Local pub

Not far from us, in Newtownmoneenalunagh. That's not a typo.

Published at First Things

Good news, everyone; First Things, a superb Christian magazine that I've been reading for years (note the blogroll on the side there), has just published a piece I wrote about folk music through the generations. It's behind a paywall, but not expensive to buy. Check it out.

Days of the forges

My first memory is of the forge; I don’t know what age. It’s a memory filled with sounds and smells, the sounds of men’s voices and the clatter of hooves coming down the street, another horse on its way, people warning me to stay out of the way and to watch the hind legs, of course. It was like a painting all crowded with people.

I remember as a child I turned the light on for my father -- I had to use a stick to reach the switch, I was so small. I must have been holding this iron for my father in the yard, and he struck before I removed my hand from the place, and he hit my thumb with the sledgehammer, and all that was troubling me was that I might curse – I remember the trouble he went to stop me cursing at the time.

You can imagine there were a lot of carts at the time, and those wheels had metal bands, so blacksmiths were kept in business until a few decades ago.

Every anvil must have its own musical tone when struck, and you could tell at a distance whose it was. I remember this anvil, and it was different than any before or since.

--  Remembrances of a blacksmithing apprentice on Radio Telefis Eireann, June 2013.

Farm work

"My father was one man and ten men. He was the local vet here. He was the butcher. He was a storyteller. He was a farmer. And everything that was to be done in the village, he was involved in it. And he was the slaughterman.

There were many here who killed pigs, but my father was the best – every time he stuck a pig, the heart rent in two halves when you opened it. Then he’d go to Scotland in June, do the little bit of the harvest we had to do. Come home at Christmas with a few pounds. He might buy a few cows or pigs and sell them again in March for the price of going over again to Scotland. I began going there myself, to help with the harvest, when I was eleven. 

You got the boat on the north wall of Dublin – a boat full of cattle. Eighteen hours at sea, in a hold I cannot describe. When you got to Scotland the cattle were let off, and when the boat went to Clyde and we were let off, not much different than the cattle.

You had to keep a steady pace picking the potatoes; you put a 13-year-old out at this day and age at a 30-yards, you think they'd be able to?

At the end of the day, when you were done with the harvest, you had to make your own bed. I mean you actually built one – you got a tick, filled it with straw, and packed it between vegetable boxes."

- Remembrances of Irish growing up in the mid-20th century, as recorded in an interview by Radio Telefis Eireann documentary "Leaving Belmullet," 2005. Photo used with permission of Irish History Links