Well you might wonder why I chose such a title. It just dawned on me that the people who lived in the early and mid part of the 20th century were a cut above the people who are cock of the walk today. Again you might ask why. Well I think form my perspective that people who lived then, the parents and grandparents of the people of today, really had a raw deal in comparison. So let’s begin.
My father James (Jimmy) Kavanagh, the youngest of four children, was born in 1909 in Hollyfort, near Gorey, in Co. Wexford. He went to school in Monaseed, a small two teacher school in that famous village about two miles from Hollyfort. Monaseed was the birthplace of Myles Byrne the famous rebel of 1798. Myles Byrne, having survived the rebellion, fled to France and became a general in the French army wrote his memoirs known to every schoolboy of my generation. As my father-in-law, Jim Deegan, used to say, it was a ‘poor part’. What Jim meant was that the area in general was economically disfavoured. At the time I got to know Hollyfort it was a miserable street. And a small street at that. I suspect it hadn’t changed a lot from the time my father was a boy in the early 1900s. The ’street’ consisted of about 6 houses, two shops (one of them in one of the houses) one of them a pub/shop and a guard’s barracks. My grandfather lived in one of those houses and he had neighbours on either side. Fortunes lived in the house at the lower end and Greenes lived in the other. When I was a child old Mrs. Greene had a shop in the front room of her house. But more of that anon. My father was considered a bright boy but he only managed to go to school until 5th class. Then he was apprenticed to a grocer in Carnew. I had three aunts ( my father’s sisters) and they were Mary(the eldest) Janie and Ciss. Mary was very bright too and won a scholarship which enabled her to become a schoolteacher. Janie stayed at home in Hollyfort for a time and my aunt Ciss married a man called Jim Brien, a forestry worker.
Mary (after she had graduated) married John Murphy from Gorey, a monumental sculptor of note. She worked most of her life in Monaseed School but was a teacher in the Loreto Convent in Gorey before her retirement. John and Mary lived in a house on Railway Road in Gorey. And that was a quaint town too in the 1940s. Mary and John had three children, Breda, Pauline and Mary. Breda and Mary are married and live in Wickow and Kildare respectively. Pauline, a bank manager, lives in Dublin. I often went to Gorey to see my cousins and aunts and uncle. They were most hospitable. Every adult in that house smoked and when I visited I was no exception. I used to go with a 50 packet of Sweet Afton just to impress them! John and Mary were probably the most travelled people in Gorey in those days when money was scarce. They visited practically every country in Europe but as far as I know they never went to the U.S. or Asia. Of course travel was very limited in those days. John was very talented and painted beautiful pictures in the Webb style which are still in the family possession. John, Mary and Janie were lovely gentle people who had a huge number of friends in Gorey and in Co. Wexford in general.
Janie, lovingly known as Auntie Janie, moved from Hollyfort to Gorey in the 1950s to look after her sister Mary’s children and spent her life in Gorey. Janie was a very popular person there and was equally popular with her nephews and nieces. Her life should not go unnoticed. She loved Bingo and took up fishing at one stage and became a violin player to boot. She smoked fags to beat the band. She might still be alive today if she hadn’t fallen while under the influence and broken her ankle. She was about 75 then. After a few months in hospital and a few months at home she had to succumb to the ignominy of going to a nursing home in Riverchapel. She was well looked after there but died after a few months. I heard after her death that Janie had an aunt (Kavanagh) who came from Dublin to live in Gorey and who left a lot of family papers behind her after her death. Unfortunately I never met her or saw the papers.
My Aunt Ciss was married to Jim Brien and they lived in Ballintlea near Hollyfort. I spent a lot of time in their house in the summers of the late 1940s and early 1950s. Of all the hospitable people in the world the Briens were the tops. They were, like most of the population of Ireland, as poor as church mice. Yet they had an open house. All the neighbours called and the house was full of mirth and jollity. When I knew them Ciss was already old in appearance though I suppose she was only in her mid forties. Jim was equally aged but only about the same chronological age. But all that belied their great hearts. What wonderful people they were – full of fun and never a bad word about any one. They lived in a council cottage with a kitchen and three bedrooms. The toilet was about half an acre. They had no running water. The well was about half a mile away in Mordaunt’s field. Water for washing came from the roof via shutes. I spent some of the best weeks of my life in Briens house.
They a fairly large family some of whom were much older than me. Molly was the eldest. A buxom girl at that time she was and is today a jolly fun loving person. Molly has a family and now lives in Australia. Jimmy was their second child. What a lovable friendly man he was. Full of fun and mischief. He owned one of the first cars to grace the roads of Ballintlea. To me it was a Rolls Royce but to the discerning eye it was only a banger. He brought us to Mass in the Mount in that Rolls. The Mount famous as a school of the Benedictine Monks where many famous men attended including Liam Cosgrave a Taoiseach of Ireland was the former Mount Nebo home to Hunter Gowan the bloodthirsty shoemaker from Gorey who terrorised the people of that district in 1798. But there we went to Mass with Jimmy in the car. All the other folk around went in pony and traps or on bicycles or walked.
Jimmy was the first entrpeneur in Ireland. He hired me and my brother and his own family to pick blackberries. We all set too with a will and Jimmy paid us 1s. 6d. a stone. We were very happy and I spent may long and carefree days picking the wild berries. Jimmy had a big barrel in the back and when he filled it up, or rather when we filled it up, he sold the contents for 2s.6d a pound. We were happy, Jimmy was ecstatic and the man who collected the barrel was satisfied. At night Briens became alive with the music and singing and camaraderie of social intercourse. There was one man who came there to visit and what a singer he was. Caruso would hardly hold a candle to him. The passage of time has dimmed my memory and I cannot recall that lovely man’s name. He married Statia Greene and he worked dragging timber from the wood with horses. I went with him once or twice to do that work but I suspect I was more in the way than not. The Greene brothers were regular visitors as was Pat Mordaunt and Mick Mordaunt who had a huge lump under his jaw that eventually killed him. They were all pleasant gentle people who never let obscene language pass their lips. In fact my memory tells me that obscene language was never heard at all in that house of gentle folk. And I suspect that that is so there today where my cousin Mick Brien is lord of the manor.
The Greenes who called were Mr. Greene (on rare occasions) who was the father of Tommy, Bill and Eddie who were regulars and Statia whom I never saw. He had other sons too but they were not included in my memory bank as I only heard about them. Mrs. Greene never called either but I got to know her pretty well as I went there calling on many occasions. At home the Greenes were as gentle and kind as they were when they visited. Their house was my house. I sat at their table where Mrs. Greene covered the table with a mountain of floury potatoes, and gave us bacon on plates and big mugs of buttermilk. Hens ran around the kitchen and Mrs. Greene did her best to hoosh them out over the half door.
Mrs. Greene’s brother Bill Pierce lived there too and he was as courteous and gentle as his in-laws. I roamed all over the house without let but I never ventured up the stairs as I knew that was their private quarters. However I often went into Bill’s room which was on the ground floor and used to be the parlour before he came to stay. He had shotguns and mirrors in there and a settle bed. He never minded my poking around in there and never came into the room while I was there. Greene’s had an orchard with wonderful fruits on the trees – damsons, apples and pears. But it was always a bit dark and smelled bad enough. I guess they used it as their toilet.
Harvest time was wonderful at Greenes. They were glad of the help at stooking and stacking. The weather always seemed to be fine then and the harvest was always saved. Of course I had to go home and never saw the threshing. But then I had ample opportunity at home where my uncles were involved in farming activities.
