Life in rural Galway.

**Tales My Father Told Me.

**Marian Finlay. (nee Egan)

According to the date on his headstone, my grandfather Patrick Egan, was born in 1830. His father Peter had a holding of land in Loggawannia, and he may have been an only son because I never heard my father mention any Uncles and we had no cousins named Egan. His mother’s surname was Lee and my brother Pat thinks that she may have been from Carnacrow because my father claimed relationship with that family.

When I was in my teens an old neighbour, Tommie Moran, Loggawanma, showed me the remains of my Grandfather’s barn beside Carroll’s house. He told me that one Christmas Eve a man and his family with all their belongings had come to Loggawannia looking for shelter. It was assumed that they had been evicted from their land in some neighbouring estate. My grandfather had given them the use of his barn and being the Steward on the Staunton Estate used his influence with the Landlord to get them a tenancy. My grandfather must have been living in Loggawannia at the time but later moved to Clydagh where he was given an additional holding plus five extra acres of Cargin land as payment for his work as Steward. I don’t know if he was literate but since his duties involved buying and selling all Staunton’s cattle I assume that he was.

My father claimed he was seven when his father died in 1885, but his birth certificate gives his date of birth as 1876 so he must have been nine. His older sister Mary was born in 1872 and in 1874 another boy was born who was called Peadar after his grandfather. My father used to tell us that the Landlord Staunton gave the priest a pound at Peadar’s Christening , a considerable sum of money in those days, and a waste of good money according to his siblings who considered him a bit simple-minded, although he could read. He seems to have left home at an early age and lived with cousins in Annaghdown where he later married a woman who owned a small farm.

My father always referred to whichever member of the Staunton family living in the Big House as Staunton so I never knew what member of the family he was referring to, and since I was usually eavesdropping on some conversation not intended for my ears I did not dare to ask. The headstone erected by the Landlord over my grandfather’s grave bears the inscription; *“In charity pray for the soul of Patrick Egan, who was for thirty years the faithful Steward of Geo. Lynch Staunton” July 31st 1885. Aged 55 years. *A large Celtic cross nearby asking us to pray for Geo Lynch Staunton seems to indicate that he had died some years earlier.

My grandfather was drowned in Lough Corrib. He had been rounding up cattle for a fair on a very hot day and went for a swim in the lake. According to my father on the death certificate the cause of death was Apoplexy, probably the term then used for a stroke. Local gossip claimed that he had drowned himself, though how a strong swimmer would have chosen that method of suicide, and was afterwards buried in consecrated ground is inexplicable, but why let facts get in the way of a good story? The folk memory may not be accurate but it is certainly long lived because the suicide story surfaced during my time at school and in that of the next generation.

Only last Summer a neighbour, Kathleen Gillon, told me the following anecdote that may be relevant to the events of the time. Unfortunately, she could not recall who told her the story or the subject matter of the sermon that caused my grandfather and another man, whose name she could not remember, to walk out of the church in protest. The priest advised the congregation to take note of how both men would meet their death. One would like to know the name of the other man and his ultimate fate, or whether, in the opinion of a superstitious congregation both men fell victim to the ‘priest’s curse’.

I can only conjecture that the sermon may have been in connection with the dispute over the managership of the school. Staunton had built it for the children of his tenants, but at some stage the Church decided that the Parish Priest should take control. Whether by clerical edict or not the children were kept away from school and it was closed. During the course of the boycott the Landlord and priest met one day and a heated argument ensued. Staunton, offended by the priest’s attitude, asked haughtily; “Who do you think you are to speak to me like that?” To which the Priest replied, “I’m the son of a small farmer from the Co. Mayo placed by God over you.” As my father told the story, “Staunton turned on his heel and walked away, but after that he ceased to attend Mass in Claran and went to Corner Chapel instead.

Folk history does not record how a widow with eight children coped after the tragedy, at a time when there were no children’s allowances and no widow’s pension. Probably she was helped by her brothers who lived in her old family home, in Cruckfada between Headford and Shrule. My mother told me the following sad little tale that she must have heard from my father. The dead man had a splendid dog for rounding up stock, and after his death, probably not having any use for it, his widow gave it to her brother. The boys loved the dog and one day my father and his younger brother, Padhraic set off for Cruckfada to retrieve the animal. When they came within sight of the house they whistled for the dog who ran to them. Delighted with themselves they headed for home, but the uncle on missing the dog pursued them on horseback and reclaimed it. In my mind’s eye I see two little boys trudging sadly along the four-mile stretch of road.

My sister Nora recalls hearing a description of my grandfather’s splendid funeral when the local “Gentry” came in their carriages to pay their respects, but I must have been off-duty that day because I don’t remember any such story.

Despite the tribute to the “faithful steward” at the end of the day land is land, and the landlord sued for re-possession of the five acres in Cargin, on the grounds that these five acres represented the Herd’s wages, that Pat Egan was a Herd, and after his death the land should revert to his employer. The land in Loggawannia seems to have been retained in the name of Peter Egan till 1889 when it passed to Patrick’s widow, Mary Egan nee Carroll. Due to her reduced circumstances she was forced to sell that farm to Johnny Murphy in 1894.

My father, who could never mention his mother without emotion, told me that she died of fever in Tuam. She must have been dead at the time of the law-suit because it was my Aunt Mary, the eldest girl who defended the case. She was successful mainly because of the testimony of one Michael Newell, a Gauger who lived in Headford, and wanted to see Justice done to the orphaned family. He swore that he had known Pat Egan all his life and he was always a Steward, never a Herd. That land, opposite Colnaminna gate is still in the possession of the family.

Apparently it was customary for boys to absent themselves from school when there was seasonal work to be done on the farm and return when their help was no longer needed. In spite of the unfortunate family circumstances my father continued to attend school till his teacher, Nicholas Darcy told him to stay away as there was nothing more he could teach him. He always described Nioclas as he called him, giving the Irish version of his name, as a savage who did not believe in sparing the rod, and would recount the following story with great glee.

The teacher’s moods were unpredictable and nobody questioned his right to administer punishment Woe betide the boy who fell foul of him. One day, as the pupils entered the school after the mid-day break Nicholas lashed out with his cane at a brother of Pat Lally from Ballinacregga who had done something to provoke the teacher’s ire. He was a well-built lad of about 16 and stung by the assault he retaliated with a punch. A bout of fisticuffs followed, much to the delight of the rest of the boys at seeing the teacher at the receiving end, and better still, ending up head over heels in the barrel of lime kept for the purpose of disinfecting the earth closets. Young Lally left the school and emigrated immediately afterwards to the US.

My father’s revenge on Nioclas was more subtle and possibly more salutary. One day the teacher punished him, unjustly in his opinion, for some misdemeanour. When the Inspector called he was placed in a strategic position. He knew what was expected of him but he also knew that teachers were paid or graded according to the performance of their pupils, so all through the examination he remained Mute *of Malice, *refusing to answer any questions, much to the chagrin of the teacher. Retribution was swift but the message was not lost on the teacher. My father and a member of the Creaven family vied with each other for first place in the class. Nioclas fostered the rivalry and when he set a problem would call out, “Come on Blake! Come on Kenny!” the name of a well-known firm of Galway solicitors. The nickname stuck in my father’s case and to the end of his life he was always known as Kenny.

Another member of the Creaven family, Sean, was a particular friend of my father. Irish was not taught at school but during the revival of the language at the beginning of the 20th century he and Sean taught themselves to read Irish from studying articles in the newspaper of that time. My father always regretted that he could not write in Irish because he did not understand the Grammar, a statement that always puzzled me.

Like all his family Sean was very musical with a beautiful singing voice and he and my father collected ballad sheets at fairs and markets, much as today’s teenagers collect CDs. Sean emigrated to America and on the steamer on the way to Galway he was so heartbroken that he swore he would return as soon as he earned the return fare. He never came home.

When we were children my father used to sing those songs to us and although he was not a great singer, we thought he was the equal of John McCormack. At that time those old songs such as The Rocks of Bawn, and the old version of Galway Bay had fallen from favour, but many of them were popularised more recently by Dolores Keane and brought back many happy memories. A song I liked particularly was The Bonny Bunch of Roses, a song about Napoleon’s ambition to invade the British Isles and collect the *“Bonny bunch of Roses” *when he had conquered the rest of Europe, but after the retreat from Moscow he lost the bonny bunch of roses. This song can be found on a CD recently produced by Frank Harte and Donal Lunny.

My mother was the more musical of the two. She played the melodeon and her party piece was the Grandfather’s Clock a song that she and her classmates from Claran School had sung on the stage in Headford when the main item on the programme was the play “The Colleen Bawn”.

My father must have been well into his teens when he left school, but Nioclas advised him to read, and for the rest of his life he read widely and retained what he read. The standard of education seems to have been high, with emphasis on English Literature, Arithmetic, Geography and History. Grammar and good handwriting were considered very important and both of my parents had beautiful handwriting. I often heard him and his contemporaries referring to the Sixth Book which had excerpts from the writings of the great British stylists and one of our neighbours, Bill Creaven, a brother of Sean used to quote from the Sayings of Poor Richard, that I afterwards discovered were excerpts from Poor Richard’s Almanac, by Benjamin Franklin. The Vicar of Wakefield seems to have featured because Bill used to allude to Moses and his green spectacles. The pupils must have studied American History also, possibly in the context of the American War of Independence because my father told of being examined by the School Inspector on the Battle of Bunker Hill. I used to think that Bunker Hill was some sort of dormitory because when our bed-time was at hand my father would call out, “Get ready for Bunker Hill”.

Nicholas Darcy was married twice. I never heard who his first wife was but the second wife had been the Assistant teacher. Part of the courtship had been conducted by notes sent by messenger from the Senior school to the room next door. On one occasion the courier’s curiosity got the better of him and he was in the process of reading the billet doux when the Master with his cane came upon him from the rere. No doubt he had cause to remember the incident.

Louis, Frank and Irene were children of the second marriage but there were at least two children if not three from the first union. The boys were sent to school in Ballinasloe, and like many privileged children seem to consider themselves immune from punishment. One day my father was mowing with a scythe in a field near the school when the three boys who were idling nearby started to bandy words with him. When they made some crude insulting remark about his sister, the girl who had been a second mother to the family, he jumped over the wall and gave them a hiding.

They threatened to tell the Master and he replied that he’d give the same treatment to their parent. Nioclas was irate at the idea of anybody having the temerity to chastise his children instead of reporting their misconduct to him. Remembering how the Master had spent his life caning every child in the district , the irony of the situation was not lost on my father, who was unrepentant.

Another schoolmate of my father was Mick Mannion, Loggawannia. Both were members of the United Irish League an agrarian movement founded by William O’Brien, a member of the old Irish Parliamentary Party. The object of the organisation was to restore the land to the tenants and prevent the Landlords from letting the land to “Graziers”. The movement spread throughout a large part of the country and was particularly active on the Clanricarde Estate in East Galway, where evictions were still being carried out. Reports on the activities in every district were published but I never discovered the name of the paper, another instance of failing to ask the right questions during the lifetime of those involved. Under the heading Clydagh Notes my father reported on the progress of the campaign in prose and Mick Mannion in verse.

Because of the fear of violence the Landlords and the “Graziers ” were under police protection and the RIC were active keeping the ringleaders under surveillance. A well-to-do family named Lee who came from a townland off the Galway/Headford road were renting the Cargin lands from Staunton, but for fear of the League they were reluctant to herd their cattle and sent their sister, a very pretty girl to do the herding.

My father was attracted to the young lady and a romance developed much to the annoyance of the brothers. One evening as she was counting the cattle in Cargin my father, who was working on his own land whistled to attract her attention. She looked round and seeing two men walking down the Ferry road, decided that they were responsible. She notified the police and the pain both respectable married men were charged with conduct likely to lead to a breach of the peace. They were mortified and threatened to divulge the name of the real culprit.

I don’t know if the case ever came to court or if it was dismissed, but apparently it was a source of great amusement at the time. Many years ago when my husband and I were driving from Galway an old lady thumbed a lift some miles above Headford. On discovering my identity she spoke about my father whom she described as a ‘perfect gentleman’ and asked me to tell him that Purty Lee sent her regards. Obviously, she bore no ill-will. I don’t know if the League ever accomplished anything in our area, but the disputed land was later striped by the Irish Land Commission. Mick Mannion had by then, like most of my father’s friends emigrated to America.

With so many of his contemporaries leaving the country and half of his siblings in America I often wonder if my father thought of joining them, but in the thinking of the time it would have been considered disgraceful to abandon one’s father’s land. Because he had died intestate every member of the family had an equal fight to the holding, which meant that my father could not marry till he was in his late forties in case some member of the family made a claim.

After his oldest sister emigrated in 1909 he lived on his own for 14 years. From listening to his reminiscences I concluded that he had a very happy bachelor existence. There were none of those references to the hardships of life under British rule or seven hundred years of oppression that one later became familiar with. The different Land Acts had given farmers ownership of their land, and although on a Summer’s evening at sunset one could see the outline of the undug potato ridges in the Castle field there seemed to be no folk memory of the Famine through which his father and grandfather had lived.

In Cecil Woodham Smith’s book on the Famine Staunton is listed as one of the landlords who waived the collection of rent at that time. Some years ago I came across a reference to him in the Irish Times in connection with Trevelyn with whom he was associated.

As he described it to us my father’s life in the early years of the 20th century seems to have been idyllic. He owned his own row boat and enjoyed unlimited free fishing on Lough Corrib which was practically on his doorstep, was a crack shot with his rifle and shotgun and it says much about the easy availability of firearms at that period that he even had a revolver that he bought by mail order.

The revolver almost got him into serious trouble after a silly prank went wrong. I don’t know when the incident occurred because all my father’s stories started with *It must be forty years ago … *Some older men from Ballinacregga were returning from the Ferry pub and having a serious discussion about the Germans, who naturally enough were poised to target our quiet backwater, when my father who was at the Clydagh crossroads with some of his cronies thought it would be fun to fire a shot in their direction and suggest that the Germans had arrived.

The men were walking uphill when he fired over their heads - not allowing for the incline. The bullet ricocheted and Mike Geraghty fell to the ground. His companion, Patsy Hardiman, who had lived in America shouted to the younger men at the crossroads that a man had been shot. There was consternation. Nobody knew that my father had a revolver. The injured man was placed on a door and carried into the nearest house which was my father’s, and a messenger was dispatched to Headford for the doctor.

The wounded man was not in pain. The bullet had entered through his thigh and had almost emerged on the opposite side where it was visible beneath the skin. Dr Golding arrived, slit the skin, removed the bullet, dressed the wound with iodine, and not surprisingly, said that a gun attack was a serious matter and must be reported to the RIC.

Quick action was called for. My father rowed out to the deepest part of the lake and dropped the gun and the remaining ammunition overboard. When the police arrived next morning there was no trace of a weapon. Witnesses were questioned, surrounding fields were searched, but the shooting remained a mystery. Nobody was charged, but it would be interesting to see the police reports.

At some stage, and here again I have no dates, night classes were held in Clydagh School for the benefit of older men who had missed out on education. My father, Pat Murphy, Kilbeg, and two other past pupils were recruited by Nicholas Darcy. I asked my father what was taught and he said it was the same curriculum that was followed in the day classes, and some of the pupils were old enough to be his father.

I presume that Nicholas Darcy had some input but he does not seem to have taken an active part. I once asked if they had been paid and my father said that there was some remuneration but they never got it, and he supposed the Master needed it more than they did. A sad reflection on the teachers’ salaries at that time, and perhaps a pointer to the reason why my father never amassed any money.

After class the tutors held card-playing sessions on an upturned blackboard, till one night an Inspector arrived on a sidecar. Alarm signals were sounded, the jarvey was deliberately misdirected and lost his way in the bye-roads, and by the time the official reached the school the pupils had dispersed and the blackboard was returned to its proper position.

I don’t know how long the night classes survived but many years later when I was still at school, an old man, Jimmy Earnor from Knocklahard called to our house and gave us the definitions of Syntax and Prosody taught to him by my father. On another occasion when my father was in his seventies, he was walking along the road when a big car pulled up beside him and an American voice shouted “How’s my old schoolmaster?” My father recognising him as a man from Ballyconlought who had been one of his pupils, retorted ruefully that it was sad to see the pupil driving and the teacher on foot.

Nicholas died suddenly. He must have felt unwell and went to the school door where he collapsed. When he did not attempt to stand one of the bigger girls, Sis Newell, jumped over his body and the rest of the pupils followed her. After his death his wife must have been appointed to the Principalship because he was the last of the male teachers. Sis Newell emigrated to the States and the family is now extinct.

In my father’s time the Newells were blacksmiths, and when I was a child the remains of the forge were still there, but the trade was not practised by that generation. They had a lovely old fashioned hand-made iron candle-stick a replica of which I once saw in a Dublin museum. The house was bought some years ago by a foreign couple who used it as a holiday home. They built a modern extension to the rere but retained the original structure and the thatched roof, the only remaining one in the area.

None of the Darcy family followed in their parents’ footsteps, and the older members must have emigrated. Joe went to America, and Louis who may have been at University was an active member of Sinn Fein and tried to recruit the young men into the movement. My father said he inherited the rebel streak from both sides. His mother’s uncle who was a prison warder gave the key of the prison to William O’Brien and my late brother Tom told me that the Darcy grandfather and a neighbour walked to Castlebar to see the French in 1798.

My father by then was more interested in constitutional politics and supported the Irish Parliamentary Party. He often referred to an afternoon spent with the younger man, when Louis had produced a pair of revolvers and they spent a few hours in target practice on a stable door. My father maintained that he had no great faith in Louis marksmanship and stood well out of range. When I asked him to describe Louis he answered dismissively, “He was a light ladeen!” which could have meant lightheaded or of slight build.

My mother, who was 18 years younger than my father and grew up on the Claran side of the parish, remembered him as a fellow with a supercilious air, who used his superior education to put down anybody who tangled with him. He was courting a neighbour of my mother who took his attentions more seriously than her pals thought probable, and since Louis did not attend Mass they teased her about consorting with an atheist. One of the girls Delia Greaney, afterwards Mrs. Lydon, quoted from the Maynooth Catechism, *‘let him be to thee as the Heathen and the Publican”, *and referred to him as a Heretic and Infidel. The remarks were transmitted to Louis, and Delia, knowing that at the next encounter with him she would have to defend her criticism, took out the Catechism Notes and memorised the definitions.

Louis was not too popular with the parents of the area who felt that he was leading the young men into trouble. It was said that an old lady from Cloone, the area from which the Darcy family originated declared that if she got her hands on him she “would bring him under her apron to the Headford barracks”. My mother often described her last meeting with him. Her family home, Millpark was always a house where music was played and Aunt, the lady who took over the family after their mother’s death encouraged the family to invite their friends for house dances.

The family home was at the end of a long lane at the foot of a low hill and invisible from the road. Because of its sheltered position it was reputed to be the only house left standing on the road between there and the lake shore on the night of the Big Wind. On this particular evening before the youngsters had assembled my mother strolled up to the road and saw Louis cycling towards her. He dismounted and they had a brief conversation.

My mother must have pitied the lone young revolutionary and asked him if he was coming to the dance. He replied that he had not been invited and my mother said; “Well! I’m inviting you”. He a greed to attend when he had concluded whatever mission he was engaged in. The dancing was in full swing when he walked in but on his arrival the set ended abruptly and every man in the house disappeared.

This incident was confirmed to me years later by my Uncle John’s wife, nee Bridie Lydon, who was making her debut on that occasion. It was the first time she had been allowed to a grown-up dance and she recalled her excitement and the subsequent disappointment at the unscheduled termination of the event. Louis stayed on for a while after the others had left and then asked my Uncle John if he could show him the short-cut across the Slieverue bog to the bridge of Ower, where he had a rendezvous with a man. Pat Garvey, then a teenager from Carheens volunteered to escort him and true enough when they reached the spot a man, a priest from a neighbouring parish was waiting for him. He had left his bicycle in Millpark to be collected at a later date. Shortly afterwards he was arrested and murdered by the Black and Tans near Oranmore. My uncle examined the bike for initials or other identifying marks and concealed it under a cock of straw in the haggard, in case of a raid.

Few young men attended his funeral. His recruits knew better than to appear and those not politically involved who turned up were roughly handled by the Tans who had expected some sort of demonstration. My mother who was in Headford that morning was warned by her brother who had a shop there that *“every Tan in Connacht would he at the funeral ”. *and rushed home to warn John.

When she got to Carrabeg Hill lorry-loads of Tans passed her by, whistling and jeering. When she reached home her brother had already left for the church and on Aunt’s insistence she followed him. He had already been questioned by the troops and I often heard him relate how terrified he was as they encircled him with a ring of bayonets and an officer asked him if he knew Darcy, why he was at the funeral, was he a Sinn Feiner, and why he did not serve in the War. His reply that his brother was there mollified the officer and he was told to proceed. His brother James had served in France with the American Army

The soldiers were in a nasty mood because the local Sinn Fein group had got a girl to place a posy or wreath of flowers in the national colours on the coffin to the annoyance of the Parish Priest, Fr. Forde, who feared that the church might be set on fire. The grave had been dug the previous night, but nobody could be found to close it. My mother described Mrs. Darcy pleading with the crowd in the honour of God to close her son’s *grave, and *eventually calling on two older men by name. One of them Thomas Darcy, Carnakib, no relation, was not too pleased at being thus placed in the limelight.

Afterwards all the men were rounded up and driven into the school where for the amusement of the soldiers they were marched round the room and drilled. When they were released a soldier at the door gave each man a whack of his rifle. It was said that the soldier missed every second man.

My father sensing trouble did not attend the funeral but took refuge in Hardimans, Ballinacregga. Three teenagers from the village Tom Hardiman, Tommy Geraghty, and I think Bill Lally took a short cut across the Creggs to meet the funeral at Harte’s hill.

When the Tans who were at the rere of the cortege saw the figures silhouetted against the skyline they thought it was an ambush and revved up their vehicles, scattering the mourners. When it was realised that they were mere youths the soldiers threw them back over the wall and tumbled the stones over them. As the mourners caught up the soldiers started to wail as if the youngsters were crying in their death throes. Mercifully the boys were unhurt. After the Treaty and the outbreak of the Civil War the young men from Ballinacregga joined the Free State Army after being intimidated by the anti-Treaty supporters.

The Staunton family seem to have maintained a kindly interest in my father because one member of the family told him that he could have a job for life on the estate, and he worked there at intervals for a period of six years. There must have been times during which the family did not live in the Big House as it was known locally, because my father and some of his contemporaries spoke of its being let to Sir James Mathew, a relative of the famous Fr. Mathew of the Temperance movement. He was a high Court Judge who came to Ireland for the Court Sessions.

His daughter, Elizabeth, known as Miss Bessie, married John Dillon of the Irish Parliamentary Party, the most famous Irish politician of his day, a great orator and a man of such integrity that he was known as Honest John Dillon. Before his marriage in 1885 he visited the family in Clydagh House and all the local men were invited to form a guard of honour. My father was very proud of the fact that he shook the hand of John Dillon who must have been the MP for the area.

He described the bride to be as a grand young girl but said John Dillon was an old man. At that time John Dillon would have been forty four and my father nineteen, but I suppose in one’s teens age is relative. Many years later Professor Tierney of UCD who had built a holiday home on the lake shore was visited by Professor Myles Dillon of the Institute for Advanced Studies who recalling his family’s connection with the district asked the PP if there was anybody alive who remembered his mother. Father Keane suggested my father who by then was the oldest man in the parish and he called and recorded my father’s recollections of the event in Irish

The last Staunton to live in Clydagh was Mr. Charles, always referred to locally as Searluisin, but I don’t know whether the “een” was a reference to his stature or was meant to be derogatory. Much to my father’s astonishment he claimed that he could not afford to get married. My father also spoke of a Colonel Staunton who tried to recruit him into the British Army during the Boer War, and as an inducement was painting a glowing picture of army life, which included foreign travel and a splendid uniform till Searluisin shattered the illusion by interjecting “and his picture in the paper when he’s *shot’. *At any rate my father’s sympathies were with the Boers, men described by my father, who had seen them in films on fair days in Headford, as fine men wearing soft hats charging into battle against the British on horseback.

At the time the native Africans did not merit attention, and not having any understanding of African history I was not aware of their existence till a tiny black man, a customer of ours, named Nimrod Sejake explained the situation to me. He told me he was exiled from South Africa for Trade Union activities, and had been sentenced to jail with Nelson Mandela the first time Mandela was sent to prison. My father would have been surprised.

I remember the Colonel’s daughter calling to see my father on a few occasions when she was a guest in Clydagh House during the thirties and my father addressing her as Miss Dorothy, and telling her she had been a beautiful young girl. My mother did not consider the use of the past tense tactful.

As a teenager one of his jobs was to assist the Gamekeeper, a North of Ireland Orangeman named Williams, referred to locally as Liaimin. This entailed reporting for duty at six o’clock in the morning to feed the newly-hatched pheasants that were kept in a special enclosure before being released for Shooting Parties. To ensure that he arrived on time Williams presented him with a clock of the type known as a wag o’ the wall.

Williams always carried a shotgun and in later years when he went to the Ferry pub for his nightly drink, for some reason, perhaps when Home Rule was being considered, fired shots every time he passed by my father’s home. My father reported him to Staunton and he was dismissed. Some years later my father was awakened one night by an explosion and discovered that the old clock which was hanging beside his bed had burst scattering the works all over the bed. The Creavens surmised that it had some connection with the death of Williams that occurred around that time. I remember playing with the remains of that old clock in a shed when I was a child. The face had Roman numerals.

Another Northern employee of Stauntons was Samuel Martin, who taught Bill Creaven the violin. He was very pleased with his pupil and averred that he had a very correct ear. Bill used to play at all the Station parties. All the employees on the estate seem to have been assimilated into the life of the local community, who probably enjoyed this contact with strangers. There was a big turnover of gatekeepers who lived in the Lodge, but the one my father remembered most fondly was a man named Burke who was summarily dismissed without notice for some minor infringement. The poor man was penniless and sold his most treasured possession, an English dictionary, to my father for six shillings. That sum was a workman’s weekly wage at the time, but it was sufficient to cover his and his wife’s travelling expenses to the next job.

We were forbidden to touch that book which was kept on top of a wardrobe. When we had difficulty with the meaning of some big word my father, with great ceremony took down the dictionary the cover of which was missing, undid the yellowed tape that held it together, and read out the exact meaning of the word and its derivation. I remember an argument with a neighbour one night on the meaning of concurrent and consecutive, and my father intoning “con with or together

A raid by a group of unknown men looking for guns precipitated the departure of Charles from Clydagh. Since they arrived by boat it was thought locally that they had come from the Iar Connacht side of the lake in the expectation of finding an arsenal. He and his housekeeper, Harriet were roughly treated, but with touching faith in the loyalty of his ex-tenants, he declared that none of them would dream of doing such a deed. My brother John maintains that he heard my father say that Charles flung a little axe that he used for chopping up firewood through the window at the departing attackers and injured one man who died later as a result of the wound, but I always understood that the intruders were never identified.

On the day he left the ancestral home he told my father that the previous night had been a dreadful experience because of all the ghosts. I understood that he meant the memories but my father took the statement literally and said in all seriousness. “No! He wouldn’t tell a lie”.

In later years, and here again I have no dates, the place was occupied for a time by the British Army. There does not appear to have been any open animosity towards the soldiers but there may have been some hidden resentment. Some of them used to go to the Ferry for a drink. A couple of them would cycle as far as the turn in the road at the lake, and park their bikes by the demesne wall before completing the journey on foot.

Although they were not politically involved my father and Mick Creaven decided to take the bikes, and one night they lifted them and threw them into Lough Corrib, where in spite of searches and interrogations they remained. After some time my father confessed his sin and was refused Absolution by the Confessor till he had made restitution - an impossibility considering the circumstances. Eventually the problem was resolved when he found a more complaisant priest who praised him for his action and said it was a very small reprisal for all the British sins against the Irish. Nobody considered the possibility that the bikes were private property bought out of the owners’ meagre earnings.

One night the sentry on duty in the grounds of Clydagh House saw a man crossing the lawn. After calling on him to halt he fired a shot alerting the garrison who searched the grounds but could find no trace of the intruder. Perhaps the Big House was haunted after all!

My youngest brother, with Paddy Joe Hardiman and an older neighbour Mattie Reilly set off one night to raid the orchard in the walled garden. Leaving Paddy Joe keeping guard at the gate the other two climbed over the high wall and were on a tree picking apples when a man wearing a trench coat came towards them along the path from the direction of the gate. They made a quick getaway and rounded on the guard at the locked gate who had seen nothing. That was the end of the escapade. It was said that the crows did not nest in the Clydagh wood because of a curse placed on the family by an old woman from Ballinacregga, but about 20 years ago my late brother Tom told me that the crows had returned to nest there again.

During the Civil War the house was occupied once more, this time by the Anti-Treaty forces who considered themselves the legitimate government of an illusory Republic. I suppose all armies live off the occupied territory but my father was somewhat aggrieved when one day a sack of potatoes he had just filled was commandeered by a member of the garrison. His remonstrations were met with the rejoinder to send the bill to DeValera. Some Sundays later he was at Mass in Claran when another of the Irregulars slipped into the seat beside him and whispered; “Kenny! when you’re paying your dog licence you’ll give the money to us”. To which my father whispered back. “I will and you can take it out of the price of that bag of spuds you took from me”.

I don’t know at what stage the Irregulars vacated Clydagh House, but they set fire to it before leaving. My father who had remained strictly neutral during the Civil War had a very clear recollection of the burning. One morning somebody called and said *“They’re burning down the *Big *House *“and he set off on foot to see for himself. Mick Dowd, Ballyhale, was on guard in front of the house seemingly alone because my father never mentioned any other names when the topic was discussed round the fire. There were heaps of doors and windows lying on the lawn and my father in his innocence assuming that they were going to be added to the pyre addressed the other man and said that it was a shame to burn all that fine stuff and that he could do with a few doors, to which Mick replied generously, “Take what you want!”

Whenever anybody admired the three handsome panelled doors in our house this story would be told, so I am not revealing any secrets. When my mother married my father in 1923 she found two mahogany panels that may have been window shutters and got John Joyce, Loggawannia, to make a wardrobe for her using the panels as doors. My brother discovered woodworm in the new wood and discarded the wardrobe when he moved into the new house, but my sister Nora told me the mahogany doors are still sound after all those years. My father soon discovered the reason for the sentry’s generosity when the following week he saw cartloads of timber passing by his door on the way to Ballyhale.

There was a magnificent white marble mantelpiece in the drawing-room of Clydagh House which was removed during the occupation. The removal men assumed that it was all of a piece but discovered that it was in sections when they tried to remove it. It was said that they put the segments into a sack and were carrying it across the bog when they decided that it was not worth the bother and dumped it in a boghole where it remained.

Although at that time the house was in a bad state of repair and would probably have crumbled into ruins, after the end of the Civil War a claim for compensation was presented to the Free State Government, and towards the end of the nineteen twenties it was restored to its former glory.

According to Nollaig Ogadura in his book Civil War in Connacht the amounts claimed in compensation for the destruction of property during the Civil War at the Quarter Sessions in September 1923 amounted to almost £154,000 but Clydagh House is not among those listed.

No expense was spared. Tradesmen from Dublin were brought down to do the work and lodged in the nearby farmhouses, a welcome source of income to the housewives. My mother who loved company often spoke fondly of her lodgers who paid 30 shillings [£1.50] a week rent for full board. Her favourites were three plasterers Billy O’Neill, Arthur Moynagh, and Joe Byrne, an apprentice still in short pants, to whom rural conditions must have come as a bit of a shock. My father when asked very politely for the toilet opened the back door and said “There you are as far as the eye can see”.

My mother thought the Dublin accents were very grand but by the end of their stay they had lost them. I was too young to remember most of the lodgers who passed through our house but there was a Mr. Bruckshaw from Maguire and Gatchells whose task it was to install some system of central heating. “Hot air” my mother called it. He introduced the first radio seen in the area. I remember a complicated arrangement of wires and what I thought were buckets extending from one of our chimneys to a big tree at the end of our garden, and all the young people sitting on the low wall outside our house to listen to this wonderful new medium.

Then there was a man whom I disliked because he used to tease me, and I disliked him even more when I was washing my doll and drying her off in front of the open hearth; the doll caught fire and he grabbed it and flung it into the flames probably saving me from serious injury, but I could only cry for my lost doll.

Unlike most men my father never went out at night to visit neighbouring houses but some of his contemporaries would often visit us to discuss politics or tell ghost stories. Although I did not understand the nature of the political discussions, being in love with words I memorised some of the derisive phrases used by my father such as “Abolish the Senate!” and “That man has no Policies!” and a recurring argument about the “Annuities” without having any idea of their meaning.

He was the unofficial letter-writer for the area and I remember the excitement when the residents of Ballinacregga applied for a pump. The only source of water for that townland was a well in a turlough that was flooded in Winter. I was fascinated by my father’s description of it as “a place to which the ducks and geese had free access”

Since most of the inhabitants of the six houses were old age pensioners it was vital that the pump should be within easy reach. Michael Reilly and my father had fields at the top of the boreen opposite the school and both offered sites but even before the final location was announced everybody knew where the pump would be sited. Officially, the Council Engineer decided that the proferred sites were too close to the graveyard and selected the present site in Connell’s field, too far away for the use of the elderly people who sought it in the first place.

My father did not believe in ghosts, maintaining that they had all been banished by the Tans, but after saying that he had been out at all hours of the day and night and had never seen anything worse than himself he would relate the following tale that frightened me more than any story of headless horsemen or ghostly apparitions.

His maternal grandmother in Cruckfada reared two children relatives who had been orphaned at an early age by the death of both parents. One of them a little boy was attending school barefooted as were most children at that time. One evening he complained of a sore foot and was kept home from school, but gradually his condition worsened and a little bed was made up for him beside the fire.

He continued to deteriorate and started to age before their eyes till eventually he had grown a little beard. Although my father never mentioned the term “changeling” the thought must have occurred to the grandmother who would remark “Cibe thu, is laghach an sean-fhearin thu”.

One night the patient was so weak that it became apparent to the family that he was going to die and they decided to sit up with him although he begged them to go to bed. At midnight such a commotion arose in the yard outside that the inmates were scared almost out of their wits but the little boy/man said “I told ye to go to bed,” which they did without further delay.

Next morning, rather belatedly, the priest was sent for. He prayed over the patient who was soon restored to his normal youthful appearance. In reply to questions put by the by the grandmother as to his whereabouts while the old man was in his place he said he had been in Knockma, the fairy hill at Castlehackett between Headford and Tuam, and named the people he had met there, contemporaries of the grandmother whom he could not possibly have known.

Years later after my father’s death in 1967 I was visiting his grave with my mother and recalling the story asked my mother if my father had fabricated it. Had I questioned Holy Writ she would not have been more shocked. “That was a true story”, she insisted. “His name was Tom Kyne. He made a fine man but he went bad in America” The younger members of my family are very sceptical about the veracity of this story [None more so than I. KF.], claiming that it is a folk-myth common to unsophisticated people of several countries, or that the child was suffering from an illness that induces premature ageing and death, to which I can only reply that whatever the circumstances, the subject of the anecdote did exist, recovered and grew to manhood. The Carroll family still live in Cruckfada and I sometimes wonder if they have ever heard the story.

Nobody could deny that my father lived through a period of great change and I often wish that I had made notes of his reminiscences while he was still alive. He had something interesting to say about everything. When commenting on the high rateable valuation on Cargin land he claimed that when the land was being valued, probably during the Griffith valuation, Staunton had wined and dined the valuer and suggested an inflated figure to enhance his standing among his peers.

When Jubilee Island figured in a court case dealing with the discovery of illegal distilling equipment there, he was one of those who had been present at its christening by the Landlord on the occasion of Queen Victoria’s Jubilee, when a shot was fired in honour of “the Queen, God bless her, who has reigned for 60 years”, and an irreverent voice muttered, “I don’t care if she snowed for 60 more!” He had seen the demise of Landlordism and the British Empire but not the birth of the Celtic Tiger.

After his death when Monsignor Murphy undertook to write his obituary for the local paper there were no outstanding achievements to be recorded. He had no fear of death because he told me he *had reared a good family and had never wronged anybody, *but if one accepts that the criterion for a successful life is “Lying on one’s deathbed and facing the future with confidence,” then his life was a success.

General Contents. .