LIFE IN WEST CORK

An adaptation of the

Memoir of John Lucey (1884-1978)

Eldest surviving son of Con and Julia (Kelleher) Lucey - penned in 1975

Local Stories

Canon Peadar O'Leary, author of that very fine book, 'Seadna', lived just across the river from Cahireen. I mention it because it is a matter of history that he got the bones of that story from a woman who lived in a cottage at the corner of our land. His book gave the supreme uplift to the weak beginnings of the Irish revival.

Mike Twomey, the local poet, played jokes also. His mother and yard neighbour were notably bad friends, and nothing would do the brave Mike but to compose a dialogue in verse of the two women slating each other all out, as they were well able. Sorry I cannot recall it, but it ended: "Since the days of old Boney (Buonaparte) I'll tell you quite plain there was never such slaughter by Nell or by Mane." Nell was his mother and Mane an equally bad-tempered old lady.

A pastime very much liked by the younger boys was to collect all the donkeys in the district and set up races along the roads. It was good sport, but the drawback was that you may be leading the field when the donkey would take it into his stupid head to turn off for home and leave you high and dry and last in the race.

In my young days the boys around the place delighted in playing practical jokes on one another. At that time a young farmer across the river was paying court to my aunt Bridget at Cahireen, but her mother was known to be very much against it. One fine day, Romeo was seen by a very lively joker entering the house at Cahireen, but the girl's mother was in the kitchen so Romeo switched his footsteps into the dairy nearby. The joker followed up and quietly locked the dairy on the outside, leaving no means of escape. Next the joker went in to the girl's mother in the kitchen and said there was some noise in the dairy as if there was a rat. The mother went out at top speed, and poor Romeo was caught in a trap. Of course everyone heard about it!

Also in my younger days, I well remember that the new milk was placed in coolers — broad, shallow wooden pans. When the cream had come to the top it was skimmed off and churned in a large barrel. Churning day was always an event, because on that day — about twice a week, four or five other farming mammas brought their butter to the houses in turn, and a firkin of it was sent to the market town for sale. Of course this was a social occasion for the women who had come together, the table being decorated with the best tea and cakes and even shop bread, then a rarity in country districts.

The Meitheall, which was the coming together of men to help in some special work, such as threshing the corn, or digging out the potatoes, was another very real entertainment. It ended up generally in a big dance, with constant tea and a large barrel of porter. It is not in vogue at present, more's the pity.

If a farmer happened to be laid up for any length of time, his neighbours always came along and saved his hay or corn or other crops, and so many a season's work was saved each year for a man who could not help himself.

Still another pastime that has ceased is the Scoruioct, or evening visit. It was a social call and required no invitation whatever. All doors were welcomely open. Cards mostly for the men, and gossipy tit-bits for the women and girls.

The bonfires on St John's Night and the celebrations on Halloween were also very popular; but Christmas, of course, outshone all other celebrations. The wren boys went around on St Stephen's Day with a wren on a nicely decorated holly bush, and they sang "If you fill it [the goblet] of the best, we hope in Heaven your soul may rest."

Halloween was then a great occasion for merriment. Besides diving for apples and roasting nuts there were many tests and trials about who, where and when the girls would be married, and it seemed to me at the time that these tests and forebodings were bound to come true. The young people were fully convinced of it anyway.

The Skellig List

It was usual for no marriages to be celebrated during the period of Lent; but on Skellig Island Monastery, where Lent began about a fortnight later, marriages could be celebrated that much later. So in an imaginary and poetic rhyme, suitable pairs were selected to be sent there together. This pairing was the most unsuitable that could be found, and this drove the victims wild, because the verses were good and everyone got them off by heart and repeated them.

Some Old Country Customs

Tailoring. There were no readymades in my young days. Instead, the farmer's wife bought a few bales of hard-wearing tweed and invited the tailor to come to the house and stay until suits of clothes were made for all the family.

Boots (not shoes) were often made in the same way by the shoemaker and repaired by a visiting cobbler in the same way. Gutta-percha (or perk) was often used for soleing. Never used now.

'Turf' we call it in Ireland. It has been used for all kinds of heating down the centuries. It comes from the melting down of vegetable matter in marshy ground for many ages, just as coal had done for many ages previously. The turf was cut in rectangular pieces by a winged spade called a sleán (slaun). It is spread on high ground to dry, and then brought home and built into shapely ricks in the farmyard. In my young days it was—but no longer is—a farmer's most valuable crop, because it was so entirely indispensable.

A Hillside Small Farmer

This man lived high up on a near-by hillside. He had only a bare subsistence—a few acres of rocky ground that grew enough potatoes and cabbage and fed a few cows and goats. I mention him because in every way he belonged to a previous age. He wore shoes with bright buckles, stockings to the knees, knickers buckled at the knees, a long swallow-tailed coat with brass buttons front and back and, to crown it all, a very tall silk hat. There was only a very narrow and stony pathway to his house and no wheeled vehicle could enter. Jules Verne would have depicted him as a visitor from another world.

The Poor People at the Time

In my younger days they were numerous in the country districts, but were becoming less so. Before that they had been very numerous, being a relic of the great famine times. It was the charity of the farming people that kept them alive at all. In my early days my people helped along two very poor families. My wonder then was how they ever succeeded in living. About half the people had hardly enough to eat. There were then traces of the foundations of cabins on our land, seven of them, with traces of their potato and cabbage patches, given free to them by my forefathers. Both boys and girls were then fleeing the district for the U.S.A. as soon ever as they could get the few pounds passage money.

Times have changed, and very much for the better, thanks be to the God of all goodness, who we hope will lead and guide us all to a prosperous Ireland and a happy ending to our sojourn here below.