by Paddy Heneghan
Bed time stories were not really a feature for me when I was a child. The first book I have memory of was about a little bug called Bucky. The graphics gave him the shape of a ladybug. He was involved in some sort of war. Bucky Bug went around in a small airplane and the sky in the graphics was invariably filled with exploding missiles. Luckily Bucky’s girlfriend was a nurse so that, no doubt, she would be around if Bucky happened to get shot down. She was called June Bug. I have no memory of the storyline. I must have been about seven when I had this book, as I was able to read the story for myself. I have no idea who bought the book for me or why I was so enchanted by it, or indeed why it has remained so long in my memory.
I must say something about my mother, who never read any stories for us. I often think of an old joke that had been doing the rounds and is still useful to me when I want to have a bit of banter with friends. When somebody asks me what I’m doing just now, I reply: Why, I’m finishing a book. Which leads to the remark: Oh, I didn’t know you were writing a book. To which I reply: I didn’t say that I was writing a book. I am reading a book.
My mother might well have been the inspiration for this joke. She read a book and her choice never changed: it was Gone with the Wind. My mother almost every evening prior to getting the tea (in those days the tea was the main evening meal) she went to her bedroom for a siesta, or a rest as she called it. As soon as she had settled herself down she started reading her book. She usually fell asleep after reading a few pages, after which the book either fell to the floor or would be found beside her in the bed when she woke up. She never used a book-marker, and found it hard when she next resumed reading to remember where she had left off. So she kept going backwards and forwards continually, and never got to finish Gone with the Wind!
My mother used often tell us that she never got a proper education. She was the eldest of seven children – five girls and two boys - and of course was enrolled in school like the rest of her siblings. Her mother, she told us, constantly kept her, the eldest, at home from school to help with the housework and to mind the younger siblings. Accordingly mother missed many of her classes in school. This maybe is why she never read us bed time stories. It also might explain why she seldom wrote letters and why, when she did write, she always had a small dictionary by her side to aid her spelling. How she would have loved it today when many kids have a computer with a spell-checker!
Spelling was not mother’s forte. I once came home from a night on the town, and mother was poring over a crossword puzzle in a children’s magazine. I’m completely stuck here waiting for you to come home, she said to me. I can’t get beyond No. 2 across: What animal carries its house on its back? I had a look at where she was stuck. Now, I said to her, if you would just put in snail instead of snale for No. 2 across, you’ll be away in a hack! And so it turned out.
I will be writing about my mother elsewhere because what I have written does not do her justice. Herself and the following two sisters were beautiful, calm and affectionate ladies. The fourth sister was contrastingly bubbly and excitable, and went off to New York with her husband, a dentist. The fifth (the only one of my aunts who did not marry) was too enigmatic for me to attempt on the spur of the moment to find a suitable adjective to size her up.
My father was the one who read me stories, but they were not bed time stories. He was a farmer’s son who had a good career as a railway employee. From time to time he loved to take me, the eldest of three brothers, to the nearby Dublin Botanic Gardens to see how the staff tended the various plants in the vegetable section. On our walks to and from the Gardens we would converse in Irish, which was his home language in the West of Ireland . This helped me immeasurably in school. After the inspection of the vegetable plots we would sit on a bench in the Gardens, and he would read for me, in English, tales based on the legends of Ireland, where I learned about the exploits of Fionn McCool, Cuchullain, Diarmuid, Grainne, and others. On our walks we often argued over phrases in the Irish language. He spoke the Connemara dialect while my school teacher taught me in the Munster dialect. Father listened patiently while I told him where he was going wrong, and he patiently explained that his way was how his mother spoke Irish to him.
The books that father read from were kept in a bookcase which was in the parlour at home. This was filled mainly with classics, and I can remember such titles as Sketches by Boz, Angel Pavement, A Trail of ’98 and so on. None of these attracted me, and that applied particularly to A Trail of ’98. In fact I misread the title as ‘A Tale of ‘98’, which I thought was a historical novel about the Irish Insurrection of 1798. When eventually I ventured to read it, it turned out to be a very tender and romantic story about the Klondike gold rush in 1898. I am still trying to find a copy of it to re-read. The bookcase also had a gap which awaited the eventual return of Gone with the Wind.
My father took an interest in the books which I took out on loan from the Phibsborough Public Library. I remember I took out on loan a book on the life cycle of frogs, which had a chapter on the frogs’ reproductive system. Father thought that this was unsuitable reading at my age and requested me to return it, which of course I did. He little knew how knowledgeable I really was in these matters. In going to and coming from school we passed a shop which dispensed animal medicines. In the window was a set of graphics displaying the reproductive processes of various farm animals. These were an adequate substitute for a lesson on ‘the birds and the bees’. In addition I had on the way home one night after attending a local cinema, the experience of assisting at the birth of a calf in a shed off Deverys’ lane. An agitated man called me from the street that night asking me as a matter of urgency to help him with an animal in distress. The animal was a cow, and after entering the shed half way down the lane I got the task of pulling on a rope while the man manoeuvred a calf into the world. I did not mention the incident to my father, feeling that if he did not like my reading about frogs he would certainly not like to hear that I had been involved in some bovine gynecology.
My uncle Tom (father’s brother, who also lived in Dublin) was the person who added further to my reading experiences. He was single at the time I was attending secondary school, and he gave me presents of books on a wide variety of subjects. We children were generally somewhat lukewarm about Uncle Tom’s choice of gifts, as he tended to give us ‘useful’ presents. Gradually to our bookcase were added copies of The Arabian Nights, Alice in Wonderland, Treasure Island and similar classics.
Uncle Tom’s list of educational accomplishments was lengthy and varied. As a native speaker of Irish he had earned a scholarship to attend Galway University and acquired BA and MA degrees there. He also acquired a Higher Diploma in Education (HDE) which qualified him as a teacher. He then got a travelling scholarship and attended post-graduate studies in the university of Bonn in Germany where he became fluent in German. He followed this with post-graduate studies in Grenoble in France, thus adding French to his languages. When finally settling down in Dublin, he worked as a translator in Dáil Éireann (the Irish Parliament). Somehow he managed to qualify as a barrister-at-Law (LL.B degree) and went on to become the Chief Editor of Irish Publications in the Department of Education.
On my visits from time to time to Uncle Tom’s office, he told me about his experiences in Bonn and his introduction to the German language. He seemed to detect that l had a feeling for languages and gave me many copies of books which he had edited. To my amazement these included several Spanish dramas which he had translated into Irish and were regularly in demand in Irish drama circles. Strangely he never spoke to me in Irish: for my developing fluency in Irish I had to thank my father.
One of the books which I got from Uncle Tom and which greatly helped me in my secondary school Irish studies was Gnás na Gaeilge by Cormac Ó Cadhliagh (Usages in the Irish language). This in due time helped me to get the highest mark of all the candidates in the Irish paper in my entrance examination for the Civil Service in 1944. Over a thousand competitors sat this examination and my result really astounded me, since many of the candidates would have been native speakers of Irish.
So the experiences of my early days, despite the absence of bed time stories, left me with a good repertoire of Irish legends, and a good knowledge of the Irish language with the capacity to acquit myself comfortably in all of the three provincial Irish dialects. My father and uncle also left me with a bad case of bibliophylitis, otherwise known a bookaholism, so that today I cannot pass a bookshop without an overwhelming urge of enter and rummage around.
I can say that if my forebears never read me bed time stories, they did, in their unconventional ways, serve me very well with the means of acquiring in due time a host of stories for my own children.
Bed time stories were not really a feature for me when I was a child. The first book I have memory of was about a little bug called Bucky. The graphics gave him the shape of a ladybug. He was involved in some sort of war. Bucky Bug went around in a small airplane and the sky in the graphics was invariably filled with exploding missiles. Luckily Bucky’s girlfriend was a nurse so that, no doubt, she would be around if Bucky happened to get shot down. She was called June Bug. I have no memory of the storyline. I must have been about seven when I had this book, as I was able to read the story for myself. I have no idea who bought the book for me or why I was so enchanted by it, or indeed why it has remained so long in my memory.
I must say something about my mother, who never read any stories for us. I often think of an old joke that had been doing the rounds and is still useful to me when I want to have a bit of banter with friends. When somebody asks me what I’m doing just now, I reply: Why, I’m finishing a book. Which leads to the remark: Oh, I didn’t know you were writing a book. To which I reply: I didn’t say that I was writing a book. I am reading a book.
My mother might well have been the inspiration for this joke. She read a book and her choice never changed: it was Gone with the Wind. My mother almost every evening prior to getting the tea (in those days the tea was the main evening meal) she went to her bedroom for a siesta, or a rest as she called it. As soon as she had settled herself down she started reading her book. She usually fell asleep after reading a few pages, after which the book either fell to the floor or would be found beside her in the bed when she woke up. She never used a book-marker, and found it hard when she next resumed reading to remember where she had left off. So she kept going backwards and forwards continually, and never got to finish Gone with the Wind!
My mother used often tell us that she never got a proper education. She was the eldest of seven children – five girls and two boys - and of course was enrolled in school like the rest of her siblings. Her mother, she told us, constantly kept her, the eldest, at home from school to help with the housework and to mind the younger siblings. Accordingly mother missed many of her classes in school. This maybe is why she never read us bed time stories. It also might explain why she seldom wrote letters and why, when she did write, she always had a small dictionary by her side to aid her spelling. How she would have loved it today when many kids have a computer with a spell-checker!
Spelling was not mother’s forte. I once came home from a night on the town, and mother was poring over a crossword puzzle in a children’s magazine. I’m completely stuck here waiting for you to come home, she said to me. I can’t get beyond No. 2 across: What animal carries its house on its back? I had a look at where she was stuck. Now, I said to her, if you would just put in snail instead of snale for No. 2 across, you’ll be away in a hack! And so it turned out.
I will be writing about my mother elsewhere because what I have written does not do her justice. Herself and the following two sisters were beautiful, calm and affectionate ladies. The fourth sister was contrastingly bubbly and excitable, and went off to New York with her husband, a dentist. The fifth (the only one of my aunts who did not marry) was too enigmatic for me to attempt on the spur of the moment to find a suitable adjective to size her up.
My father was the one who read me stories, but they were not bed time stories. He was a farmer’s son who had a good career as a railway employee. From time to time he loved to take me, the eldest of three brothers, to the nearby Dublin Botanic Gardens to see how the staff tended the various plants in the vegetable section. On our walks to and from the Gardens we would converse in Irish, which was his home language in the West of Ireland . This helped me immeasurably in school. After the inspection of the vegetable plots we would sit on a bench in the Gardens, and he would read for me, in English, tales based on the legends of Ireland, where I learned about the exploits of Fionn McCool, Cuchullain, Diarmuid, Grainne, and others. On our walks we often argued over phrases in the Irish language. He spoke the Connemara dialect while my school teacher taught me in the Munster dialect. Father listened patiently while I told him where he was going wrong, and he patiently explained that his way was how his mother spoke Irish to him.
The books that father read from were kept in a bookcase which was in the parlour at home. This was filled mainly with classics, and I can remember such titles as Sketches by Boz, Angel Pavement, A Trail of ’98 and so on. None of these attracted me, and that applied particularly to A Trail of ’98. In fact I misread the title as ‘A Tale of ‘98’, which I thought was a historical novel about the Irish Insurrection of 1798. When eventually I ventured to read it, it turned out to be a very tender and romantic story about the Klondike gold rush in 1898. I am still trying to find a copy of it to re-read. The bookcase also had a gap which awaited the eventual return of Gone with the Wind.
My father took an interest in the books which I took out on loan from the Phibsborough Public Library. I remember I took out on loan a book on the life cycle of frogs, which had a chapter on the frogs’ reproductive system. Father thought that this was unsuitable reading at my age and requested me to return it, which of course I did. He little knew how knowledgeable I really was in these matters. In going to and coming from school we passed a shop which dispensed animal medicines. In the window was a set of graphics displaying the reproductive processes of various farm animals. These were an adequate substitute for a lesson on ‘the birds and the bees’. In addition I had on the way home one night after attending a local cinema, the experience of assisting at the birth of a calf in a shed off Deverys’ lane. An agitated man called me from the street that night asking me as a matter of urgency to help him with an animal in distress. The animal was a cow, and after entering the shed half way down the lane I got the task of pulling on a rope while the man manoeuvred a calf into the world. I did not mention the incident to my father, feeling that if he did not like my reading about frogs he would certainly not like to hear that I had been involved in some bovine gynecology.
My uncle Tom (father’s brother, who also lived in Dublin) was the person who added further to my reading experiences. He was single at the time I was attending secondary school, and he gave me presents of books on a wide variety of subjects. We children were generally somewhat lukewarm about Uncle Tom’s choice of gifts, as he tended to give us ‘useful’ presents. Gradually to our bookcase were added copies of The Arabian Nights, Alice in Wonderland, Treasure Island and similar classics.
Uncle Tom’s list of educational accomplishments was lengthy and varied. As a native speaker of Irish he had earned a scholarship to attend Galway University and acquired BA and MA degrees there. He also acquired a Higher Diploma in Education (HDE) which qualified him as a teacher. He then got a travelling scholarship and attended post-graduate studies in the university of Bonn in Germany where he became fluent in German. He followed this with post-graduate studies in Grenoble in France, thus adding French to his languages. When finally settling down in Dublin, he worked as a translator in Dáil Éireann (the Irish Parliament). Somehow he managed to qualify as a barrister-at-Law (LL.B degree) and went on to become the Chief Editor of Irish Publications in the Department of Education.
On my visits from time to time to Uncle Tom’s office, he told me about his experiences in Bonn and his introduction to the German language. He seemed to detect that l had a feeling for languages and gave me many copies of books which he had edited. To my amazement these included several Spanish dramas which he had translated into Irish and were regularly in demand in Irish drama circles. Strangely he never spoke to me in Irish: for my developing fluency in Irish I had to thank my father.
One of the books which I got from Uncle Tom and which greatly helped me in my secondary school Irish studies was Gnás na Gaeilge by Cormac Ó Cadhliagh (Usages in the Irish language). This in due time helped me to get the highest mark of all the candidates in the Irish paper in my entrance examination for the Civil Service in 1944. Over a thousand competitors sat this examination and my result really astounded me, since many of the candidates would have been native speakers of Irish.
So the experiences of my early days, despite the absence of bed time stories, left me with a good repertoire of Irish legends, and a good knowledge of the Irish language with the capacity to acquit myself comfortably in all of the three provincial Irish dialects. My father and uncle also left me with a bad case of bibliophylitis, otherwise known a bookaholism, so that today I cannot pass a bookshop without an overwhelming urge of enter and rummage around.
I can say that if my forebears never read me bed time stories, they did, in their unconventional ways, serve me very well with the means of acquiring in due time a host of stories for my own children.
