Country Living
A time when Poc ar Buile gave a lift to ailing spirits
Country Living with Francis Farragher
There are phases of life when individuals seem to transcend the passage of time. In reality of course they don’t, and the Grim Reaper eventually catches up them, but when their lifetime spans through many decades, at times they do give an impressions of always having been around.
I remember when by children were small and there would be the occasional family visit to the local pub which of course at the time had the traditional ‘grocery’ attached to it at the time.
The proprietor, a kindly woman who always gave more than good value when dishing out the sweets to the kids, had been behind the counter through many decades. When the kids were small they used to ask in a kind of mischievous way: “Has Mary been around forever.”
Time does seem to go slower when the early school years are being enjoyed (ground out in my day) but Mary just seemed to have been an everlasting presence in their young lives. When she eventually passed away – very peacefully and quietly in keeping with her manner through life – the kids had of course grown up but the image of the sweet seller (more often a giver than a seller) has never left their mind’s eye.
A couple of weeks back as I watched an RTE Nationwide special on Seán Ó Riada, the same thought crossed my mind when I heard Seán Ó Sé’s rendition of An Poc ar Buile, a song that would put even the most depressed contrarian into a bout of good humour.
It reminded me of a time fadó, fadó (that line is getting increasingly more common in my rambles) during the 1960s when the radio, and most notably Raidió Éireann, were really the only provider of news, entertainment and the odd weather forecast that penetrated into the kitchens of Irish homes. While television had officially arrived in Ireland, in reality, it had only penetrated into a very small number of homes.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
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Country Living with Francis Farragher
For most of us who grew up on family farms back through the decades, it could seem to be a very mixed bag. There were always ‘jobs’ to be done like looking at the cattle located a few miles away on a fine summer’s evening when a game of football would seem a lot more attractive.
There were the tougher jobs like thinnowing beet or turnips; footing turf for a day; or that task I hated with a vengeance – picking stones from the meadow fields. I could never quite figure out as a young lad why stones had to be picked almost every year – it was as if they grew out of the soil!
For all that, the quality of life was quite good for most of us out the country, even during the more straitened times of the 1960s, when in fairness, there was always healthy food on the table but very little by way of the clang of silver in your pocket.
In general, it was a time when farms were less intensive but in the ‘pre-dole days’, it still remains something of a mystery to me how families managed to rear and educate quite large ‘clutches’ of children.
There was of a course a whole culture of self-sufficiency on most farms with the hens supplying the eggs that provided food for the table and the ‘gugs’ also went a long way to paying for the groceries when the ‘travelling shop’ called once a week. We used to call him the ‘eggler’ – in my childhood days, a man called Christy Mannion from Barnaderg whose Wednesday visit to our house was almost akin to a Santa Claus arrival every week.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App
Download the Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App to access to Galway’s best-selling newspaper.
Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
Or purchase the Digital Edition for PC, Mac or Laptop from Pagesuite HERE.
Get the Connacht Tribune Live app
The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
Country Living with Francis Farragher
WE all get attached . . . nay, even dependent . . . on our technology devices, most notably the mobile phone, but here and there the technology does spook me a bit.
A couple of weeks ago, as I sat into my car one evening as I prepared to head for the hills, I began to sing a verse or two of the Beatles classic ‘Yesterday’.
The Apple CarPlay system was on in my car and I had scarcely completed the first verse of the song when lo and behold what started to play on the speakers but of one Paul McCartney with the ‘real thing’.
Now, some of my technology nerd acquaintances will come up with a simple explanation as to why this happened but it surely wasn’t a coincidence.
There are times too when I think I’m paranoid, or maybe not, when after certain conversations have taken place about anything from cars to canisters, an ad flashes across my iPhone about the topic we’d just been discussing.
And now, the latest buzz words in the whole chain of technology advancement are Artificial Intelligence or AI, which I have to admit is just a little bit above my basic level of competency or understanding of high-tech jargon.
Being of country stock, the AI initials always meant only one thing back the years – artificial insemination – when the man with the straws of bull semen would arrive on the farm to impregnate cows in what had to be a very non-pleasurable experience for all concerned.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App
Download the Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App to access to Galway’s best-selling newspaper.
Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
Or purchase the Digital Edition for PC, Mac or Laptop from Pagesuite HERE.
Get the Connacht Tribune Live app
The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
Country Living with Francis Farragher
Sometimes, the return drive from Dublin after a weekend sojourn in The Capital can feel a bit longer than it should. The passengers are generally tired and try to steal forty winks so often the radio is the best companion to court. With local stations out of range, I flicked through the channels on a Sunday evening and stumbled into one of those programmes that once you hear the beginning of . . . well it just sucks you in.
It was a documentary made a number of years back for Radio 1 on the Whistleblowers’ theme, featuring the story of one Father Gerard McGinnity who in the late 1970s and early 1980s was regarded as one of the ‘up-and-coming stars’ of the Catholic Church in Ireland being appointed as Senior Dean of Maynooth College in 1978 at the age of 32, decades younger than any of his predecessors.
The Armagh native seemed destined for high places in the Church hierarchy, with ‘the sky the limit’ for someone so young to have advanced so quickly through the ranks. However, all was to change dramatically around 1984, when Fr. McGinnity was made aware of allegations of possibly of improper contacts between the then Vice-President of Maynooth College, a Fr. Micheál Ledwith, and young seminarians.
Fr. McGinnity, still alive and well in his mid-70s, spoke on the documentary about how he wrestled with his conscience and what he should do after these concerns were raised with him.
Eventually, he made the decision, that he needed to express his concerns to a number of bishops and the then Papal Nuncio, Gaetano Alibrandi, expecting that his concerns would be treated in confidence and properly investigated. Neither of those two things happened.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App
Download the Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App to access to Galway’s best-selling newspaper.
Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
Or purchase the Digital Edition for PC, Mac or Laptop from Pagesuite HERE.
Get the Connacht Tribune Live app
The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
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