Travellers’ Tales: Colombia.

By Patrick J Heneghan

In the late 1950s, when I was living in Phibsboro on the north side of Dublin City, I regularly attended social gatherings with a group of Spanish students who came regularly to a neighbouring house to ‘hang out’ during the late evenings.  One of the group was a young clergyman, already ordained priest, Father Luis Villabona.  He was in fact a houseguest where the gathering took place.  He likewise was studying English, and I agreed to give him lessons in English, and he in return gave me lessons in Spanish.  He went home eventually to Colombia, his homeland, to take up parish duties.  We started to correspond, he writing to me in Spanish and I to him in English.  His work afterwards occasionally took him to Rome on church-related business, and he rarely returned to Colombia without making a detour to Ireland, to renew acquaintances and to practise his English.

Eventually I received an invitation from my friend to visit Colombia.  I initially demurred because Colombia had, and still has, a reputation for being one of the most dangerous countries for tourists in the Western World.  A powerful guerrilla group labelled the FARC had for years been engaged in war with the Colombian government.  FARC had taken over many of the remote and sparsely-populated parts of the country, financing its political and military battles by kidnapping, extortion and participating in the drug trade at various levels.

I consulted with my wife, who said I was mentally deranged, and that she herself would not go to Colombia for a million dollars.  I said I would make a deal with my friend to visit him on three conditions:  Firstly, I wanted, like the explorer Cortés, to view the Pacific Ocean from a mountain peak in Darien; secondly, I must take a swim in the warm waters of the Caribbean Ocean; and finally I wanted to go to Leticia, a town from where I could stand on the bank of the River Amazon.  Fr. Luis accepted my conditions!

When I went to arrange my passage, the tourist agent said he would sell me a return ticket to Colombia, but that I was the first person for years who came to him wanting to waste his travel money.  Nobody returns from Colombia, he said, except maybe an odd missionary.

I have to say that I spent three glorious weeks in Colombia, but my guest, Fr. Luis, who met me in Bogotá, fell a bit short with his end of the bargain.

He first brought me up to a peak on one of the three mountain ranges closest to Bogotá.  By the time I had reached the top of the 4,000 metres high peak, a trip achieved by means of a funicular railway, the air had become so thin I could scarcely breathe.  On return to base I said I was not overly impressed with the height of the mountain, since some of our own mountains at home seemed just as high.  Fr Luis explained that Bogotá from where we started was already 3,000 metres over sea level!  Then how about seeing the Pacific?  He said that there were two other mountain ranges – cordilleras he called them ¬¬- between Bogotá and the Pacific coast.  To my question about Cortés who, I had read, saw the Pacific from a peak in Darien, this area, my friend explained, was in Panama, not Colombia.  Cortés had never been in Colombia.  Balboa was the one who discovered Colombia.  Poets, I discovered -  Keats in this case – sometimes take poetic licence, as when he wrote ‘On first looking into Chapman’s Homer’.  Check it out!

When you’re already 3,000 metres up, another 1,000 metres will finish the climb!

Next in my itinerary was my swim in the Caribbean Ocean.  No problem!  Fr Luis first drove me northwards from Bogotá to the Atlantic coast by way of Bucaramanga, where I met Beatriz Turbay, a young lady who had earlier stayed with us in Dublin for a year when she was studying English.  Beatriz’s extended family included a former President of Colombia, Julio Turbay, and Paola Turbay, a former Beauty Queen of Colombia and TV presenter.  Beatriz brought me in her car around to see the sights of her beautiful city, but first she had to get permission from her father to be allowed out in the family car without the family’s fully-armed guard tailing us from behind.  No untoward incident occurred and after an overnight stay in Bucaramanga, following the course of the great Magdalena river we went on to Santa Marta, our only diversion being to visit a pineapple plantation half way along the journey.  Going westwards on reaching the Caribbean coast we travelled through an area which was the fictional territory that inspired Colombian Gabriel Marquéz when writing his novel ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’.  Finally we reached Barranquilla, home of Mayra Peréz, another of our former student guests in Dublin.

On arrival we were royally wined and dined and on the following day we had a picnic with Mayra, her husband and her three children during which I had my long-awaited swim in the Caribbean.  The skies were blue, the heat was the usual 35 degrees and the swim was perfect, so much so that I would never again be tempted to swim from an Irish beach.

Now came up for discussion the arrangements for my trip to Leticia on the banks of the Amazon.  We had to consult with Mayra’s uncle about this.  He had been a doctor in the service with the United Nations medical arm.  His first question was whether I had taken all the necessary injections for the journey to Leticia.  What injections, I asked, with some surprise.  I was certainly taking my quinine tablets against malaria.  But, he asked, what about yellow fever and tetanus?  .... hepatitis, typhoid...?  Hold on there, Doctor, I interjected, how long is the list?  Just a few more items, he said, but the odds on your catching any of them are quite low.  Without going any further, my enthusiasm for going to Leticia evaporated.  Mayra settled the matter for me, telling me that in Leticia illegal drug trafficking had become a new way to make money, and narcotic drugs were bought and sold there in broad daylight.  She consoled me by offering to ask her brother to take me out to a local desert, where I could see interesting wild life, cacti and other plants.  On the following morning her brother turned up in his car and took me several miles westward.  Our first incident on entering the desert was to see a tortoise, which was crossing the road in a leisurely style.  We put the tortoise in a box on the back seat of the car, from where it was to be installed in Mayra’s back garden and to be called Paddy in my honour.  Cacti and other plants abounded, on some of which - including the cacti – grew delicious fruit.

Colombia is richly endowed in flora and fauna. 

I was destined afterwards to return to Colombia four more times, and I left behind so many new friends that subsequently our home in Dublin became almost an unofficial Colombian Embassy.  Further adventures in Colombia will be recounted elsewhere.

If it is any comfort to those intending to visit Colombia, I can say that having abandoned my proposed visit to Leticia I never even saw a mosquito in Colombia, much less did I ever get a bite!  I am not saying that there are no mosquitoes in Colombia, but not in areas I visited.  Your best protection in Colombia is to have good friends there, follow what they say and don’t go to places which they say are dangerous.  They will quickly tell you where the ‘mossies’ can be found!

Ants, Bees, and Wasps

by Paddy Heneghan

Our Uncle Tom was by way of being an eccentric in many ways.  He was not the most popular of donors of Christmas gifts, but he did at this time give a present to each of the four children in our household.  His gifts came frequently in the shape of educational books, whereas we looked forward to getting silly and noisy things like drums, toy guns and so on.  Among the books I received from him were, for example, The Science of Languages, The Arabian Nights, The Starry Heaven, and Beasts, all of which I still have and cherish.

One of the books was entitled ‘Ants, Bees and Wasps’.  It gave me valuable insights into the world we shared with these useful and interesting, if sometimes dangerous, creatures. So I would like to share my experiences with the world of these insects.

Ants.

I take first the ants. One of the first little verses I learned in my Spanish class was the following:

Lo que hoy las Hormigas son, eran los hombres antaño:
De lo propio y de lo extraño hacían su provisión.
Júpiter, que tal passion notó de siglos atrás,
No pudiendo aguantar más, en hormigas los transforma:
Ellos mudaron de forma.  Y de costumbres? Jamás.

(The ants of today were once humans. They lived from their own resources and the resources of others.  The deity noted this angrily and could not stand it any longer.  The appearance of the ants was changed.  But as to their habits?  Never!)

How do ants compare with humans?  Most ants are predatory and some prey on and obtain food from other social insects.  Some species of ants specialise in preying on other ants and on termites.  That resembles the behaviour of some groups of predatory humans towards their fellow human, and that was what Jupiter could not stand for, so he turned that species into ants.  Their appearance changed. But as to their habit, never!  It’s a pity another Jupiter does not come to help out.

 As to relationships with humans, ants perform many beneficial ecological roles including the suppression of pest populations and the aeration of the soil.  So ants are not all bad!

My complaint about ants is that from time to time they infest our gardens and if you happen to sit down on the grass they will infest yourself, and sting you.

I had an interesting experience with ants during one of my visits to the United States.  When holidaying in Athens, Georgia, I noticed a mass of ants on the margin of a pathway.  They were of an exceptionally bright brown colour, and they were later indentified for me by my son, who is a biologist, as fire ants, an invasive pest in the United States.  There the cost of dealing with and controlling the species comes to the region of five billion dollars a year, to cover medical treatments and crop damage.  These red ants do not otherwise bother humans, save for foolish people like myself who are inclined to give the nest a toe-poke, which I did.  Luckily enough I did not persist with my behaviour long enough to allow the ants to get a grip.  A sting of one of these insects swells into a bump, which can cause much pain, especially when several stings are in the same place.  There are home remedies for these stings, but if they become infected medical treatment is required.

Bees

Next we can take a look at the more amiable bees.  Television programmes frequently show bee-keepers at work with bees.  These insects pollinate plants and produce honey and wax.  For myself, however, I give all bees a wide berth, as I did have had a rather unpleasant experience in my childhood with a type of bee called the bumble bee.

Often confused with honey bees, the bumble bee is larger and furrier, with yellow/red banding across the end of their tails. They are social insects, living in colonies. They nest in earthen banks, abandoned mouse-holes and the like.  Bumble bees are not aggressive and will sting only if they feel threatened.  They are important pollinators of many plants and fruiting trees.

During my primary school years myself and a couple of my school pals regularly went to play in and explore a then rural area of North Dublin called Finglas.  One summer’s evening on our way home from Finglas we watched some bumble bees emerging from a hole in a road-side dry ditch.  Nothing would do us but to get a long stick and give the hole a few pokes.  Suddenly we found ourselves the target of a swarm of the so-called “soldier” bees, a provision in bee-hives which the course of evolution was a type developed in most colonies.  We set off citywards “ar nós na gaoithe” (a phrase in the Irish language “Like the wind”), closely followed by the soldiers.  When the bees gave up the chase I found I had gotten one painful sting and the two others each got several stings.  One lad was still in severe pain after we got back to the city.  We investigated by removing his shirt, and found a bee which was working merrily away on the poor lad’s back.

We learned later that while the honey bee delivers one sting and dies thereafter, the bumble bee can deliver multiple stings and lives on.

Wasps

Now I invite your attention to the wasp.  In latter years I have had to deal with no fewer than three hives of wasps which invaded my property.

The wasp is an insect which is neither a bee nor an ant.  It is an “in-betweener”, all three groups having descended from a common ancestor.  The most commonly known wasps are the “yellow jackets” which live together in a nest with an egg-laying queen, non-reproducing female workers which tend the queen, a small number of drones and “soldier wasps”.

All species of social wasps construct their nests using some form of plant fiber (mostly from wood pulp) supplemented with secretions from the wasps themselves. The placement of nests varies from group to group, yellow jackets preferring to nest in trees and shrubs, but they will also build colonies in hollow walls where they can find suitable entry points.

Social wasps are considered pests when they become excessively common, or nest close to buildings. People are most often stung in late summer, when wasp colonies stop breeding new workers.  As the existing workers search frantically for sugary foods they are more likely to come into contact with humans.  They often respond aggressively and sting if the nest is approached.  Stings are usually painful rather than dangerous, but in rare cases people may suffer life-threatening shocks.

My first episode with wasps involved the removal of an active nest built by the wasps under and attached to the ceiling of our glass conservatory.  This was done by attaching “blue tack” putty around the rim of a suitably- sized plastic bowl, putting some wasp-killer powder onto cotton wool and into the bowl, and attaching the bowl to the ceiling over the nest.  After a few days the bowl and the cotton wool was taken down, and all the wasps had died.

My second episode involved killing a colony of wasps which had penetrated the top of a garden wall which was under the shelter of a covered way.  The nest was not near any vulnerable part of the garden and late one night when the wasp activity had ceased I covered the opening to the nest with a heavy towel which I weighed down with a concrete block.  The wasps ceased to emerge and obviously perished.

The third episode provided the greatest challenge to the removal of the nest.  Again the wasps penetrated the top of an 8 foot garden wall which was open to the sky.  This proved to be a very awkward place to reach.  My hardware store offered a couple of solutions in the shape of killing powder or an anti-wasp spray to kill the wasps.  A Google search suggested another remedy such as spraying the nest with gasoline, which was considered a risky fire hazard.  Neighbours suggested that spraying the nest with washing-up liquid dissolved in water would disable the wasps’ flying capacity and kill them.

The ultimate remedy would obviously be to engage a professional pest-control agency to deal with the wasps, the likely cost of which would be upwards of €80, depending on the location of the nest.
As October was approaching, and the first frost would kill the whole colony, I decided to leave the problem to Mother Nature.  At first frost the only survivor of the colony would be the queen, which before the winter would seek out a safe hiding place and emerge in the spring to found a new colony. I am assured that the queen never returns to the site of a previous foundation.

Many people would be aware of the importance of bees and wasps as pollinators of plants which provide food.  Accordingly the destruction of such insects should be avoided if at all possible.

Tragic death in 1876 of George Knowling

by Patrick J (Paddy) Heneghan

George Knowling of Water Street, Waterford City, who died by drowning in 1876, was my great-grandfather.  My mother was Elizabeth Foley of Tralee, eldest daughter of Martha Knowling of Waterford City, who was one of the five children of George Knowling.

The name Knowling has disappeared in Ireland, the subsequent generations of this George I now write of having adapted to the very common Irish name Nolan.  My grandmother Martha Foley (née Martha Knowling) married John J. Foley of Tralee under the name Martha Nolan.  The place of her former childhood residence - Water Street - in Waterford was over time cleared and the street no longer exists.  Her sister, whom we called Aunt Ciss, married Johnnie White and they lived in St Alphonus Road, Waterford, with their two children Laurence (Sonny) and Eileen (Eily).  All of those mentoned in this paragraph are now deceased.

My grandmother Foley never spoke about the death of her father, but I picked up the broad details of the story of his drowning during regular visits to Tralee during my childhood.  The family tale was a smooth story with no loose ends, and left nothing unexplained.  It turned out to be an impressionistic picture of the original historic and indeed heroic event.  It went as follows:

George Knowling with two companions went out in a rowboat on the river Suir.  A sudden gust of wind overturned the boat and the three were left in the water hanging on to the side of the boat.  George Knowling was the only one of the three who could swim, and he was able to help in getting one of the party to the quayside.  He then swam back to rescue the other.  He reached the boat as it was being carried seawards with the current.  The boat drifted away and no trace was ever found afterwards of the two men.  It was assumed that George was just too exhausted to get himself and his companion back to shore.  That was the extent of the story as it came down to us children

I make a slight but relevant digression here.  Some years ago I bought a book written by a history professor named White from a Boston University.  His mother was a lady from a place called Aghnagran, near Listowel, in County Kerry.  This lady grew up on a somewhat impoverished farm from which her father had emigrated to Chicago, leaving his wife and family in Ireland.  This daughter in her late teens joined her father in Chicago, and during the course of the Second World War got work with an airline company in Chicago.  She met and married an officer named White of the United States air force, and their her son, the professor referred to, heard many stories from his mother about her family back home in Ireland.  After his mother’s death the professor eventually, out of professional as well as personal curiosity, decided to visit Ireland to see the scenes of his mother’s early adventures and to check out with his relatives the accuracy of his mother’s stories.  He received a very warm from his many Irish relatives. On his return to the Boston the professor wrote a book about his visit to Aghnagran and concluded  that oral tradition does not like complications, and that tales of events, over time, such as those he heard from his mother, become moulded and simplified, and sometimes can be quite inaccurate as to the facts.  Oral tradition, he wrote, does not like complicated speculation.

In my efforts to discover further the details of my great-grandfather’s death, I wrote to the central Library in Waterford.  In reply I was told that the library could not trace any record of the drowning event, but they supplied me with an account of the work of a noted George Nolan, builder, who, they speculated, could have been a relative.  I got no further in my own researches until the press account of the inquest turned up.  A copy of the text follows:

From The Waterford Daily Mail, March 20, 1876.  Report of Inquest

DEATH BY DROWNING – LOSS OF THREE LIVES

One of the most distressing accidents which has occurred for a long series of years took place about six o’clock last Saturday evening.  Four young men, named McClelland, Nolan, Condon, and Ronayne had put out in a boat for the purpose of exercise prior to a regatta which it was contemplated holding in a short time.  The three first-named were  employees of Mr J P Graves’ sawmill, McClelland, who was a native of Scotland and a married man, being foreman sawyer. Ronayne was a very young man and was unmarried.  His widowed mother keeps a public house in Manor-street, and the deceased was an only son.  He had only about a month previously terminated his apprenticeship as an engine-fitter at the engine works of the Waterford and Limerick Railway.

Nolan leaves a wife and five children to be provided for.  He had been an enthusiastic admirer of aquatic sports, and was considered an experienced amateur.  The boat, which had been only a short time purchased, was the joint property of the ill-fated young men who lost their lives out of her.  She was fitted with a sail, and to this circumstance was attributed the untimely fate which overtook the occupants.

It will be remembered that the entire of Saturday was remarkable as being windy, squalls occurring at intervals; and it was owing to a sudden gust, which burst upon them with the violence of a hurricane, and with the rapidity of lightening, that the boat was capsized, and its occupants precipitated into the water.  The gale had sprung up while they were in the act of tacking from north to south, they having been ashore a short time previously and having determined to run for Woodlands adjoining the demesne of Faithlegg when the boat upset.

Condon struck out for the Waterford shore, and succeeded in safely reaching Woodlands, and on coming to land he was observed to sit upon a large stone while he endeavoured to ascertain what had become of his comrades.

McClelland had made for the opposite direction and had succeeded in making the shore but there he was shortly after discovered with his topcoat covering his head and face downward with arms outstretched, as if in the act of swimming.  It was on the grounds of Mr. P. Anderson, Glasshouse, that the unfortunate young man was lying, and that gentleman had him removed to his house, where all the means which humanity could suggest to restore animation was freely applied, but without avail:  the Suir’s cold tide had extinguished the vital spark, and his two comrades had found a resting place beneath its turgid waters.

Nothing has since been seen of the bodies of Ronayne and Nolan, though constant grappling is taking place in the river. The recovered body was placed in an outhouse belonging to Mr. Anderson, and remained there pending an inquest which was held on Monday by Mr. T. Izod, Coroner for the Co. Kilkenny, when a verdict in accordance with the facts stated was returned by the jury.   END

Tales from the Rugby fields

by
PJ (Paddy) Heneghan

In my secondary school years in Dublin’s Northside, 1939 to 1944, I played mainly Gaelic football and hurling.  Gaelic football is rather like soccer, save that handling the ball is allowed, while the game of hurling is like hockey, but it allows handling and hand-passing the ball, and is played with a stick called a hurley.

My interest in rugby started when a schoolmate of mine, Michael Ryan, invited me in 1944, immediately after I had left secondary school, to join the Clontarf Rugby Club.  I played with Clontarf for about two years, starting in 1945.  Paddy Lawlor was a member of the club and also one of my classmates at secondary school, St Joseph’s, Fairview (Joey’s to Dubliners).  In school he was a gentle giant. On the school’s Gaelic football team I had played left full back alongside Paddy, who was our full back. He was a fierce handful on both the Gaelic football and hurling fields, but on the rugby field a ferocious second row forward. He played rugby many times for Ireland and a number of times abroad for the British and Irish team, known as The Lions.

Starting in 1946 I went regularly as a spectator to high-level Rugby games, particularly to interprovincial and international matches, mostly at Lansdowne Road (now Aviva Stadium).  International matches were resuming in Lansdowne Road after the end of the 1939-1944 war in Europe, and the first of such matches I saw took place in Dublin in 1946 between Leinster and the ANZACS (a team that comprised de-mobbed service men of the Australian and New Zealand armed forces).  Ulster, to the best of my recollection, had been defeated 10-9 by the ANZACS in Belfast, but Leinster hoped to go one better.  The ANZACS match against Leinster was a cracking affair.  As the teams in the last seconds were heading for a drawn game, the Leinster out half Austin Carry (Old Wesley) went for a drop goal from midfield.  We watched open-mouthed as the spinning ball went high and goalwards, only to strike the very top of the right hand post and fall wide.  A truly prodigious kick deserving of a win, but it left Leinster with a mere draw.

The next match I saw was a renewal of the international series when Ireland played France at Lansdowne Road.  France was still rebuilding following the war, and was not expected to give Ireland too stern a test.  In fact an Irish cartoon artist in a Friday evening paper portrayed individually the French team he expected to see.  He showed the French second row forwards rigged out like a pair of ballet dancers, with embroidered jerseys, finished off with frilly knickers.  When the two players in question ran out on the field the following day, there was a gasp.  Moga and Soro (what apt horror movie names they had!) weighed in at a combined weight of 33 stone.  A Dublin ‘gurrier’, a type not often seen among the rugby elite, bellowed out from the back of the stand: “Jaysus, look at what Hitler did to them!”.  The French won the match, though not handsomely.  Ireland scored a penalty kick (three points) and the French managed a drop goal (four points).  Latterly the law has been changed whereby a drop goal now counts only as three points.

In pre-war international rugby Ireland had not been considered a potent force.  All that changed in the period 1947 to 1950 with the advent in 1947 of Jack Kyle at out half.  I attended the 1947 match against England, ‘the auld enemy’ (often referred to as ‘the base, bloody and brutal Saxon’).  An Irish journalist in a post-match commentary confessed that when he saw the young Jack Kyle running onto the field with the Irish team he shuddered at what might be in store for the youngster. He described Jack as looking like a tousled-haired school boy!  He need not have worried about Jack.  Ireland won the match 22-0, in no small measure due to the jinking, sidestepping and sheer genius of the tousled schoolboy!

In 1948 and 1949 I attended Ireland’s matches when they won back-to-back Triple Crowns (victories over England, Scotland and Wales in each season).  In 1950 I travelled to London for the match against England in the expectation of seeing Ireland’s Three-in-a-Row materialize. The match was a grinding affair, with England leading 3 - 0 as the second half drew to a close.  Then to our delight after a set scrum well into the second half, Ireland’s scrum half crossed the line for a try (5 points).  But the score did not stand, The referee called the teams back to retake the scrum.  Arguments still rage to this day about that decision to repeat the scrum. There was no further score in that match and thus ended the dream of Three Triple Crowns on the trot for Ireland.

Bed time stories

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.

The Christmas Turkey

(Paddy Heneghan writes here about a visit during Christmas holidays in the 1940s to The Square in Tralee where his grandmother bought her turkeys for the Christmas period.  The Square in Tralee is first mentioned in records back in 1613.  The area was low lying and a marsh developed where, hard to believe now, turf was once harvested.  The houses were built on higher ground giving The Square its present shape. It later became a market place and cattle fairs were held there. There was also a thriving fish market.)

The Christmas Turkey

In former days one of the adventures of the Christmas holidays in Tralee was to help Grandmother Foley of Moyderwell when she visited the Market to buy some of the provisions for the festive period.
A good Christmas turkey was an essential item on the shopping list.  These were the days before turkeys were bought fully eviscerated, ready to cook. Prior even before they were sold “New York Dressed”, that is, with the head, feet, and viscera still intact. Grandmother’s turkeys, however, were bought alive and kicking!

Grandmother usually bought three or four of these birds. They could be bought live from the dealers, mainly country folk, who brought their produce to the town market. One in particular of the turkeys was bought for the Moyderwell Christmas dinner and had to be of the highest quality.  Grandmother chose it after careful scrutiny. She poked her finger all over the bird.  A good meaty breast was essential!  This turkey was usually a 16-pounder, as there were rarely fewer than a dozen present for the dinner.


The other turkeys were selected for later important festive occasions.  There was one for the New Year’s Day dinner, and one for the dinner of 6th January (Little or Women’s Christmas as it was referred to locally, or in ecclesiastical terms The Feast of the Epiphany).  In between these dates there was the turkey which would be the prize for the annual post-Christmas card-fest in Grandmother’s kitchen.  There the card-game of Thirty-One was played out in five rubbers, by the most murderous group of card-players in town.  Three of the Foley sisters took part, as well as Grandmother herself who was ordinarily most well-spoken, but in the course of card-play she permitted herself some unbelievable blood-curdling imprecations on those who crossed her.  The kids of course were confined to the parlour while the card-games were in progress.
The turkeys were kept live in the stable at the rear of the Foley house in Moyderwell.  There were regular specialists resident at home who could be charged with the various preparatory tasks before the turkeys reached the table.

A Christmas Visitor, 1940

by PJ Heneghan

In the old days for us kids every Christmas spent in Tralee was wonderful.  I was six years old when our family in 1933 left Tralee to settle in Dublin. After the move we returned to Tralee at least three times every year to visit our grandmother, but the Christmas visit was always the highlight of each year.

The Christmas of 1940 was particularly memorable. The fact that a war was raging in Europe and that supplies for the festive season were becoming scarce had little impact on us. In fact our isolation on the edge of Europe only added to the excitement as we followed developments on the Continent.

That Christmas we arrived at our grandmother’s home several days before the Great Day itself.  Grandmother announced that we had a visitor.  A Dr. Foley had been installed in the lodger’s room upstairs and he expected to be with us for a few days until his car had been repaired.

The story was that Dr. Foley was on a journey from Dublin to visit friends in Dingle when his car developed engine trouble, and he had to leave it in the Kerry Motor Works for repairs.  The company told him that there would be a delay of a day or two as they had to get a new part from Dublin.  Dr. Foley went to one of the local pharmacists to find out where he might get congenial lodgings for what he hoped would be a brief stay in Tralee.  It helped when Paddy Walsh, the pharmacist, told him that he might just find a vacancy at Moyderwell with a Mrs. Martha Foley.

Grandmother usually kept one lodger at her home, and it happened that the incumbent gentleman had left the room vacant while he went home to County Cork on his Christmas vacation.  Pat, as we called him, was an inspector with the Department of Agriculture.  Pat was a very miserly person, and he refused to pay Grandmother rent for the period when he was away.  Grandmother saw no option but to accept this. The poor foolish woman also agreed that Pat, pending his return in January, could leave his clothes and personal effects in the room over the Christmas period.  Pat well knew, of course, that grandmother would find it hard get a lodger just for the Christmas period.

Dr. Foley therefore came like manna from heaven. There was the moot point whether grandmother should clear the room of Pat’s effects during his absence.  She had scruples about the letting to Dr. Foley, although not about the doctor personally.  He was after all a Foley, one of the clan, so to speak.  All grandmother’s scruples were overcome when Aunt Chriss – her daughter, a widow, who also lived in the house with two of her young children – argued that Pat could not expect the room to be left idle when he had paid no rent for the period of the vacancy.

And so, on our arrival from Dublin, we came to sit around the fire in the parlour late on the evening of 22nd December 1940, chatting with Dr. Foley, who had just returned from the cinema.  He had taken to the cinema with him Aunt Chriss’s daughter Eileen, a comely young lady who enjoyed the unexpected treat.  He had also returned with a box of chocolates for grandmother, and she was well pleased.  As we chatted the goodies were being shared around.

My brother Frank, aged nine at the time, had just started to take piano lessons, and he was persuaded to perform a few party pieces.  Dr. Foley was most impressed, and urged my mother to spare no expense in developing this talented child. He discreetly asked whether money would be a problem, and offered to help if necessary.  He promised my mother that he would speak to some officials of the Dublin College of Music, where he had good friends who could help.  (To quick-reel ahead for a moment, Frank was later to become the head of this very college.)

The following day we occupied ourselves helping grandmother in her visits to the market, opening the envelopes with her arriving Christmas cards and affixing stamps to the outgoing mail, and generally at her request doing odd jobs around the house.  Meanwhile, Dr. Foley came and went, but told us that that he hoped to leave on Christmas Eve for Dingle, as he expected the car would be ready by then.

On the 24th of December Dr. Foley left.  My father arrived from Dublin late that evening and my mother filled him in on our impressive visitor and of his extraordinary interest in Frank. They figured that as they spoke the good doctor was with his friends in Dingle.

Christmas came and went.  We attended Midnight Mass, visited the crib, had our usual turkey and plum-pudding Christmas meal, enjoyed our children’s party on St. Stephen’s Day and stayed up in the parlour late each night, while in the kitchen the adults played ferocious rounds of a card game called “31”.  Occasionally we tiptoed into the hall and enjoyed listening to the sounds of slaughter and post-mortems which emerged from the kitchen at the end of each game.

At the beginning of January, life returned to normal.  My father had gone back to Dublin, while my mother, two brothers and myself stayed on as usual until the 6th of January when the school holidays ended.

The drama started on the morning of 2nd January 1941.  Pat returned about 11 am.  I remember, as if it were yesterday, the commotion that broke out on the top floor.  Pat was arguing loudly with Aunt Chriss in his room and then came out onto the landing, roaring that Mrs Foley should attend at once in his room.  Where were all of his shirts?  Where were his stockings?  Where were his jodhpurs?  Pat’s work, I should explain, involved walking about in muddy farmyards and sodden fields which required him to wear knee-length stockings and short britches.  All of the clothing which he had left in his room was missing – except for a pair of old braces, coloured green, white and orange, an army issue from his service in the LDF (our local defence force, established at the start of the war period we called “the emergency”).   Grandmother was not the kind of person to respond to peremptory demands in her own home, but on this occasion she thought it better to go up to the top floor to see what was amiss.

Grandmother told Pat about the nice Dr. Foley, but it began to become clear that the clothes so carefully hoarded by Pat were now “gone west” – possibly to Dingle.  Pat, the miser, had it seems for over a year been hoarding shirts, socks, ties and indeed anything that was likely to become scarce with the war increasingly likely to last for some time.

A formal post-mortem took place in the parlour, the whole family being present. We all contributed.  Some remembered Dr. Foley’s comings and goings during his stay, and how he appeared very slim when returning to his room, but rather well upholstered when going out.  He frequently asked for bowls of hot water in his room.  Why was that?

Grandmother went to see the pharmacist.  Yes, of course, Paddy Walsh remembered Dr. Foley, for he had referred him to my grandmother and later, several times, supplied him with morphine for a patient. This might explain the need for bowls of hot water.  The Kerry Motor Works on the other hand did not remember Dr Foley at all!

There seemed to be no other option at this stage but to go to the civic guards, but Pat refused point blank to consider this.  What would his Department think?  Someone in his room, with access to his clothes and his papers!  Well, to his clothes anyway – the papers had not been touched!  Aunt Chriss later aired her suspicion that Pat had also been using his bedroom as an office, and was likely to have been receiving an allowance for this from the Department.  Did the allowance, she wondered, continue to be paid in his absence?

It was decided not to bring the police into the picture just yet.  What proof positive did we have that Dr. Foley was a thief?  The talk went on, but no action was taken.

About the middle of January when all of the hullabaloo had died down, Aunt Chriss was walking in Strand Road, at the other end of the town, when she noticed a couple walking slowly ahead of her.  They were deep in conversation.  The man looked a little like Dr. Foley, but Aunt Chriss could not be quite sure.   The lady was one of the very respectable local family, a nice girl but not exactly in the first flush of youth.  What should Aunt Chriss do?  What if she were mistaken?

The matter was quickly decided for her when the man paused for a moment, bent over, and adjusted the stocking on his right leg.  It pulled up away above his knee.  Definitely one of Pat’s missing hoard!

Aunt Chriss doubled back and went into the Garda Station, which was at the entrance to Strand Road.  The guards responded immediately and took the good doctor in for questioning.  There was really no contest!  He confessed at once to the theft and was duly detained pending his appearance in the district court.

The full picture emerged at the hearing.  “Dr. Foley” was Peter Wavin (not his real name), released in mid-December from Mountjoy Prison in Dublin.  He had hitch-hiked his way to Tralee.  His was a very sad story.  He belonged to a very respectable family from the midlands and had had a good education.  He had become hooked on heroin following a long and serious illness.  On arrival in Tralee he had called to the County Hospital and conned the Reverend Mother into parting with £5.  He visited the Prior of the Dominican Church with greater success, receiving £10.  He then set up temporary headquarters with grandmother. The remarkable feature of the case was that he had made no attempt to work his charms on the Foley family, except to borrow the name as a platform for his further operations.  His crombie coat was liberally provided with pockets, which enabled him to clean out Pat’s store of clothing.  When arrested he had been (Aunt Chriss’s conjecture) sizing up the single daughter of the Strand Road family as a prospective spouse, but fortunately for her there this did not come out in court.

Dr. Foley was sent off to Limerick Gaol for a period, the length of which escapes my memory.  We never heard of or from him again.

It was a memorable Christmas indeed.  As con-men go, “Dr Foley” was up there with the best!