Merriment and Work in Donail in the 1940’s & 1950’s

By: Peadar Nugent

Peadar is a Donail native who now lives in Oranmore, Co. Galway, is an ardent athlete and historian and has loved to keep up with his native home.

‘My mother, Nora Crotty, from a musical farming family in Moyasta, married Joe Nugent and came to live in Donail in February 1936.  Their accommodation in the old house, typical of farmhouses of the time, was a thatched single storey dwelling, on the western side of the road in Donail East.  Joe’s older brother Patrick and their father Maurice also lived there.  As conditions became a bit cramped with the arrival of baby Joseph in April 1937, followed by Paddy in March 1938, additional space was called for.  So they built a new three bedroom slated bungalow directly across the road.  The builders were Jimmo, Matt and Murty Fitzpatrick from Knockerra and the cost of construction was approximately £100.  Joe, Nora and the two boys, together with Mary who was born in February 1939, moved into their new home later that year.  The parlour and bedrooms had timber floors while the kitchen, with its open fireplace, had a flagged floor.  Running water, flush toilets and electricity were still non-existent in the areas.  Need and affordability were the only requirements for a new home at that time.  If it was needed and could be afforded, it was built.  The electricity supply was not switched on in the parish until about 1954, while planning permission for any sort of development did not become a legal requirement until 1963.

The new house in Donail soon became a recognised centre for music, set-dancing, singing, story-telling and card-playing.  Many people called to Nugents on their cuairt to while away a few hours, particularly, during the long winter nights.  My mother played the fiddle and concertina while my father played the tin whistle.  Visiting musicians to our home over the years included Marty O’Connell from Lower Burrane who was a very accomplished bodhrán player, Mrs Galvin from Tarmon who played the fiddle and concertina, Paddy Frawley from Tarmon, Mickey (Pidder) and Frank Maloney from the Pipers’ Hill, Tonovoher, Marty Purtill from Clonderlaw, and Tommy McMahon from Cooraclare, all of whom played the concertina.  Larry Mulqueen from Molougha and Peter Haugh from Doonbeg, both of whom played the accordion upside down, were also regular visitors.  Other visitors included Fr Gerry Fitzpatrick who played the fiddle and concertina and Dan Furey who played the fiddle.  Dan, who was from Labasheeda, was also a very proficient step-dancer and taught his steps to several children all over West Clare.  His step-dancing is best remembered now for his unique rendering of The Priest in his Boots.  Mickey O’Shea from Kilrush often displayed his singing and step-dancing talents while Johnny Lyons from Moyadda provided his unique style of comedy.  A few memorable Wren Dances were also had in the two Nugent houses in the mid -1950’s.  The old house, which was no longer occupied, was the venue for the music and sets while the supper of tea, baker’s bread, butter and red jam was served in the new house.  A keg of porter was usually purchased also, to be downed by the older men.  Most of the younger generation didn’t drink alcohol at the time.

A lot of commodities were very scarce, following the ending of the Second World War in 1945, until the late 1940’s and ration books were introduced nationwide by the Government of the day to distribute limited supplies among the population.  Adults and children were treated as equals for the purposes of the distribution.  The Nugent household, with six young children and just two adults, did relatively well from this disposition.  It resulted in their allotment of some items being greater than their needs.  The excess tea, sugar and tobacco products were used as prizes in the card tournaments which were held regularly in their home.  The game, still very popular in the area, was forty-five, with two teams of three facing each other.  The victors in each round had to win a rubber, which was the best of nine games.  A unit consisted of eight teams and a number of units would contest the bigger tournaments.  Michael and PJ Miniter, Carhuefree, were chiefly involved in managing the entries and draws. 

My parents were very enterprising.  They had to be, to make ends meet on 35 acres of mixed quality bog farmland.  Three sows, each producing two litters in the year, were kept.  This ensured that there was a load of bonhams ready for the market in Kilrush or Kilmihil every two months.  Each sow, while littering, was brought in to the kitchen.  This was necessary to ensure the safety of the young, not yet strong enough to look after themselves, while their mother was moving about.  The bonhams were put in a tea chest while not feeding.  The whole lot would be moved out to a cabin after about a week and, after a good scrubbing of the flagged floor, the kitchen and its furnishings would return to their usual setting.  We also ran a chicken hatchery for a period of time in the 1950’s.  The principal breeds of hens at the time were Light Sussex, Rhode Island Reds and White Leghorns.  Located in the parlour, three incubators (two 150-egg and one 100-egg) were in use at the peak of the business.  This resulted in a fresh supply of chicks hatching out on a weekly basis.  The incubators had to be checked regularly during the three-week incubation period.  Maintaining the correct temperature was by means of paraffin oil fired heaters.  The hatching eggs had also to be damped regularly to maintain a sufficient degree of necessary moisture.  And they had to be tested for fertility after the first seven or eight days.  This was done in the darkened room, using a candle, at which stage the glugair (rotten egg)would be removed.  Generally, the day-old chickens were delivered by ourselves to the customers who had pre-ordered them.  Delivery was mostly by bicycle or pony and trap to locations as far apart as Doonbeg to the northwest and Aillroe, Labasheeda, to the east.  Occasionally a customer called in person to the house to collect them.       

Farming and related activities were very labour intensive back then.  Tractors didn’t replace the horse until much later and were mainly the preserve of agricultural contractors.  Setting potatoes was the first job to be done in spring after the end of winter.  The ground had first to be prepared.  This involved ploughing and harrowing with horse and plough or harrow, followed by opening of the drills.  The latter was also done by horse and plough.  The next part of the procedure was moving the dung – now commonly called farmyard manure – from the farmyard to be dumped in piles at intervals along the drills.  The heaps of dung had then to be scattered by hand, using forks, along the drills.  Meanwhile, the scealláin were being cut at home.  Seed potatoes were not in common use.  The scealláin were sown by hand, being spread from a bag apron tied around the waist.  The drills were then closed by horse and plough and left to nature to develop until picking in September, by which time they’d have grown in full.  The stalks would usually be sprayed a few times during the summer to protect the crop from blight.  The spraying was done by pumping a knapsack sprayer by hand while walking between the drills.  For harvesting the crop, the drills were opened by horse and plough.  Workers then had to make their way along the length of each drill on their knees and separate the potatoes from the clay and leave the produce in a line behind them.  The pickers then collected them in buckets and emptied them in a heap in a central location in the field.  There they were pitted on a bed of rushes and covered on the sides and top with more rushes before, finally, being covered by up to one foot of clay from the soil immediately around.  The pit was opened at times during the winter to take potatoes out, as the need arose.

The most common cereal crop grown in the area was oats.  Seed was sown, at about the same time as the potatoes were being sown, mostly by spreading by hand from a bucket.  This was followed by rolling.  A door in one of the farm outhouses would be lifted off its bacáin if there was no concrete roller available.  The door would be laid flat in the cornfield and chains would be attached to it so that it could be drawn by a horse.  The farmer would stand on the door to give it additional weight as it was being drawn.  The oats would normally ripen by August.  A farmer with one or two acres of oats used a scythe or a horse and mowing machine for cutting.  Each ráithín had then to be gathered by hand into sheaves which would next be bound, using eight or nine strands of the crop itself for each sheaf.  The bound sheaves were then gathered together into stooks.  In due course the stooks were collected from the field and brought into the haggard where they would be put in a wind to await the arrival of the thresher.  Jimo Fitzpatrick of Tarmon was the only one around with such a machine and he was always in huge demand in September.  You’d hear the musical sound of the thresher for miles around as a few men on the ground forked up the sheaves to the man on top who fed them into the machine.  Another man on the ground minded the bags as they filled with oats, while another was kept busy forking the straw out of the way.  Some of the straw was made into a cock and neatly headed, to be used later for bedding in the sheds where cattle had to be housed during winter; while more was set aside as material for making súgáin to be used in reseating chairs.  The bigger farmers with large acreage hired a tractor-drawn Reaper and Binder to make short work of the cutting, gathering and binding.

Easter week was the normal time to hit for the bog.  The potatoes and oats would already be sown.  Jack ‘Captain’ Browne had a bog in Derrylough where he rented banks to those who wanted them.  The going rate for a bank of 70/80 yards long was £5.  Preparation of the bank, included cutting a slit with a hay knife on the scraw, which covered the turf, about four feet in from the edge of the bank.  The scraw was then dug loose and tipped into the hole.  The hard work of cutting and spreading followed.  Cutting to a depth of four or five sods was done by hand, using a sleán.  Spreading was also done by hand, often by two people using pitchforks or four-pronged forks and, sometimes, a turf barrow.  One of the spreaders would be up on the bank while the other would spread on the lower deck.  Cutting would usually last a week and, depending on the weather, the turf would be ready for turning a couple weeks later.  Footing and making gróigeáin followed when the turf was fully dry and then it was usually left in the bog until autumn.  Turning, footing and making gróigeáin was back-breaking as it was all done by hand.  On the other hand, bringing the turf home was a most enjoyable experience.  A bank would usually yield 60 or 70 horse creels, and it was normal to deliver one full creel to the school and one to the priest at that stage for winter heating.

Hay making involved cutting by horse-drawn mowing machine, turning by hand or tosser, raking with a raker into rows, and collecting the rows with a tumbler (paddy) to various locations in the meadow, for tramming.  A few weeks later the trams would be brought from all the meadows into the haggard by horse and tramcar and, with the help of a few neighbouring men, the reek would be made.  Hay barns hadn’t come into general use in farmyards until later.  The two-eye or three-eye barns which were gradually coming into use were erected mostly by Pat McInerney of Donail and Joe Madigan of Derrylough.

The original national school in Knockerra opened in 1886.  It had open fire-places, no running water, no central heating, no electricity, dry outside toilets peculiarly called ‘lavatories’ despite their lack of flushing other than from dripping roofs, and separate play area yards – separated at the rear by a dry stone wall – for the boys and girls.  The starting age for school at that time was in or about 6 years and First Communion was made towards the end of high, now called senior, infants.  The school stood the test of time well, until a fire engulfed it one December night in 1951. Free education had not yet been introduced and 14 years was the minimum age for leaving school.  Following the fire, the children scattered to various other national schools, depending which was closest to where they lived generally.  Nora, Imy and Peadar Nugent, from Donail, together with Senan and Francis Mulqueen from Molougha, transferred to Killimer N.S. (where numbers were falling and the danger of closure was a possibility) because of family connections with the only teacher there, Mrs Kitty Sheehan.  Burrane N.S., Tullycrine N.S., Cooraclare N.S., and the primary schools in Kilrush were others which benefitted from the resultant temporary increase in numbers.  The local children began to return gradually to Knockerra in early spring 1952 and were accommodated initially in the sacristy of St Senan’s Church pending the provision of more permanent premises.  Don’t think for a moment that corporal punishment was the sole preserve of those in religion at that time.  I saw more severe beatings meted out by one or two of the lay teachers in those schools than I ever saw elsewhere.  Mrs Mac who taught me in Knockerra for 2½ years until the fire outbreak was not one of those brutes.  The Nugents and Mulqueens remained on and completed their primary education in Killimer.  School buses were unheard of then and the daily travel to Killimer involved a round trip of six miles.  At certain times of the year one could be lucky enough to get a lift for part of the way from Tommy Ryan in his horse-drawn rubber-wheeled cart or from TJ Crowe in his van on their way home from Derrylough creamery.  Tommy and TJ both lived in Carrowdotia, some little distance beyond the school.  Houses along the route belonged to, among others, Sonny and Mrs McMahon, Michael and Bridie O’Leary, Mike ‘Cutch’ Moloney, John Nolan and his mother at Killimer Post Office, Mrs Mulvihill, Pat, James and Baby Casey, John and Mai Hickey, and the ‘Monk’ O’Dea.  Killimer post office, at Poulnadarree Cross, is long since closed and not even the ruins of the building remain.  The children visited and chatted to all of those people on a regular basis on their way home from school.  This was a mutually beneficial happening for all involved.  They are all now imithe ar shlí na fírinne.  Ar dheis Dé go raibh a n-anamacha dílse. 

The location of the old school in Knockerra took on a new role in the mid-1950’s when it opened as a dance hall.  Very successful and well attended modern dances as well as céilís were held in what was named St Senan’s Hall.  These were run by way of fund raising ventures for the new school, then at the planning stage.  The dances continued to attract huge crowds until into the mid-1960’s and the hall was probably the second most popular in Clare after Paddy Con’s in Ennis.  Among the more popular bands to play St Senan’s Hall on the céilí side were the Tulla, the Kilfenora and the Shamrock, while the Premier Aces and, particularly, Tommy Cleary always brought in huge crowds for the showband-style modern dances.  The dances finished at midnight while the clocks were in winter time mode, but continued until 1am once the clocks went forward at the end of March.  It seems that the Church, in the pre-Vatican II era, ignored the change in the clock.  And, of course, there were no dances held during either Lent or Advent in that era.  An important feature of the hall was its mineral bar at the opposite end to the band stage.  The parish of Knockerra/Killimer was probably unique at the time in not having a public house.  It’s many a love story began in the mineral bar and plenty people have very happy memories of their time foot tapping and dating on the boards of St Senan’s Hall.

There were very few cars in the parish in this period.  Fr Galvin PP, the Miss Hassetts of Besborough House (who employed John Hickey as their chauffeur/factotum), Tommy Power, Paddy Duggan (who also ran a limited hackney service), Joe McInerney of the Castle Dairy, Donogrogue, and Harry Upton (the creamery manager in Derrylough) were among the very few who enjoyed such a luxury.  The curate relied on a trusty bicycle, even in his travels around the local roads after the dances had ended in the local hall – to ensure that the young men and ladies didn’t dally on their way home.’