The Story of Ireland's Only Steeplejill E-Book

Angela Collins O'Mahony

• Herausgeber: Mercier Press
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Seitenzahl: 309

Beschreibung

Angela Collins O'Mahony came from a small farming background and originally worked as a secretary for a steeplejack company. One day she was sent to a site to deliver materials and, when she couldn't attract the men's attention, she climbed up to the top of the chimney stack to tell the steeplejack's that their materials were there. With that Angela's life-long passion for climbing was born. She went on to establish her own business, which eventually employed 62 people and allowed her to work with a major American company. Even when she was the Managing Director, Angela still scaled 300-foot high church spires to replace blown-off crosses, and 600-foot industrial chimney stacks. 'Steeplejill' is the remarkable story of this remarkable woman.

Leseprobe

MERCIER PRESS

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© Angela Collins O’Mahony, 2016

ISBN: 978 1 78117 446 3

Epub ISBN: 978 1 78117 447 0

Mobi ISBN: 978 1 78117 448 7

This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

I dedicate this book to John, my husband of fifty years; to our children, Susan, John, Martina and Hilda; and to our grandchildren, Karen, Andy, Emma and Kate

Prologue

I recall being conferred with an honorary doctorate in Dublin Castle like it was yesterday. The then Taoiseach, Albert Reynolds, presented the parchment to me. I was with my family and friends among some of the greatest minds of Ireland. I found it hard to contain my inner joy, but, despite the great ceremony, flashing cameras and smiling faces, my thoughts travelled back to my humble beginnings and to my first childhood memory.

1 Growing Up in Kilkishen

When I was three years old or so, my mother sat me on a chair and dressed me in new socks, new shoes and a new dress and cardigan. I can still remember the feel of the socks as she rolled them onto my feet. When she had finished, she admired her work, stood me at the front door and told me she was going to cycle to visit her family and was taking me with her. She warned me not to move or dirty my dress.

For a while I did as I was told, but soon got bored and ran off to shush away the hens and chickens that were pecking around on the ground. I did a twirl in the middle of them and fell flat on my face in the mucky yard. I was covered in mud and really upset, and my mother came running to me. She tried to brush me down, and I knew by her face that she was very disappointed. It was the end of our outing, because there was no other dress. That is my earliest memory.

My father was Martin Collins, born in 1901 at Enagh, Kilkishen, Co. Clare. He was over thirty years old when he met my mother, Mary Kate McNamara. Dances were held at crossroads back then, and the Gullet, in Cratloe, Co. Clare, was where my parents first met. We knew, from the conversations we heard over the years, that they married for love. The wedding was held in January 1933 in my mother’s local church in Cratloe. The wedding photograph shows her and her bridesmaid dressed in winter coats and my dad and his best man in suits. They looked so happy. She was twenty-seven years old, and Dad was thirty-three.

My grandfather, Matthew McNamara, was from Gallows Hill, a few hundred metres from the Gullet crossroads where my parents met. He inherited the family farm from his father, and, when doing the family tree, I saw they were on that land back as far as I could trace, to the 1770s. He married Honora Sheedy from Truach, Clonlara, Co. Clare. They had five children. Patrick, the eldest, went into the priesthood but left later, married his neighbour and went to live in Dublin. Jimmy was next, and he remained on the farm. My mother, Mary Kate, came in the middle. Annie was next, and she also married her neighbour, but unfortunately she had no family. The youngest was Jack, who inherited the farm in later years. He also married his neighbour, and they had one daughter, Catherine, and though she is only a first cousin and ten years younger than me, she is like my sister.

I remember my mother being so happy on the days when Jack and Jimmy, Annie and Patrick, along with Patrick’s wife and four sons, met at Gallows Hill. I was about four or five at the time, and Catherine was not yet born. I used to watch the boys playing happily until I joined them, and then they quickly scattered out of sight, hiding around the trams of hay.

My dad’s father, Patrick Collins, married Bridget Collins (no relation), from Cappanalaght, Gallows Hill, Cratloe, Co. Clare. They had seventeen children, two of whom died in infancy. Dad was the youngest. His oldest brother, Michael, emigrated to England, where he found work and married. He died, aged forty-two, leaving a young family. Another brother travelled to Australia.

Most of the family went to the United States of America. The parents saved the fare to send their oldest daughter, Katherine, there. She married an Englishman named Cutler, and they went into the harness business. The business did well, because she was able to return to visit and, later, to bring her brother out to join her. Then that brother brought the next, and that one the next, and that continued until only my father, his sister Delia and their parents remained in Ireland.

Dad often talked of his and Delia’s heartbreak as they said goodbye to their siblings, never to see them again. After having had such a large family, my grandparents had no Irish grandchildren. Delia never married, and Dad was single at the time of their deaths in April and July 1926, when he inherited the family home and farm.

In those days, when marrying into land, it was the custom that the bride brought a dowry with her. Cash was scarce, so the dowry could be made up of animals or a combination of animals and cash. Its size depended on the size of the future husband’s farm, which had to be assessed by the bride’s father. During their frequent rows, Mam would tell us that Dad had misled her father when he came to view the farm. Apparently Dad had opened an entrance to a neighbour’s field, to pretend he had more land than he actually had, and borrowed some additional animals for the day, purely with the intention of procuring a bigger dowry. It had worked, according to Mam. Her father had been tricked, and she had brought too many cows with her.

My parents had six children. Paddy was born in December 1933, Martin in December 1935 and Bridget Anne in May 1937. Fifteen months later, in July 1938, Michael arrived and Sean the following year in December. I was the youngest, born in May 1943 after a break of three years and five months.

My grandparents, Matthew and Honora, my aunt Annie and my uncles Jack and Jimmy often visited Mam at Enagh. When Paddy was a couple of years old, they used to take him to their home in Gallows Hill for short breaks. They became very fond of him, eventually keeping him permanently. This helped Mam, as she had so many children to mind and cows to milk, as well as caring for my aunt Delia, who was unable to walk, having been born with her knees bent, and had to be carried everywhere. My grandmother Honora died in Gallows Hill in 1940, before I was born, but I have memories of my grandfather, Matthew, visiting us on his ass and cart. He died in 1959.

In 1944, my sister Bridget Anne became ill and was taken to Ennis General Hospital, ten miles from our house. There was no public transport and few people had cars. Mam cycled, but was heartbroken she could not stay by Bridget Anne’s bedside. Dad visited by horse and cart and by bike. He told us he had heard her crying out in pain before he reached her bedside.

After visiting, he used to call to the Franciscan monastery in Ennis to ask the monks to pray either for her recovery or that God would take her to Heaven. One day, a monk told him to visit on the following Tuesday at 2.30 p.m. and that she would die then. Dad went there at that time, and that was exactly what happened. He was with her when she died, on 7 November 1944. She was seven and a half years old.

Bridget Anne was buried in Clonlea graveyard with my father’s parents and his brothers who had died in infancy. Dad talked of her often, but my mother never did. Neither recovered from the shock. I often found Mam crying, and, when I became an adult, I understood and tried to imagine what it was like for them to lose a child under such circumstances. During arguments, my father always said to us, ‘Your mother is a changed woman.’ She invariably replied, ‘You have the drink to fall back on.’ Drink dominated our lives from that time onwards.

Our home was the usual Irish farmhouse, with a thatched roof and three windows front and back. It had three small bedrooms and a large kitchen with a concrete floor. There was a settle-bed in the kitchen, which acted as a sideboard during the day. The fireplace was so large that as a child I could easily stand in it. If I looked up through the chimney I could see the sky. The space around the fire was whitewashed and there was a concrete hob at either side to sit on. A crane hung on the back wall to hold kettles and pots of water over the open fire. It swung back and forward as required. There was a steel oven for baking bread, usually left to the side. The teapot and a steel iron were always placed in front and were rarely put away.

There was a hen house attached to one gable end, then a calf house and, further down, a small storeroom and then a piggery. Across the road there was another shed, with no windows, just stone walls and a galvanised roof. It had many uses. Mam put us in there when she went shopping. She gave us milk and bread and bolted the door on the outside to ensure no harm came to us. I have no bad memories of this, and I am sure she was only away for a couple of hours.

The thatched roof of the farmhouse leaked often. Dad did repair it, but probably not often enough. In around 1947, the rotted roof collapsed – old timbers, thatch and dust fell everywhere. My brother Martin and I were in bed when I heard an unusual noise. We put our hands up as if to keep the ceiling from crashing down on our heads. Thankfully we escaped unharmed – that end of the house remained standing – but some of the dust and rubble fell onto our bed. The incident was very exciting to me, but left us homeless. My parents had to find a house quickly, which was difficult back then.

In the meantime, we were cared for at Ennis General Hospital. I have vague memories of being alone in a ward with three of my brothers. I remember a priest and a nun coming to give them Holy Communion. When they left, we took the sheets off the beds to put over our heads and pretend we were them. I also remember jumping from bed to bed when no one was looking. I enjoyed the time there, as it was unusual to be with my brothers in a confined area, where they had no choice but to include me in their games. Eventually our parents came and took us to temporary accommodation in Kilkishen village.

My brothers attended the three-roomed school in Kilkishen. At first I was too young to attend, so I used to go to the wall and talk to the children in the schoolyard. I loved the village as there was so much company there. However, it did not suit my parents. They felt very squeezed, having come off the land where they were accustomed to plenty of space. They had to walk or cycle over a mile to and from the farm each day, bringing me with them.

Another unpleasant aspect of village life was that Dad was close to the pubs. Mam would give him his weekly allowance for two pints, but it was never enough. He had to get alcohol by hook or by crook, and he had many ways of getting the money for it. Going to funerals was a favourite strategy of his because he knew that there would always be a barrel of porter bought for the occasion. He attended most funerals and would cycle for miles to one.

Dad was known as a matchmaker. I remember once when he arranged for his bachelor cousin from near Ennis to come to our house and introduced him to a nearby farmer’s daughter. This lady, tall and thin, attractive and hard-working, was about the same age as the cousin and would have had a handsome dowry. They seemed very suitable. The day arrived and the introduction took place, but though Dad’s cousin found her pleasant he did not offer her marriage. He felt it strange she wore a headscarf indoors and that she heard noises in her ear. It put him off. It was true that when she was in our house she kept her scarf on and her hand to her ear but nowadays we would know she had tinnitus. We felt very sorry that the match was not a success as that prevented her brother being able to marry. He could not bring a strange woman into his home while his sister remained unmarried. Matchmaking took place a lot back then, and my father was very involved and had some success.

At fairs and markets, Dad sometimes helped with the wheeling and dealing. He would put in an offer to buy an animal, to get the bidding going for a seller or to bring down the price for a buyer. He was charming and had the gift of the gab. He loved when our own cattle and pigs were fat enough to be sold at the fairs. Usually boys went to the fair with their fathers, but Dad brought me with him on occasion. I was useful to run ahead of the cattle and stand at the crossroads to prevent them going in the wrong direction or trespassing into fields if gates were open.

When he had sold the animals, he would try to send me home so he could go to the pub, but Mam told me to stick with him and pester him to come home before the money was spent. One time, his cousins had their nephew with them, and we children had to wait outside the pub, sitting on the footpath. (Women and children never went into pubs in those days.) Dad kept sending out lemonade and Marietta biscuits. The first lot was well received, but soon we had had enough and wanted to go home. We occasionally peeped in and would say to each other, ‘Oh, they are finishing now,’ but they would place their glasses back on the counter only for them to be filled again. It was useless beckoning at Dad to come out as then he just sent out more lemonade. When he finally finished, he was very drunk. It took a long time to get him home because he kept falling and trying to get up.

Sometimes he stayed away for days and came home penniless in the middle of the night singing ‘Spancil Hill’ or ‘The Old Woman from Wexford’, if he was in jovial mood, or, if he was not, shouting a litany of abuse about something Mam had said or done, or about the neighbours, calling them land-grabbers and anything else that came to mind. When confronted next morning, he would remember nothing.

Whatever time he arrived home, he always wanted food. He would fall over a couple of times before he reached the table; then he took a long time to eat. I always thought that drink must be a funny thing: it gave you the impression that your mouth had moved from where it used to be, because Dad was never able to feed himself. I had to catch his hand and guide the fork for him.

We were afraid of him when he came home drunk. I did not want my mother in the house, as he often threatened to hurt her – and did, when she would not give him money. We often sat her on the window sill so we could push her out if he came to hit her. Other times, I begged her to take the blankets from the beds and go out to the hay barn until he was asleep. He often came out and found us, and then we had to find another place to hide. It was very tiring going to school next day having had little sleep and pretending nothing had happened. It was worse for Mam as she had so much work to do.

Dad rarely got up before 6 p.m. when the fire was on and the cows milked. He took his meals in bed and would call out to us in the kitchen to bring him whatever he needed. That was the way he lived his life.

We did have occasional happy days. Dad often took his bike apart and repaired it. When we dismantled ours, if we had difficulty getting them back together again, he always came to the rescue. He made calf baskets, put shoes on the horse and repaired the woven seats of our súgán chairs. He did the very necessary work of sowing crops for he knew that if there was no food for the animals he would have no money for alcohol. He found the thinning and weeding very boring and never went on his knees to do it. It was mostly left to my mother, especially after my brothers went away to work.

Once the crops were growing in the ground, Dad took things easy and went back to bed again until harvest time. Then he worked very long hours and often cut a whole field of oats or barley in a day on his own. It was very hard work and required skill, as the scythe was very dangerous. He used the horse to plough up the potatoes and take them from the ground, and we used to put them in pits to preserve them over the winter. He also ploughed up the turnips, mangels and other food crops. We loved the days in the bog when he cut turf using a sleán and we stooked it in piles to dry. Then we all helped to bring it home and made a reek of it at the gable end of the house. He used a billhook to cut back the hedges but often left early and Mam had to finish.

When saving hay, Dad often put me behind the rake and hay turner, which drove my mother mad, but I enjoyed it – I loved being trusted. He showed me what was dangerous, and I was careful. One day, he put me on the horse after he had removed the tack but had left the winkers on. He did not hand me the reins, and, when I leant down to reach for them, he hit the horse with something that made him bolt. The horse threw me over his head and galloped off. I fell heavily on the ground. I got to my feet, shaken and very frightened, and asked Dad why he had done it. He replied that it would teach me not to trust anyone.

When it was the time of year to go to Limerick to buy bonham pigs, Dad prepared for days before, cutting barrels in half to put the piglets into, to keep them from running away. One year – I remember the day well – we saw him off on his long journey. After he had gone, Mam prepared the shed for the piglets and talked throughout the day about the profit she would make when she had fattened them. In the evening, she cooked a nice dinner for Dad, and we walked out to the gate several times, listening for the noise of the old steel wheels of the cart on the stone road. Eventually we saw the horse in the distance walking slowly towards us. When he came to a standstill at our gate, Dad was smiling and said ‘Whoa’ to the horse in a jolly voice, so we knew he was not sober.

To our horror, a couple of piglets were hanging off the end of the cart, choked. The rest had escaped. There were no piglets for fattening or selling. Dad did not realise anything was wrong until he saw our faces. It was only then that he looked back, and his expression changed instantly. The terrible sight sobered him. The joy on my mother’s face changed to disgust. She just lowered her head, buried her chin in her chest and walked back to the house. I followed her, feeling pity for both of them. Her hard-earned money was spent again.

Dad tried to explain that he came out of Limerick without going to any pub and that it was only when he was near home that he had decided to go for one pint. That one led to others when friends arrived. He told us he had the barrels well covered and had ropes tied onto the pigs to keep them safe. Someone must have taken off the covers and played a trick on him. (There was always someone else to blame.) He then went into the house, went to bed and stayed there for days. Mam left home and went to her family. Dad got up out of bed eventually and went and brought her back. I was about seven and was very lonely as I thought she was never coming back, and that was the worst part.

Pigs did not have much luck with us. I remember another incident, when Dad succeeded in bringing bonhams home alive and Mam fattened them and got them ready for sale. I watched them every day and named them all. One day, one was taken away from the others, and a couple of men came to help Dad kill it. They tied its two back legs together – the screeching was frightening – and hoisted it up on a hook on the side of the shed. Then one of the men took a fierce-looking knife, went over to the pig and stuck the knife into its heart.

It was customary to leave the pig to hang for hours to let all the blood run out. Women were ready with buckets and basins to collect every drop and take it to the kitchen to make sausages and puddings, which were later divided among the helpers. Later, the men took the pig down and cut it into portions. Some pieces were hung off the ceiling over the fire to be smoked, and the rest was put in a barrel with layers of salt and left there for weeks to preserve and cure. When the work was done, we all had a delicious fry of the newly stuffed sausages, pudding, liver and kidneys with tea and bread or spuds. Everybody who had helped ate with us and got some to take home. This process was repeated on the next farm in due course.

We children were not always given the cured meat to eat because my mother sold it in order to pay bills in the local shops. We were soon back to eating mashed potato and eggs with the occasional ‘spotted dog’ (white bread with a few currants) when Mam baked it.

My mother was a kind and soft-hearted woman, and could laugh heartily when she had a reason, which was rare. I loved her dearly, and we got on really well. She was tall and thin, and some neighbours commented that they did not know how she managed to do so much work. Some used to say she was made of steel. She was a Trojan worker, who gave everything to her family. She spent days in the meadows thinning and weeding acres of different crops, often in very cold and wet conditions. I often sat on her back while she was doing that work, pretending she was my horse. She would laugh and never once told me to go away. When her own weeding was done, if she was short of cash, she took on contracts from other farmers. I remember one day she collected £5 for thinning a neighbour’s meadow. It took her a long time, and we only had cold milk and bread to eat, but she was delighted with her money.

She did the tiresome job of milking twelve cows by hand morning and evening. I hated milking cows. We all did. When it was milking time, we used to develop headaches, sore fingers and tummy pains and had to lie down. Once Mam had finished the milking, we were miraculously cured.

She often sent me to take the cows back to the field, and that meant going along the public road, but it was quite safe as there were plenty of houses on the way. She would tell me to take my time so the cows ate the grass on the side of the road where it was green and plentiful. Ours was a small farm, and Mam wanted to save what she had.

Mam also reared hens and chickens. When they were fattened, she would walk among them, catching some, snapping their necks and hanging them on nails beside the back door to let the blood drain. Then she would drop each one into hot water, pluck off its feathers and clean it. These she brought on her bicycle to the farmers’ markets at Kilkishen or Tulla, along with eggs, vegetables and homemade butter.

She often went to the farmers’ market in Limerick. Sometimes she began early in the week, pulling up cabbages and potatoes and telling my brothers to cut and bag timber. She loaded it all onto the horse and cart, and anything that didn’t fit she hung outside the cart. Then she tacked the horse and walked the ten miles to Limerick market, often leaving home at about 4 a.m. When she had everything sold she bought groceries, clothes and animal feed. She would arrive home weary and tell us all about her day and her delight when her work was done and she could sit on the cart to rest her feet and begin the journey home. We were always delighted to see her back because she would have plenty of fresh food with her.

Markets were not held often enough in the small villages, so she also sold her produce to local shops or from door to door. There was less competition and more profit that way. She sometimes took one of us with her. I loved when it was my turn – having to calculate how much money was owed, taking it and giving change, and then getting a toffee lollipop at the end of the day.

Mam often took me out of school on Tuesdays to go to Newmarket, a few miles away, to sell her produce. One day, the headmaster told me not to take off the same day each week as I was missing the same subjects. When I told Mam, she was embarrassed and stopped taking me with her.

Mam also made clothes and always sewed vests from flour bags and turned the collars on shirts and coats inside out so they could be worn again. She told me that her Singer sewing machine was the first thing my father bought her after they were married. I still have it. She did all the painting and wallpapering in the house. I helped and was excited with the end result – I have loved DIY ever since.

She loved the evenings by the open fire. She used to ask Dad to read Ireland’s Own, Our Boys or the Clare Champion. She loved hearing scary tales, such as Kitty the Hare, while she was resting. When there were no newspapers, she would ask Dad to tell her a story, but he usually sang. The stories were fine, but I hated listening to the same old songs. One of Dad’s stories was about when he was a young man and he was sent on his horse at midnight to fetch a priest for a dying neighbour. He was told to hurry as it was urgent. When he came to a certain part of the road, the horse would not go any further. Dad told us that the Devil was stopping the horse, as he was after the soul of the dying person. I remember being gripped with fear and unable to sleep that night.

In the evenings, once the five decades of the rosary and the trimmings were over, we played draughts or Ludo until an argument broke out, and then my mother would take everything away. My father would join in when we played cards, especially Forty-five and Twenty-one. I often asked if I had won, and he would tell me to get a pencil and paper and add up the score. Soon I began to enjoy that.

Mam and Dad sometimes took us to visit houses where there was a gramophone. When they danced, I stopped playing to look at them. They looked lovely dancing together, and happy. I wished it could always be like that. I have only a couple of memories of them that way. They might have been from weddings, as people held the receptions in their homes in those days.

My father was always asked to dance and sing, and I remember him being coaxed to keep step dancing and then to sing a song shortly afterwards, and him saying, ‘Will ye give me a chance to get my breath!’ He rolled up two tea towels, crossed them on the floor in the shape of an X and then danced across and around them. When the musician played faster, he danced to keep up with him. I loved to hear everyone clapping, and I was very proud of him. Dad was an entertainer and enjoyed the attention.

In about 1950, my parents bought their first radio, which was only turned on for the news and some programmes. On the nights Din Joe’s Take the Floor came on, Dad pulled me out on the floor to teach me to dance, and I eventually got the hang of it. The radio was a novelty and kept him home from the pub on occasion.

For years my parents had been looking for a home nearer to their farm. Then, one day, luck came their way when they met a bachelor neighbour with a bicycle business who wanted to live in the village. So they just swapped. His house was out in the countryside, in Ardane near Kilmurry, in the parish of Sixmilebridge, Co. Clare. It had a large kitchen, two small bedrooms downstairs and a larger attic bedroom upstairs, which was a novelty. There was also a field where my brothers could play hurling. The move was an improvement but still not ideal as it was half a mile from the farm. We were not in a financial position to build a new house or to repair the old one.

Ardane was very different from the village. It was quiet, and I was lonely. My brothers were at school or working, and all our immediate neighbours were either unmarried or had no children. I visited them all the time, but I missed the company of the village children. Our next-door neighbour, Mrs Stephens, taught me to knit and was a real conversationalist. We became close friends and stayed in contact right up until her death. She took an interest in us all, and in later years, when I was working, she waited at her gate to check my post-office book and make sure I was saving.

When the time came for me to go to school, I could not attend as I had ringworm on my face and head. It was very unsightly, and I felt awful. Dad travelled the county making enquiries, and then one day he told my mother to get out the iron, as he had been told of a cure. She cleaned the face of the cold steel iron, and he rolled up a newspaper tightly and placed it on the surface. He lit the newspaper and left it to burn out. It left a residue, which he applied to the ringworm. And it cured it. I can still remember the happiness I felt when my hair grew back. I looked normal, and I could go to school.

I enjoyed school, especially when I was in Mr O’Connell’s classes. He was the principal and a kind, wonderful teacher. One day, my skipping rope was taken from my bicycle. Mr O’Connell immediately arranged for all the pupils to leave the classroom, with their bags. He then allowed each pupil back, one at a time, so whoever had taken it could put it back without embarrassment. No one did. Mr O’Connell did not give up. He took us outside to search around until eventually it was found under a little pile of stones.

When I was eight or nine, the time came for me to receive Holy Communion. Everyone was talking about the Big Day and their new clothes. My mother made mine: a báinín skirt and coat. I was expecting to visit our relations in Gallows Hill and looked forward to getting some money. There must have been a bad row the night before because neither of my parents went to Mass that morning. That in itself was unusual as it was a mortal sin to miss Mass. Mam dressed me and sent me to walk the lonely road from our house in Ardane to Kilmurry church, which was a surprise, as I had never done that before. There was no other house on our roadside between our home and the church. I was afraid but excited, so I went without any fuss.

On the journey, I realised I did not have a communion bouquet, but I saw white flowers on the bushes by the road so I climbed the ditch and picked some. They had thorns and were prickly to hold, but they looked splendid to me. I put them down in front of me in the church, and nobody noticed any difference.

After the ceremony, I saw my classmates having their pictures taken. I was ashamed to be alone and remember quietly walking away behind the crowd. I passed the large chestnut tree at the corner and walked down by the forge, happy to be out of view. I had only walked about fifty yards when our next-door neighbour, Tess McNamara, came along in her ass and trap and asked me to sit in. She had a rug over her knees, and she shared it with me. She gave me a hug, admired my suit and told me I was lovely and that God was with me. I felt great when she told me that. She handed me a shilling, and I felt greater still. We continued our journey and talked continuously until we came close to home, then I hopped out and walked down the hill to my home.

My mother took off my new clothes, veil, shoes, the lot, and put everything away carefully. I remember she was very sad. She asked no questions, but I told her about Tess McNamara bringing me home and showed her the money. That is the memory I have of my First Holy Communion. It stood to me in later life.

By this time, my aunt Delia was very frail and was spending most of her time in bed. She became ill and passed away on 3 February 1951. I remember the night they waked her in the house, and the next day a horse-drawn hearse came to take her to Kilkishen church, even though we were not in the parish at the time. Delia was buried in Clonlea with my sister Bridget Anne and Dad’s parents and brothers. Even though life became easier for my mother, my aunt was sadly missed.

About that time, my father received a letter from America telling him he had inherited money from a relative. That news filled the house with happiness. My parents longed to hear how much, and decided there and then, whatever the amount, it was to be my dowry. It meant I could marry a farmer when I grew up. They must have felt they would not be able to save enough to provide me with a dowry, and now that problem was solved. When the money arrived, Mam put it in the bank in Tulla with my name on it. At the age of eight or nine I had no idea what a dowry or legacy meant, but I learned over the years because they never stopped talking about it. (When I was twenty-one, it amounted to about £450 with accumulated interest.)

Around 1956, we received wonderful news once again. A house joining onto our farm came up for sale. It belonged to Mr Martin Collins (no relation), who, when he sold it to my father, also named Martin Collins, must have caused quite the headache for the Land Registry. It had taken almost nine years for us to get back to the farm, and the move proved magical. Now we were able to go inside any time and have a cup of tea. Life was back to where it was before the thatched house collapsed.