An Irish Country Childhood. Marie Walsh
our classroom we would watch him read his breviary at the same time every day, slowly pacing from the hall door to the iron gates and back. At intervals he would partake of some substance from a small flask which he took from an inside pocket. In my innocence I thought then that it was holy water, but years later I realized it was good old Jamiesons. The house was always under surveillance with several pairs of eyes focused on its door. Nothing ever went unnoticed.
Our school was not big enough for the number of scholars it contained so we had to take it in turns with lessons. We would spend one hour sitting doing written work and one hour standing reading or around the blackboard or the hanging maps, which always intrigued us. We would pull the maps down to the utmost then let them snap back at breakneck speed. The cord would be lost and it would take the teacher hours to dismantle the map and put it right, while our knuckles smarted from the cane.
When the priest decided to pay us a visit, our teachers were promptly informed by the spies – the taller children who could see through the window facing the priest’s house and kept watch for his appearance – so that everything was in order on his arrival. He would ask questions and many times would pull down one of the wall maps, get the pointer and we would have an impromptu geography lesson. We would be shivering in our skins in case we gave the wrong answer. The cane was often used after his departure if our performance was not up to the teacher’s required standards.
The priest was also the school manager and selected the teachers, usually from his own part of the country as parishes seldom got a local pastor. He also dispatched them if they were not of the right calibre.
Bridget, the priest’s housekeeper, was a kindly woman of middle age with a weight problem and an impediment in her walk. Her only excursions into the outside world were Sunday mass and an odd trip to town, when she was chaperoned by the hired hand. She suffered from sore eyes due to the constant smoke billowing down from the chimney, as her only means of cooking was the open hearth. The story goes that when the house was under construction at the beginning of the century, the lady who looked after the needs of the then parish priest refused the builders a cup of tea so they had their revenge by making sure that the chimney never functioned properly. Many times I heard Bridget call ‘Bad cess’ to her predecessor for her meanness in not being more liberal with her teapot.
A brook flowed through the grounds of the priest’s house into the river close by and then into the lake. From this brook water was drawn every day to swill the old wooden-box toilets at the back of the school. This was done in chain-gang style.
Each morning there was an inspection of scholars. To the unfortunate child who had to be sent to the brook with carbolic soap and a scrubbing brush it was the greatest humiliation. Added to this was a further punishment when the parents heard the woeful tale through the usual channels of gossip.
The rule of the girls’ school was hair length just to ear level, supposedly for hygienic reasons. How I envied the few girls whose mothers ignored the rule. As soon as they were outside the school gates they would loosen their plaits and let their flowing tresses blow free in the wind knowing they were admired by all their shorn friends.
The turf fires had to be lit by the older children, who took turns in coming extra early to school so the fires would be kindled when the teachers arrived. Each family had to donate a cartload of turf to both boys’ and girls’ school. On delivery, a class would be delegated the task of bringing the turf from the road to the shed. It was a welcome break from the daily routine. A teacher would supervise and would also comment on the quality of the turf and inform the donor’s children, much to their embarrassment, if the standard was not up to requirements.
In summer time we were allowed to play outside the school grounds and our favourite pastime was jumping the river. Accidents often occurred and it was not unusual to see children huddled around the fire in the afternoon while their clothes dried. One fire was kept burning even in summer time with the kettle constantly on boil for the teacher’s tea. We also picked the fruits that grew in abundance everywhere, and the teachers were forever warning us against eating unripened sloes as they had to cope with the results: violent stomach ache and sickness. To add insult to injury, we would afterwards get the cane for our disobedience. There was a natural sliding-stone on the hill behind the church. It was worn smooth by children over the years and we used to get walloped for wearing out our undergarments on it.
Our master and his wife and children drove to school in their pony and trap. One of the older children would be given the task of unharnessing the pony and putting him to graze in the local field, usually belonging to the parish. That same boy would get the pony and trap ready for the teacher’s departure when school was over. The two other female teachers lodged Monday to Friday next door to the school at Katie’s house. Katie was a widow with a son and depended on her income from the teachers for survival.
Katie was a good friend of Bridget, the priest’s housekeeper, who used to cook the meat for the teachers’ dinners. After school, I would collect the food from Bridget for Katie, as she was unable to negotiate the stile leading from the priest’s house. The gates were only used by his reverence and as they creaked and groaned when opened they would have betrayed my presence. So I was warned to be swift and use the stile in case the priest wondered what I was furtively conveying from his kitchen.
One day I was hurrying across the stile with an offering from Bridget, in anticipation of sharing a bowl of jelly which had been cooling all day on the outside windowsill of Katie’s house. This treat was reserved for a few chosen schoolgirls and had to be earned by bringing spring water from the well at playtime and other chores. In my haste, I slipped off the stile and on to the gravel path, and the contents of the dish that I carried were flung far and wide. When I retrieved them, covered in gravel, they looked like baby hedgehogs. I washed them in the brook and was amazed and nauseated to see that they were odd-shaped bits of meat. I had never seen kidneys before and to me they looked exactly like what was thrown out of the pigsty window after the pigs were castrated. I could never look at the teachers afterwards without remembering what they had eaten, and my share of the jelly went untouched that evening. Instead, I went home with both mind and stomach in turmoil.
The teachers were not local people and they never mixed socially. Teaching was a very prestigious job in those days and if one happened to meet them after school hours out for their usual walk, we would run for cover rather than talk to them.
In summer weather the journey to and from school was full of adventure. Sometimes there were obstacles to be overcome, like the horse who would be grazing peacefully until he spotted us, when he would gallop towards the fence, neighing and prancing, trying to get out. We knew that he was vicious and had to be muzzled by his owner when he drew the travelling shop around the villages on certain days. Our parents never seemed to realize how frightened we were, but maybe the danger was not so great as we imagined.
Most of the road was open bog road with no fence and in winter no shelter. It could be treacherous and an adult from our village had to meet all the children from school, especially when the wind blew down from the mountains and the rain lashed at us mercilessly. Then we would have to walk in single file, holding on to each other, otherwise we would have ended up in a bog-hole.
Although this bog road was a short-cut to church, school and shops, it was seldom used after dark as it was supposedly haunted by the ghost of a poor, wandering soul who had drowned in a bog-hole. The ghost carried a pitch-torch and many an unsuspecting traveller would see its light in the distance. Using the old paths and the stepping-stones across the river, they would gladly hurry to meet their fellow-traveller. At a certain point, where the road followed part of the old highway, they would find themselves escorted by the invisible phantom. Its pitch-torch would glow in the dark night, but only part of a man’s hand would be visible holding it. Then the phantom light would disappear into the bog, leaving the now-terrified human being to continue his journey, wondering whether what he had seen was real or a fear-induced delusion caused by hearing so many ghostly stories from childhood.
In summer we would pick blackberries, sloes, bilberries and nuts as we walked. We would thread the bilberries through long blades of wild grass. They resembled necklaces and we would come in from school with our hands, faces and teeth stained blue-black from