Click on name - Abbrev: P/O = Previous Owner, U/P = current owner Unpublished

1 Shed (CM1) 7 Shed (CM7) 13 U/P (CM13)
2 P/O Fentons 8 P/O Jack O Sullivan 14 O Sullivans (CM14)
3 P/O Mikie Lyne 9 P/O O Sullivans (CM9) 15 O Sullivans (CM15)
4 Shed (CM4) 10 O Sullivans (CM10) 16 O Sullivans (CM16)
5 Shed (CM5) 11 Shed (CM11) 17 P/O Edward Goggin
6 Shed (CM6) 12 P/O Denny Philip O Sullivan 18 Ruin (CM18)

A Coom Wedge Tomb

Coom

By Helen O’Shaughnessy (McDonald)

I am a grandmother of four beautiful grandchildren, three grand-daughters and one grandson. I bought a push-along wooden horse and named it Diamond for their communal use in my home called “Coom” in Galway. What has this to do with remembering Ballinskelligs? It has everything.

Diamond was my Uncle Jack’s and Aunty Teresa’s horse in Coom, Ballinskelligs! Naming my home “Coom” goes back to childhood summers spent in Coom beneath Canuig Mountain where my beloved mother was born.

Mammy was Sheila O’Shaughnessy, but known in Ballinskelligs as Julia “The Hero” O’Sullivan from Coom. Daughter of Mary and Denis and sister of Mae, Jack, Florrie, Kitty, Peggy, Joan and Ellie who died in childhood. She and my dear father Kevin lived in Achill when first married but later moved to Dublin where my brothers, Leo, Philip, John and I grew up.

From the age of seven I started coming to Coom for summertime and there began my magical connection with Ballinskelligs. As I’ve grown older I’ve come to realise how deeply it has seeped into my being.

Mammy was born and reared in the Old House in Coom. Then the flat-roof house was built and was called the New House. Later, the red-roof bungalow was built, further down the road. This was the geographical layout of my Coom and I negotiated it effortlessly. Life for me was based in the bungalow where Aunty Kitty, my grandparents - Nan and Gog - my Uncle Florrie and Aunty Joan lived. The New House had become the home of my Uncle Jack and Aunty Teresa and was referred to as “the house above”. The bungalow then became “the house below”. The house above was abbreviated to Up and the house below was called Down.

When I came on the scene the old house didn’t really feature, apart from the kitchen garden and the “car-house”. For a seven-year-old, I had a lot of terminology to deal with but had no problem mastering it. Aunty Kitty tells the story that one day I asked my grandmother Nan, “can I go Up now?” really, I was asking to go to play with my Coom cousins, Jack and Teresa’s wonderful family, in the House Above. After asking repeatedly to go Up, I turned to Nan and said “I AM GOING UP NOW”. And I was gone.

Poor Uncle Jack and Aunty Teresa couldn’t have been kinder and more forgiving to another addition to their clutch. I gave them some heart-stopping moments. Once I decided to teach my cousin Marian to cycle her bike. I was holding the saddle of the bike as she headed downhill towards the House Below. But as she gained pace, I had to let go. Thankfully, Marian had the good sense to steer the bike into the ditch and escape with nothing more than a few bumps and bruises. Uncle Jack was working in a field nearby and was totally shocked to see Marian fly by him on a bike she couldn’t cycle, heading for Patrick Goggin’s Heighth.

Aunty Kitty was the centre of my life while in Coom. These were her summer holidays from being a teaching principal in Emlaghmore and she effortlessly and totally enriched my life in her care for me. She often brought me to school with her if I arrived before the summer holidays had begun in Ballinskelligs. The children there were extremely welcoming and I genuinely had happy days among them. Hannah Marie Shea, Claire Brien, Sheila Connor, Bridie Dillon, Marie Keating, Julie Shea, Margaret and Mary King are names that readily come back to mind and I remember their kindness to me all those years ago.

I watched my grandmother make brown bread well into her old age and Aunty Kitty taught me how to make shortbread. On a recent visit to her and my cousin Philip, she shared her white scone recipe with me, as my husband Brian and I were greeted with the warmest of welcomes as always. I remember her needlework and every detail of a sleeveless, gingham, cotton shift dress she made for me - the turquoise pattern, navy trim pockets - and I absolutely loved it. It is immortalised in my first passport as I wore it the day I was photographed for it.

Aunty Kitty had a car long before it was the norm for women to drive. She would bring us to John Joe O’Shea’s, and later Nell Sigerson’s shop, in Dungegan, to Pud Shea and Nell Brennan’s as well as to Hannie O’Shea’s to do her shopping; to the post office, to the strand, to the céilís in wet weather (shank’s mare otherwise), to “town” - never Cahersiveen - and to the Glen church for Sunday Mass.

The journey from Coom to the Glen was unforgettable. Our route was part of today’s Skelligs Ring. After Bealach, the first glimpse of Skelligs, our Aunty Mamie’s house in Toureen, the Glen school, Puffin Island, and Bridie O’Connell’s home at the strand - the only person I know who lived her long married life so close to the sea. What a journey! We would meet Mammy’s first cousins, the Daly’s, at Mass - John, Julia and Paddy (I think Francy may have been living in England by this time). Some years ago I met Paddy and when I told him who I was, he looked at me and said “now that I look at the west side of your face, I can see your Uncle Florrie in you”. I consider that a great compliment and it brought back a memory from our dancing days in Portmagee. I was dancing with Micheál Brien from Fermoyle and he said “you are the spit of your Aunty Kitty, like you’d cut the head off her”. I was thrilled. He couldn’t have said anything nicer to me

My grandmother, Nan was Mary Walsh from Kinnard East. She was a loving, soft-spoken, gentle, gifted homemaker. When she and my grandfather Gog married, they lived with his parents, Denis and Peig, in the Old House and had their own family of two sons and six daughters. My great-grandfather Denis was a colourful character, known as “The Hero”, and it was he who gave my O’Sullivan lineage the enduring local title by which he was known. He, my great-grandmother Peig and Nan and Gog’s daughter, Ellie died within three months of each other and are buried together in Dromod, Waterville, where the O’Sullivans originally came from. It was only in later life that I came to appreciate the history of the Old House.

Nan’s sister, Aunty Kate Lyne to us, lived about a quarter of a mile beyond the House Above, en route to the Glen. She was our next-door neighbour! She had an idyllic house beneath the hill and I loved visiting her, Paddy and their son Mike. Their daughters Bridgie (London) and Mary (Derby) had both gone to live in the UK. They were such a kind, caring family. They had a donkey Balfor who was really a pet to us. Aunty Kate let us bring him any place that took our fancy, but we learnt about his stubborn nature very quickly. Balfor would only go where Balfor wanted to go. The beauty of Aunty Kate’s home was captured by a photographer and now hangs in the restaurant of Galway University Hospital. Three of my grandchildren born in the hospital were celebrated by drinking coffee beneath that photograph. Aunty Kate’s son Mike was photographed by Jill Uris and appears along with my Uncle Florrie and Mike’s father in one of her renowned books of photo essays about Ireland.

When Mammy died, my cousin Marian and Rosario Walsh - daughter in law of Mammy’s cousin Eileen the Master - gathered Fuchsia and other wild flowers from the road to Aunty Kate Lyne’s and brought them to St Fintan’s Church in Sutton, Dublin where they would adorn her coffin. They fell gently on her as she was later interred in the nearby St Fintan’s Cemetery where her headstone inscription acknowledges Ballinskelligs as her first home.

Mammy’s sister, Aunty Peggy lived exactly one mile from the House Below. She married Mikie Kirby and their home was a great port in a storm as I found excuses to visit my Kirby cousins. My brother Philip spent his summers in this wonderful house and I, of course, was a regular visitor. It was lovingly referred to in Coom as “Kirby’s”. Aunty Peggy and Mikie were so welcoming and warm-hearted. They had their own children, Philip in summertime and often me, to feed. I loved the river outside the garden and their beautiful hydrangea has left an indelible impression. The minute they bloom in my own garden, Aunty Peggy’s presence is with me instantly.

I loved being sent to “The Spout” at Hanneoin’s on the bike for water with a white enamel bucket. When filled, it was placed precariously on the handlebars and very carefully balanced until we arrived at Kirby’s. The Spout was called after Hannah Eoin O’Sullivan who lived beside it. Philip has a lovely memory of her. He was walking to Dungegan with our cousins, Declan and Margaret Kirby, to go to confession one Saturday morning. Hanneoin was travelling by donkey and cart to buy a sack of flour and other groceries in John Joe’s. She gave them a lift from Ballinskelligs School in the donkey and cart to Dungegan via the old road and transported them home afterwards. This simple act of kindness made a huge impression on Philip and, over 50 years later, he has never forgotten her.

On one of my visits to Kirby’s I decided to walk backwards, down the field beside the house, on a foggy evening. I turned sharply around at a barbed wire fence and got a deep cut. I can still see the horror on Aunty Peggy’s face as she tried to stop the bleeding. I was left with a scar which to this day always reminds me of that episode.

Letter-writing kept the Ballinskelligs connection as I grew up. Nan, my aunts Kitty, Peggy and Teresa, wrote to Mammy almost weekly. Mammy wrote regularly to them, to her sister Mae in Chicago and also to her dearest life-long friend, Maureen Jerry O’Sullivan (Hancock) from Kinnard West, who lived in Slough in the UK. While the letters were addressed to Mammy, they were really open letters to us all. They were most entertaining, written in the finest penmanship imaginable. Aunty Mae wrote to Mammy before her death and this final, treasured letter was brought as an Offertory Gift at her Funeral Mass. In Ballinskelligs I loved when Patie Dennehy, the postman, was on his rounds by bike. He was heard before he was seen with his unique greeting of “hello, hello, hello” to let you know he had post for you.

These dignified, gracious people in Ballinskelligs were always there for us and gave us unconditional love and deeply influenced us throughout our lives. A priceless gift, appreciated beyond words. Ballinskelligs will always be remembered. My grandchildren have a wonderful legacy.

Dedicated to the memory of Sheila and Kevin O’Shaughnessy.