Early life

“I went to school when I was seven years and my first teacher was Johnny Maher from Rinevella. He was a fluent Irish speaker and he was a poet. He composed a great song about the ‘Jane of Cardigan’ a ship that struck on the Croppa (?) Rock in Rehy, Rinevella Bay. And the song was got afterwards in the ‘States. His son brought it out there. And Paddy BL (0 Broin)’s hands and we typed it out here and ‘tie in the house someplace. It’s a pity we weren’t handled by a good teacher. Like, we’all had a smatterin’ of Irish. The lads that were about four years older then me, or five or six, they were fluent Irish speakers, some of them, you know, in Rehy. Every man in Rehy of my father’s group was a fluent Irish speaker and they spoke (Irish) outside the chapel gate on Sundays and the Rosary used be recited in Irish in the chapel. When certain meit’d come around there’d be no English at all spoken because they knew that the man, the newcomer, maybe like a man by the name of Seamus a’ /Mail (unclear). Seamus used go to the forge and he’d a big horse. He used go down to Tommo Haugh’s forge and my father’d meet him and, ah, there’d be reels of Irish comin’ in over the ditch.

‘Twas lovely to hear ’em. But they spoke so fast and so gutteral that it was Greek to us, you see. They never left us get under the kernel of it at all. But then we learned Irish … Johnny Maher got too old then, you see, and he retired and a man by the name of Marcus Dowling came and he was from East Clare. He hadn’t a focal. But when it became compulsory to have Irish in the curriculum he done a crash course like all them teachers. But he was no bloody good at it, you know.

He done his beet, like, but ’twas all book Irish. He had no blas or anything, like. We learned a good lot of Irish songs. He was a musical man, he used to play the fiddle a bit and sing and he had good things … but …Anybody that was good at the Irish and anybody that he felt would be a candidate for college or anything he put them in a special desk and then the others didn’t get much … he didn’t put much heed on the others. And down along at the end of the school they couldn’t read or write at all_* at all. Never did. They used to call it “The Rowdies Corner”. The Strand lads was there and they were wild I know. Some of them didn’t bother much about learning at all. No matter how you’d hammer it in to them it was no good to them anyway.  Twas great sport.

Our schooldays they were good and they were bad like everybody else’s schooldays. My father used to keep me inside (out of school?) for a month. I was the eldest boy of the family. I was the fourth of the family but I was the eldest of the boys anyway. Of course my older brother died when he was very young. He was older than me but I call him “my small brother”. It’s complicated there but you won’t need that part of the information anyway.

He (Dowling) was very devoted to us, mind you, in his own way. And do you know what he done? He brought us back (after class) for two or three winters to study algebra and Euclid and mensuration and all them kind of things. And we all went to school from about the first of November till about the first of February. And we had great times; football matches and … We was big fellas that time and he was delighted with us and we learned an awful lot. And I knew very well that I could make the grade that time ’cause I’d an interest in it and my brain was more developed when I was young. Ah, but it didn’t happen. My father had no ambitions for puttin’ me away (through higher education?) and so I stayed the way I was.”