“Give us This Day. . .”.

I was the youngest of five children. My mother died when I was four years old. Dad raised the five of us on his own. We had a big two-storey house on a large farm in Holyrood. I often think of how cold it was in the morning when I stepped out of bed. I also remember having a pee pot under the bed.

The thing that sticks in my memory was the hole in the ceiling. I spent a lot of time there, mostly listening to what was going on. I was being quite nosy actually. Most of what I heard was everyday talk, neighbours and relatives dropping in to chat. I couldn’t see a lot because the hole was directly over the stove and my view was limited. I could see, however, the end of the couch, which was by the kitchen stove.

What I saw there one morning has stayed with me over the years and been a great sense of comfort for me. Dad was a big strong man who farmed for a living. There he was kneeling on the floor, his elbows on the couch, his head in his hands, saying his prayers before he started the day. We talk about things in life which influence the way we live and something as simple as this has strongly influenced mine.

“The Dance”

In the early 1950s, we young ones heard of a concert on Ireland’s Eye Island. A crowd of us got in a boat on a cold windy November night and headed for Ivanhoe, where the concert was going ahead. After the concert, which was only about a half-hour long, the dance started.

During the dance a young fellow from Ivanhoe invited our boyfriends to come with him for a drink, which was not unusual during outport dances. Off they chased this young fellow, who was about fifteen or sixteen years old. He took them to his home, where he planked a bottle on the table. More than likely it was moonshine. The kitchen was full of people telling stories and singing songs. Our boyfriends told us they didn’t know anything before this older man with a three-day beard poked his head down the hole, above the stove. From his vantage point he insisted, “Put MY bottle on the table and have a swalley on me.”

There were lots of hoots and hollers. It seems that the old fellow had been barred from the dance the week before for fighting and his wife only allowed him out of bed, as far as the hole, that night.