"...stories birling through my mind..."
A literary journey
Nostalgic Irish prose
Irish culture & folklore
Ulster-Scots short stories
Literary Essays
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 There is crooked road that curls its way around the coast of County Antrim. Along the crooked road is a tunnel cut from cavernous rock. They once called it the Black Cave Tunnel for it is formed from that same long, tall cave, but you will know it by its common name, The Black Arch.
If you hold on tightly to the rusty railings by the Black Arch and follow the steep, slippery steps down towards the sea, you will find a cavern of red rock. It goes by the name of The Devil’s Churn. There you will hear the sea slurp and glug back and forth through the eye of the cavern. Listen closely and you will also hear music. Listen closely and you will hear the music that turns the tide. Why is the music so sad? Why is the music so flawless? Let me tell you the story of the Piper of Black Cave. *** The Hiring Fair was black with people. The piper boy stood upon his wooden case and peered over the backs of two stout, dun heifers towards a girl in a ragged, red dress.
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 Martha Doey (nee Taylor) aged 15-16 (circa 1933). Burning corks for eyeliner by the fire Two years ago, I began to do some historical research for a new novel called Waterloo Road. I was able to draw from my own experiences, having grown up with great aunts and uncles who lived on the Waterloo Road, but when Barbra Cooke got in touch to tell me about her granny Martha Doey’s diary, the novel came to life in my mind. Barbra’s aunt Irene, Martha’s daughter, invited me to her home to learn more, and during that interview, I picked up the kind of detail that could not be found in a newspaper or a history book. I discovered a world in which women scrubbed their teeth with soot from the fire, painted their eyebrows with burnt cork and went hungry as rationing stretched from one world war to the next. A picture emerged in my mind, a hazy outline of an industrial area that only half exists today, the old red brick walls of the linen mill still standing on the Lower Waterloo Road; the unbridled noise of looms, smoke belching from chimneys and the giant damn for steeping flax near present day Kent Avenue all gone. The people who congregated at the factory corner outside Billy Boyd’s store were already known to me, as I’d spent so much of my childhood at that same corner buying sweets from Duddy’s or Sally’s shop, but I began to see my old aunts and uncles more clearly. I also started to understand the significance of the 12 foot high wall that separated the kitchen houses of the Waterloo Road from the big houses where the captains and doctors resided. I discovered the world of Little Ballymena, a quarter of Larne that has since lost the moniker for which it was once known. My great grandparents were among first generation to fill the kitchen houses on the Waterloo Road, Herbert Avenue and Newington Avenue in the late 1800s. They were farming people with “Broad Scotch” accents, an eclectic mix of every Protestant denomination; religious affiliations that were often determined by whichever church was providing handouts to the poor and needy. Such folk, alongside their Catholic friends, were all united in a love of whiskey, dancing and music. Martha Taylor’s diary is buoyant with the kind of language that comes from listening and yarning. The rhythm and phrasing her words echo conversations conducted over washing lines; tales whispered in queues when ships bearing bananas came into dock and stories formed in a world in which women talked for hours. I haven't attempted to reproduce any of Martha’s diary: The following words are merely notes with my own insights of a short but rich historical resource. A life of serfdom Martha, who was born in 1917, begins the diary as a small child sitting on an army blanket in the back garden of number 15 Waterloo Road. The walls are thick with snow and she is content watching the robins hop along them. She is writing in the year 2001, her mind flooded with early memories. Martha’s peace on the army blanket is shattered when she hears soldiers marching. “Tramp, tramp, tramp,” she writes. She is a small child and she is afraid. A great military parade to welcome the soldiers home after Armistice is likely to have been the occasion. Brown’s Factory area is beset with unemployment in the 1920s as the linen trade goes into decline. Men are to be found on street corners lamenting the lack of work and gravitating towards socialism. Women, who are never far from hard work, continue to scrub laundry for a pittance, tend to cut knees, cook and clean.  Jane McCullagh (nee Lyttle), who is known as Jean. Jean is the daughter of Samuel Lyttle and Mary Lyttle (nee Gillen)  Baby Jane Lyttle in 1914 My Great Aunt Jean McCullagh (nee Lyttle) was 104 this week. Happy birthday Jean!
Jean is my granny Rossborough's sister. I interviewed her a couple of years ago when I was writing an historical novel and thought this would be a nice time to share what she told me. My mum is very fond of her aunt Jean. I always remember Jean sitting in the Murrayfield shopping centre when I was wee and my mum yarning to her for an eternity. Jean said that when she goes for medical appointments, the nurses sometimes take pictures of her. They also invariably ask her what the secret is to a long life. She tells them that she was reared on goats milk and that she had bacon, eggs and soda fresh from the griddle every morning. Jean's mother was Mary Lyttle (nee Gillen). She was from Ballysnod and lived there most of her days. Jean’s father was Samuel Lyttle, whose parents were from Maghera. Mary’s father was Patrick Gillen, who, like many people in the late 1800s, left these shores for America. He was forty at the time, and it is believed that he may have died before actually boarding the ship. His wife, Isabella Gillen, my great great granny, was therefore alone for most of her adult life. Jean loved visiting her Granny, Isabella. She too was from Ballysnod, but lived in a thatched cottage at Bank Quays near the Glynn. The house was on the opposite side to Howdens and located back from the road at the foot of a steep glen. Jean frequently ran down though the fields between Ballysnod and the Glynn with her siblings. They slept in an old settle bed filled with straw by the fire when they stayed over with their Granny Gillen. Jean recalls that her granny used to walk as far as Carrickfergus to sell eggs and to visit a relative. Childhood play for my granny’s siblings involved hoops and skipping ropes. The children also had free reign of Arnold's farm. Jean’s mother, Mary, rarely ventured beyond the end of the lane, but the world came to Mary’s door with people selling a variety of goods, not least needles, pins and thread, essential items for a talented seamstress. The fishman also came once a week, whilst Jean remembers an auld boy called Tinman, who sold the family tin cups and a tin teapot. The John Hewitt Society International Summer School  Here I am in Armagh, in voluntarily exile with nothing but a suitcase and a notebook, assigned to a dorm, a world away from my job, my husband, my children, my king-sized bed and all my inhibited freedoms.
I think of my responsibilities from time to time. They roll through my mind at the speed of steel bowls as I meander through the narrow streets, and they clock against my ears like wood on leather as I pass the cricket pitch on the Mall, but the itinerary is tight, the talks and entertainment uplifting, the friends giddy, and so, I walk each day in selfish sandals in the heat of a rare Ulster summer to the Market Place Theatre and Arts Centre in Armagh. I could write about all the talks I’ve attended and all the people I’ve met, but the reader would see only a blur of names and not the essence of the John Hewitt experience: the wonder of first-time writers, the humour of those who ‘dabble in silly rhymes’, the swagger of outspoken critical thinkers, the idiosyncrasies of spacey poets who talk of other dimensions and the calm aura of the odd bestselling novelist who had no intention of ever becoming a writer at all. Whilst the talks, readings and conversations are enthralling, some of the most meaningful exchanges occur in surrounding cafes, where tips are given freely and friendships blossom. I studied French at university and always wondered if I’d ever find my Rive Gauche. I didn’t expect to find it in Armagh. I befriend a local writer called Byddi Lee, a fellow member of Women Aloud and author of ‘March to November.’ Her gorgeous Goldilocks curls come bouncing into my life as she utters a sentence that fills me with hope and fear in equal measures: ‘I’m reading Snugville Street.’ I laugh and assure Byddi that my novel about a French exchange set between Belfast and Paimpol is mostly fiction. Byddi Lee points to her childhood home on the market place and gives me an insight into her upbringing, a precious window into the soul of a city. You see, Byddi Lee and me, we are as two Cathedrals, raised on opposing plinths of old battle lines.  How did did our ancestors, the young and old of nineteenth century Ulster, foot it to the dance floor? The answer, if you're partial to Victorian literature, can be found in a recently republished novel called Orange Lily. May Crommelin’s novel, set in County Down in the 1870s, is well worth a read, but what caught my attention, as I made the last touches to my book on the history of Irish dancing, was the description of dancing, and in particular, the reference to Soldier's Joy, my 6 year-old daughter's favourite team dance. No slithery-slathery walzes!
‘Soldier’s Joy' is a popular team (country) dance in the festival tradition of Irish dancing, and the dance is a charming spectacle to behold as the children knock, knock, knock, clap clap clap and rolly polly polly to the music. However, in Orange Lily, the dance is a little more rustic. ‘Big Gilhourn,’ an affable farmer, who has taken a fancy to Orange Lily despite her unerring love for Tom, takes to the earthen floor of the barn like Michael Flatley, rejecting any notion of lilting to a modern dance: “None of your new slithery-slathery walzes for me. What I like best is to see a man get up and take the middle of the floor - and foot it there for a good hour!’ ‘The Soldier’s Joy’ for me, if I may make so bold as to ask that request.” A few weeks ago, I embarked an eight-week course in the Irish language and I can now say: “Tá athas orm.” Happiness is on me. I've always been captivated by languages. At the age of four, I heard the resonant words, “L’Irlande, douze points, “La Royaume Uni, nul point,” and I was intrigued. Decoding the Eurovision Song contest scoring system soon became an annual quest. Two years later, listening to a pretty German lady singing ‘Ein bisschen Frieden’ (A little peace) marked the turning point in my linguistic aspirations. “I cannae get over it! Thon’s a quare an good song,” said my daddy, who only spoke English. I guess everyone in Northern Ireland wanted ein bisschen Frieden in April 1982. I became a dedicated language enthusiast, reading and translating the foreign words on the Vosene bottle in the bath and giving ‘Frère Jacques’ slightly more ding ding dong than my contemporaries. By the time I was 16, I came to understand that languages were my ticket out of Northern Ireland, its trouble and its rain: Ein bisschen Wärme, das wünsch ich mir. The dalliance with German ended after GCSE, but French was a life-long love affair that would ultimately lead to the fictional French exchange in my first published novel, Snugville Street. The EU was said to be the key that would open doors for all of us working class children in Larne in the 1980s and 1990s, and it was true: languages and an EU passport allowed me to compete for jobs that were inaccessible to my parent's generation.  The Braid Water Recreation Club Irish Dancing Team, late 1940s (Source: Mid Antrim Museum and Arts Centre at the Braid.) Miss Agnes McConnell, later Mrs Close, was born in 1901 at 1 Railway Street, Ballymena. It is not clear who taught Agnes McConnell to dance in the Irish style promoted by the Gaelic League, but it is likely that she learned from another family member. Agnes would have been accustomed to the style particular to her area before conforming to the Munster style at the festivals after 1928: much of the adjudicator commentary of the early festivals centred around the taming of arms and Scottish influences among the Larne and Ballymena dancers.
Ballymena was certainly a hub of traditional dancing in Agnes’ formative years: the Protestant Hall in the 1910s and 1920s regularly accommodated Irish night festivities. When Madame McConnell, a Ballymena singer from a separate McConnell line, invited Miss Louise Agnese from Cork to the Protestant Hall in 1911 for an evening of theatrical and musical entertainment that included Irish jigs and reels, hundreds of people had to be turned away. Likewise, local teachers, the Misses Millar, who taught Madame McConnell’s children, included Irish jigs and reels in their fancy dance displays. Miss Agnes McConnell ran what the family called the “original and only dancing club in Ulster” in Railway Street from at least the late 1920s, if not earlier. Most of the McConnell siblings were involved in dancing, including Sam, who was born in 1911; Fred, who was born in 1915 and Pearl who was born in 1920. The children grew up in Harryville, a working class area of town that provided manpower for the local linen mill. Most of Miss Agnes McConnell’s aunts and uncles worked at the mill: her mother, Margaret was a spinner and her father, David, a fitter. The McConnell family, who belonged to the Church of Ireland, would not have been part of the Gaelic League’s new dawn of saffron and green. Those Protestants involved in the Gaelic League revival of the early 1900s tended to be from middle class or aristocratic stock. Harryville was a unionist, working class and Protestant heartland where the voices were ‘broad Scotch’ and a Twelfth of July arch was decked out in in red, white and blue. The McConnells appear at the 1929 Ballymena festival as ‘The Shamrock team,’ featuring Miss Pearl McConnell, younger sister of Agnes. Their performance was noted by adjudicator, Mr Denis Cuffe, as the finest he’d seen in a life-time. In subsequent years, the McConnell dancers were entered into competitions under the name of ‘Miss McConnell’s school.’ Miss Sally McCarley, who later taught her cousin, Mrs Sadie Bell (née Kernohan) to dance, was instructed by Miss Agnes McConnell in the early 1930s. Although Sadie went on  This book is page turner and a wonderful unintended excursion. It is ironic that I got lost in a glen on the way to Jo Zebedee’s book launch for Waters and the Wild, and I certainly gave my friends a wee titter on facebook when I described that journey from Larne to Carickfergus. How can anyone from Larne get lost on the back road to Carrickfergus?
At first I blamed the majesty of Glenoe, but maybe, just maybe, there were wee winged creatures in the undergrowth guiding my destination! I recently stumbled across the Ordnance surveys of the 1830s and discovered that apart from drinking copious amounts of whiskey and dancing their socks off, Presbyterians and Catholics of County Antrim in Victorian times were united in an unerring belief in the fairies! The Glens of Antrim surround the town in which I live and they have claimed a great big part of my heart: Sunday drives to buy ice-cream in Carnlough; childhood beach trips to Waterfoot; practice hikes and expeditions through marshy mountains on Duke of Edinburgh awards; romantic flights of fancy in a white Fiat Uno with my boyfriend in 1994; guiding tourists (without getting lost) around the waterfalls at Glenoe and Glenariff; leafy walks with my children around Glenarm forest and the music and laughter of the annual Dalriada festival. In short; enough to inspire my own literary endeavours. “It’s set in the Glens!” she said, and that’s all it took for me to be compelled to read Jo Zebedee’s Waters and the Wild. The decommissioning of arms
Mr Sean O’Togda complained in 1924 of the ignorance of youth as a result of the decline of the old dance masters. Mr O’Togda had a teacher of the traditional style who taught dancing to women in the following way: “To add grace and variety to the dance, he showed them how to dance with arms akimbo and to place the hands gracefully on the hips…He also showed the girls how to hold their skirts lightly at the side with thumb and index finger of both hands, and slightly and gracefully keep them out from the sides” (Weekly Freeman’s Journal.) In a 1904 photograph of an Irish dancer, “Cassie” in Victorian attire at the Feis na Gleann, the dancer has both hands on her hips. Miss Patricia Mulholland, a Belfast dance mistress, who began teaching in the 1930s, was also an exponent of the use of arms. “As far as I was concerned, arms poker-rigid beneath an expressionless face had little attraction. I wanted to inject more feeling, and, in the process, let Irish dancing come into contact with the widest possible audience.” (MacCafferty) Arms were, however, discouraged by some dance teachers in the nineteenth century. Mr Trench, a dance master operating in the south of Ireland in the early 1800s instructed that arms should hang gracefully to the side. He actively discouraged the flinging of these limbs about, or flourishing them on the level with the head; an indication that the dancers either had a tendency to naturally liberate their limbs in ethereal motion, or that in some previous time, the arms had moved freely. Another reflection on pre-dance master times is this: “During the rapid exercise, Nancy occasionally clapped one hand on her well-developed hip.” (Irish dancing sixty years ago.) The white collar scholars of the Gaelic League and the country dancers went head to head in a great national and nationalistic debate about what exactly Irish dancing was, and the Gaelic League turned to the south-west for inspiration, applying the Munster style found in areas of counties Kerry, Cork and Limerick to step dancing in the rest of the country. Foley observes that the dances were to be “controlled, disciplined, skilled and asexual;” hip slapping and flings thereby excluded.  This week marks the end of a chapter of my life as a full-time author, during which time, I can’t help but think that someone inadvertently plugged me into the wall.
Those who have undertaken novel writing as a profession will understand what I mean when I say that real life can be an inconvenience. Words rise up in the dead of the night; charged atoms that twist and turn until the school run is complete, at which point they explode mercilessly onto the screen. Any glimpse of reality is a gross impediment. A phone call, a parcel at the door, the school bell and the bothersome iMac message, “Your mouse battery is low,” all become implicated in the creative fall-out. A few weeks ago, I surrendered to reality. I had been applying for jobs for a while, each application appearing on my screen like a waning mouse battery warning, but this job felt different. Perhaps it was down to timing, the job affixing itself, neatly to the end of a chapter. Or, perhaps it was a fateful moment during which the atoms of my life were aligned. Regardless, I understood that the career as a full-time novelist was over, and I began to re-enter the strangely familiar world that had hitherto been known as normality. |
ProseThe Piper of Black Cave
82 Waterloo Road Ballysnod The Teacher Voice The Last Day of Summer Scheme Uniquely Girls' Brigade The Children of Latharna The Band Stick The Bully up the Brae A dander around Larne God Created Butlins History & folkloreMartha Taylor's diary
Jean McCullagh at 104 Ballymena & the McConnells Arms in Irish Dancing Catholics & Protestants in Irish dancing EssaysIrish Times:
Irish Dancing: The Festival Story The Protestant in Irish Fiction. The Protestant in Irish fiction II Ulster-Scots in Irish Fiction An author in Wonderland Belfast Telegraph: Irish Dancing Miscellaneous Dancing in Victorian Ulster Learning the Irish Language. John Hewitt Summer School Book reviewsArchives
May 2019
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