Eddie (b.1913) and Mary (b.1911)

Paddy Francie Harkin, who lived in Galwolie, was selling paraffin oil and an odd evening my mother would give me a jar and after school time I would go down and Miss McGee would walk with me. She said to me one time: "If you don't stop your capers you'll never learn. You're full of capers."

There were five in our family...Biddy, Jimmy, Dan, Mary and me. Every child took two turf to school every day. Master McNulty was teaching in Ardlaghan School. Nobody would ever get near the fire. The master would stand in front of the fire the whole day and pull up his shirt and warm his arse to the fire. One day, Wiley got an old bull horn. Then he got this big thick turf and he made a big hole in the turf. At that time there was a blasting powder. He packed the horn with powder and he put a good cork in it. Then he put it in the hole in the turf. "I took me time," said he, "I waited 'till there was a good lock in with their turf and then I went in and put mine in the pile. The fire was coming on grand, and the master came up and put on the turf. Then it exploded and the master got it in the arse.

I left school at fourteen - I never went much anyway. I spent many's the day down at the river. There was a school in Lettermore, Carriagh, during the night in wintertime. The teacher's name was Nancy Hicks. She was a good teacher, an old woman. She was there all winter, and all the young people gathered around every night and learned. She stayed in William Condie's all winter and in the summer she left. She was a traveller. She had no home.

My grandfather built this house that we live in. He got this farm, but there was no house on it, so he built a wee house made with sods. He had to carry the stones before he was able to put a chimney on the sod house. He used to say that he was able to catch the moorhen up the chimney.

My father worked on his own farm. There were nothing going at that time. Whatever you took out from the ground was your living. Sure, there was no dole...the only thing he got was the pension when it came out. It was two and six (12½p) and then it went up to ten shillings (50p).

McFadden's of Breenagh had a shop in the area. Below that, there was a man called Burns. He had a wee family, and he had a donkey and cart, and if you had eggs or butter he would take them to town and whatever goods you wanted, he would take them home. No money exchanged hands. It was all swapped.

We had great evenings in this house when we were young. John Simey Doherty would come here and stay. There used to be a dance here nearly every night. They would gather here and Mickey Paddy Dan Toner and his uncle, Paddy Toner would play on the fiddle. There would be three or four fiddlers. Mickey would be here every night and there would be dancing here until late. A lot of neighbours, from Ardlaghan up to Letterbrick and out to Meenlaharry, would come to the house to dance. And the ones from far away might get a cup of tea if there was any to spare. They would leave around half past ten or eleven o'clock during the winter. There would be dancing and singing. They would dance the sets, the highlands, and the siege of Carrick and reels. What bothered them at that time was that they were afraid that the night would get too short. It was only during the long winter evenings that they had the time to dance.

There were a lot of travellers in this area. Most of them were gathering spuds and crops and some of them had tin cans selling them and making them. John Love was through the country gathering old coats, wool and quilts. When he had a good load he would put it in a barrow. Seven hundred weight and he had his mother sitting on top. He would put a rock on the barrow. Then he would go out to Glenswilly and there was another load there and he would go to Letterkenny. He was strong.

Once however, when he went up Letterkenny street one of the police stopped him. John had overloaded the barrow. They arrested him and the mother. They gave him a summons. He was fined half a crown. John said that was the luckiest day for him. There were people at the courthouse and they gave him plenty of money. He gathered five or six pounds.

There were a whole lot of people travelling around then, including women. Turlough Harkin, he should have been a priest but he took to travelling. They were all homeless. They would stop in houses and some would have three or four bits of sticks with them and a covering and they would shelter under it all night. When travellers died, they were buried at the poor house in Stranorlar, which was called the County Home.

There were fairies. One night Mickey Lynch, Meentagrannagh was raking up in Carlin's of Meenanea. When he was returning home at bedtime, he came to a quarry near Jim Sheonaigh's house and he saw a nice light in a nice window. A fairy came out and told him to come in. The fairies were singing, dancing and eating. Mickey thought he wasn't in a half an hour and the fairies went away very sudden and Mickey was out on the road and it was three o'clock in the morning.

I heard the Banshee myself. I heard her, her lonely crying. It was a sign that someone was going to die. Other signs of a death or misfortune were that you might see a light or you'd find a big brattle. I heard Jimmy, my brother, say he had a field of spuds up in Carrick. He had them dug and he, John and Owenie went up and clayed the pits. They had them clayed and Jimmy said: "John will we stop for tae." John said: "No, I'm going home to feed the horses." Just then there was a wil' brattle, and Jimmy thought the half of the barn was tumbled by the sound of the noise. When he got down there was nothing at all wrong. It was a sign though. That was the time that Pat Bán McGlinchey died.

In old times when a person would die, there were no boxes, and they would wrap the body up in blankets. On the day of the burial, they would take the doors off the byre and they would get big long sticks and put them under the door, and the corpse would be lying on the door and four men would carry it to the graveyard. They took the back door with them.

I have the cure for sore backs. You used to get pitch to buy in big lumps in the shops. You would cut a square off an old pair of corduroy trousers which you placed on your back. You would place on the plaster of pitch on top of it. They placed a red-hot iron on the pitch. Oh, you would go mad through the house. If it burned you, the woman of the house would get a pandy of cold water and throw it on your back. I saw my father putting it on my mother and my mother putting it on my father.

Burrell, the whitest thing you ever saw was used for a cough. It's like a wee white shamrock. You boiled it in a saucepan. It's green and then it turns white like corn flour when it is boiled. It's hard to find it now. It grows in wet places, in puddles of water.

The priests were holy terrors. People were afraid of the priests. Fr. Gibbon was in Glenfin. He had the power. Samuel Donaldson was the landowner, and the house that Fr. Gibbon was living in was owned by Donaldson. He would come to the house to see if everything was tidy, especially the midden (manure heap). Father Gibbon always kept two cows, and the midden wasn't very nice. It was going up to the gable of the house. "You must tidy up that midden", Donaldson said. Donaldson went home and the next morning he had diabetes. As much as they could carry to him he couldn't stop eating and they had to send for the priest. They said that Fr. Gibbon had put a curse on him.

There used to be big missions in Glenfin. They'd last for three weeks. Once, on the last Sunday of a mission, the priest said "The missions will be closed at 6 o'clock up in that field this evening. Everyone is to bring candles". All the people went to the field that evening and didn't a big wind get up. They thought the candles would be blown out, but every one of them stayed lit and it was a big gale. They did indeed. The priests had the power right enough. My mother lived to a big age; she was 98 when she died. She was the last of the lot. We're the last of this family, only two of us left now, me and Mary. The rope's getting short Mary.

Edited extract from Anne McMenamin's book, 'When We Were Young', a delightful collection of stories and photographs, collected around the district. The book may be purchased by contacting the publishers, Voice Publishing Co. Ltd., Main Street, Ballybofey, Co. Donegal, Ireland. Email: donegalthevoice@eircom.net