Country Living with Francis Farragher

Sometimes, I have to pinch myself, when driving through villages like Moylough, Menlough, and Turloughmore and see public houses that were once thriving hubs of activity, now having their doors closed, most of them never to reopen again.

There was also a great rural tradition back the decades of the ‘all-in-one’ pub and shop which sold everything from bicycle tyres to salty bacon and of course creamy pints of Guinness.

To own a pub and the accompanying licence was of course regarded as a little goldmine in small towns and villages across the West of Ireland where many of them did a ‘steady day trade’ while the nights – and especially the weekend ones – were then a real bonus.

I remember too back in the late 1960s when that rather strange term of ‘the singing pub’ entered our vocabulary with some of the bigger establishments having a dance floor and a small stage for the bands.

Many women of that era, who had hardly ever before set foot in those male-dominated pub arenas, suddenly found an outlet where it didn’t seem so strange after all, to be out for a bit of craic with the men.

My mother, who would never have been a fan of the booze – her great saying was that there was ‘mí-ádh’ in drink – relented on the odd Sunday night when herself and a few of her friends would travel to the Copper Beech in Turloughmore, maybe for one sherry and a bit of dancing.

Transport issues, stricter drink-driving laws, rural depopulation, and maybe too a culture change among the younger generation, have all led to the demise of the country pub, once the focal point of the village and the local parish.

True, there are great survivors in all of this, but last week it was still quite a reality check to read the headlines in the local papers of more than 120 pubs in Galway having closed their doors over the past two decades.

Across the country since 2005, close on 2,000 pubs have closed in the Republic of Ireland with places like rural Galway, Roscommon, Tipperary, Cork, and Laois taking the biggest hits.

And yet, all over the world ‘the Irish pub’ is one of the great tourist attractions in most of the major resorts where ‘supposedly’ you can experience everything from leprechauns to flying pigs.

There was also a great tradition of the typical Irish pub also ‘doubling up’ as the local undertaker, probably on the principle of looking after you through life and death.