MATT RIP

We're a man down
Fr. Stephen Farragher
A small thing, you might say, in such a large parish. But when the man is part of the fabric of the parish, not just in a church sense, but in the wider social and community meaning, then the phrase takes on the significance of a red card at an all-Ireland final. And that is no small thing.

Matt O'Dwyer had his roots in not just the present day community of the wider Ballyhaunis, but also in its past. His grandfather served there (Barrack St.), his father taught its people (Coolnafarna), as did his mother in the local national school, and Matt was born there (Abbeyquarter) and spent his life teaching there.

It would probably be true to say that there is not a person in Ballyhaunis who has not been touched in some way by Matt's contribution to the life of the area.

I went down to his funeral on Tuesday (28/6/2016) and from the time I arrived till I left the following day, I was overwhelmed by the sense of community which underlay the intensity of the widespread grief at Matt's sudden death.

Matt was reposing at his home on Doctor's Road, Ballindrehid, on Tuesday afternoon prior to the removal to the church. There was a constant queue of people coming through the front door and it took four and a half hours, without any break, to file past the coffin and for people to pay their respects.

The removal itself was a slow walk from the house to St. Patrick's church on Upper Main Street. This, in a slightly eerie silence where the only sound was the tread of feet on the roadway as we passed the small groups of neighbours at their gateways.

The gathering in the church was both public and intimate and again there were expressions of grief and sympathy as people commiserated with Geraldine and the family at the top of the church. Another long endless file.

St. Patrick's on the morning of Matt's funeral
Click on any image for a larger version

The next morning more people from out of town arrived for the funeral mass, and for those who could not be physically present there was still a chance to be there via the live webcast.

St. Patrick's is an impressive church. It was built and dedicated at the beginning of the twentieth century and has seen many Dwyer funerals since then. The spire was only completed as late as 1999 as a Millennium Project and I'm told the church is one of only two dedicated churches in the country. For dedication, as opposed to consecration, a church has to be debt free and empty for the day of dedication, ie all the pews and other furniture taken out. This probably explains why so few are in a position to opt for this as they will be in debt when newly built and it becomes a big operation at a later stage.

While I was at the church I took the opportunity to pay my respects to Canon McGarry who is buried in the grounds.

Mass was concelebrated by seven priests, which, while a great tribute to Matt, may seem a bit of an extravagance in the light of the Eucharistic famine stalking the land, but that is a matter for another day. There were four altar servers. Happily I can't say altar boys any more because one of them was a girl. Not quite 51% but certainly reflecting well on the Parish Priest (quoted above) when I gather there are parishes which won't tolerate any of this post-conciliar nonsense.

The service was inspirational with the PP's talk honed to perfection. He knew the family well and had been at the hospital over the weekend. The choir and instrumentalists were very good and I think I detected a version of Plaisir d'Amour slipped in along with Ag Críost an Síol, but I couldn't determine if that was purely as a piece of secular music, however appropriate, or if it had been expropriated by the church into its holy hymnal.

Matt's funeral in Main Street, Ballyhaunis.

And then the walk through the town to the graveyard. Traders closed their doors and stood outside and the Garda made sure the procession passed smoothly through the square and then up the hill into Abbeyquarter.

Matt's parents' grave - Jimmy & Maura

The graveyard, where his parents and grandparents are buried, is just across the road from where Matt himself was born.

Matt and Geraldine in happier times (2007)

Geraldine was magnificent in the face of what fell out of the heavens on top of her and she had great support from equally grieving family and friends.

I extend my own sympathy to her (as a former Louis boy - Rathmines).

Myself and Matt (2007)

I gather the Yanks nicked most of the photos from the family home in Barrack Street but by some miracle they missed a few which were long later discovered by the next-door neighbours, the O'Malleys, who had bought the house after Aunt Molly's death.

These they gave to Matt and he gave me a loan of them. Otherwise I'd never have known what our great grandfather, Luke Reilly had looked like.

Luke Reilly

So, once again Matt, a belated thanks for that contribution to our family history.

Rest in Peace

Typocast

Click on any image for a larger version

I can't claim the high moral ground when it comes to proofreading. I'm still finding typos in stuff I wrote many years ago and had proofread more than once since.

Today, with so much stuff just online, you can correct your typos as though they never existed. Hardcopy is another matter. And another matter still is when they are cast in stone, or just plain cast.

The picture above is from the 1964 film "A Home of Your Own" and it shows Bernard Cribbins sculpting an inscription on a monument in a new housing estate to be opened by the mayor the following morning. The unveiling of the monument brings gasps from the crowd as the finished inscription is suddently revealed as "The money for this erection was raised by pubic subscription". Your worst nightmare. I've never forgotten it.

And when you end up doing legislation, where whole new legistlation is required to be passed to correct any typos you've missed, I can tell you that sharpens up your proofreading skills.

Still, no one is perfect, not even in 1850, when this gate for Brian Boru's well at Castle Avenue Clontarf was cast. You'd need to be wide awake to spot it: the H should follow the M in Brian's name. The cló rómhánach here denies us the luxury of the floating buailte (see below)

An author, who is an authority on matters relating to Clontarf, attempted to persuade me that this was a legitimate variation in the name, but when I looked up his own book on the matter I found he had actually corrected it himself in his text.

And in case you think I'm having a go at Dublin and its suburbs, I'll take you as far west as my granny's birthplace in Kiltimagh, Co. Mayo, where BOHOLA has dropped an O in the casting. [Update - 11/2/2015: Carol Maddock has just pointed out that I missed the apostrophe in "area's" and I've now spotted another one in "1950's". Clearly proofreading is a never ending task.]

[Update - 5/4/2016: "Bohola" has now been corrected but it looks as if the other two typos have been reproduced in this new plaque.]

Or to my father's birthplace, Ballyhaunis, in the same county, where the MILLENNIUM has dropped an N in the same process.

Not so nice when your typos are cast and would require a complete recast to remedy them.

There are some fine cast signs which currently suffer from typos but where the typo is not in the casting but in the subsequent tarting up. These are easily remedied. But, of course, you have to spot them first.

The above sign, from the Cornmarket in Wexford town, is perfectly cast. However when it came to tarting it up subsequently there was a problem. Tarting up meant painting the whole thing gray and then painting the surround and the script white. And they did a lovely job. But nobody told them that those little irregularites over the d and the b were in fact part of the script - Irish buailtes or séimhiús which mutate the consonants concerned.

I remember floating buailtes from school. Quite often, given the complexity of Irish grammar, you were not sure whether to apply one or not. So we always made sure there were a few floating ones above each line of script to be pressed into service as required.

And don't get me started on street name signs in Irish where the follies are a compound of typos and plain pig ignorance. My web page on this comes with a health warning - keep the blood pressure pills handy. Enjoy.

Polyester Poppies

As Poppy Day again approaches I find my blood rising at the sight of everyone on all of the UK TV channels wearing the poppy, some even from mid-October. This polyester patriotism is nauseating. Others have written better about it than I could.

It is enough to say that in my youth I would never wear a poppy.

In the first place it was British and on the wrong side of the fight for Irish freedom. I later realised how it had been hijacked by the Northern Ireland Unionists to be flaunted in the face of the Nationalists on Remembrance Day. Once, at a checkpoint on Lifford Bridge on the Border, I was faced with a British soldier, rifle in one hand and poppy can in the other. Perhaps he noticed the car registration, but he never approached me on that score.

Later, in following up my family history, I found that my uncle John had died on the Somme in 1916. So, in order to honour him and, in part, to reclaim the poppy from the Unionists, I took to wearing one for a few years. I have recounted this elsewhere.

Then the sheer sick political correctness and exploitation behind the push to wear the poppy got to me. Wearing it has become obligatory in the UK as a sign of patriotism, including support for more recent illegal invasions of other countries and the slaughtering of their civilians with weapons of unspeakable horror, which weapons are banned by international conventions signed up to by the invading states.

So, having done my bit for my uncle, I will no longer wear the poppy.

Instead, today, I will remember the deaths in WWI of two very different men.

Rifleman John P Dwyer
1893 - 1916

John Dwyer was born in Ballyhaunis, Co. Mayo, in 1893. He seems to have had some Irish language or nationalist leanings, having won a book prize at the 1903 Mayo Feis. By 1914 he was working in the Civil Service in London and by 1916 he was serving with the Civil Service Rifles on the Somme. He died that year in the offensive on High Wood, a victim of the arrogance of the British High Command.

He still lies where he died. He is commemorated on the Thiepval Memorial and in the Mayo Remembrance Park in Castlebar.

Further details on my website

Lieutenant Richard Gardiner Brewster
1892 - 1918

Richard was born in D'Olier St., Dublin, in 1892. He was the son of William Theodore Brewster, then an accountant, but subsequently to become manager of the Irish Independent. Richard was renowned as a fine horseman and in 1912, after a period as a civil servant in the Department of Agriculture, he joined the South Irish Horse Regiment. He had two stints at the front in WWI and it was during the second of these that he died, in March 1918.

He still lies where he died. He is commemorated on the memorial in Pozières and on his family's gravestone in Kilbarrack Cemetery, Co. Dublin.

Further details on my website
Today these two men lie beneath French soil, separated by a just a few kilometres.

John Dwyer was my uncle.

And my connection with Richard Brewster?

Well, in 1946, Richard's brother, Gordon, died in my mother's shop in Howth, Co. Dublin. As a result, I was conscious of Gordon Brewster from an early age. You can read about that on the excellent blog of the National Library of Ireland. When I started rooting out my own family history in recent years I decided to check out Gordon's as well. And that is how I came across Richard.

How sad that these two young soldiers died in vain.

Today, let us at least honour their memory.

Ballyhaunis Man

This is James Bernard the cattle dealer whom I will henceforth call Ballyhaunis Man. He is one of two men chosen to represent the town in the street sculpture Fair Day in the centre of the town.

It is a fine sculpture by Rory Breslin and I have commented before on how lifelike are the figures. I almost apologised to this man's statue for invading his space when I was taking the photo.

I am taking it that Rory is not responsible for the typo in the accompanying stone plaque.

Fasten your Seatbelt

This is the Kincora Boys Home in Belfast. In the 1980s it was exposed as a centre for paedophile activity and some staff were tried and imprisoned.

In the light of what is now coming out all over the UK and the Channel Islands about the extent to which this type of activity was covered up, the inquiry into Kincora has been reopened. It remains to be seen whether this will lead to the unmasking of the many powerful and famous people, both from north and south of the border, who are alleged to have availed of its services.


This is Kincora in Abbeyquarter, Ballyhaunis, Co. Mayo. A different Kincora entirely and one of very happy memories. It's just that the re-emergence of the name Kincora, and the bay windows, reminded me of some youthful adventures in my father's home town.

The house was a child's paradise. At least, one room of it was. And that is where my older cousins' toys were kept. They had gone off to become priests and I had the run of their toyboxes, full of model soldiers and the like.

What comes to mind every bit as much as the toys was the day I took the small tricycle out onto the steep hill road outside the house.

I leapt up on the tricycle and went shooting down the hill. It was only then that I found out the tricycle had no brakes. And at the bottom of the hill was the main road which could have any class of a vehicle trundling or speeding along it.

What was I to do?

I was quickly gaining speed and had got beyond the point of putting my foot into the spokes - that would have taken me straight to the moon, or beyond, and left me permanently toeless. And even if there was no traffic on the main road when I hit it, my speed by then would have ensured a serious injury.

There was only one thing to do. There was a long high bank along the right hand side of the road.

In the flash that it took for this looming disaster to hit me, I turned the wheel and crashed into the bank. I emerged battered but not broken.

The real mystery is how a child who could make an intelligent, dangerous, but necessary decision in a flash, turned into today's ditherer and procrastinator.

One for my psychiatrist, perhaps? Or will I just wait till I finally get to the other side, if there is one?


Kincora, the steep hill road, and the disappeared bank.

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Update 6/9/2013
And just in case you thought I was imagining the bank, today my cousin Carmel produced a photo of herself and myself sitting on it at around the time I'm talking about and in the company of the two family dogs.

Riddle Me This

WHY IS THIS NOT A PIG?

An American Wake

It's amazing, when you start following up your family history, how many world events which you might have learned about in your school history suddenly become personal.

The First World War is a typical one of these. Almost everybody in Ireland who starts out tracing their family history, from rabid Republicans to West Brits, will find some relation somewhere who went to war. Some families will come up with a clatter of them. WWI had an insatiable hunger for cannon fodder.

Another event, whose 100th anniversary is coming up, is the sinking of the Titanic in April 1912. You can see the impact of this event on a sample local community, the Mayo village of Lahardane, on that community's commemorative website.


These were times of large families and high emigration, much of it to America (USA and Canada). Emigrants tended to cluster. That is to say, those from a particular parish would emigrate together as a group. When tragedy occurred it then had a disproportionate effect on certain communities. A good example in the case of the Titanic was the village of Lahardane in the parish of Addergoole, from where a group of 14 went on the Titanic; only 3 survived.

While none of those who left might ever have come back anyway, hence the "American Wake", the emigrant was never completely lost to the local community. There were always letters from America, which would be passed around all those mentioned in them. There were food and clothes parcels, which kept many a family going in times of hardship. And, of course, the remittances: money sent home when the emigrants got established in their new country. In Ireland's case there was even a special line in the national accounts for emigrants' remittances, and it was a significant line even in macro economic terms.


When it came to crossing the Atlantic, my family was more fortunate than some of those in Addergoole. My aunt Jane sailed from Cobh in 1908 on the White Star Line's then flagship the Baltic. At the time, this was the largest ship afloat, just as the Titanic was to be 4 years later.

Unlike the Titanic, the Baltic made it, and was one of the ships which radioed the Titanic an ice warning on the day the latter sank.

Jane was accompanied by a group from Ballyhaunis, her home town, and not a thousand miles from Lahardane. She settled in New York and had family, some of whom did come back to Ireland and visit. She was one of the lucky ones.

Street Sculpture

At this stage people have become very familiar with what is referred to as street sculpture. These are not statues on pedestals. Rather are they life size figures, usually in bronze, depicting historical or symbolic persons, and designed to fit into the context of the street where they appear.

In Dublin, for example, we have James Joyce outside the Kylemore Bakery/Café in Tablbot Street, Molly Malone with her barrow at the bottom of Grafton Street, or Patrick Kavanagh resting on a bench along the banks of his beloved canal.

There are some interesting examples ouside the capital, however, and I thought you might like to see a few of these which I came across in recent times.

Click on the images for larger versions.

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Galway

Although they never actually met, Oscar and Eduard Wilde are depicted relaxing and conversing in Galway's Shop Street.

Eduard was an Estonian writer who was a contemporary of Wilde's. He lived 1865-1933, while Oscar lived 1854-1900.


These sculptures are more stylised than lifelike.

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Ballyhaunis

Much more lifelike are these characters from the Square in Ballyhaunis, Co. Mayo.

I took some shots from close up and almost found myself apologising to the guy in the cap for being in his face.

This group, and particularly the man with the cap, had a real presence.

It is entitled Lá an Aonaigh or Market Day. The sculptor is Rory Breslin and the project is connected with the Mayo Millennium Sculpture Initiative.

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Kiltimagh

The West of Ireland has been decimated by emigration from the famine times onwards. It was particularly heavy during the 1950s. While the rest of Europe was basking in a post-war resurgence, Ireland was experiencing a prolonged depressing recession.

Emigration during this time, and in previous decades, had been so heavy that a significant income inflow in the national accounts came under the heading "Emigrants' Remittances".

This very striking sculpture, entiltled "I'll Send You The Fare" is in Kiltimagh's main street and is dedicated to the young men and women who emigrated from Kiltimagh, Bohola, and the surrounding areas during the 1950s.

The sculptor is Sally McKenna.

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Kiltimagh has a strong literary tradition and it is very hard to escape the presence of Raftery the Poet in the town. From the Raftery Rooms, now sadly closed, to Raftery Square, the town resonates to the poet's words.

This street sculpture of a man reading his newspaper testifies to the town's literacy.

Unfortunately it is somewhat contradicted by the grammatical mistakes in the cast dedication plaque for the emigrant street sculpture and by the sign over Sparky's Variety Store in the main street.

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Some more street sculpture here and here.

The end of the line

I recently visited Ballyhaunis, Co. Mayo, where my father was born and where I spent many holidays in my youth (1950s to you). I had come back to chase up some leads in my current pursuit of my family history.

On my way back from the graveyard the road passed under a railway bridge. As I approached the bridge, I looked up towards the railway line and, to my amazement, there were the old semaphore signals still by the side of the track. They certainly didn't look abandoned; one was set to open and the other to closed.

They brought back memories of when my father, who worked for the national railway company, used to bring me to the station and get me into the signal box where I spent many an hour in the company of the signalman. Of course there were more trains then. There are now only three passenger trains a day and the odd timber goods train.

Anyway, I wondered what might have remained of the old signalbox and all its solid victorian mechanical and electro-mechanical machinery. So I trekked up the slope to the station and went to the ticket office. Fortunately this was manned (literally) as there was a train due for Dublin.

I asked the man if he would mind me going onto the platform to take a few photos for old times sake.

"You're welcome."

"Is the old signal box still around? I used to spend time in it in the 1950s when I was down here with my father."

"It is."

"I saw the old signals down the track. I suppose they're not in use any longer."

"They are, but only for the next week. After that we will be going over to lights signalling controlled from Athlone"

"You mean the old levers which controlled the points and the signals, and that I was allowed to operate in the 1950s, have been in use all this time?"

"They have, indeed."

"And the old staff system?"

"Definitely"

Well I must confess I was absolutely flabbergasted. The control system, installed when the railway first came, was still in use, and apparently functioning satisfactorily.

Unfortunately, there was nobody around to let me into the signal box which would not be open until much later in the day, but I was welcome to take what photos I liked including of the interior of the signal box, but only through the window.

What he told me confirmed that the line was still single track which doubled at the station to serve as a passing point.

I should explain what the staff system was. It was an ingenious way of locking a single track section so that it could be occupied by only one train at a time. Don't forget that with a single track you could, otherwise, have two trains approaching each other, at speed, from opposite directions.

The system operated through two interconnected devices at either end of the single track section. Each device had a bank of staffs, which were like small metal batons, and only one staff could be out out of the combined bank of staffs at any one time. When you took a staff out of one device, the system locked until the staff was returned to the device at the other end of the section. A driver could not enter a section unless he had a staff in his possession. A perfect system, with a built in failsafe factor (eg should the electricity go down), provided, of course, you left out the human factor.

In the old days this staff system operated all over the country, everywhere there was a single track line. As an aside, the man explained to me that the Ballyhaunis station (terminal to you) was one of only two in the country that could be switched in and out of the system. This depended on whether more than one train at a time was scheduled to occupy the track between Claremorris and Castlerea. If they were, Ballyhaunis was switched in and provided a passing point for what the system recognised as two separate single tracksections (Claremorris-Ballyhaunis and Ballyhaunis-Castlerea). Otherwise, it operated as a single section between Claremorris and Castlerea.

And all this elegant control system would be obsolete in a week's time. It was very sad. The passing of an era. From electro-mechanical to electronic, and from local to regional control.

You can see a more sophisticated explanation of the "old" system here.

I hope that someone will see to it that the relics of the old system are preserved somewhere, if this is not already the case. It would be a shame if future generations were denied the opportunity to view this elegant and robust security system in all its glory.