Early Childhood - Part 2: Durrow
Our destination was a little town called Durrow in what used to be known as Queen’s County but is now County Laois or Leix. The house we moved to was next door to a public house by the bridge over a little tributary of the River Nore.
The main roads from Dublin to Cork and Kilkenny separated just past our house. Twice a day we looked out for the red CIE bus from Dublin to Cork and from Cork to Dublin. At one stage my friends and I thought it would be fun to board the bus when it stopped outside Sheeran’s shop to pick up passengers or cargo. We ran up and down the central aisle, greeting the passengers. Occasionally, we would be offered sweets but I never accepted them as my mother had warned me never to accept sweets from strangers. You made your own fun in those days and the bus was exciting because it brought a bit of the wider world into our sleepy little town.
We used to play hopscotch on the pavement outside our house. We would draw a large rectangle on the pavement in chalk and divide it lengthways into two and then sideways into five, giving us ten sections. We would place a tin lid in the first section and each competitor had to hop on one leg to the top, pushing the lid from section to section in sequence. At the top you turned around and came back down. Once the second foot touched the ground you were called ‘out’. I do not remember ever getting very far in this game.
I was no happier in school in Durrow than I had been in Waterford. It was a one-teacher school and had pupils ranging in age from 6 to 15. Often the older pupils sat helping the younger ones with their sums and spelling. The curriculum was confined to the three R’s and Scripture. During lessons a sign was displayed showing whether the lesson was secular or religious. Rote learning was the order of the day. I remember sitting for half an hour with a postcard and a saucer of red lentils in front of me. The figure ‘5’ was printed on the card and I sat there placing lentil after lentil on the figure till it was outlined in lentils! It was a monotonous exercise with neither purpose nor benefit. I can honestly say I learned little or nothing in that school.
Perhaps, in a roundabout negative way, I did. I remember one incident that left a lasting impression on me. It was the 11th November 1936 and precisely at 11a.m.the teacher told us to stand up, bow our heads and be silent for one minute. She didn’t explain why we were to act in that manner but the silence got to me. I went into one of my nervous giggling fits that used to land me in such dire trouble. My friend, Janet, a real giggler, joined in. Phew! We were treated like criminals of the worst kind. I was told that I was lucky my father had returned safely from the front but that other men had not been so lucky. I didn’t understand what she was talking about but I reported the episode at home before my parents heard her version. It was the first time I’d heard that my father had fought in the First World War. He explained the significance of the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month and I never forgot it. As the teacher, Mrs St Leger, ranted and raved at us that day, one of the mischievous lads told her we were sticking our tongues out at her and she knew she couldn’t use the cane so she told us to write out 100 times, ‘I must not stick out my tongue at my teacher.’ I knew I had done no such thing and the injustice of it hit me hard. There was no way I was going to admit 100 times to something that I hadn’t done. I told my parents and they knew I would never act like that so they forbade me to write the lines and from then on I was in that teacher’s black books. Government inspectors (cigiri) regularly visited National schools and when the ‘cigire’ Mr Colman next appeared, Mrs St Leger whispered to him as she pointed to me and I know she was telling him about the incident. Janet’s mother told her to write the lines for the sake of peace, although she believed her daughter to be innocent.
My sister Helen acquired her hatred of school at that time. She is left-handed and the teacher was forcing her to write with her right hand. Helen knits and uses her knife and fork the opposite way round and there was no way she could manage to alter that. She developed a stoop and a stammer so my mother took her to the doctor and he ordered a lengthy period of respite at home, pretty drastic, really. No one checked up on her, and no one asked if she was receiving any education. She has always been highly intelligent and is an avid reader so she picked up what she could from books. My brother, Ted, and some of the older pupils used to cycle to Abbeyleix School, five and a half miles north of Durrow, where the standard of education was somewhat higher.
Ted was a boisterous youngster and he always seemed to be in mischief of some kind. He talked to everyone he met. One Friday he was chatting to a commercial traveller for a creamery who happened to be in Durrow that day collecting orders and payments from the shops. On his way home to ‘The Swan’ the man was hailed by someone he knew and when he stopped the car his acquaintance battered him to death and stole his money. Until the murderer was apprehended our parents never let us out of their sight.
The murderer was a married man and the newspapers reported that, as he was about to be hanged, his last words were, ‘I hope that no one will ever point a finger at my children and tell them their father was a murderer.’
The murder was a brutal one and I couldn’t understand how anyone could do such a thing and leave his children without a father. The hanging almost seemed more brutal and especially because it was carried out in cold blood by those acting in the name of justice. I pondered long and hard on the gruesomeness and horror of the episode. In later years, whenever I am debating the death penalty, that murder more than 70 years ago springs freshly to mind. The time lag between arrest and execution was small. I guess it was a cut and dried case. It certainly gave our tiny community a shock.
We hadn’t been long in Durrow when my father fell ill with double pneumonia and pleurisy. Henry was the baby and he was sleeping in a drawer by the range in the family living room. He developed pneumonia and I heard the doctor tell my mother to ignore the baby and attend to her husband who was the breadwinner. My mother was being told to leave her baby to die! Those were ‘the good old days’!
Fortunately, my Uncle Charlie turned up and he nursed the baby through his crisis. A special bond formed between uncle and nephew from that time. My father was taken to Aut Even Hospital in Kilkenny and we all visited him there when he was convalescing. I remember one of the nuns who was a nursing sister being bowled over by Muriel who was such a pretty child. The nun gave her a big box of chocolates and didn’t even tell her she was to share it with her brothers and sisters!
Muriel started school in the spring of 1938 when she was five years old. At that time she had a habit of removing her knickers and dropping them wherever she happened to be. My mother put me in charge of her and I had to watch that she was wearing her knickers at all times. One day in school she leaned over in her desk and horror of horrors her bottom was bare! The teacher sent me home with her and my mother was highly embarrassed. How Muriel evaded my eagle eye I don’t know but she was always full of mischief and merriment. It was customary in those days of large families for older siblings to be placed responsible for the younger members.
One bright interlude in our school days came when we were all encouraged to plant flowers in beds in front of the school. The boys did all the digging, and my parents bought me a packet of mixed seeds and told me how to sow them and tend to the shoots. There was a prize for each age group and I won from my class. The rector, Dean Burrows, presented me with a large, single-layer box of chocolates, sheer luxury in those days. The dean was rector of Durrow and Killermogh, and his curate at that time was Rev Desmond Patton, who lived in the school-house behind the school on the Cork
My father had set up in business as an ecclesiastical woodworker and his workshop was in a garage he hired from Finnemores up the street from our house. We used to take a flask of tea and some sandwiches to him at lunchtime when we weren’t in school. On summer evenings the whole family would set out for a walk along the road leading north out of town. We used to pick wild strawberries in a wood near the River Nore and my mother would make delicious jam from them. No shop jam ever tasted so good. Those gentle family strolls were happy occasions and I like to look back on them and remember my parents in easier times. Their journey through life was anything but a tranquil stroll!
One evening a young man called John Woods called to see my father and they chatted away for hours. Next day there was a terrific gale. It blew slates off the roofs and felled trees. John was driving home along the road from Abbeyleix when a tree fell on his lorry and he was killed. Then my father said that one of the topics of conversation the previous night had been sudden death and that he felt the young man had had a premonition of his own death. I listened in awe.
There were quite a few characters about in those days. I remember a poor soul called Leisha Hynagh who used to appear in town on certain days and spend hours in the pubs. I think lots of the men in the pubs used to buy her drinks and she would appear on the streets shouting to all and sundry in her drunken state. Years later when I was home from college she saw me and shouted across to me, ‘You are going to be rich. You will marry someone like a doctor. I see it in your face.’ I was really embarrassed and tried to escape from her attention. Another character was an old tramp and one day we were playing on the pavement when we spotted him across the road. He was exposing himself to us and we were shocked but didn’t dare tell our parents, as such things were never spoken about.
I was away from school in September 1938 when I had the mumps. My mother was in bed at the time, and she sent me across to the Co-op grocery shop to buy some bread. In the shop a Garda (Irish policeman) was watching me. He asked why wasn’t I in school. The police at that time were attendance officers among their other duties. We were scared of them and our parents often made the threat that the policeman would come and take us away if we were misbehaving. When the Garda heard that I had the mumps he shouted at me to go home at once and not come out infecting other people with mumps! I didn’t wait for a second warning. I ran in terror from the shop! Today’s youngsters have no such fear of the police.
My little sister, Margaret, was born on the 9th September 1938 and I was given the privilege of naming her. The Princesses Margaret and Elizabeth were in the news at that time and I thought Princess Margaret was so beautiful. I said I would like my baby sister to be called Margaret Rose. My parents thought that, living in Ireland, those names would be too obvious and perhaps cause problems later on so they suggested a compromise and we all agreed on Margaret Ann. By the end of the month we had moved away from Durrow to Abbeyleix, the town where both of my parents were born.
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