Down by the Chapel gate in Cooraclare

This article is from page 84 of the 2009-06-16 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 84 JPG

VILLAGES, I think are the most interesting and unique of all human shelters. They have a character and personality you don’t get in cities or towns, which are by their very nature private and impersonal, and certainly the same degree of human contact and cohesion never obtains.

But like everything else on this planet, villages have felt the wind of change blow harshly up and down their single streets. In many cases, it can be called progress, but that also demands a price and, while it 1s an in- disputable fact that standards of living have vastly improved in the developed world, it is also a little sad to see some of the changes that have taken place to accomplish this.

Where are all the great characters that lit up our impressionable youth with their antics: sometimes hilarious sometimes eccentric, but never dull? The box in the corner of the room has supplanted their entertainment. Imag- ine one of them coining in now while ‘Coronation Street’ or “Fair City’ was holding the room spellbound. His en- try (a nightly and very welcome fea- ture then) would be a very unpopular interruption now and he’d be told to “whist up’. A house I knew in my youth had a wind-up gramophone and whenever the spirit moved the woman of the house (which it frequently did) she’d wind it up, put on the McNul- ty Brothers, Delia Murphy or some dance music on an old 78 and a half set lifted the gloom of the hungry ‘30s and ‘40s, even though the cot- tage kitchen floor seriously restricted movement, with no room for fancy steps or pirouettes, but it didn’t curtail enjoyment, homemade, unsophisti- cated and spontaneous.

My own village, Cooraclare, where I was baptised and confirmed, has changed but not, in my view, as seri- ously as other bigger centres of popu- lation. In my far-off youth, the Sugan City had an array of characters from the creamery to Ryan’s Store on the Kilrush Road.

Dennis Horgan was the creamery manager – an onerous and well re- garded job then, now only a memory. He was a Kerryman and a most inter- esting and colourful man who knew and lived football. Mary Ellen and Sinon Considine owned a fine shop across the road and on Sunday morn- ing before Mass it would take Moss Keane to battle his way to the counter. Tom Mac moved in from Dromelihy and set up a nice little shop with his wife, Mary, under the Old School. Tom was an all-round man of many parts, combining business acumen with a natural ability on the stage. Gura, fada buan thu, Tom. Can you still sing Rowledum Randy, Tom?

Brock’s pub dominated the street; Mick on his grey house was a feature of the road to Kilrush: both very well turned out. The pub, later bought by Tom Doherty, became the Own Pride Inn (a great tracker mat I almost had at stud).

Jacky Mclnerney, a postman and a lovely man we affectionately called Jacky Nutty, looked after our bicycles and sold us my first Rudge in 1939. He and his red terrier, Bully, were on our team as we set out to make life miser- able (and short) for Raynard in Lios

a tSeabhach, Burnpark or Campbell’s grove in Dromelihy. The Guards in Tudlows on the Danganella road re- moved the tongue and gave you half a crown. Powertul!

John Joe Conway, affectionately known as Bully, with no threatening undertones, delivered telegrams for Martin Joe Doherty, the soft spoken and most agreeable postmaster. John Joe ran a small shop opposite the chapel gate and every Sunday morn- ing before Mass the ‘Man from the Clochar’ laid out his stall of seafood. Fresh fish, seagrass with a lovely salty flavour, baimeachs in a tank of brine, periwinkles and a seagrass called Slamhcan that was boiled with ba- con instead of cabbage (often scarce in a late spring). He did a roaring trade and your greyhound (a sixpenny piece) went a long way with the long- gone “Man from the Clochar’.

Next to the Chapel gate was D’arcy’s. One of whose girls was the mother of TD and Senator, Brendan Daly who later served with distinction as Min- ister for Defence. Then there was Tubridy’s pub. Three of the Tubridy boys gave great service to the parish football team. Martin, Tom and the youngest, Shamashin, who when he donned the black and amber Number 11 gansey never took a backward step from any opponent. He emigrated to

London and died there, still a young man. Leaba imeasc na Naomh duit, a Sater UeerNnuee

The sable-clad carpenter, Micko Carey, did all our building and car- pentry work and was a master crafts- man and a family friend. His son, John, played football for the village at Number 6, with distinction for many years and he and his wife were a thorn in the side of the track bookmakers with their very successful kennel of racing dogs. His brother, Stevie, won a very competitive Irish Coursing Oaks in Clonmel with his very fast bitch, Lady Item. The local coursers suitably fined the Clonmel bookies and celebrated accordingly.

Across the road, on the elbow of the village, was Meades where my neighbour, John Connell, with whom I sometimes went to Mass, stabled Fanno. I often went down to the river- bank to watch and listen to the sound of running water (which | think has a soothing, calming effect) as the river made its way to Doonbeg Castle and the ocean.

Mitchel Lillis always kept and drove a good horse and his lifetime inter- est was the local and county football team. He lived for the game and fit- tingly his son, Mickey, won senior championship medals in Clare and Laois, when he went on to win a Na-

tional Club Championship with Port- laoise. A great day for the Lillis family and the Sugan City. Mitchel’s cousin, affectionaxely known as Solas, was a top-class musician and entertained many an appreciative audience with his distinctive style on the accordion. Another great Milesian supporter was postman Frank O’Brien, whose broth- er Pana was a nationally acclaimed football star, having played for Clare, centre-back in front of Jamsie Foran and Micko Connole in goal in the 1917 All Ireland final, when Wexford won the third of their four in a row. Frank wrote and sang the beautifully evocative ‘Around the Chapel Gate in Cooraclare’, in which he proclaims proudly his love for and pride in his native place. Frank emigrated to Chi- cago to join Pana and sadly died far away from the Sugan City. A lovely and very talented man.

George Russell’s forge was down by the water’s edge at the bridge. We of- ten congregated at its gable-end with the blue-head worm, when the river was in flood. Inside, many discussions went on, with customers and some of the village’s retired workforce settling the world’s problems, while George worked at his bellows and anvil mak- ing sweet music and watching “the river fret and foam”. George is long gone to God and his profession is now

history: in a village where sweet an- vil-music rang out from three forges serving the needs of the local hinter- land, even the physical evidence of the forges is gone, mo lean!

Dan Irving, who taught for many years in the village school, acted as secretary when Irish coursing people met in Clonmel and set up the ICC when they decided to secede from the English coursing governing body, post 1916. A lovely, gentle gentleman, he was married to a sister of Con Col- bert – one of the heroes of the 1916 period. Sadly she died young. Her son was called Con after his executed uncle. Con was an army officer, post- man and later owned Maria Frawley’s pub. John Thomas Cassidy lived up towards the top of the village and was for a while my next-door neighbour when he lodged with Mrs Connell in Tullabrack from where he cycled to Moyasta National School where he taught for many years. An interesting and precisely spoken man who was our guest almost nightly.

I have walked a village Ulysses from the Creamery to the bridge and have mentioned just a few of the colour- ful characters who walked its street. They and many, many more who have slipped through the widening fissures of an 83-year-old memory don’t de- serve to be forgotten. They were an integral and active part of the village scene and were, like the plucky lit- tle man from Tarsus, “citizens of no neon ae

I look back with pride on the Sugan City and its environs and will always remember the happy days of boyhood when I cycled up and down with my dog, Sam