Cáit Takes Charge
After my mother died, my father and my sister Cáit made an agreement that she would take over the family. Maybe Cáit offered it; I don’t know. Something had to be done. But, despite the tough circumstances, all of us turned out all right. In fact, I’d say we did pretty well. Cáit did a fantastic job, the poor woman. She was only sixteen when my mother died. She couldn’t further her own education because she had to take care of the rest of us. We were all going to school at the time. Maurice was fourteen. There was me, there was Paddy, there was Seán, there was Tom, there was Martin, there was Maureen, and finally there was Billy who was only about a year old when my mother died.
Seán moved up the hill to live with Tom Pats Carney, my grandfather, my grandmother, Máirín ‘Mhuiris’, and my uncle Máirtin. He basically grew up in that house. It was a good arrangement for everybody. The rest of us were at home, eight of us.
Cáit was trying her very best to keep us all together. She had to do the washing and the cooking. I don’t know how she did it. She was a highly dedicated person. She was a great lover of Irish music and kept up the habit of singing around the house that was started by my mother. She had a beautiful sweet voice.
There are some funny memories too. One time Cáit was complaining about a cat we had. It was wild and was driving her crazy. ‘Get rid of that damn cat’, Cáit told us.
Maurice and I had a plan. Maurice was the engineer on the job. I was his assistant. Before school the next morning, we got an old canvas sack and put a stone in the bottom of it. Then we put in the cat in the bag, tied the top and threw it in the ocean. It was a big operation. That was the end of the cat. We had done the job and we were pretty proud of ourselves. Then we went to school for the day. But when we came home from school, Cáit asked if we had got rid of the cat. ‘Sure,’ we said, ‘no problem.’
Cáit Ní Cheárna (later Uí Chearna) flanked by her charges (l–r) Tom, Martin, Paddy and Billy – in his bathrobe.
Then Cáit said, ‘You did? Well, look for yourself. He’s sitting right up there in the loft!’
You know, cats have sharp teeth and that little rascal must have bitten right through the bag. Next time, we put a couple of extra stones in the bag and that finally finished him off.
Coming of Age
My father bought me my first pair of shoes in Dingle when I was twelve years of age. Actually, it was a pair of black hobnail boots. There were nails on the bottom to catch the ground so you wouldn’t slip.
When I got those new shoes, I felt like a grown-up. It was like the story told by Ó Criomhthain in The Islandman. I thought that everybody was staring at my feet. The younger fellas laughed at me with my new shoes.
I got my first pair of long trousers a little bit later, finally getting rid of my knickers. When I started wearing long pants, my friends would say, ‘Did you see Micheál Ó Ceárna with the long pants?’ They loved to tease you. But it was all in good fun.
I remember getting my first suit and shirt and tie in Dingle. It was a navy-blue pin-striped suit. We bought it off a cart on a fair day in Dingle. Once a month, the jobbers would come from all around the country and they would set up stalls. They had sales on clothes and things.
I don’t know whether the clothes were any good, but the price was right. I thought I looked like a million pounds in that suit.
My Education
I started going to school at the age of seven and continued until I was fifteen. You went to school on the island up to the eighth grade when you were ready to graduate. We called it ‘primary cert’. I graduated in 1936. I always said that I got a ‘HTR’ degree. It meant it was time for me to ‘hit the road’.
My father always said I had a good head on my shoulders. I always did well in school. I used to get called up to the front of the class quite often to do maths problems or to go to the map and point out different places to the class. I read a lot of books and was interested in reading and writing and talking. I was always interested in education and the Irish language and its advancement. It stayed with me all my life.
Of course, we often discussed what we were going to be when we grew up. In them days in Ireland, some boys talked of becoming priests, schoolteachers or members of the Garda. When we saw people go away and became a success and then come home, we asked, ‘Why can’t we follow suit?’
I knew that I did not want to be a fisherman, but I thought about becoming a schoolteacher. I wondered, ‘Am I going to be a storyteller? Am I going to write a book?’
I took the Preparatory Examination to be a schoolteacher in 1935. I saw this as the best chance to advance myself. You had to sit for the test in Ballyferriter. It took a day or two. You got paid £10 by the government for expenses. My father got the £10, not me.
Even though I passed the test, I wasn’t called to go on to teacher training. Apparently, there was an influx of young people from West Kerry who took the exam that year, and a lot of them passed. There were too many qualified and not enough openings. Two of us on the island, myself and my friend Maurice Guiheen, passed the test that particular year but we weren’t called. We were out of luck.
If I had been called, I would have gone to boarding school in Ballyvourney (Baile Mhúirne) in Cork for a couple of years and then to St Patrick’s College in Dublin for another two years to be trained for a teaching job.
In them days, the educational system was controlled by the parish priest. If you didn’t take care of the parish priest financially, the parish priest did not take care of you. My family did not have as much money to give to the Church as the farmers and the members of the Garda Síochána and others on the mainland. So when there were not enough slots available, I was out. It’s not that way any more, thank God.
You could try the Preparatory Examination again later, but you had to be under the age of fifteen. Unfortunately, I would have been over the age limit the next year. I’m pretty sure that if I had taken it again, I would have been called up. As it was, my formal education was over. But, throughout my life, I never stopped learning. I picked up quite a bit of English from the visitors to the island. I would say that my English was more or less self-taught using my own system. I learned the roots of the language in school and from the visitors. Then I bought a dictionary and looked up words I didn’t know. Then I’d gradually work them into a conversation. And, of course, I practised. It was practise, practise, practise.
Then, when I moved to Dublin, I was around English speakers all the time and I picked it up pretty quickly. I had no choice.
6. From the Great Blasket to Cahersiveen to Dublin
Leaving Home
I was sixteen and a half years old when I left the island in 1937. I was the first one of my immediate family to leave the island. I felt that the Carney family was living on borrowed time with respect to financial support. It was a day-to-day proposition. And frankly, I didn’t like fishing, the main business of the island. There was too much hardship in it. You had to be out in the weather, working hard all day and you never knew whether you would catch anything. Too often, you caught very little or nothing at all. It was always a gamble and I did not like the odds.
Actually, I was also afraid that I might drown while fishing. Most islanders spent a good portion of their life on the ocean, but they never learned how to swim. It is hard to believe. I only learned to swim in my twenties when I was living in Dublin.
When I was sixteen, I was ambitious. I wanted to meet girls and go to the dance halls and the cinema. I wanted to be free of the limits of island life. There were just too many constraints on the island.
A school principal named Pádraig Breathnach who lived across Dingle Bay in Cahersiveen (Cathair Saidhbhín) used to visit the island every summer with his brother Finnian. The great Irishman Daniel O’Connell, nicknamed ‘The Liberator’, came from near Cahersiveen. Pádraig’s wife passed away at an early age and he had no children. There were four Breathnach brothers: Pádraig, Finnian, Michael and Cormac. They were highly involved in the
movement to bring about the freedom of Ireland. Cormac lived in Dublin.
Pádraig was passionate about Irish. When he came to the island, he hired me as his tour guide and we spoke Irish together. It gave me something to do, and I picked up a couple of shillings. He stayed in my uncle Pats Tom’s house on the top of the village.
Pádraig saw that my father was having a hard time making ends meet. He proposed that I move in with him at his home in Cahersiveen. He thought my father and Cáit would have one less mouth to feed and one less youngster to keep an eye on. He told me that he had a house with a small garden and a pony. He had a woman to take care of the house and he said I could help him with his garden.
Pádraig was my mentor, my guidance counsellor. He spoke with my father first, and my father was very pleased with the idea. I suppose my father felt that it would help the family if somebody left the nest.
My father gave me his blessing. He said: ‘Whatever you say and whatever you do, Mike, do it right.’ He put his hand in his pocket, the poor man, and gave me five shillings. I doubt that he had any more than that five shillings. He blessed me, and put his hand on me. He cried. And so did I.
He also told me, ‘Keep your eyes open all the time and keep your mouth shut most of the time.’ That is great advice for anyone at any time.
The experience of moving off the island was a real eye-opener for me. Before I left for Cahersiveen, I had been as far away as Dingle only twice in my life. I was in for a huge adventure.
Cahersiveen is located on the south shore of Dingle Bay on the Iveragh Peninsula. My father took me in a naomhóg to Dunquin and then in a horse and cart to Dingle. Then we said our sad goodbyes at the train station. There were lots of hugs and tears. I took a train to Tralee, through Killarney and then southwest all around the Ring of Kerry to Cahersiveen. It was a big loop and a long, lonely ride, about a hundred miles. Pádraig paid my train fare.
Pádraig’s house was located away from the shore in a small village called Mastergeehy, Irish for ‘master of the wind’, or ‘windy place’. My mentor met me at the train station.
I was bit homesick at first, but I got over it. I took care of Pádraig’s pony and the garden, and he paid me two shillings a week. That was the beginning of my long working career.
The only thing I did not like about Mastergeehy was that I could not see the ocean from Pádraig’s house. And I was a little lonely at first, because I did not have any friends. Back in the island, I would play sports and have fun with my friends. Now I was by myself most of the time. But I had my very own room and my very own bed. There was nobody to kick me in the head at night. It seemed like a real luxury.
Pádraig made me read history books and books about ‘the Troubles’. And he would teach me a little English. But mostly, he wanted to speak Irish with me. I was a kind of handyman for him. I would sow the potatoes and take care of the grounds and such.
After a short time, I got used to my new home. I made new friends. We would go to dances in various houses in the village, set dances. They were nice people, very understanding. Cahersiveen was intermixed with regard to language. Most people spoke English, but some spoke Irish. They were glad to have somebody from the island who spoke the pure Irish of the island. Cahersiveen had a Gaelic football team and I got involved with it. We used to go down to Waterville on the coast to play football games. Sometimes we won. Most of the time we lost. But we always had fun.
I never discussed going to America with Pádraig. In fact, I never even thought about it. America was closed to immigration at that time so it was out of the question. I was just trying to get away from the life of fishing on the island. I got along well in Cahersiveen. I had a nice set-up.
An Unexpected Opportunity
One day, Pádraig’s brother Cormac told him about an opening for an apprentice in a bar in Dublin. Pádraig sat me down to talk about it. I had lived in Cahersiveen only about five months. I always thought of it as a kind of way station. I had a sense that there was something greater yet to come. I certainly did not want to go back to the island. But I needed to get some place bigger where I could get a good week’s pay and help out my family on the island a bit.
Cormac was a schoolteacher in Clontarf in Dublin. (He was eventually elected a member of Dáil Éireann and served as Lord Mayor of Dublin in 1949–50.)
Pádraig said that the apprentice job was an opportunity to meet new people, do new things and see more of the world. He encouraged me to move along. He said, ‘You can’t stay here forever. You don’t want to do this all your life. You need to advance yourself.’
I was a little hesitant. I wrote to my sister Cáit and asked her to let my father know what Pádraig had proposed. My father was anxious that I keep on going in terms of pursuing a career. Cáit wrote back and told me that my father was sorry to see me go so far away from home, but that he was glad to see me headed in the right direction. So I decided to see what might come of this job in Dublin. I said, ‘Let’s go!’ It was September 1937.
Pádraig bought me a new suit. He took me to the train station in Cahersiveen and bought me a ticket to Dublin. It was a long ride to Dublin, about 300 miles. It took all day. I was full of doubt that I was making the right move.
Pádraig had arranged for me to be picked up at Kingsbridge Station, now called Heuston Station. P. J. Carroll, the owner of the pub, and his son picked me up in his car. A car! There weren’t many cars in all of West Kerry. I loved it.
But when I first arrived in Dublin, I thought I had better go back to the island. I had never seen the likes of it. And I thought Dingle was big! I thought to myself, ‘I’ll never be able to make it.’ The traffic … The language barrier … The people didn’t speak Irish, only English. The cars, the buses, the lights, the shops, the houses, the big buildings … everybody in a hurry … the way they went about things … It was all so different from the island and from Cahersiveen.
The staff of Davy Byrnes pub in 1942, including Mike Carney, second from the right.
Apprenticeship: Malloy’s
Being an apprentice in them days was a union job. I had to join the Allied Vintners and Grocers Union. The dues were a shilling a month. I spent three years as an apprentice in Malloy’s. I got paid five shillings a week during the first year, ten shillings a week the second year and £1 a week the third year. I gradually moved up the ladder. My living quarters up on the third floor over the bar and my meals were both provided at no charge as part of my compensation.
To me, I was making was big money. I even opened up my very own bank account at the Munster & Leinster Bank. After a couple of years when my earnings went up, I would send some money back home to my father whenever I could.
But it was hard work. My father used to tell me that you’ve got to be determined in life. So I stuck with it. I usually worked at Malloy’s from nine o’clock in the morning until ten at night, six days a week. I would have a break in the middle of the afternoon and I had every fifth Sunday off. I used to envy people who did not work on weekends.
Davy Byrnes pub in 2010.
When I moved to Dublin in 1937, there were a lot of people unemployed and on the dole. The government built roads to put people to work. They even paid for the construction of a better road up the hill back on the island. I was glad to have my apprenticeship to move my career along.
There were four lads working in Malloy’s at the time. There was a manager, two other apprentices and a porter, a man who did the cleaning.
The Guinness would come in a big barrel, a hogshead. We had to bottle it in the cellar and put the label on the bottles and put a cork in them. We would leave them alone for a couple of weeks and then they’d be ready to be served to our customers. For the draught beer, we hooked the hogshead up to a pump that brought it up to the counter. We learned how to pour it in a pint glass and put a good head on it. Pouring beer, especially stout, is a fine art in itself!
It was the same way with the whiskey. It would come in big 500-gallon containers c
alled caskets; both Jameson and Powers whiskey. The delivery men used to put the barrel up in a stand. We would add colouring from the chemist, the pharmacist, and it would stay there for settlement and to age.
The English spoken in Dublin was different from what I was used to back in West Kerry. They spoke much faster. I couldn’t translate that fast in my mind. One time, when I first went to Dublin and my English still was not very good, the manager of Malloy’s asked me to ‘go get some ham’. And I went upstairs and came back down with a hammer. I thought the man said ‘hammer’. We all got a big laugh out of it.
I completed my tour of duty in Malloy’s after three years. My apprenticeship was up. It was time to move on.
Junior Barman: Davy Byrnes
Now I was ready to become a junior barman. I applied for a position at Davy Byrnes, a pub at 21 Duke Street, just off Grafton Street near Trinity College. It was a historic pub in a great location, so I was anxious to work there.
Davy Byrnes was referred to as the ‘moral pub’ by James Joyce who made the place famous in his novel Ulysses. Some people say that it is the greatest book ever written.
When I first went to work at Davy Byrnes, it was owned by Davy’s nephew Éamon Boland. They had a room in the back of the bar where the leaders of the 1916 Easter Rising used to meet to formulate their plans. Those in attendance included Michael Collins, Arthur Griffith, Éamon Ceannt, Patrick Pearse, Thomas McDonagh and James Larkin. All their pictures were on the wall. I used to love to sit and read about their exploits. I was about twenty years old at the time.
I spent two years working at Davy Byrnes as a junior barman. I got paid £5 a week. I lived in Carmel House on South Circular Road in digs, a kind of boarding house. I got a room and meals there for about £2 a week. I would commute back and forth to Davy Byrnes on my bike. After work, I would go out to the cinema or to a dance.
From the Great Blasket to America Page 9