheep while its warm blood gurgled over my fingers seemed like a very natural and matter-of-fact thing to do. I had the feeling that I was helping rather than killing. As soon as the sheep was dead, it would be hung by its hind legs, head downward and with its front legs sticking out for skinning. It required considerable skill to take the skin cleanly from the carcass without cutting the flesh. Tadhg would gently cut the skin in a straight line along the underbelly and ease it away from the flesh. Once he had made a start, he would alternately use the blade and the knife handle to separate the skin by cutting, pummelling and pulling. When the sheepskin was taken off, the carcass would be slashed open along the same line as was used to cut the skin. Out in a gush of green, white and red would spew the steaming organs and innards of the sheep. The edible and saleable organs, such as the heart, liver and kidneys, were carefully cut and separated. Then every speck of the sheep’s insides was cleaned out. The final act was to rub some blood on to the gleaming, hot sides of the white carcass. This gave it a healthy redness. A few nicks made on the stretched outer layer of reddened skin caused them to open, revealing the perfect white of the underlayer.
Thursday was pig day. They were a lot more difficult than the sheep, and squealed and struggled when they were being slaughtered. Pigs were not skinned, instead the rough hair on their hide was burnt away with a blowlamp. The smell of singed hair and hide was horrible, but you got used to it.
Slaughtering cattle became much easier with the arrival of the humane killer. This was a specially developed gun which was held to the bullock’s forehead. The crack of the shot was followed immediately by the crash of the dying animal on to the floor of the slaughterhouse.
In hindsight, the whole scene was sickeningly gory, but I must confess that I was usually so engaged with the process that ethical conflicts never arose in my young mind. There was an ordinariness about it all. I could like lambs, but I could still eat lamb. The fact that it was killing never impacted. It is the type of experience that should, at the very least, drive a child to vegetarianism. It did not, and it was not too many years before Uncle Patty was explaining and teaching me the intricacies of slaughtering, a training which stood me in good stead many years later when I got a summer job in Walls’ meat-processing plant in Hayes, outside London.
The butchers took a real pride in their product. Of course, they had a vested interest in making sure their meat was of a consistently high quality in order to keep their customers. Dingle customers were demanding and would generally be good judges of meat. From the customer’s point of view there was no need to worry about additives or disease; good butchers would neither buy nor kill any animal considered to be in any way defective. The law that made it impossible for small butchers to continue slaughtering their own meat was a mistake. It has led to huge difficulties of traceability. Nowadays not even the butcher knows for certain where the meat originated.
Carpenters were always busy; there was a constant demand for their skills – making coffins, spokes and wheels for carts, etc. They started in a clean workshop in the morning, but by evening they were surrounded by discarded pieces of timber, wood shavings and sawdust. Mind you, the cast-offs and shavings were very useful for starting a fire in those pre-firelighter days. It was not unusual to see people leaving the carpenter’s with a sack of bits for the fire.
The fire was built up by a strictly regulated method. First a layer of crumpled newspapers was laid, then a layer of wood shavings, on top of that went a few bits of wood and finally the coal. A match was put to the paper and away it went. As soon as the coal was glowing, more was added and then, to ensure that the expensive coal did not burn away too quickly, a few shovelfuls of wet slack were slapped on top. The slack was really just coal dust and it formed a crust on the fire, giving it a few extra hours’ burning time.
The shavings from the carpenter and the coal dust were just part of a thriftiness of approach that was essential in those times. Very often one person’s waste was another person’s lifeline. Butchers would always give bones to people who asked: ‘And a few bones for the dog?’
Everybody knew if the bones were for the dog or for the family soup, but nobody said. The butcher would throw in some dripping as well; this was handy for fried bread if there was nothing else. Bread which was a bit on the stale side for selling would find its way to families in need. Similarly with any fish not sold on the quays.
Dignity and anonymity characterised all such exchanges.
Travellers were plentiful in Dingle, particularly during the summer period. We called them ‘tinkers’ or ‘coffees’. The travellers were well-known and would park their caravans in the same spot, over near the creamery. Their kids attended school with the rest of us while they were in the area. The mothers went begging from house to house while the fathers appeared to do nothing at all. At that stage, the craft of tinkering – mending kettles and pots and pans – which had given them their name, had all but disappeared.
Obviously they had very little money but they nonetheless had to buy bits and pieces. You always had to be on your mettle when dealing with them, as they would argue and bargain forever. They were basically honest people, but were tricksters at heart.
On one occasion one of the traveller clan died and there was great sadness. Plans were made to have him buried somewhere at the other end of the county. But the price of a coffin was a bit of an obstacle and they were certainly not going to pay an undertaker for what they could do themselves. So they went around to every carpenter in the town looking for as cheap a coffin as possible. One of the carpenters in Holyground reluctantly did a deal with them. He was at a loss on the deal, but agreed it just to get rid of them.
They went off to box the body and head out of town. Hardly an hour later they were back to the carpenter.
‘We got a cheaper coffin in Fitz’s. Will you take this back and give us our money?’
He was only delighted. He could sell it again at its proper price.
‘No bother at all. Put the coffin back up there and I’ll get the money from the house.’
That was that. But when he was talking to Fitzy a few days later outside Mass, Fitzy denied ever selling them a coffin.
‘They never darkened my door.’
The carpenter thought no more of it, but about a week later his wife started complaining about a smell in the workshop. They put it down to rats and he laid some traps. The smell got worse. It remained a mystery for another week until he went to pull down a coffin for a funeral in Ventry. He was struck by the weight of it and had to get help from a neighbour. They lifted it down and opened it up, only to fall back in horror at the stench from the decomposing body of the traveller inside. It was a cheap funeral and no comeback, because when challenged months later, the travellers denied all knowledge and maintained that they had buried their man.
It’s a story that I know will cause surprise and maybe disbelief, given that travellers are noted for their funeral rituals, even to burning the caravan of the deceased, but it happened in Dingle. Who knows what circumstances lay behind it.
The Ashes, who lived next door to us, had the Guinness agency. The entire Guinness supply for West Kerry was kept in their store. My abiding memory of the Guinness store was that it had an intriguing device that recorded the ambient temperature. The thermometer was connected to a nib, which then inked the temperature on to graph paper that revolved on a drum. The drum did one revolution every twenty-four hours. The Guinness had to be up to, rather than down to, a particular temperature at the time. Shows how tastes change.
They also had a factory for making soft drinks, or ‘minerals’ as they were called then. Mr Ashe, who was known as Mikey Joe, took personal charge of the formula for making the minerals. They had a big selection. Apart from the usual orange and lemon flavours, they made Lemon Soda, Red Lemonade, Raspberry, Grapefruit and Cola.
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br /> From a food and drinks point of view, the town of Dingle was well served with local produce. Every butcher supplied his own meat from the grass of his own farm, or else bought specially from a neighbouring farmer. Milk was bought at the creamery and churned into butter, which was bought and sold locally. Mrs Quinn from Cam sold a half-stone of homemade butter every Sunday, as did many others. Donal Lynch’s family, from Kilfountain, did a twice daily milk round with the horse and cart, delivering in bulk to shops like McKennas in Dykegate Street, but also dropping in pints and quarts of milk to private houses. Lynch’s horse knew the stops so well that it didn’t matter who was doing the run; the old horse stopped at all the customers’ shops and houses without being asked.
Then from the mid 1950s to the early 1960s the town changed rapidly. It was a revolution that crept up on us without warning or anticipation and it resulted in the elimination of almost all the trades and craftspeople and their families in Dingle. Perhaps we had been under the impression that young people didn’t want to carry on the family businesses and went on to a different life, exploiting the advantages of their education and seeking their fortunes in other places. But it wasn’t that. In fact, all the industrious people in small businesses and trades were the last of their generation because they were hit with the consequences of the second industrial revolution.
From the early 1950s it was cheaper to buy shoes ready-made than to get them from the shoemaker. The carpenter who made carts and and coffins could not compete with the factories who delivered coffins directly to the undertaker. As for carts, they were fast being replaced by cars and tractors. The harness-makers and the blacksmiths went the same way.
The tailors were hit by the fashion for off-the-rail, ready-made clothes, because no matter how well they pursued their craft, they could never achieve a decent rate for the time it took them to produce a first-class garment.
The effect of this on the town was catastrophic. Houses that for generations were centres of a brisk trade and business began to see a sharp and continuous downturn in their incomes. Within a short few years it was clear that there was no future in it for the son of the house and shortly after that the business closed. In their working lives these hardworking and diligent people had had little enough and certainly would not have had the opportunity to invest in pensions or the like. Now they had nothing and were in the main trying to survive on a meagre old age pension. Their homes reflected the change. No craftsman inside the window; no customers. Eventually the name over the door was taken down. The big shop window was curtained and the only people who called were friends and relations. The streetscape changed from commercial to residential, with the incongruously large, gaping shop windows in private houses the only reminder of what once was.
It was a different Dingle.
BONFIRE NIGHTS AND WRAN DAYS
During the round of the Dingle year there was a series of events that maintained links to generations past and created a cultural bond between the people, streets and groups in the town and its hinterland.
The two biggest traditional occasions in the year were Bonfire Night, 23 June – a pagan celebration as old as history, which the Church had hijacked and renamed as Saint John’s vigil – and the Wren’s Day, on 26 December, Saint Stephen’s Day. We called them ‘Bonefire Night’ and the ‘Wran’s Day’. From the first day of June, and sometimes much earlier, we started collecting material for the bonfire. Buggies were constructed to carry the loads, and we would go door to door, asking for wood and any other material suitable for burning, such as turf, coal and cardboard. Used car tyres, which we begged from garages or farmers, were particularly valued. The centrepiece of the fire was the baulk. This was an enormous branch or trunk of wood around which was built the fire. Getting the tree trunk was a huge challenge. Fields and farms were scoured in the search. But finding it was only the beginning. Then you had to drag it secretly into the town and store it in a place where it would be safe from marauding rival gangs who might steal it for their own fires.
Traditionally, there was ferocious competition among the different groups from the various parts of the town: Sráid Eoin, Goat Street, or the Quay. Who would have the biggest blaze? Which fire would still be burning the following day? The Sráid Eoin fire – our fire – was originally on the bridge at the bottom of Main Street. However, in later years, as people became more safety conscious, it was shifted over to the Spa Road. Building the fire would begin in the mid-afternoon. It was no easy job keeping the baulk upright; we jammed smaller logs and branches around its base for stability. Then we surrounded it with the old car tyres. Oil-soaked rags, cardboard, wood shavings and sawdust were pushed into the spaces, and outside of these were placed the additional oddments and fuels. By the time the pyre was built and set it might be twelve feet high. The fire would be lit round about eight o’clock. Torching the fire was a ceremony in itself. A number of tin cans would be affixed to rigid lengths of wire, approximately a yard long. The cans were filled tight with oil-soaked sawdust. Once they were alight they were pushed deep into the pyre to get it lighting from the inside out. The flames from the blazing wood and fuels would leap towards the sky, shortly to be obscured by the thick, black, pungent smoke from the tyres. Eventually, the logs and the baulk itself would take hold and the fire would settle down.
The townspeople went from fire to fire. Then they would bring out chairs and sit around the blaze; how far back they had to set the chairs was another measure of the power of the fire. New potatoes were produced, to be baked in the fire. You had to be fairly hardy to brave the furnace-like heat and get close enough to place the potatoes on the fire and then retrieve them. Only rarely were they properly or fully cooked, but nonetheless everyone remarked on how good they were that year, and what a great night it was.
Then the music would begin. This was music without frontiers: a hornpipe followed by rock ’n’ roll, or the twist, or whatever took the fancy. On great town occasions like this, Patrick Cronesberry and his sister Mary Ellen would sometimes perform a wild rock ’n’ roll dance. He would throw her over his shoulder, pull her back between his legs, swinging, jiving and lifting her high up in the air, moving more spasmodically than rhythmically, but giving his all to the sound of Bill Haley’s ‘Rock around the Clock’. The crowd loved it and it probably marked the beginning of my lifelong love affair with rock ’n’ roll. Once, when I was watching a Rolling Stones concert, it struck me that Cronesberry was not that different from Jagger!
The Cronesberrys were an interesting family who were originally from England. Patrick’s older brother John was the town crier. He would go around the town, ringing his bell and shouting notice of an upcoming important meeting or entertainment. He had a clipped and distinct style of speech and a very loud voice so was well equipped for the job. The sound of his bell and his resonating voice brought people rushing to their doors to hear the news. It would usually be about Duffy’s circus or a travelling fit-up show, but I do recall him announcing a meeting to oppose the proposed Turnover Tax, a predecessor of Valued Added Tax (VAT), which caused great grief to retail shopowners, who led a national campaign against it. Amazingly enough, the measure was passed in Dáil Éireann by Seán Lemass’s minority government. Fianna Fáil supporters, including my uncle Plunkett in Lettermore, swore that they would never vote for the party again and that it meant the end of the small operator – they did and it wasn’t. Lemass was gutsy and he knew that the issue of local shopkeepers having to pay tax more efficiently was not going to bother most ordinary people.
The Turnover Tax protest meeting was of interest only to the shopkeepers and small traders. This lack of interest was of such annoyance to one shopkeeper that he hired a loudspeaker system for the roof of his car and spent an hour touring the town, announcing the meeting, denouncing the Government and pronouncing the end of commerce as we knew it if this appalling tax were to be introduced. He coaxed and persuaded people to attend the meeting. ‘Come along and support us. Please be there. Thi
s is a very important meeting. Everyone is welcome.’ Of course, by the time he had said this for the twentieth time he was in foam of enthusiasm. He got quite carried away with indignation and righteousness, so much so that on his final round-up he announced: ‘Everyone must be there, and anyone who isn’t can fuck off for themselves!’ In those days that kind of language would never be broadcast over a public address system. He was the talk of the town for ages.
Patrick Cronesberry worked in the coal yard at Atkins’, one of the biggest general stores in town. In fact, they had shops in a number of locations throughout Munster. His daily grind involved lifting half-hundredweight bags of coal from store to truck and from the truck into people’s houses. To save his clothes, he usually wore a jute sack on his head, with the stitched corner sticking up like a monk’s habit and the rest stretched down his back. It was hard, dusty and thirsty work, never more so than on the couple of occasions each year when the coal boat would dock at the pier with a cargo of coal. Every available horse and cart in the town would be recruited to move the coal from the pier up to Atkins’ yard at the top of the Main Street. A huge bucket crane swung across from the boat and deposited the coal into the carts that were queued up from the quay right down to the head of the pier. As soon as they were filled, the carts trundled their way through the streets of the town to where the workers with their shining coal shovels were waiting to offload and bag the coal. It was non-stop, physical, backbreaking work, with every breath contaminated by the swirling black coal dust. There were no masks or protective clothing, so they undoubtedly inhaled black lung and other respiratory problems.
Patrick Cronesberry would come into Foxy John’s bar every evening after work. His order was always the same, ‘A flagon of Bulmer’s cider and a pint glass, Joe boy.’ He was the only person in Dingle to call me Joe. I never told my mother.