The Community

Two boys wrote articles under the heading My Own District. They contain gems of local information. Both mention the crops sown on their respective farms. One gives precise quantities and acreage, which includes a quarter of an acre of cabbage (p. 358). He also gives some field names. The same writer gives a description of his house (p. 360): ‘There are three chimneys on our house and there are four bedrooms a kitchen a parlour a hall a pantry a bathroom one garret two lofts. …Our house is over a hundred years old and there is a pump in the street and it is twenty-two feet deep.’

The second writer recounts a fairy legend (pp 311-12) associated with his grandfather and a ringfort on the family farm. A maid was milking the cows one evening when she saw tubs of gold in the fort. She had a spancel tying the cow. She used it to mark the bush where she saw the gold. The writer continues: ‘She went home to get bags to bring the money but when she came back the fort was full of spancels and the gold was gone.’ Fairies are not mentioned but the whole sense of his narrative depends on their existence. [26]. Belief in fairies was very strong here as elsewhere up until recent times.

A female writer wrote about two local Ringforts (369-70). Superstitious beliefs are associated with one. ‘Sometimes in winter nights we used to see lights going up to the sky from it. The people used to say that money was there and that a fairy hound was there minding it.’ The second ringfort is reputed to have been the dwelling place of the local female notoriety referred to earlier (The Hag of Bealaha).

The section on Famous People relates incidents of unusual acts of skill, endurance, courage or ingenuity. One tells of how a servant girl came to the rescue of a family who ‘ran short’ of bread (p. 327). She got up at five a.m. and went out to the corn. ‘She cut it, threshed it, sieved it, ground it between two querns, made a cake of it, baked it and had it on the table for the man and woman’s breakfast.’ In this instance the name of the girl is not given. In some of the other feats the names and addresses of the achievers are given.

The short section on the Landlord by a female and a male writer is useful for its omissions as well as for what it includes. The opening sentence under this topic is (p. 347): ‘Mr. Stacpoole was the landlord in this district fifteen years ago but all the landlords are done away with now.’ Nothing more is mentioned about him personally or about the reputation of the Stacpoole family. The system of non-fixity of tenure and the evictions which frequently resulted is related but with a distinctive local flavour. The manner in which a ‘League house’ was built, roofed, scrawed and thatched all in one day for evicted tenants is retold (p. 348). ‘The grabber’ is described (p. 347) as a person who would ‘come and build a new house and have your land and they would buy cows and horses and put them into your land.’ The writer continues (p. 348): ‘Sometimes you would hear people say that people that grab land would never have a day’s luck but plenty people grabbed land and are more lucky today than people that never grabbed it.’

The second writer, a boy, described how his grandfather was evicted in 1873 because he would not act as an informer. He had seen a poacher shooting but refused to give his name to the gamekeeper. Although rent and rates were paid eviction ensued. The boy’s closing sentence is (p. 349): ‘He (the boy’s grandfather) looked for compensation but his case was thrown out of court.’ The simple English used by the children gives a clear view of how the landlord system was viewed by the tenant class.

The section on Patron Saint has two accounts of pieces of folklore associated with the life of St. Senan. The most significant part from the local point of view is (p. 351): ‘A bell fell from heaven to St. Senan on a little hill hear Bansha.’ The ‘little hill’, situated c. 250 metres from the school, has a monument called St. Senan’s Altar. This was restored in the early nineties and with an annual mass continues to be a place of significance in the locality. The restoration is an example of the revival of traditional veneration for a significant site in the landscape.

The final topic is Travellers. One female writer discusses different types of travellers that graced the community with their presence from time to time. She names clean and dirty ‘tinkers’. These made mugs, saucepans and buckets out of tin. She also uses the word ‘tramps’. Some travelled around with wagons, animals and ‘a lot of children’ (p. 373). Others came out of towns and asked for lodgings for the night. Some were storytellers. Gipsies sold jewellery and ‘other useful little articles’ (p. 374). She relates a story of a gipsy woman who told a woman’s fortune forecasting her untimely death.