The O'Sullivans of Muingaphuca, by Helen Curtin Moskey

poetry, and personal memoir.

The centerpiece of the collection, A Kerry Ethnography, was the culmination of the author’s more than ten years of research in the United States and in Ireland. It

his wife Margaret Foley (Peg Fól).

Cover photograph by David McKinley. Front window of the O’Sullivan Ancestral Home, 2001.

O’Sullivans of Muingaphuca

O’Sullivans of Muingaphuca

The

The

The

O'Sullivans of Muingaphuca

Helen Curtin Moskey (1931- 2003) was an Irish-American writer and poet of dual U.S.-Irish nationality. Her experiences as the child of an Irish immigrant mother; her extended stays at her family’s ancestral home at Muingaphuca, County Kerry; and her experience as

writing.

Photo by Paul de Jong, 1970

MEADOWSHIRE COMMUNICATIONS | WASHINGTON, DC

HELEN CURTIN MOSKEY

through the intense social transformation of American life from the post-war era to the 1970s, were powerful

by HELEN CURTIN MOSKEY

THE O’SULLIVANS OF MUINGAPHUCA By

HELEN CURTIN MOSKEY

With a foreword by

PATRICIA CURTIN LAWLER

Edited by STEPHEN T. MOSKEY

MEADOWSHIRE COMMUNICATIONS Washington, DC | 2019

DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF

WILLIAM AND MARY CURTIN

THE O’SULLIVANS OF MUINGAPHUCA

By Helen Curtin Moskey Foreword by Patricia Curtin Lawler Edited by Stephen T. Moskey

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means whatsoever without express written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

REQUIEM AETERNAM DONA EIS, DOMINE, ET LUX PERPETUA LUCEAT EIS.

Editorial Contact:

REQUIESCANT IN PACE.

Stephen T. Moskey 1711 Massachusetts Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20036 Email: skipmoskey@gmail.com Website: skipmoskey.com

Copyright © 2019 by the Literary Estate of Helen Curtin Moskey. Stephen T. Moskey, Executor.

All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America.

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CONTENTS DEDICATION iii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS v FOREWORD Patricia Curtin Lawler vi INTRODUCTION: THE WRITINGS OF HELEN CURTIN MOSKEY Stephen T. Moskey vii IN MEMORIAM HELEN CURTIN MOSKEY viii THE MARY CURTIN TAPES, 1986–1989 Mary Sullivan Curtin and Helen Curtin Moskey 1 A KERRY ETHNOGRAPHY: THE HISTORY OF THE DESCENDANTS OF OWEN-MÓR O’SULLIVAN, MUINGAPHUCA, CARAGH LAKE, CO. KERRY, 1826–1992 Helen Curtin Moskey 101 HALLOWED GROUND (1992) Helen Curtin Moskey 112 MY JOURNEY (1925) Beatrice Theresa Sullivan 125 PORTLAND STORIES Helen Curtin Moskey 195 WAKING TO MORNING IN MUINGAPHUCA (1994) Helen Curtin Moskey 215 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 216 iv

ILLUSTRATIONS 1. Bill and Mary Curtin’s Wedding Photograph, November 10, 1927. — ix 2. Mr. & Mrs. William C. Curtin and family, June 4, 1949. — x 3. The Celtic Trinity Knot. — 1 4. The William C. Curtin Family, ca. 1945. — 2 5. William H. and Helen Joan Kennedy Curtin. — 23 6. Mary Ellen Sullivan Curtin, 1988. — 24 7. Visiting the Dromavalla Cemetery, Killorglin, Summer 1976. — 28 8. Bill Curtin and Mary Sullivan, Myrtle Beach, Connecticut, 1922. — 45 9. Wether’s Well (Tobar na Molt), Ardfert, Co. Kerry, Ireland, 1933. — 57 10. Lady Edith Gordon (1871-1945). — 87 11. Lady Gordon’s home Ard-na-Sidhe. — 87 12. The Paved Garden of Ard-na-Sidhe, overlooking Caragh Lake. — 88 13. Mary Gallivan O’Sullivan (September 26, 1873–1950). — 104 14. Saint James’s Church, Killorglin, 1988. — 105 15. The William Curtin Family, 1961. — 107 16. Mary Ellen Sullivan’s Certificate of Naturalization, 1927. — 115 17. The Curtin Children: Bob, Maureen, Helen, Patricia, and John. — 124 18. Beatrice Sullivan on her way to Ireland, 1949. — 126 19. The Bill and Mary Curtin Wedding Party 1927 and 1977. — 127 20. The Insignia of the Cumann na mBan. — 138 21. William H. Curtin and Helen Joan Kennedy Curtin, prior to 1928. — 140 22. O’Sullivan Farm House, Muingaphuca, 1976. — 141 23. O’Sullivan Farm House, Muingaphuca, 2001. — 142 23. Beatrice and John O’Sullivan, Gap of Dunloe, 1933. — 155 25. William C. Curtin, around age 7, ca. 1907. — 159 26. Bridget (Beatrice) Sullivan’s British Passport, 1923. — 165 27. Interior of Saint James’s Church, Killorglin, ca. 1920. — 169 28. Mary Ellen Sullivan, Ireland, 1927. — 181 29. Catherine M. and John Eugene O’Sullivan, Muingaphuca, 1976. — 192 30. Catherine M. O’Sullivan, Killarney, 1976. — 194 31. Kathleen McKinley, John Eugene O’Sullivan, and Matthew F. Moskey, 1976. — 199 32. The Curtin Children, ca. 1933. — 202 33. No. 8 East Main Street, Portland, Connecticut, 2018. — 204 34. Maureen and Helen Curtin on Helen’s wedding day, June 4, 1949. — 206 35. Saint Mary’s Church, Freestone Avenue, Portland, circa 1910. — 208 Cover: The cover photograph of the front window of the ancestral home of the O’Sullivan family of Muingaphuca was taken by David McKinley in 2001. v

FOREWORD

INTRODUCTION

By Patricia Curtin Lawler

The Writings of Helen Curtin Moskey

I am honored to write this foreword as the last living child of an incredible woman, Mary Sullivan Curtin, who came to the United States from a humble farm in Muingaphuca, Co. Kerry, Ireland, to later marry William Curtin and raise five children. It has been a joy for me to hear my mother’s voice again through reading the transcribed interviews of my Mother and my sister Helen Curtin Moskey.

By Stephen T. Moskey

Before I begin my reflections, I want to express my appreciation of my sister Helen for the hard work and talent that went into writing the Kerry Ethnography, and for the love she showed my mother through the writings and taped interviews. I also want to thank my nephew Stephen Moskey for the skill, determination, and love he has shown in producing this treasure for all the descendants of Mary Sullivan Curtin.

The three characteristics that influenced all of us children were our mother’s great devotion to the Blessed Mother and the Rosary, her feelings about Ireland and the English, and her kind heart. Her faith was the source of strength during all the hard times in her life, especially the death of her oldest child, my sister Maureen, at the age of 39 and the sadness she felt for Maureen’s seven children. When my mother was older and living alone she heard of a possible apparition of the Blessed Mother that was being celebrated in New Jersey. My brother John was aware of how much it would mean to her to attend, so he drove her down to take part in it.

Mother’s feelings about the poverty in Ireland that she experienced in her youth was evident even after many years, and they are expressed in the interviews that you will read here.

My husband Tom and I once drove over two hours with my parents to attend a performance of the play “Playboy of The Western World” by the famous Irish writer John Millington Synge. To our surprise she insisted we walk out in protest of the play after ten minutes because of its depiction of the poor in Ireland. Her resentment of the English explained why she never used a set of beautiful glasses my husband Tom once brought her as a gift because they were colored ORANGE. I saw a lighter side of my mother every year on Saint Patrick’s Day when we listened for the words by Bill O’Brien, the father of Nancy O’Brien Curtin, wife of my brother Bob, on Mr. O’Brien’s special radio show. He always had a greeting for “the beautiful Irish lass Mary Sullivan Curtin who lives in Portland.” We all got very excited and my mother loved it. My dad, Bill Curtin, told me he truly believed that his way to heaven was through my mother. He was always so proud of how beautiful she was to look at and the beauty of her soul.

“The Portland Stories” written by Helen reflect my mother’s kindness and compassion.

These virtues are exemplified in the story “Mr. Emerson” about the “hobo” who during the Depression came by our house a few times a year and my mother gave him a meal and talked with him. When he died the police called because the only address and name in his possession was my mother’s.

In these reflections I am speaking also for my sisters Maureen and Helen and my brothers Bob and John to express our great love and gratitude for all the influence our remarkable mother Mary Sullivan Curtin had on us. This Kerry Ethnography dignifies and uplifts the memory of our mother and our family and will forever remain a warm reflection of our Irish heritage. vi

At the time of her death in 2003, Helen Curtin Moskey (1931-2003) left behind a significant body of research and writing about Ireland, the Irish Diaspora, and her Irish-American identity. Having grown up in the 1930s and 1940s with no visits to or from her mother’s family in Ireland, she was intensely curious about Ireland, its people, its customs, and most of all, her family there. She would not meet her mother’s family in Ireland until 1976, when she was in her forties. That experience transformed her worldview and launched her on a personal journey of discovery.

Through her writing, Helen wanted to understand how the heart and soul of the Irish people found expression in her own life as a woman, a mother, a wife, a devout member of the Irish-American branch of the Roman Catholic Church, and as a writer.

After her retirement in the mid-1980s from a 25-year career at Ætna Life & Casualty, she matriculated at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. Her goal was to earn the Bachelor’s degree that, due to family financial circumstances four decades earlier, had been denied her. She used her coursework at Trinity, postgraduate studies at the University of Canterbury (Christchurch, New Zealand), and summer courses at the Fine Arts Work Center (Provincetown, Mass.) as vehicles for learning about her own Irish-American identity and the history of her mother’s family, the O’Sullivans of Muingaphuca. Her research and writing on Ireland took many forms, from recorded interviews with her mother to essays and personal memoir to poetry and ultimately to a book-length manuscript that presented the original research she had conducted on 170 years of her maternal family’s history in Co. Kerry, Ireland.

Whatever Helen wrote—fiction or nonfiction, poetry or short story—was grounded in detailed and thorough research. She employed anthropological field research methodologies such as transcribed interviews and personal in situ observation that she recorded in field notes. She approached her writing journalistically, and even writing a poem about a monarch butterfly could send her (in those pre-Internet days) to the library to uncover scientific information to inform her text. She wanted her writing to be not only elegant and entertaining, but also factual and instructive.

Helen saw her writing, especially about Ireland and her family, as both her legacy and as a gift to her family. A few years before she died, she appointed me her literary executor and extracted from me a promise to find a way to publish her Kerry Ethnography. I had known about the ethnography for years, and in some ways lived through its creation. However, I had never read it in its entirety until many years later, when I found several drafts of it among her literary papers.

Helen had submitted the Kerry Ethnography to Trinity College, Hartford, for her degree in the spring of 1994, where it was readily accepted by her advisors as a fine piece of scholarship that merited an Honors accolade.

Now, some 16 years after my mother’s death, and after almost two years of work editing these pieces of Helen’s writings for wider distribution, I can make good on my promise to her.

Because of her dedication and years of work, the O’Sullivan family history is now preserved for the current and future generations of what we proudly call “The Curtin Clan.”

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IN MEMORIAM

HELEN CURTIN MOSKEY (1931-2003) “Forever Missed, Never Forgotten”

Figure 1. Wedding Photograph of Bill and Mary Curtin, November 10, 1927. The wedding ceremony was performed in St. Peter’s Church (now closed), on the South Green in Hartford, Conn. Standing, left to right: Beatrice Sullivan (Maid of Honor), Leon Mullen (Best Man), and William. Seated, Mary. (Photo courtesy of the McKinley Family.)

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The O'Sullivans of Muingaphuca

THE MARY CURTIN TAPES 1986-1989 Edited by Stephen T. Moskey Beginning on June 11, 1986, the 66th anniversary of Mary Curtin’s arrival in the United States, and for the next three years, Mary’s daughter Helen Curtin Moskey conducted a series of occasional interviews in which the two women discussed hundreds of details about Mary’s family in Ireland, the O’Sullivans of Muingaphuca, Caragh Lake, Co. Kerry, and about Mary’s early years in America before her marriage to Helen’s father, William C. Curtin. The information that Helen elicited from Mary through these interviews made its way into the Kerry Ethnography, giving it an authenticity and vibrancy that can only come from a first-person account of things that happened, now, more than a century ago.

Fortunately, Helen made audio recordings of some of the interviews, and after her death in 2003, the cassette tapes were among the collection of books, papers, and Curtin family memorabilia that I inherited from her as her literary executor. There I found three fully-recorded interviews dated July 11, 1986; March 12, 1989; and October 10, 1989. I had the tapes converted to digital mp3 format, and subsequently had them transcribed by a professional typist.

I edited the transcripts for publication by adding footnotes to help clarify obscure terms, concepts, and explain family relationships.

Figure 2. Mr. & Mrs. William C. Curtin and family, June 4, 1949, gathered on the back lawn of 8 East Main Street, Portland, Connecticut, on the occasion of their daughter Helen’s marriage to Benjamin J. “Buddy” Moskey, Jr. From left to right, Patricia, Robert, Maureen, Helen, Buddy, Mary, John, William, and Beatrice. (Moskey Family Collection)

Figure 3. The Celtic Trinity Knot, also known as the Triquetra (Latin, “three-cornered”), is one of the best-known symbols in Celtic culture. The early Catholic Church in Ireland appropriated it to represent the Holy Trinity, but it was also used by indigenous Pagan religions in Ireland before the advent of Christianity.

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The O'Sullivans of Muingaphuca

The O'Sullivans of Muingaphuca

Interview on June 11, 1986 HELEN: Now, Mother, today is the 66th anniversary of your arrival in the United States.

MARY: Yeah, you’re right.

HELEN: So, let’s talk about the day you arrived, June 11, 1920, in New York.

Take it away, Molly!

MARY: Well, we didn’t get started for Hartford until Saturday after we got through the clearance at Ellis Island. I don’t remember very much about the details of the different things we did. I just remember being at Ellis Island in this big building. It looked like a huge bank with, you know, counters and seemed liked a very long counter, like as if there were different people in back of the counters, you know, getting information or whatever it is they were doing.

HELEN: Did you have to go up to the counter with your passports and everything?

MARY: Well, I had to talk to somebody or somebody talked to me about the entry and they checked my papers to see if they were proper or what they’re supposed to be. And then we were just released to go out and there was somebody with us to direct us to our next move. I don’t remember what it was.

But everything was so strange to me that I was just overwhelmed with the size of everything because I was accustomed to small buildings and narrow roads and just very simple.

But these huge buildings, they were just overwhelming. That’s about the size of it.

HELEN: Did you have a physical that day? Did they look at you medically to see if you were healthy?

Figure 4. The William C. Curtin Family, ca. 1945. Back row, left to right: Patricia, Helen, Bob, and Maureen. Front: Mary, John, and Bill. (Photo courtesy of the McKinley Family.)

MARY: Yes. I remember a doctor looking in my eyes, you know, with a light.

That’s all I remember.

HELEN: How about down your throat, did he look down your throat?

MARY: I suppose he did.

It was just an examination but it wasn’t a lengthy one. It was just a look here and a look there, looked in the eyes.

HELEN: Now, the day before when you arrived in New York on June 10th, what time did the boat get into New York?

MARY: Oh, sometime in the afternoon because there wasn’t time to go through this checkout.

HELEN: Do you remember going by the Statue of Liberty?

MARY: Yes, I do. And, of course, the Statue of Liberty didn’t mean anything to me as far as knowing why it was there. It was just a very unusual thing to see the Statue of Liberty.

And the people that were with me, they didn’t know any more about it than I did.

HELEN: Did everybody get out on the decks when the boat [arrived in the harbor]?

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MARY: Oh, yes. When we came close to the land, everybody wanted to see what America looked like and, of course, there were passengers on that boat, too, I think that probably were in America before—or up until now they did know something about America.

HELEN: Now the first night in New York, did you stay on the boat on June 10th that night?

The O'Sullivans of Muingaphuca

HELEN: Yes. MARY: But see, the trouble is that all of this was so overwhelming for me that I could not take in everything and get it established in my mind why it was this way or that way or the other.

HELEN: How much luggage did you bring with you from Ireland?

MARY: Yes, we stayed on the boat, you know. We had supper and we went to bed as usual. Then in the morning, then there was a lot of action, you know, everybody wanting to get out, get their luggage out and see what was going to be.

HELEN: Was there a party on the boat that night that you hit New York?

MARY: No. The thing that impressed me, in fact shocked me, when we pulled in on Friday afternoon—I’m pretty sure it was in the afternoon—but it was quite warm compared to what I was accustomed to an island. And when the boat pulled up to the dock, it moved slowly and everybody was anxious to see if it would hit the deck or something, and we came upon several workmen, the men that worked on the dock, and I was shocked when I saw that they had nothing on from the waist up. They just had dungarees on and probably shoes, but nothing. And I had never seen anybody, not even my father, without his shirt on. And just to see [that].

HELEN: Did you think that was immodest? docks and whatever other work. They would do moving stuff on wheel—what do you call those carriers?

MARY: Oh, I had just one little suitcase, I think.

HELEN: Do you remember what clothing you had that you brought with you?

MARY: My aunt made a suit for me before we left Ireland. It was a navy-blue skirt and jacket and I had a blouse, and I can’t remember whether it was white or a pastel color. It might have been white. I don’t know. I can’t remember.

HELEN: Did she make that by hand or on a sewing machine?

MARY: She made it on the sewing machine because I had a sewing machine. When I was along about 14 or 15, I think, I got my Aunt Bertha’s sewing machine. She died. She was my father’s sister and she had a sewing machine.

And you remember that girl from Rochester?

HELEN: Eileen Connors?

MARY: Yeah. Well, my aunt was her niece, I think. No, she was my Aunt Bertha’s—.

HELEN: The dollies?

MARY: Yeah. They were carrying trunks. They were carrying I don’t know what. I don’t even remember the details.

HELEN: Her mother was your Aunt Bertha’s niece?

HELEN: Do you remember what the passenger group on that boat consisted of? Was it mostly men or women or children or young immigrants?

HELEN: I see.

MARY: I don’t remember seeing any children on that boat. There might have been.

Maybe there was children on the second class. See, we were third class. All the immigrants to America as far as I know were all third-class passengers.

HELEN: What were your accommodations like in the third class?

MARY: Well, we had to go down a couple of flights of stairs to where we slept and there was just bunkbeds like.

HELEN: How many people in the [cabin]?

MARY: I don’t know. I don’t know if there were two other people across the aisle from me and Aunt Jo. HELEN: But in the same room? You say across the aisle, all in the same room?

MARY: That little aisle that you come in the door. I think there was probably four beds, I’m not positive but it seems to me as that was what it was. And I don’t think we got undressed entirely. I don’t remember having a place where you could undress, you know, privately.

HELEN: Do you remember anything about the bathrooms on the boat?

MARY: No, I don’t remember anything about the bathrooms only that there was, you know, a place to go to the toilet.

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MARY: No. Aunt Bertha was her grandmother.

MARY: That was it. And the children were too small to use the sewing machine so my grandmother got the machine for me because she figured I was big enough now to use it.

HELEN: That was your father’s mother?

MARY: Yeah. So that was what my Aunt Jo used to make my suit. And she was a dressmaker, you know, in this country for years.

HELEN: Was that sewing machine a treadle?

MARY: It was the one that you turn with a hand.

HELEN: Did another person turn that for you?

MARY: No, I had to do it. I had to guide the material with the left hand and work the wheel with the right hand.

HELEN: And did you make your own clothes on that?

MARY: Yes. HELEN: Did you make clothes for the rest of the family?

MARY: Yes. HELEN: Did you make clothes for your brother?

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MARY: No. I made a shirt for my uncle when I was 13.

HELEN: But nothing for your brother? You never made shirts for your brother when you were [at home]?

MARY: I don’t remember. Maybe I did, but I don’t remember.

But my mother cut the shirt out. I was 13 years old, but my mother wasn’t too good at the machine, her sight wasn’t, you know, so good and so I did the sewing part but she would cut it out. My mother did very good sewing for a farm person—you know, that didn’t have this fancy clothing that you have if you were living in a town or a city.

HELEN: Where did you do your sewing? In the family room in the cottage?

MARY: I did it on the kitchen table. Everything was done [there].

HELEN: In front of the window?

The O'Sullivans of Muingaphuca

HELEN: Was it a name label or did it say something else?

MARY: Well, it had my name on it and it might have said— HELEN: Your destination?

MARY: Destination to Hartford. Something like that. And I understood what it was at the time, but I didn’t have any reason to get these things set in my mind. I didn’t think I would ever have to remember it. And that’s 65 years ago so it’s only natural that I would forget.

HELEN: Right. Did you hold onto Josie’s hand, do you remember holding her hand going through all these places so you didn’t get lost in the crowd?

MARY: No. Well, maybe if we were going through a dense crowd I probably would, but I wasn’t like a little kid hanging onto her mother.

HELEN: Then what happened after they put the label on your shoulder?

MARY: Right. In front of the window.

HELEN: Was your Aunt Bertha a seamstress?

MARY: No, she did housework when she lived in this country.

HELEN: She came to the United States, but she didn’t like it and then went back to Ireland?

MARY: Well, then I had to go to some other place to find out about how to get the train, I suppose. I don’t know.

HELEN: So, you got to Hartford that day?

MARY: Yeah, we got to Hartford and I don’t think it was terribly late, it was sometime in the midafternoon and we went to Auntie O’Brien’s house.

MARY: Well, I don’t know how long she was in the States.

HELEN: And who was there?

HELEN: I think you told me one time she was here four or five years.

MARY: Well, Mae [O’Brien] was.

MARY: Yeah. I think it would be a short period like that. And she went back and then she met this man whose name was Shea in Dooks. That’s where the golf is so popular now.

HELEN: So, this man Shea was from Dooks?

MARY: Yeah, I suppose the farm came down to him from his father like all those small farms.

HELEN: And when we were in Ireland last summer, we visited two of Aunt Bertha’s daughters, right?

MARY: Oh, Josie? Josie was one.

HELEN: She was the tour director, the welcoming committee?

MARY: She was the welcoming committee. Yeah, that’s what you’d call it. And she wanted to know, you know, if we would like to get washed, so she said, “There’s plenty of hot water if you two want a bath, you know, you can have it. And I’m sure you’re tired and, you know, it will pep you up and we have plenty of time before supper, you know, to do this.”

And she said to me, well—I can’t remember exactly what she said, but she said maybe something belonging to Catherine or me would fit you and, you know, you can have your clothes washed and cleaned. I don’t know whether I wore that suit for the eight days we were on the boat or not, I can’t remember what else I had, but I must have had other things.

HELEN: Was that your first bath in a bathtub?

HELEN: Josie O’Neil.

MARY: Josie O’Neil. And Mary was at Coomnifanida, isn’t it? Isn’t that the name of the place?

HELEN: Mary Connors? At Caragh Lake?

MARY: Yes. It’s across the lake.

HELEN: Let’s go back to the day at Ellis Island, the June 11th date. You started to tell me when we were in the other room that after your papers got processed, they put some kind of a sticker on your shoulder?

MARY: It was just like a label, you know, you see these gatherings where you have the name of a person on it.

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MARY: Yes, it was.

HELEN: What did you have at your house?

MARY: Well, you know, in Ireland our bathtub was a half of a wooden barrel. Like as if a barrel was cut in half and you just put the water into that and probably you’d have a pitcher of water to rinse yourself off, but I don’t remember that too well either.

HELEN: So, the tub must have seemed very large?

MARY: Oh, yes, it was great to be able to stretch out, you know, and all the hot water you wanted.

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With this wooden tub, there wasn’t an awful lot of water, maybe a couple of gallons of water, I don’t know, and then half a gallon to rinse yourself off with. This is an island I’m talking about.

HELEN: So after the baths and maybe a little rest or whatever, what happened that night at supper, did other relatives come?

MARY: Oh, they talked about this party that was going to be at Aunt Nora’s house, you know, and all the relatives would be there.

And I don’t know, I had long hair then, it wasn’t short. And I don’t think I washed my hair, or I’m not sure, maybe I could have. Mae said, “Well, you might as well wash your hair as long as you’re ratted,” because she was sort of taking over as like my mother. And she was ten years older than I, she was 28 when I was 18.

HELEN: So she really knew her way around?

MARY: Well, she was, and she was very capable and she was a stenographer and bookkeeper for the Robinson Box Company in Hartford. And she was the only one in the office.

She did everything.

HELEN: Mother, was Mae born in Ireland or in the United States?

MARY: Why would she be born in Ireland?

HELEN: Her parents could have been over there?

MARY: No, no. She was born here.

HELEN: Mother, would you explain who Auntie O’Brien and Aunt Nora are just for the sake of this tape?

MARY: Well, they’re our two aunts.

HELEN: How they are related to you?

MARY: Well, they were my father’s two older sisters. And there was Aunt Mary, too.

She was another sister of my father’s. She was the oldest one and the first one that came to this country. And how she came to this country? I don’t know how old she was, nobody ever told me but chances are she was probably somewhere between 18 and 20, I don’t know.

But there was two Moriarty girls, you know where they live next door to our farm?

HELEN: Yes. MARY: There was two Moriarty girls there and they had a relative in the States and she sent tickets for the two of them to come over to America. And I don’t know what happened with one. Was it that she didn’t want to come, maybe she had a boyfriend and didn’t want to leave him? I don’t know, but she might have got sick or something and wasn’t able to, you know, make the trip right away.

So, the word went around, and I don’t know how it was arranged, but I have an idea that my Aunt Mary says, “Well, if she’s not going to use the ticket, I would like to go.” So, I don’t know whether the tickets had names on them or not or whether it was just a ticket for the boat, whatever. Anyway, that’s how Aunt Mary came over. And she came with the Moriarty girl, I’m

The O'Sullivans of Muingaphuca

pretty sure. So of course she came to whoever the Moriarty girl was coming to. Must have been an aunt maybe. And that’s how Aunt Mary got to Hartford.

And she got a job I suppose doing housework like all the other Irish girls. And especially now Aunt Mary, she wouldn’t have a home, she has no relative here. So, the natural thing to do was—it was very easy I guess to get a housework job. Now probably the American young women didn’t want to do housework, they’d rather work in the store or [office].

HELEN: And then she also got her room and her board.

MARY: She had her room and her board and not only that, but she also got a training course in the way Americans, you know, live here. Because a girl who grows up on a farm and she’s probably working on the fields, she has no chance to learn fancy cooking or anything fancy.

So that the girls, if they were lucky enough to find a nice family to work for, the lady sort of wised them up on different things.

HELEN: Now, who did Aunt Mary marry in this country, what was his name?

MARY: She married a fellow by the name of Kelly. I think his name was—oh, dear, I don’t remember his first—I never met him. And I don’t know how long she was married, but she had one child, Eugene, and Eugene was about a year older than I was. He was about 19 when I came here.

Oh, no, he was from the second marriage, yeah. Then my aunt—I don’t know how many years after her first husband died, he might have got injured at work because they were doing very hard work in those days.

HELEN: But there were no children with that Kelly?

MARY: No children. No children with him.

And I don’t know how long after that but she had a home, you know, established I suppose like every marriage, and she took in boarders. Boarders—the young Irish men that came from Ireland and they got a job, but they had no place to live. So, a lot of the Irish—it didn’t take the Irish very long to get acquainted because they sort of searched each other out, you know, for the new ones that came, they’d see them in church and one family would introduce a newcomer to [everyone].

HELEN: Did they have an Irish club or anything in the Hartford area?

MARY: Well, I don’t know whether the Irish clubs were started that early or not.

HELEN: But they had the Irish dances, didn’t they?

MARY: But they had the—yeah, well, I don’t know whether it was the same as it was when I came, but you see because my Aunt Mary, she must have come probably— HELEN: Thirty years earlier.

MARY: Yeah, maybe 30 years, I don’t know.

HELEN: Because if her son, Gene, was a year older than you and that was the second marriage— MARY: Yeah.

HELEN: —chances are she was here ten years.

8

9

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MARY: Well, see, things changed quite a bit. They didn’t stand still, they kept changing.

And I wouldn’t know anything about that because nobody told me.

HELEN: But what was the name of her second husband?

MARY: His name was Michael Sullivan.

HELEN: Okay.

MARY: And my aunt’s name was O’Sullivan, you know, but she didn’t mind dropping the O I guess.

HELEN: Now Auntie O’Brien, what was her first name?

MARY: Her name was Catherine.

HELEN: And tell me about the man she married.

MARY: She married a man that came from Cromane.

HELEN: That’s down where your cousin Josie Shea lived.

MARY: Yeah, be farther down towards the sea, Dingle Bay. In fact, the O’Brien homestead was probably only from here to Waverly Avenue to the ocean.1 And she must have met him in Hartford, but nobody ever explained anything to us, to me, and I didn’t know enough to ask questions. I was never one for asking questions, but Beatrice always had nerve enough to ask questions.

HELEN: Kind of like me asking a lot of questions.

The O'Sullivans of Muingaphuca

MARY: Oh, but their brogues were—it wasn’t as— HELEN: It had softened.

MARY: Yeah.

HELEN: Well, Mother, tell me were the young guys all flocking around you? You were beautiful.

MARY: Was I? HELEN: I can tell by your pictures.

MARY: I didn’t know it.

Well, I don’t know if there was any young guys there, I can’t remember. But I had so many relatives that I had to get acquainted with. There was one cousin, McKenna, his last name was McKenna. And for the life of me I can’t remember his first name and I know it well, but I’m forgetting everything.

HELEN: Is it Mike?

MARY: No. Well, he gave me either two or three dollars. Now that’s like—that would be like getting 30 now from somebody.

HELEN: Or a lot more.

MARY: Nobody had much money. Probably men were working for ten cents an hour in those days. But, of course, the food and clothing weren’t as expensive as they are now.

HELEN: Do you remember what your reaction was to that?

MARY: Yeah, like you.

So, when I came to Hartford, Mae was 28, so that meant that her mother and father, that they were married, you know, probably 30 or more years.

MARY: Oh, I thought it was great, you know, because I didn’t have any money. When I left Ireland, I think I had 20 Pounds that my grandmother gave me.

HELEN: Was Mae the oldest?

HELEN: Your father’s mother?

MARY: Mae was the oldest. I think so.

MARY: My father’s mother.

And let me see. Oh, so after my Aunt Jo and I got cleaned up, you know, they told us that there was going to be a party in honor of Aunt Nora’s 25th anniversary tonight at her house. That would mean the whole— HELEN: The gathering of the clan.

MARY: The gathering of the clan is right. And I’m telling you that I had more people talking to me and asking me questions. And the one thing that I noticed is they just loved to hear me talk with my funny brogue, you know.

HELEN: Did they say that?

She had this pet cow, ever since she was a little calf, my grandmother was, you know, sort of taking care—it was probably a nice color or something HELEN: Did she name it, do you remember if it had a name?

MARY: Maybe, I don’t know. I don’t know whether she named it or not. But this cow must have had probably a nice face or something. There was something about the cow that my grandmother liked. And she sort of raised it up until it got to be a mother and then I think she had a calf once or twice. It wasn’t very long where they had the cow. My mother took care of milking the cow and all whatever had to be done. But it was always understood that this was Grandma’s cow, you know.

MARY: No, but I knew it.

HELEN: Did you call her “Grandma,” is that what you called her?

HELEN: Well, didn’t they all have brogues, too?

MARY: No, “Nanny”.

1

The distance from 8 East Main Street to Waverly Avenue is about 50 yards. Thus, Mary is saying that the O’Brien homestead was about 50 yards from the water’s edge.

10

It was Nanny’s cow and of course my mother took care that the cow was fed and taken care of and everything but still the cow was Nanny’s. So, I don’t know whether it was shortly before we came to America. I think she had it in her mind to sell the cow and give me the money.

11

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The O'Sullivans of Muingaphuca

But they don’t tell you what’s on their minds at all, they just do their thing and they don’t let the kids in on it. So anyway, she sold the cow and I think it was—it wouldn’t be 20 dollars, I don’t know, it was 20 something. 2

HELEN: Did they own their house?

MARY: No, they rented.

HELEN: And where did Aunt Mary live?

HELEN: Pounds.

MARY: She lived down South Prospect Street, that’s—it runs towards the Times—

MARY: Might have been 20 Pounds. And when I was getting ready to leave, she gave me the money.

HELEN: Where the old Hartford Times building was?

MARY: Yeah, the Hartford Times, that’s it.3

HELEN: That was a pretty big sum of money to be giving you.

And South Governor Street was only a couple of streets south—it would take you only less than five minutes to go from one to the other.

MARY: Yeah, well, maybe.

HELEN: Of what little they had.

HELEN: We’ll go up through there someday.

MARY: Maybe the material for my suit came out of it. I don’t remember just how I spent the money but know that that was the only money that I could depend on of my own. And my Aunt Jo, who was with me, she went back to visit her mother, who was my grandmother. I think she wanted to see the whole family anyway, but her mother was the main person of her visit.

And let me see.

HELEN: Well, we’re back at the party where you got the three dollars, American dollars from McKenna? Do you remember what else happened at the party? Did they have a meal?

MARY: Yeah.

HELEN: And just point out the area.

Mother, can we talk about Aunt Nora a little bit, like who she married?

MARY: She married a man by the name of Sullivan, also. They were crazy about the Sullivan name.

HELEN: Were they brothers or related?

MARY: Oh, they had—it wasn’t a dinner, it was like a buffet, you know, sandwiches and cake and plenty of tea and plenty of whiskey, too.

MARY: No, no relation at all. But he came from Ireland, too.

HELEN: Irish whiskey.

HELEN: What part of Ireland? You were saying that he came from a place not Kerry.

MARY: Irish whiskey. Nobody was intoxicated but, you know.

MARY: Not Kerry. More centrally located.

HELEN: Everybody was friendly.

HELEN: What was his first name?

MARY: Jerry, Jeremiah.

MARY: Yeah. You had to have a nip, that’s all. I don’t know whether I got any or not.

But anyway, I had never been to anything like that, you know.

HELEN: So, Jeremiah Sullivan?

HELEN: Do you remember what your reaction was to all of this?

MARY: Oh, I don’t remember what it was, but I was pleased I’m sure. And then after about two weeks, Mae O’Brien, she used to come and stop, you know, to – see me. I went to live with Aunt Mary. I didn’t stay at Auntie O’Brien’s house because she had her own family. She had Mae and Catherine and Jo and the oldest one, what was his name? Gee, I forget.

MARY: Yeah.

HELEN: And where did Aunt Nora and Jerry Sullivan live?

MARY: Well, at the time that I came, they lived on Fenwick Street. It’s the south end of Hartford. It’s down near that ballpark that’s down there.

HELEN: Colt’s Park?

HELEN: Michael, like his father?

MARY: No, not Colt’s Park.

MARY: No, I don’t think it was Michael. But that doesn’t matter anyway because—but they had four children and they had no room for me.

HELEN: What street did they live on then, Mother?

MARY: Governor Street, South Governor.

HELEN: How many children did they have?

MARY: Oh, they had Mae, Josephine, Jerry, Agnes, Helen, and Margaret. There was six children.

HELEN: Okay. So, the party’s over and you’re living with Aunt Mary now?

2

One British Pound Sterling was worth around $4.80 in 1920, the year that Mary emigrated to America. The 20 Pounds Nanny received from the sale of her cow was thus worth about $100, which in 1920 had the buying power of about $1,317 in 2019 dollars. This was a small fortune.

12

3

The Hartford Times Building (built in 1917) is located at 10 South Prospect Street in Hartford.

13

The O'Sullivans of Muingaphuca

MARY: Yeah.

HELEN: Did you have a room to yourself or did you have to share a room?

MARY: She gave me the living room. She had a bed in there and she didn’t use that living room much, it was in the front of the house and everybody came in the kitchen way like we do here. Because it’s more convenient.

HELEN: Right.

MARY: And that’s the only place she could give me a room to myself.

HELEN: Did it have a door that you could close it off?

MARY: Well, it opened from the dining room I guess, yeah.

HELEN: I remember Auntie O’Brien’s house had those glass doors that closed her dining room and her living room? Was it something like that?

MARY: No, it was an older house, much older because Prospect Street was one of the oldest streets in the city. And I imagine that when Hartford was started, I think a lot of their traffic was by the river. And Prospect Street is closer to the river than any of the other—

The O'Sullivans of Muingaphuca

ready,” she said, “I’ll go with you to see the employment person and, you know, we’ll see what the chances are.”

It was all decided within a half an hour after we got there, you know, we got in to see this lady. It was a lady who was the employment person. And so, Mae introduced me to her and she said, “She’s my cousin, and she’s been here from Ireland only a couple of weeks,” she said, “And she would like to get a clerical job.”

Well, she didn’t say that “I thought it would be good for her to get a clerical job,” she twisted it around a little bit. So, well, I would like to get a clerical job if there was an opening.

And she said, “Well, yes, there are two openings,” she said, “for clerical jobs right now.” And she said, “One is on the second floor with Mr. O’Connor,” and that was one thing in my favor I figured, although nobody said so.

HELEN: You knew an Irish name when you heard it.

MARY: That’s right.

So, she asked me a lot of questions, but I can’t remember any of them and I don’t know.

She wanted to know about my schooling I guess.

HELEN: Do you remember what went on during those two weeks or how you felt?

HELEN: Did they give you a little test or anything?

MARY: No, I don’t.

MARY: No, not that I know.

HELEN: Did you get homesick all of a sudden and feel sad?

HELEN: Well, then what happened when you got through with her?

MARY: No, I didn’t. I had Mae O’Brien, my cousin. She was very attentive to me and she knew that I must feel kind of out place and probably very uncomfortable.

HELEN: So, she came to see you every day?

MARY: I don’t know if she came every day but I saw a lot of her and one day when she came, she said, “Have you decided what kind of work you’ll do?” and I said, “Well, I don’t know.

I haven’t thought about it but I suppose I’ll do housework like all the other Irish girls,” or most of them anyway. And she said, “Well,” she hesitated and she says, “Can you read a newspaper?” I says, “Yeah, of course I can read a newspaper.” Well, she says, “Can you get the meaning of everything and what it’s all about and all that?” and I said, “Yeah, I think so.”

She says, “Can you add and subtract?” This was arithmetic, you know. I said, “Yeah,” and I was good at arithmetic, at least I could get by anyway. And she says something else, there was something else she asked me about the reading and the writing, that went with it I suppose.

And there was something else and I can’t figure out what it was, I can’t remember but there was three questions she gave me.

And she says, “Well, if that’s the way it is,” she said, “If I were you, I wouldn’t go do housework.” She says, “Don’t go for that pot-walloping.”

HELEN: Pot-walloping?

MARY: That’s what she called it. That was an Irish phrase, I think. She says, “Don’t go for that pot-walloping,” she said. You know, I think she said, “You have a chance to get a clerical job at one of the insurance companies. “Preferably,” she said, “The Travelers.” It’s so nearby, you know, from Aunt Mary’s house. She says, “When I’m coming home from work someday soon, I’m going to stop and get an application for you and you’ll fill it out and then when you’re 14

MARY: So, she said, “Well,” she says, “I’ll send you up to the second floor and Mr. O’Connor will talk to you.” So, I suppose she called him on the telephone, I don’t remember that but she must have called and told him that we were going up. So, Mae, when we went up to his desk, he was in a place by himself at the end of this long, long room. There was a lot of people working there.

HELEN: Were they all women working there or were there women and men?

MARY: Well, I think there was two or three men also. There was machines that had to be, you know, tended to and operated. Addressograph machines, and these machines that you put a whole drawer of these little metal plates.

HELEN: Name plates?

MARY: Name plates. And there’s a lot more than the name on it.

HELEN: Coding?

MARY: Yeah, everything. Well, those machines were operated by men. They’d put the drawer into it and get it going and then it would come out. I don’t know what they were making.

HELEN: Those plates would get fed through something?

MARY: Yeah. Well, that’s what the men were doing, but I think the people that were sitting at desks were all women.

HELEN: So, you got down to Mr. O’Connor?

MARY: So, we got to Mr. O’Connor and again Mae introduced me to him and told him why we were here and so then he talked to me a little bit. And Mae said something like, “Well, 15

The O'Sullivans of Muingaphuca

you know, she’s been here only a couple of weeks and I think she’s a little bit nervous now about all this newness and the work and everything. And so,” she said, “she’ll probably be a little bit nervous in the beginning.” “Oh, well,” he said, “if she does as well as another Irish girl we have in this department from Ireland, I’m sure she’ll be all right.”

So, he was very easy to deal with and, you know, he didn’t make me feel as if I was—.

So, he turned to me and he said, “Well, if you do as well as this Ms. Dwyer, I’m sure you’ll make out all right.” And he says, “We’ll take you on for three months on trial. And at the end of three months if you like us and we like you, you’ll have a permanent job, but if things don’t work out,” you know, something like that, you know, much to say, “or you’re out.”

So anyway, he says, “You come into work Tuesday morning.” Monday was the 4th of July and he says, “Come in and somebody will show you around and explain what your duties will be,” and that’s it.

HELEN: How much did they pay you, Mother?

MARY: Thirteen dollars a week and we were paid twice a month, on the 15th and the 30th unless it happened on a Sunday, you’d get paid the day before.

HELEN: Did you get your money in cash or a check, do you remember?

MARY: Gee, I don’t remember. It didn’t matter to me as long as I got paid.

HELEN: What kind of work did you do?

MARY: First they put me on the addressograph machine, but it seemed that—I don’t remember exactly what the difficulty was. An addressograph machine is not like a sewing machine, you know, and I was accustomed to a machine that would do what I told it to do. But, see all of this is so new to me, Helen, that I think that they figured maybe that I wasn’t quite up to that yet.

HELEN: But what did they expect you to do with that machine? What kinds of things did they do with it?

MARY: Well, they would have a paper of some kind would be presented to me and the person’s name, this person who got insured would be on it and the address underneath, and up in the corner would be the policy number, and on the second line down from that would probably be the date of the—let me see. You would have annual policies, you would have semi-annual, and quarterly policies. Well, you would have to make that notation there whether it was annual, semiannual, or quarterly and then underneath that I think it was the premium, yeah. Then over here you would have the city that it was—I think the city; that it could have been California for all I know, I’m here. And there was something else there, too, and then you have the name and address and so forth.

So sometimes when I hit a number, I wouldn’t hit it heavy enough or something and this is a metal plate.

HELEN: Right.

MARY: And if you didn’t hit it heavy enough, you wouldn’t make the indentation.

The O'Sullivans of Muingaphuca

MARY: Yeah, there was some kind of a keyboard where you had to punch these letters where it would show on the plate.

HELEN: And did you punch that like with just your index finger?

MARY: I think so.

HELEN: Because you didn’t know how to type at that point, right?

MARY: No, it wasn’t typing, it was a simple thing, you did it one by one, you know.

So, I guess I was getting kind of worried about that and the girl that was telling me, she’s, “Oh, never mind about that, you know, we’ll let you do something else for a while and you can go back to it,” or something. They had a story for everything.

So, the next thing she put me—oh, was working on the files. These plates had to be put in the files. The annuals went into a certain place and the semi-annuals were separate and the quarterlies. And they were having some kind of difficulty with finding plates. She showed me how the filing system worked and that it was important to get everything in the right place. You wouldn’t put a semi-annual where the annuals would be, you know. And I guess they had quite a few of those that, I don’t know how it was but there was a pile of them anyway.

So, I thought that was simple as anything could be, so I did very well on that. In fact, then they were giving me things that some of the other—there was one or two other girls—because this is a big filing system. And I don’t know what it was but if I couldn’t find the thing—see, one time you would be putting into the files and then another time you would be taking out for changes that were to be made either on the addresses or maybe somebody changed from an annual to a semi-annual to make it easier, but anyway there was always this in and out of the files. So, they had quite a few there that they couldn’t find them. They had the papers for them but they couldn’t find them. So, what I thought, well, gee, was maybe somebody put it in the wrong file.

So, if I couldn’t find it in the annual, I would go to the semi-annual and if I couldn’t get it there, I’d go to the quarter, and I found them almost all by doing that trick, you know, not just go what the request said.

HELEN: They must have liked that.

MARY: They did. They wanted to keep me on it, but after a while I guess they wanted me to try something else. So, there was always a change being made, you know, you went from one thing to another.

HELEN: Did you get raises in your salary?

MARY: I did.

HELEN: When you went into new jobs?

MARY: Yeah. No, not when I went into new jobs, when I went into the new year. They told me that I would get a two dollar a week increase each year, at the end of each year.

HELEN: Did they ever give you more than that?

MARY: No. Because that was the law I guess or the company policy. So anyway, it wound up where I was there seven years. That was the only job I had in America.

HELEN: So, your job was to make up the metal plates for the addressograph machine?

HELEN: There was a keyboard like on a typewriter?

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HELEN: What were you doing the last job you had at Travelers? What kind of work were you doing there, do you remember? You said your work changed, but what was the last thing you were doing?

The O'Sullivans of Muingaphuca

No, at this time her husband was living there, then he died sometime later and then she was alone, but she had three rooms on the upstairs that she rented out to people, you know, like me, that had to have one room.

MARY: Gee, I don’t know, there were so many different changes that they made on those records. If somebody wrote in with a new address—

HELEN: Do you remember what the rent was?

MARY: I don’t. I have no idea.

HELEN: But I mean you stayed in the same department?

HELEN: Did you have to buy your own furniture or did she—

MARY: Yes. But I was at a desk all the time.

MARY: No, the furniture was all there. It was very simple.

HELEN: Well, Mother, what happened when you got engaged to Dad? MARY: Oh, nothing— HELEN: —about your work?

MARY: Oh, nothing happened when I got engaged to Dad because I got—let me see, I got engaged on Easter Sunday and it was my birthday at the same time.4 HELEN: What year was that?

MARY: 1927. So that was in April and then I decided, well, with the summer coming, you know, I think I’d like to go to Ireland and see my mother and everybody in case that I got married, you know, before the following summer. So, I asked for a leave of absence and they said, “Yes.” Yeah, I could have a leave of absence.

So, I made the arrangements and I left for Ireland I think it was a day or two before June 11th, I don’t know. But, you know, all that was done in the summertime. You know, if you wanted to go to Ireland, you had to go early in June and maybe I got through the first of June, I don’t know exactly. I’m forgetting all those details. It never occurred to me that I would have to remember it.

HELEN: So, you went back home on a boat.

MARY: I went back home and I stayed three months at home. I wanted to go to England so bad because I knew a girl very well, her name was—oh, she was going—she was a nurse and— HELEN: You knew her in Hartford?

MARY: Yeah. In fact, I’m skipping some of my stuff.

Beatrice came. I sent her the ticket or the money to come, you know, she wanted to come.

I was here three years when she came, and then that meant that I had to get an apartment so that we could have—we would be able to live together if she didn’t do housework. So— HELEN: Where was your apartment? Did you get an apartment?

MARY: It was on Wethersfield Avenue, and I forget the name of the lady that we lived, but she had two or three rooms. She had a big house and she was living alone, I think.

It wasn’t as big as the stove, top of the stove there. So, Beatrice and I lived there. And now I’m running away from my trip to Ireland. Oh, while we were in that room, I didn’t like it, it wasn’t big enough and we couldn’t have any company.

So, there were two nurses in one of the three rooms and, let me see, we got together with them. They were Irish. They weren’t from Ireland, they were Irish, they were born here. So, we’d get back and forth and visit each other. And they heard about a place on Main Street near that church at Charter Oak Street, there’s a church on the— HELEN: A Protestant church?

MARY: Yeah. But that’s a landmark that you would have. 5 Well, that’s where this apartment was. Anyway, there was one, two, three rooms and a bathroom. So, between the four of us girls, we decided that we would get that apartment. See, the girls, the nurses went out on cases in those days and they would probably be on a case maybe for a week or maybe more, and then they would have to have a place to live but there would be one of them away all the time so it worked out very well. And it was much nicer, nearer to our work and we had more, you know— HELEN: Did you have a kitchen?

MARY: Well, it wasn’t a kitchen, it was just like a shelf. Not a shelf, a counter with a stove and a little sink and it was very nice.

So, one of those nurses was going to Ireland with me, that’s how I had forgotten even about that. So, she had a brother in England and she wanted me after I got home a while to come over and visit for a week or so. Do you know my mother wouldn’t let me go. She didn’t stop me from going but she discouraged me. Oh, she says, “There is so much of that bad sickness in England, I’m afraid to have you go over there.” Bad sickness was typhoid or something like—I don’t know what, but it was bad sickness anyway. 6 And she didn’t want me to go there and just to please her I didn’t go but I was disappointed because I had to pass up a chance that I wanted to take.

So, I was working in the fields and I was working in the house and went visiting relatives and, you know, there was always something to do.

HELEN: You put a new roof on the house on that visit, too, didn’t you?

5

This is likely a reference to the South Congregational Church (1827) on Main Street at Charter Oak Avenue in Hartford.

4

In 1927, Easter Sunday was April 17th, which was also Mary’s birthday.

18

6

In England in 1927, 1,000 people a week died from influenza.

19

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The O'Sullivans of Muingaphuca

MARY: My brother probably talked to somebody and arranged it. I didn’t care who arranged it as long as it got done.

MARY: Yeah, I did.

HELEN: What was that all about?

MARY: I stayed a month longer. Because it was a thatched roof that was on the house.

You know what thatch is?

HELEN: Yes. MARY: It can be done with straw or it can be done with that reed grass that grows by the seashore, you know, it’s very strong grass.

HELEN: Yes. MARY: And it reminds you of—oh, dear, I can’t remember. Anyway it’s like very strong grass with a round stem on it, it’s not black.

HELEN: It dries to be stiff, doesn’t it?

HELEN: Did they put that right on over the thatch?

MARY: No, they took the thatch off because underneath the thatch there is a layer of sod from the bogland. 7 And they have to have that when they’re putting the thatch on in order for the spikes to hang onto it.

You couldn’t do it with nails. You have to have a U-shaped thing with two points on the end and when you push it down, it goes through the sod that comes from the bogland.

HELEN: So, the thatch had to come off and then the corrugated roof went on top of the—right on top of the sod?

MARY: Yes, I imagine that was it, I forget, but I imagine there had to be some insulation there.

MARY: Yes, it dries to be strong and stiff. Well, some people use that instead of straw.

HELEN: Did it make noise in the house when it rained?

But if you use straw on the roof, you’re apt to get attacked by birds trying to find seed in it. And over the bed that I was sleeping in a bird must have did quite a bit of digging, and we had a very rainy season for, oh, most of a month I think, raining every other day, and right beside me in the bed it was coming down drop, drop, drop.

MARY: I suppose maybe it did. But that was expected.

And I had to have a pan or a bucket in the bed with me. It was a double bed so there was plenty of room for the bucket to catch the drip, otherwise it would probably go all over the bed and then they would think that I just had an accident or something.

HELEN: So, did Dad write to you a lot when you were over there?

I shouldn’t have said that, should I? HELEN: Don’t worry, your audience will love it.

MARY: So anyway, that meant that instead of three months, I had to stay four months to see the roof completed. I told my mother, “I’m not going to leave here until we get a waterresistant roof,” and that was that corrugated iron.

HELEN: Yeah.

MARY: They paint them. Some of them are painted red, some are painted black, some are unpainted, you know. They get rusty if they’re unpainted.

HELEN: How did you go about getting that done?

MARY: Oh, my uncle must have [done the work].

HELEN: Who was that? Michael Gallivan?

MARY: Michael Gallivan’s father. His name was John. And I had another uncle, Jim, that’s Jerry’s grandfather, you know Jerry— HELEN: Yeah.

HELEN: That was better than a wet bed.

MARY: Oh, yeah.

MARY: Yes, once a week I think we wrote.

HELEN: Do you think they opened your letters in the post office and everyone in town read them before you got them?

MARY: I don’t know. You know, you can’t always blame the people in the post office.

The mailman probably would like to have a sit down on the way and see what was going on in America.

HELEN: So, we were just talking about you got the roof on the house and that took a month longer and it delayed your return.

MARY: Yeah, I came back I think the first week of October. That was when I came back and I was anxious to get to work, you know, so I went to see Mr. O’Connor and he noticed that I had a diamond on. I don’t know whether he knew it before I left or not. I must have been wearing it in May, you know, before I left but he probably didn’t see me and he didn’t notice it.

Maybe I didn’t have any contact with him before I left.

But anyway, he says, “Is this an engagement?” and I said, “Yeah.” “Oh,” he said, “When are you getting married?” and I said, “Well, we haven’t talked about that but it will probably be in the spring.” “Oh,” he said, “Well, you know that’s going to interfere with your coming back because The Travelers Insurance Company does not have married women. They won’t hire married women and if you get married, you have to leave.”

MARY: —the mason?

Well, anyway, I didn’t do anything about getting somebody.

HELEN: Your brother did that?

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7

Ireland has two types of bogland: blanket bogs, and midland bogs. In the west of Ireland, including Kerry, most bogland is of the blanket type.

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The O'Sullivans of Muingaphuca

The O'Sullivans of Muingaphuca

So, I don’t think I knew about that. So anyway, he said, “Well, gee, I’m afraid I can’t give you back your job knowing that you’re going to get married. You’ll probably get married in the spring if you think now for sure that you are.”

MARY: Tuxedos. Well, Dad had a white silk shirt and I still have it. I’ll show it to you in a little while. It’s in my dresser.

HELEN: Wow.

So, I thought, “Oh.” I don’t know what I said, but he said, “Really I’m sorry because,” he said, “if I take you on now, we have to find a place for the girl that took your place and then if you leave in the spring,” he said, “we’ll have to hire somebody else,” and bring them up, you know, to the way I did. You start at the bottom and you keep going.

HELEN: Did that make you angry?

MARY: It did make me angry but I didn’t know what to do about it. So, I don’t know what I said to him. I don’t know what I said. I probably said that I was going to talk to my intended, you know, something like that, that would be the most likely thing that I would say. So, when I told Dad, he says, “To heck with the job,” he says, “Let’s get married.”

So that was it. We got married in three weeks. There was none of this, you know, great big preparations that we have now. I wore a simple white dress.

HELEN: Did you make your wedding dress?

MARY: No, I didn’t. It was a satin dress and it wasn’t the best satin, I’m sure of that, because it cost me only 30 dollars and then I had sleeves put in it, which was an additional cost, probably five or ten dollars to have sleeves, long sleeves put in.

HELEN: But 30 dollars in 1927 was a lot of money.

MARY: It was?

HELEN: I think it was, wasn’t it?

MARY: I don’t know. But anyway, I remember that and it wasn’t a floor-length dress, it was halfway between the knees and the ankles, I think.

HELEN: Did you wear a veil?

MARY: No, I wore a hat. My friend, Betty Fresher, she got married September 12th and she wore a hat and her sister was her attendant and she wore pink and that’s what Beatrice and I were going to use because Beatrice was going to be my only attendant. So, Betty says “You don’t need to buy anything, but if you’re going to get a hat,” she says, “I’ll give you my hat, I’ll let you take it to wear,” because she says, “Those hats are expensive.” Probably wouldn’t be considered expensive now, but at that time.

HELEN: Sure.

Figure 5. William H. Curtin (1868–1938) and Helen Joan Kennedy Curtin (1873-1928). Their older son Walter Curtin (1899-1907) died at the age of eight. Family lore has it that he died of trichinosis. (For the next several decades, every time pork was served in the Curtin family, there was a discussion of how well done it needed to be in order to prevent another death!) Their younger son, William C. Curtin (1900-1980), grew up to be the patriarch of the Curtin Clan. (Photo courtesy of the McKinley Family.)

MARY: And she said, “You can wear mine and your sister can wear [my sister’s].”

HELEN: So, you borrowed the two hats?

MARY: We borrowed the two hats, yes.

HELEN: Dad’s first cousin was his best man?

MARY: Yeah. And they wore suits, just business suits, you know, dress-up suits. They didn’t have, you know, those colored ones with the—what do you call those?

HELEN: Tuxedos with the frilly shirts?

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The O'Sullivans of Muingaphuca

Interview on March 12, 1989 HELEN: Mom, you were telling me about Christmas Eve when your mother would make a little bit of punch?

MARY: Oh, yeah. When she got through with her dairy work, she would sort of get into a Christmas talk and talk about, “Well, we’re going to have some punch now, Irish Christmas punch.” She would make a punch made with boiled water and sugar and cooled off a bit and then she would add some whiskey, probably a teaspoonful of whiskey to a glass of juice of boiled water and of course there would be sugar in there, and we thought that was the greatest thing that we could have the stuff that the grownups had.

HELEN: Would you get this like you’re all sitting around the peat fire? Did you put chairs in front of the fireplace and talk?

MARY: No. HELEN: How would you be seated in the big room there?

MARY: I don’t remember about that, how we were seated, but I think we just sat around.

HELEN: Did you have a table by that window where we keep the table now?

MARY: Yes. Our table was always by the window. And I don’t remember that we ever had anything more than maybe a little piece of raisin bread or something with the whiskey, with the punch. It wasn’t like a meal or anything. It was just a little social sip.

HELEN: You’d have this on Christmas Eve, like would you have that early in the afternoon or late afternoon or in the evening?

MARY: No, evening. Before going to bed.

HELEN: What time did you go to bed, do you remember?

MARY: Oh, I don’t know, probably nine or ten o’clock.

HELEN: Do you remember this that your father was there, too, or does this memory come like when it was just your mother and your grandmother and you kids?

MARY: I don’t remember my father being there because he died when I was probably ten and a half. I would be 11 in probably April.8 HELEN: Do you remember what month he died or the day?

MARY: I think it was in March. And I think the first World War had stirred about—had about started or there was a lot of talk about it. And there was talk about the war and Irish fellas having to go in the war.9 Figure 6. Mary Ellen Sullivan Curtin (1902-1991). Matriarch of the Curtin Clan, 1988. (Moskey Family Collection)

8

Eugene O’Sullivan (1873-1913), Mary’s father, died in March 1913, about a month before Mary’s eleventh birthday.

9

The U.K. entered the World War I, then known as the “Great War,” when it declared war on Germany on August 4, 1914. Irish troops first saw battle in August 1915 when they landed at Suvla Bay in Gallipoli, Turkey. The Christmas Mary is remembering was most likely 1914, when she was 12 years old.

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Well, I was too young to get seriously involved in talking about that sort of thing. I would probably just leave that conversation and just start some kind of a little game or something because that wasn’t anything that we children were interested in.

Anyway, he died in March [1913] and I remember being at his funeral.

HELEN: What do you remember about it?

MARY: All the people in the graveyard.

HELEN: Okay. So, you were saying you remember about your father’s funeral?

MARY: Yeah, I remember my grandmother picking up teeth.

HELEN: Teeth?

The O'Sullivans of Muingaphuca

MARY: No, the other daughters were in this country.

HELEN: Yeah.

MARY: There was my mother, my father, and my grandmother and grandfather and my sister, Margaret. And then there was at that time, if I was nine or ten years old when she came back, there was probably my brother, who would be seven or eight, and then Beatrice, she would probably be five or six. And all these children would be in the same house, which was only three rooms. But none of those farmer houses were any bigger than that.

HELEN: Let’s go back to the funeral though, Mom. When did Margaret die? Like a year before your father? Or was it quite a few years?

MARY: I don’t know, it might have been longer than that.

MARY: Teeth. Evidently my Aunt Margaret, that would be my father’s sister, she had been in this country and her health got very run down. I think she must have had tuberculosis, and she went back to Ireland. The doctor advised her and her sisters to help her to get to Ireland and maybe she would be able to get a cure over there. But I don’t know how long before my father died that she was there, that she died.

HELEN: Was she older or younger than he?

MARY: I wouldn’t know for sure because nobody told me, but she must have been in Ireland most of a year and she died on Good Friday. I remember hearing the family talking about how she died on Good Friday. Her name was Margaret, and she was in this country for a while, maybe a few years, and she did housework.

And when it came time for Lent, she was grateful for this penance during Lent, like fasting and prayers, and she must have overdone the fasting and she got a cold or most likely a cold because it would be springtime and the cold weather here, and she never really recovered from that cold and that’s how she developed pneumonia and tuberculosis.

HELEN: But now we’re talking about the day that you were at the graveyard when your father was being buried and you said that your grandmother found teeth?

MARY: Well, they had to dig up—probably my sister Margaret’s grave—in order for him to be buried there. See, that was very common in Ireland because they all had big families and when any died, if there was not a space left for this person who’s being buried, they would have to dig up the oldest, the oldest— HELEN: Coffin?

MARY: Coffin. And then of course if the mother especially was there, she picked up the pieces like the teeth or anything like that, she would take it and wipe it with a handkerchief and probably have a good cry for herself.

And anyway, I was standing there with my grandmother and she had the teeth in her hand, you know, I don’t believe they were false teeth. They were just the natural teeth that— HELEN: Were they like in a jawbone, so it was like a set of teeth?

MARY: Well, I don’t know what they did in those days but they gave up lots of things that we today don’t give up.

MARY: I suppose. I don’t know. I can’t remember seeing them but that I knew she had them in her hand. And she, I suppose, was wiping them off and finding a way to have them buried beside my father.

HELEN: Right. But their diet was so sparse anyways, can you remember hearing anything about what they’d give up?

HELEN: Yeah, did you tell me one time, Mom, that they took the bones—there were also bones—and they laid the bones along—

MARY: I don’t know. Nobody told me what she fasted on, but she was doing a good job on Lent, but not on herself, you know.

MARY: Yeah, beside the casket, that’s right. That’s the way they overcame the problem of enough burial places. They had great respect for the people that were disturbed, but their bodies had already decayed and the bones were there but the flesh was in dust by this time.

HELEN: What kind of fasting would she do like?

HELEN: Was she living in the house? When she came back to Ireland, was she living in the farm?10 MARY: Oh, yeah, she had to live at the farm, there was no place else for her to go.10 HELEN: Do you know how many people were living there then, like were there other daughters there?

HELEN: Now, I know this is hard for you but it’s really important for me. Like can you remember any more about what was happening when you were standing there at the grave, like were people keening and wailing?

MARY: No, I don’t remember that because all of that keening was done at the house before the body was taken out. Maybe there would be a few there that was crying.

HELEN: So, you’re standing around and like looking down into this hole in the ground?

10

“The farm” is here a reference to the O’Sullivan farm in Muingaphuca, Caragh Lake, Co. Kerry, Mary’s childhood home.

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MARY: Yeah.

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The O'Sullivans of Muingaphuca

The O'Sullivans of Muingaphuca

HELEN: Now, do you remember, like did the coffins go one on top of the other or side by side in the grave?

MARY: Oh, side by side. I don’t think—I didn’t remember seeing that and maybe I wasn’t allowed to stay there to have that done, but I would feel sure that they were laid down one beside the other one. That would mean that two old caskets had to be taken out.

HELEN: Do you remember anything about the day? was it a rainy day, was it cold?

MARY: No, I don’t think it was rainy because chances are I would have known it at the time. I remember I was only ten and a half years old, almost 11 in a few months. And the children at that age in Ireland, they were like the children of probably seven or eight years old here in this country because the children here are so mature at eight and nine that I, in Ireland being ten and a half, I had to be probably not mature as—.

HELEN: Well, children were seen and not heard in those days.

MARY: Yeah, that’s right.

HELEN: Yeah, it was another world.

But as long as we’re talking about your father’s funeral, could we back up to your father’s sickness before he’s died?

MARY: Well, he was in bed for a couple of months.

HELEN: And do you remember what happened when he got sick?

Figure 7. Visiting the Dromavalla Cemetery, Killorglin, Summer 1976. During her first trip to Ireland in the summer of 1976, Helen took her Uncle John O’Sullivan to Killorglin’s main cemetery to locate the spot where the funerals described by Mary in these interviews had taken place. Left to right: Helen’s son Matthew, Helen, and Helen’s Uncle John. (Photo by Kathleen McKinley. Moskey Family Collection)

HELEN: And was your father’s body in a coffin?

MARY: Oh, yeah.

HELEN: Yeah. A pine box.

MARY: The coffin would be set down into it and then these bones that were found would be laid along beside the casket.

HELEN: So, really if there were generations of family buried in that plot, those bones could have really been from anybody, you know?

MARY: Well, they would be from the same family but at different ages, I suppose.

HELEN: Well, right. Now, you told me that your grandfather died the day after your father and they were both buried on the same day.

MARY: Right.

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MARY: When he got sick, let me see, oh, the beginning of serious sickness was he got swellings in his neck, swellings in here and he had to be operated on. And those lumps or whatever they were, although we kids never were given an understanding of what it was or what it could be, only that he had to be operated on the side of his neck here.

HELEN: Where was that operation done?

MARY: I don’t know, but it must have been in Tralee or Killarney because it was away from our house.

And when he came home, he had to be resting, I suppose, and recuperating for, oh, probably a couple of months, I don’t know. But then he did pick up his farm work again, you know, and doing work with the horse.

HELEN: Well, what happened that started up the illness that he finally died from? How did that all sort of go?

MARY: I would rather not talk about him. I would rather not have it talked about because my father used to—am I on now?

HELEN: Yeah.

MARY: I would rather take it off and talk to you about it because I never told anybody.

HELEN: Okay.

MARY: As I remember it, we were never told confidences of the family, why this was done or that was done, or—

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HELEN: Well, any more than people would tell confidences of the family to young children today.

MARY: But we missed a lot of the causes of trouble, you know.

HELEN: But anyway, your father came down with what kind of an illness?

MARY: I don’t know what, they didn’t tell us that. I suppose that he went to the doctor if it was serious. And of course, after he had the operation on his throat, he probably had it checked, you know, every month or so, I don’t know. Again, we were in school and we didn’t need to know what was going on.

HELEN: Okay. But at some point, your father took sick and he went in his bed, right? I mean like he wasn’t able to go out and take care of— MARY: Yeah, this was after his operation was all over and everything. He got something that prevented him from doing his farm work and he had to go to the doctor. And I don’t know what the doctor told him, or my mother never told us or my grandmother.

HELEN: What was going on at home? Was he staying in bed? You know, I mean he was a sick person in bed?

MARY: He was in bed for about, I think, I would say probably a couple of months. It started and it dragged out a couple of months. And I don’t know what it was but he was not able to do his farm work and my mother was so busy trying to do what he was supposed to do and what her duties would be with the dairy, the milk, and the chickens, and the other responsibilities she had, she was working night and day.

The poor woman, I don’t know. When I look back now and realize what she was up against, you know, I feel sick over it.

HELEN: Well, Mom, you don’t need to feel sick, it wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t anything you could have changed.

MARY: No. And my mother was a wonderful person. She did the housework, she took care of the cows and the animals and the chickens and all of that stuff, and she made the clothes for me and my two sisters, one, two— HELEN: Three.

MARY: —three sisters, she made our clothes with a needle and thread. She didn’t have any sewing machine. And she was up lots of times until eleven and twelve o’clock at night trying to finish something and she had to be up at least at seven o’clock in the morning.

HELEN: Well, let’s go back to your father’s being sick. Not that I want to harp on it but I want to sort of finish one story.

So, he took sick and he was sort of in his bed and he just didn’t get better, he kept getting sort of worse?

MARY: Yeah. Yeah.

HELEN: And now do you remember anything about the day he died?

MARY: The only thing I know was on a Saturday—on a Friday it was maybe. My grandfather went to the post office to get his pension money and, you know, the post office is— 30

The O'Sullivans of Muingaphuca

you go up to the school and you go to the right and on down to where the railroad station was.

The post office was only a stone’s throw from the railroad station. And he walked there to get his pension money.

HELEN: Mom, is it the same place the post office was up until ten years ago or something?

MARY: Yeah, yeah. That’s the place.

HELEN: Okay. I know where it is.

MARY: And he walked all that distance and I would say it was at least three miles, maybe more than that because it’s a half a mile up to the school and then it was a mile to the post office, really.

So that would be a mile and a half at the least. And then when he had to walk back, again that was a three-mile walk. And when he came home, he probably had a cup of tea and something with it and then he went to get the hay off the haggard, as they call them over there: he had to bring in some hay for the animals. And he walked up those four steps from the yard level— HELEN: I know where you’re talking about.

MARY: —to go up and he fell on the steps and he had to be picked up. So, I think what he had was shock.

He was 80 years old. So, I don’t know, my mother probably saw Eammon, maybe his wife, my grandmother, maybe between the two of them they had no other way of getting him picked up. So, they must have picked him up and brought him in and put him to bed. That was Friday evening. Well, I think it was Friday evening. It doesn’t matter anyway. So, then he was in bed Saturday and Sunday. And in the meantime, I suppose my father is aware of this, that his father, you know, had fallen and probably he knew what it was. What do they call them?

HELEN: Shock.

MARY: Shock. And maybe, I don’t know, maybe his father wasn’t able to talk well or something. But Sunday morning my mother got up and she was going to give my father his breakfast. So, she went to the kitchen and started the fire, put the kettle on, and whatever she gave him, I don’t know, but it was probably tea and maybe raisin bread or something like that.

And she brought it to him to the bed and she helped him sit up in the bed and she left him and went down into the kitchen.

HELEN: Yeah.

MARY: She had her own breakfast at the table and when she heard some noise in the bedroom that attracted her to get up and go see what was the matter, and my father had fallen back on the bed. And evidently, he had a shock of some kind. Whether it was the kind of shocks you get over here or not, I don’t know. But I never heard that he said anything to anybody during the morning, the rest of the day. But that’s how he died.

HELEN: Did he die right then or was it the next day?

MARY: No, not then. He died sometime—it seems to me that he died sometime in the evening. You know, he might have been awake but that he wasn’t able to participate in anything.

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HELEN: Did the priest come out, do you remember that?

MARY: I don’t remember the priest coming. He could have but I don’t remember it.

HELEN: So, that was like Saturday night or so?

The O'Sullivans of Muingaphuca

MARY: Well, I can’t see them with my eyes but if that’s what was the custom, then that’s what it was. And we weren’t allowed to be standing around gawking at everything. They probably put us to bed, you know.

HELEN: Did people stay and stay up all night with the body and all that?

MARY: That was Sunday morning that this happened.

MARY: Yeah, all night. Yeah.

My grandfather is in the same room in another bed, and my grandfather died Monday, sometime Monday, and they were buried on Wednesday out of the same house, the father and the son.

HELEN: So, do you remember anything about the next morning?

MARY: No.

HELEN: Your grandfather was 80 and your father was around 40?

HELEN: The caskets being taken out of the house?

MARY: Forty-one I think he was.

MARY: No, I don’t remember seeing them. But it could have been.

HELEN: Forty-one? What happened about getting the bodies ready for the wake and what kind of a wake did they have?

HELEN: Do you remember whether you rode in a horse wagon or anything like that, the long ride into town?

MARY: I don’t know. I was considered a child. Maybe I was sent out or something.

MARY: No, I don’t.

HELEN: To your uncle’s or something.

HELEN: And being in the church?

MARY: Or maybe my Uncle Jim told my mother, “Send them down to the house,” you know. But I don’t remember what went on during the day. I didn’t see it.

HELEN: Well, were you at the house for the wake? Because the wake would have taken place in the house, right?

MARY: I was. Probably would have had to be there because there was no place else for us to stay.

MARY: I don’t even remember being in the church. The only thing that I remember about the funeral was seeing the people at the burial ground and the grave. I don’t know if the grave was dug while we were there. I don’t think it was. I think it was done ahead of time.

But I remember that my grandfather—my grandmother had her daughter’s teeth and she was I suppose sad and probably fondling the teeth, you know.

HELEN: Uh-huh. Do you remember what happened after when you left the grave—

But to remember every little detail, I didn’t. Only I know that the wake was going on and people were coming in and people were crying, women crying, and I don’t remember anything about leaving the house in the morning.

HELEN: Do you remember like of this keening, this kind of wailing and crying, “Aww”?

Stuff going on that you hear about, you know, the tradition of keening.

MARY: I don’t know if it was exaggerated, but crying is sort of a wailing anyway.

HELEN: Well, it’s in the Irish tradition anyways, you know.

MARY: Yeah. Yeah.

HELEN: But do you remember women coming in their black shawls and all that?

Because that was 1913.

MARY: No, I don’t remember anything— HELEN: —when you went home, you went to your uncle’s, you went anywhere?

MARY: No, I don’t know anything about it, but I feel sure that we had to come home.

HELEN: Yeah. You would have been almost 11 years old. If your father died in March, you were ten and then you were 11 the next month in April.

MARY: Yeah.

HELEN: Do you remember things about when you were 11 years old? You would have been a kid about Eiléan’s age then, probably about her size, skinny. 11 MARY: I was skinny. The other members of the family seemed to accumulate more weight than I. I was—do you remember how Kathleen McKinley used to be?

MARY: Yeah.

HELEN: Yeah.

HELEN: And when I look at pictures in Irish history books of 1913 in the west of Ireland, that’s what you’d see, women in long skirts, black, black shawls and—

MARY: Skinny like her, you know.

HELEN: But at age 11 you would have been in the fifth grade.

MARY: Yeah.

HELEN: Do you remember that as kind of the dress that people wore?

11

This is a reference to Eiléan Grace Moskey Worcester, who was 11 years old at the time of this interview. Eiléan was Helen’s granddaughter and Mary’s great-granddaughter.

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The O'Sullivans of Muingaphuca

MARY: Yeah.

MARY: Oh, yeah.

HELEN: Fourth or fifth, depending on what year you went to school and all of that.

HELEN: Did the men participate and say the rosary, too, or was this just—

Now do you kind of remember anything about yourself at that age thinking about being in school at the fourth or fifth grade?

MARY: No, I— HELEN: The school was up at the corner across from Shea’s, right?

MARY: Yeah.

HELEN: What was the name of the school?

MARY: Oh, yeah, they would. If they were there, they would.

HELEN: Yeah.

MARY: But I don’t know. My father died when I was so young that I probably lost a lot of reaction with my father.

HELEN: And who would lead the rosary? Would your mother lead it and then you would all answer the response.

MARY: I suppose so. Yeah, I suppose so. I don’t remember exactly. Everything was so ordinary and so every day, you know, custom that you didn’t worry too much about it or think too much of it.

MARY: Glounaguillagh.

HELEN: Say that into the microphone.

MARY: Glounaguillagh.

HELEN: I heard these stories about when Auntie Bea was, you know, as teenager and it probably was after you had come here.

HELEN: Okay.

MARY: I think that is the Gaelic for the glen of the lake.

MARY: Yeah, it was.

HELEN: Yeah.

HELEN: During the Black and Tan War was around 1920?12

MARY: “Gloun” would be a glen I guess and “guillagh” would be I think—

MARY: Yeah, that’s right.

HELEN: Of the lake?

MARY: Yeah. The glen of the lake. I think that’s what it is.

HELEN: And that Auntie Bea worked in the underground like bringing food and clothing and that to the soldiers at night?

MARY: Yeah.

But I wouldn’t be sure. But that’s only my own, I never heard that said but I have a feeling that it was something like that.

HELEN: Now, this is a funny question probably but I remember you telling us at one time that when you were kids in Ireland that you went barefoot a lot?

MARY: Yes. HELEN: Did you go barefoot in the winter?

MARY: Oh, no, not in the winter. We had shoes in the winter, but in the—you know, up until probably maybe October maybe we’d go barefoot. We would rather go barefoot than wear shoes. Sometimes those shoes hurt so who wants to be wearing hurting shoes.

HELEN: Well, tell me about how you would say the family rosary in the kitchen at night and did you do that— MARY: Oh, well, all of a sudden my mother would probably come in from the cow barn and say, “Well, we’ve got to say the rosary now,” and she might help to get four or five chairs out on the floor, middle of the floor, and we would kneel down on the floor on a cement floor, not one with rugs on it.

HELEN: Yeah.

MARY: And we’d just kneel down on the cement floor and rest our elbows on the chair.

That was the ceremony.

HELEN: Was it like a guerilla warfare?

MARY: Yeah.

HELEN: They would be sort of hiding from the British troops and whatever. Do you remember having her tell you anything about that activity or hearing anything about it?

MARY: Well, after I got to be about, I don’t know, maybe 16, a friend of—her name was Annie Browne—worked at this house, a rich man’s house at the lake. You know, when you go up to the school and you take that road that head towards the mountains.

HELEN: Yeah.

MARY: If you went out through there you would run into the entrance to this house, this fancy English house, you know, that they—

12

This is a reference to the Irish War of Independence (January 1919 to July 1921). The notorious Black and Tans (so named for their mismatching surplus uniforms) were initially a force of temporary British paramilitaries that were intended to beef up the resident Royal Irish Constabulary. They were notorious for their brutality against the Irish and wanton destruction of the homes and property of Irish Catholics.

HELEN: And then everybody in the house had to participate?

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HELEN: What was his name, Squire Stack or something?

MARY: Stack. I forget his first name. But anyway, I don’t know how I happened to get the assistant job in the kitchen with her.

I don’t know how it was. Maybe she might have told my mother about it, that they needed somebody out there and anyway, I worked there with her for, I don’t know, maybe a year and a half, I don’t know exactly. But anyway, I used to have to do the kitchen work, help her in the kitchen and there was two cows because they need cows for the milk. So, I used to have to milk those two cows. And I don’t know what else I did.

HELEN: Did you milk them twice a day, in the morning and at night?

MARY: Yeah, morning and night.

HELEN: And you lived there?

MARY: Yeah, uh-huh. And I don’t remember an awful lot about it, whether I liked it or I didn’t like it.

HELEN: Did you miss your mother? I’ll bet you did.

MARY: Oh, yeah. Well, I used to go home, you know, too, quite often. But then Beatrice was coming up and she would be doing the work around the house that I was doing, you know.

But really, I don’t remember much about that. It was always like being home. You know, you did the same type of work, washed the dishes and washed the clothes out and hang them out on the line and scrub the milk pails, you know, and scald them out and stuff like that.

HELEN: Well, after you came to the United States, you came in 1920, right?

MARY: Yeah.

HELEN: Well, the Black and Tan War with England was just around that time?

MARY: It was started at that time.

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come to the kitchen door sometime during the evening and want to know if there was a chance for a meal and a chance to sleep in the loft out in the cow barn or someplace, because they needed rest and they needed food and they needed clean clothes, too.

HELEN: Yeah.

MARY: So, the girls, the two girls in the house were probably doing that, you know—in fact, they may be expecting that and they prepared, you know, food and things for them in case they did come and they would tell them to go in the loft. It’s just a barn with a loft on the top.

Almost every barn had a loft, you know. And they would go out there and sleep and maybe the girls would sneak the food out there or leave it for them inside the door so they could get it because it would be very hard to get away with stuff like that because—and especially with these English people that were living around the lake in these fancy houses—they wouldn’t want anything to happen that would hurt England, you know. And everything had to be done on the QT. HELEN: Specially to think this was going on right out of their own kitchens and on their own property.

MARY: Yeah. Well, now I don’t know whether that was the way it was everywhere because I didn’t have that experience, it was after I left that that custom was put into effect.

But anyway, in the meantime, if the guy wanted to have his socks washed or maybe his underwear or something or maybe he wanted a clean shirt and if he could get a shirt for nothing, they would make sure that it was available. In fact, they maybe have that a week ahead thinking that maybe somebody might come who would need socks and a clean shirt and I don’t know what else.

I never really found out just how the thing worked, but that’s the sum and substance of it.

So, if they had a dry shirt and they wouldn’t have to have the socks. If they had dry clothes, they would just put them someplace in the barn and when the guy woke up in the morning, he would have his dry clothes.

And they would wash probably the soiled one and they’d be right handy for the next guy.

Something like that.

HELEN: Did you do anything about— MARY: No, because these activities in this, they hadn’t gone to the country yet in all this Black and Tan stuff and the—the rebellion against them hadn’t gotten out into the country.

But they called the group of girls that helped out—probably not in every one of these fancy houses did this happen because they would get caught sooner or later, but—

It would be in the towns and maybe in the towns or something they might—in the night they might raid the police barracks or something where these Black and Tans hung around. But it didn’t get out to our place until after I came to this country.

HELEN: They had a name they called them?

HELEN: So, you were here and your sister, Bea, was in Ireland. Now what do you know of what she did during that time?

HELEN: Put it into the microphone, Mom.

MARY: The only thing, see she took the job that I had.

MARY: The union was Cumann na mBan.13 MARY: Cumann na mBan was the name of the girls’ company that were backing these Sinn Fein Irish Fighters. “Cumann” like “naman,” that would be women; you know, part of it.

HELEN: Oh, I see.

MARY: And all the young people around knew where there would be a chance to get a meal or get some washing done or something for these Sinn Feinners. They would stay out of everything during the day but the nighttime is when they were working. And if there was a couple of them that had been through a couple of rough days and was really tired, they would 36

13

Literally “The Women’s Council,” but in English, the group called themselves “The Irishwoman’s Council.” This was an Irish Republican women’s paramilitary organization formed in Dublin on April 2, 1914. In 1916, it became an auxiliary of the Irish Volunteers.

37

The O'Sullivans of Muingaphuca

HELEN: Were they organized locally?

MARY: Oh, they would have meetings maybe Sunday afternoon—and they’d be talking about what they would do to better the service maybe or something, you know.

The O'Sullivans of Muingaphuca

parents-in-law that I think that’s what happened. That Julia was neglected to the point where she— HELEN: But, Mother, that was a very serious illness and a lot of people died all over.

HELEN: So, would they get together in someone’s house like for tea and then—?

MARY: They did.

MARY: Oh, no, I don’t know if there was that. Everything had to be done in secret.

HELEN: It wasn’t that they were neglected.

HELEN: Right. Where would they meet?

MARY: That’s right.

MARY: I don’t know. It would probably be a different place each time, but there was no office or anyplace where they met.

HELEN: Well, Mom, about your brother John. There’s always been this like mysterious thing about some girl he wanted to marry. Did you ever get the truth of that? But is that one of those things like you know what it was but nobody is going to say it?

MARY: I don’t know. Beatrice is the one that told me about it, that John used to go to these dances that they have at the crossroads and everything. And he was full of fun and everything and evidently, they struck up a love affair between them, and she was a second cousin of his, but I don’t know what her name was now. I might have heard it at one time. But the parents would never allow this.

HELEN: They didn’t have the medicines to treat that kind of thing.

MARY: That’s right. There was in between Caragh Lake and Muingaphuca and down around where Uncle Jim lived, you know, the fellow that rebuilt the house.

HELEN: Yeah, the Gallivans, Jerry.

MARY: I think there was six deaths in that area from that flu, so Julia was sick for about a year really. Because when I left, she was sick then.

HELEN: Didn’t she die before you left Ireland?

MARY: No, she died after I came here.

HELEN: I never knew that, I thought she died while you were a kid there.

HELEN: Second cousins?

MARY: No. She was 14 when she died. 14

MARY: Second cousins to marry, because it was forbidden by the church, but nobody had brains enough to go and talk to the priest and find out.

HELEN: And was she the youngest in the family or?

MARY: No, Katie was the youngest.

HELEN: It really wasn’t forbidden, you just needed a dispensation.

HELEN: I see. So, you left when you were 18 in 1920?

MARY: Yeah. You could have got a dispensation because when I was telling Father Cronin, who’s over here about it, he says, “That’s crazy.” He said, “They could have gotten a dispensation.”

HELEN: Even first cousins could get a dispensation.

MARY: No, now I don’t think— HELEN: Yes. First cousins could get a dispensation, but they didn’t want to do that within families but it could happen.

MARY: But anyway, my mother didn’t want it and neither did her parents.

MARY: Yeah.

HELEN: And what year did Julia die?

MARY: I think it was—if I left in June to come over here, it was within a year, it might have been that following winter. I don’t remember. I haven’t got the date of it.

HELEN: So, you were about four or five years older than she was?

MARY: More than that, I think. Let me see. I think I was old—I think I was six and a half years older than Katie, and Katie was a year and a half younger than Julia. Julia was—

And poor John, he wasn’t interested in anybody else. So, he says to heck with it. He never got married.

HELEN: So, you were—

HELEN: Tell me about your sister Julia. I mean you’ve told me in the past, I know but we’re recording this now.

HELEN: So, you were five years older than she was?

MARY: —in July. She was in July and Katie was in January.

MARY: I think about that.

MARY: She caught the flu in 1918 I think it was. There was a flu in Ireland and England and everyplace. It came from the war, that’s where it originated.

And she was kind of a thin person, you know. She had never been sick, I mean with the ordinary cold that any kid will get, so anyway she probably didn’t get the right care and my mother was so busy trying to carry the farm and carry the family and also deal with her her

38

14

Julia was born July 5, 1906. She died at age 14, possibly in late 1920, several months after Mary emigrated to America.

39

The O'Sullivans of Muingaphuca

HELEN: So that would make it right because if she died when she was 14, you would have been 19 and you say she died about a year after you came to the United States.

The O'Sullivans of Muingaphuca

HELEN: One of the boys?

MARY: One of the boys, yeah.

MARY: Sometime within the year.

HELEN: And how old were you when you would be doing this?

HELEN: So that was a hard year for your mother, she lost two daughters.

MARY: Oh, I must have been—it had to be 16 or 17.

MARY: Yeah. And it wasn’t easy for me to come from Ireland from out of a farm area and just farm goings on everything else and come over here and start in at The Travelers as a clerk.

Oh, I really had a—I don’t know, it’s so far back now that I forget most of it.

And I had to put up with these people laughing at the brogue and laughing at the Irish customs and, you know, some people, especially the Yankees I suppose. We used to call them Yankees.

HELEN: The English.

MARY: The English. And then, too, people whose background was from other countries like France and Sweden and all those places, but they had no sympathy for the Irish.

So, all of the first two or three years were really hard for me.

And I couldn’t keep up with what was going on at home either because it meant, you know, writing regularly and trying to put down to paper what you want to tell them and I don’t know, it was really— HELEN: Tell me about the dances down at the crossroads. You would go down there on Sunday afternoons?

MARY: Not every Sunday.

But was once in a while if the weather was good and if three or four girls got together, you know, say, “Oh, let’s go up to the cross,” that would be where the school—in front of the school there.

And maybe there will be a dance, maybe the O’Neill’s will have the fiddle. And sometimes there was another fellow in the area and I forget who he was, he had an accordion, so we was always hoping that either the accordion or the fiddle would be there.

And when you turned in front of the school, you turn to the right to go to the post office there was a crossroad farther down about a quarter of a mile and that was a fairly common place—or another area would be just leveled off, you know, maybe a bunch of guys at some time or other, you know, tried to level it off. But there was no such thing as a level floor like this to sit on, to dance with those old farmer shoes and everything that, oh, geez.

HELEN: Uh-huh. Did you ever have any boys come calling at the house?

MARY: No. We’d meet at the dance, you know.

HELEN: Did you have a boyfriend, like some guy you kind of liked?

MARY: Yeah, I did have a boyfriend but it wasn’t anything.

HELEN: Well, what was it like to have a boyfriend then?

MARY: He’d dance, he would want to dance with you, you know, although different ones would ask you to dance. And then he’d walk home with you, you know.

HELEN: Would he hold your hand going home?

MARY: Gee, I forget. I forget what it was all about, but, oh, gee.

HELEN: So, he’d walk you home but he didn’t walk up to the front door with you?

MARY: Oh, no, kitchen door.

HELEN: Well, the kitchen door, would he walk that far in with you to the kitchen door or just leave you at the boreen [driveway]?

MARY: Well, I don’t know, maybe, either one. They weren’t like the couples around here where they’re hanging on together all through the distance. I don’t know, I forget.

HELEN: He’d walk on one side of the road and you’d walk on the other?

MARY: Oh, no, not that.

The boy that I used to see, he died, too.

HELEN: What happened to him?

MARY: As a result of the flu.

HELEN: Do you remember what his name was?

MARY: Patrick Joy, J-O-Y-C-E. I think it’s J-O-Y. I think they just wrote it J-O-Y, but usually the name is J-O-Y-C-E. HELEN: Like James Joyce.

HELEN: And what would you dance, a reel or something like that?

MARY: Yeah.

MARY: Oh, they had reels and they had—now I can’t think—

HELEN: And where did they live, Mom, down near the lake?

There’s a big difference nowadays from the Ireland that I left.

HELEN: So, you would go down there and you would dance, like were you popular?

MARY: Oh, somebody’d invite you, “Come on, come on.” Grab you by the arm, you know.

40

MARY: No, they lived—you know where we lived, you know that hill on the other side of the road? You know, you go out to the street and then go up to that kind of a hill there and it was directly across from there. The entrance was from the road into Killorglin.

HELEN: So, from your house you’d go down towards the school?

41

The O'Sullivans of Muingaphuca

MARY: Yeah.

HELEN: And then what is the hill you’re talking about that’s—

The O'Sullivans of Muingaphuca

yourself.” And, of course, she knew the background that I had, you know, just going to school and working on a farm and milking a couple of cows.

HELEN: So, then what happened?

MARY: Well, it would be— HELEN: On Muingaphuca Road there?

MARY: Yeah. It would be—but the entrance to his house was not from the Muingaphuca Road, it was from the Killorglin Road.

HELEN: You’re talking about that hill that’s like up behind the school?

MARY: No. It’s in back of the school.

HELEN: In back of the school. Okay. Now I know where you’re talking about. Now I know where you’re talking about.

MARY: Oh, she didn’t want to say no right away, she didn’t want to dampen any spirits that I might have, I don’t know. She probably said, “Oh, well, we’ll talk about it later,” or something. She never had time for talking because there was always a job of some kind waiting for her.

And anyway, we got talking again in a couple of days about it. She said, “Well,” she said, “I suppose that’s a chance that you wouldn’t get again,” having an aunt come back to Ireland and sort of take me by the wing and bring me back. That is, she would know how to deal with traveling and, you know—the boat and everything. Because I had never been anywhere only as far as Killorglin.

MARY: Do you know that 1920 is 60 what, 69 years ago? Or 68 years ago, anyway.

And I was in Ireland only 18 years.

HELEN: So, then you started making plans to go?

HELEN: Right. So, you’ve been here more than three times, three and a half times as long as you were ever in Ireland. Tell me about the summer your Aunt Jo came home from America.

HELEN: Your Aunt Jo made the suit?

MARY: She didn’t come home in the summer, she came home in the winter, November.

And she stayed right through Christmas and up until the first of May and then she started making plans to come back to this country.

HELEN: Did she stay in the farmhouse with you, the family? Is that where she stayed?

MARY: Yeah. She slept in the same bed with her mother because that’s the only accommodation there was. She slept with her mother because her father had been dead by then.

[He died in 1919.]

HELEN: And she came home and then in 1920— MARY: Yeah. The war was over in 1918 I think it was.

HELEN: And so, she was going to be coming back to Hartford? And she asked you if you wanted to come back?

MARY: Yeah, she wanted to know if I would be interested in going to America and get a job, so I said, “Well, I—.” I don’t know what I said, but I don’t think I jumped at the chance because maybe I hadn’t ever even thought about it because of my mother being without a husband and having to work the farm and everything. I don’t know what I thought.

HELEN: And you were the oldest kid.

MARY: Yeah, so she made me a suit.

MARY: Yeah, she was a dressmaker, you know.

HELEN: What did she do? Go into town and buy some material?

MARY: Yeah.

HELEN: And what kind of a suit, was it?

MARY: It was a navy blue. It wasn’t a heavy wool suit, but it wasn’t a summer suit either. You know, it was sort of a medium quality.

So, she made it and by that time I had a sewing machine because my Aunt Bertha, whose picture is on that thing there, she died and she left five children. And my grandmother went to stay with the children for a while, you know, being the grandmother and everything. So, she told me that I could have my aunt’s sewing machine if I wanted. So, she got it for me.

HELEN: So, you were already making your clothes in Ireland at that point?

MARY: Yes. I made a shirt for my Uncle Jim, I remember. My mother cut it out, I was—I don’t know, was 13 or 14. I was maybe 14 when I made this white shirt for him. And in Ireland at the time the men used to have the collars that was about an inch high, you know, and if they wanted to be fancy, they would attach the other collar on top and they would wash the shirt so often then because they could, you know.

HELEN: What was your Aunt Bertha’s name that died?

MARY: And I was the oldest, so I said I’d have to talk to my mother about it, I suppose.

So, when I talked to my mother, she says, “Oh, achree,” that’s the same as saying, “darling,” you know, that’s a Gaelic word.15 She said, “I think you’re too young to be thrown into the world by

MARY: Her name was Bridget but when she came to this country, her fancy big sisters said, “Oh, nobody goes by that, by Bridget, they all laugh at you if you have the name of Bridget.”

HELEN: Well, your sister Beatrice, her name was Bridget also, wasn’t it?

15

Machree, sometimes pronounced achree or a-chree, is the Anglicized form of the Irish phrase mo chroi, meaning “my heart.” Americans know this word from the title of the Irish-American ballad “Mother Machree” made famous by John McCormack in the early 20th century.

42

MARY: And they did the same thing with Beatrice.

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The O'Sullivans of Muingaphuca

I wasn’t the one that talked her into—I thought it was awful that you had to change a saint’s name.

HELEN: Who did your Aunt Bridget marry?

MARY: She married a fellow by the name of Dan Shea.

[End of audio. Begin new recording.]

HELEN: So, Mom, you were starting to talk about during the day the grownups would sit around the fire having a cup of tea?

MARY: Well, I don’t know. It’s just that my mother would go to market every Tuesday.

Tuesday was market day and if she had extra eggs, she would take them into market and bring them to the store where she got her groceries and the storekeeper would give the price of whatever number it was. The same way with the butter. If she had extra butter, she would bring it to the butter store and she would get paid the value of it and that’s where she got her grocery money.

And she’d meet other women around, you know, and they would be talking, and anything new that happened around they would be talking about it. Then when my mother came home, right away my grandmother would have the kettle on and make a cup of tea and they’d sit down by the fire. My mother would be telling her about the different ones she met and the news—the latest news about this family or that family, so and so had a new baby girl or a boy or something, or maybe there’s a wedding in the works for, you know, two people from two different farms— that the girl is going to marry this boy and they’ll start a new family. And all of this news. We never had a newspaper in the house unless my father might pick one up on Sunday after Mass, but there was no newspapers delivered. But they got all the news in front of the fire while they’re having a couple of cups of tea.

HELEN: And would neighbors come in and visit sometimes—

Figure 8. Bill Curtin and Mary Sullivan (center and right), Myrtle Beach, Milford, Connecticut, 1922, with an unidentified woman (left). Bill and Mary were engaged on Easter Day 1927 and married in November that year. The photograph was found at the time of Mary’s death in 1991 in a metal cash box in which she preserved her most important memorabilia. (Moskey Family Collection)

MARY: No. No neighbors. The neighbors would be talking to somebody else at their house, I guess. I don’t know.

This is my grandmother and my mother. And of course, we’d be coming in from school, you know, and we’d hear the talking. They’d send us out to do something so we wouldn’t hear what they were talking about because we’d be talking outside to the kids we went to school with.

But my mom and grandmother, they don’t want anybody talking about the things they were talking about.

HELEN: So, they wouldn’t tell you?

MARY: They wouldn’t, they’d send us out in the field or the yard to do something.

HELEN: Okay. Well, we’ll have supper.

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The O'Sullivans of Muingaphuca

Interview on October 10, 1989 HELEN: Okay, Mom, we were going to talk about Father Eugene O’Sullivan, who was the parish priest in Killorglin.

MARY: Yes. HELEN: And that made you think about your grandfather and how he got the land out on Muingaphuca Road.

The O'Sullivans of Muingaphuca

And that Murphy, one of their children, was in Waterbury. She used to come here sometimes. What was her name? She had a son, Bill, and he and Beatrice16 had a lot of, you know—.

Well, she was one of the children of my grandfather’s sister. She was probably the oldest one, I don’t know. I don’t know how many people there were in the family.

I think that they were so depressed with the sort of life they had, that these histories and stuff didn’t mean anything to them.

MARY: It would be my great-grandfather.

The first tenant on that farm that I know of was Owen Sullivan. “Owen” is the Gaelic for “Eugene.” And he was the first one that I have ever heard of, of being O’Sullivan on that farm. I think he married a lady by the name of Foley, but then they used to call her “Peg Fol,” that meant that she must have been Margaret Foley. And she was known around as Peg Fol, F-O-L. That might have been the Gaelic for Foley; you see, I don’t know. But we were never instructed in any of that. We didn’t even know what was going on.

HELEN: Okay. So where was Peg Fol from?

MARY: I think she came from on the way to Glencar—not all the way to Glencar, but over Caragh Lake as you go that road to the left at the store and— or near the school—you take that road to the left and that carries you up along by the lake and then it goes up on the hill.

HELEN: They were trying to stay alive.

MARY: That’s it, they were trying to stay alive and get something to eat every day.

That’s what it was.

HELEN: Did your grandfather have more than that brother who went to New London and a sister who went to Waterbury?

MARY: Oh, there was another one. Did you ever hear me talk about Pat Mckenna? In Newington? Well, his mother was another—. She would be a sister to my grandfather, I think.

And there must have been more people in the family but they got pushed around, but they never told us anything.

HELEN: Mom, we have to go back to Ireland because you haven’t been to Glencar.

HELEN: Yeah, that Pat McKenna in Newington, is he still there?

MARY: Oh, no, he’s been dead a long time.

MARY: I haven’t.

HELEN: Did he have any sons or daughters?

HELEN: And you always wanted to go there.

MARY: He did.

MARY: How can I go when I—?

HELEN: Do you remember what their names were?

HELEN: Well, we’ll talk about that in the summer.

MARY: Okay.

HELEN: But okay, so he married Peg Fol and was this Eugene—no, what did you say his name was?

MARY: Right now, I can’t remember them. It’s probably 20 years since I’ve heard his name mentioned. Pat Mckenna was a nephew to my grandfather.

HELEN: McKenna. This Pat McKenna in Newington was a nephew to your grandfather?

MARY: His wife was Catherine O’Sullivan. I’m pretty sure.

MARY: Then his family was my grandfather, who was John Owen, they called him. He was John. They carried the father’s name usually in the middle at that time.

HELEN: The mother was the one who was a sister to your grandfather?

MARY: Yeah.

And he had a brother, I think, who came to this country, that must have been the time of the famine and he was settled in New London somewhere. So, we have relatives down there, but they lost track of them.

HELEN: Do you know what his brother’s name was?

MARY: No, I don’t. I might have heard it when I was a kid, or when I got big, grown up, I don’t know.

HELEN: Okay. His mother was a sister to your grandfather.

And who’s this Nora?

MARY: Nora was married to the Murphy on the way to the Catholic—the school that I mentioned.

HELEN: So, your grandfather’s sister’s name was Nora?

So, he had a sister that lived on the road up to the school, the Murphy—you know, the Murphy family that was there?

MARY: I’m pretty sure it’s her name. She’s the one that married Murphy.

HELEN: Up towards the school that you went to?

MARY: Yeah, the school that I went to. There was a couple of houses on the way up.

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16

Beatrice Sullivan, Mary’s sister.

47

The O'Sullivans of Muingaphuca

HELEN: Nora, Nora O’Sullivan married Murphy?

MARY: I’m pretty sure that’s it.

HELEN: But what was the name of this one, do you know, that married McKenna?

The O'Sullivans of Muingaphuca

HELEN: Yeah.

MARY: Owen-Mór and he had to—he had to—what do they call it when you break up new ground and it’s wild ground?

MARY: Catherine, I think, was her name. Catherine O’Sullivan.

HELEN: Clear it?

Oh, my grandfather was dead. It has to be O’Sullivan, not just plain Sullivan.

MARY: No, there’s a certain name for that.

HELEN: Well, don’t worry about it, you’ll think of it as you’re talking, but you were saying that this Owen-Mór O’Sullivan was related to the priest.

HELEN: Why was that do you think?

MARY: I don’t know. I don’t know.

HELEN: Well, you know why I think it was.

It was because the O’Sullivan was the Irish way of saying it and it was out of the clans and when the English came and they built the National Schools, they wanted to anglicize all of the Irish names.

MARY: Probably, I don’t know, honey.

HELEN: And one of the ways to do that was to drop the O. MARY: I don’t know. The only thing I know is when I left over there, I was 18 years old. I had no education, only the sixth grade in elementary school.

And I’m telling you I was just pretty miserable the first year that I was here because I felt as if I was out of —I was out of the people that I was working with because they were all Americans, you know. A lot of their parents came from Ireland, but none of them had the brogue or the Irish way of talking and everything and I’m telling you— HELEN: Well, you were the new kid on the block.

MARY: I don’t know.

HELEN: But, Mom, you were going to tell me about your great grandfather getting the land. Now you said your great grand— MARY: They never told me anything about that. I am supposing that they came—that my grandfather’s father, Owen, they used to call him Owen-Mór, that means Big Owen. 17 HELEN: That would be M-O-R? MARY: M-O-R. That’s big, it means big; it’s a Gaelic word for big.

17

Editor’s Note: The original manuscript of this study used Mor as a suffix to the proper name O’Sullivan, much like Senior or Sr. or as a second last name. So, for example, the author referred to her great-great-grandfather as Owen O’Sullivan Mor and to the family as the O’Sullivan Mors. In Irish, mór, which means “big, large, or great” (referring to the individual’s standing in the community), modifies a man’s first name, not his last. (There is a feminine form of the word, mhór, used with women’s names.) Since Mary herself, in this interview, refers to her great-grandfather as “Owen-Mór,” an appellation that she remembered from her childhood, all references to her great-grandfather Owen O’Sullivan (born ca. 1800) have been changed to follow this form of the name that Mary herself knew as a child. See also: Note 75, page 139.

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MARY: He was. He was related in some way. It could be that he’s a brother of his and they were probably living from another—farther in, in the country, in Kerry and when that Father Eugene became a priest and he was probably stationed in Killorglin away from his home area.

Now, all of this is only coming to me in my mind—that it could be possible. It could be possible but I’m not sure.

HELEN: I can check some of this out if I stay in Ireland in the summer — at the church.

MARY: If he was brought from more inland of Ireland where there was more culture and more, I don’t know, information and probably more schooling for people, now if that priest was assigned to Killorglin and he got established there and he knew that there was this about probably 40 or 50 acres of land in this area and nobody owns it, only the bigshot Englishmen that they never see and he’s always anxious to get a tenant, you know, too, because then he’ll have an income for his land.

Now, that priest probably knew that this land was available and probably Owen-Mór, I don’t know how old a man he could be, maybe he was in his twenties, maybe thirties, I don’t know what. But the priest probably just arranged it with whoever was managing the let-out-of land and he got Owen-Mór this stretch of land that was available.

Now, after he got married and raised a family, we’ll say this is the land now. This is the land that we have now that’s right there, right there, and there’s a hill right here. Now up here, that’s where the Murphys lived, so they must—when Nora O’Sullivan—all they think about when they grow up is get her married and a farm where she’ll have children and, you know, an existence and whatever it is. So, she must have married some guy that got—he got some of that land that evidently my grandfather had. My grandfather didn’t own it, he just had the use of it if he wanted it as long as he paid money, rent. That’s all that Englishman cared about.

So, this is where the Murphy family came. Now, the road is here, see, and then there was another farm here, a Shea family, but they were not related to us but they might have applied for a piece of that land but they had only enough say for two cows maybe or three cows. But this here was always as big as these two places, see?

HELEN: Uh-huh.

MARY: But I think that my great grandfather that when he—he probably had been coming from a place where they had more vision than they had around here. They were very poor around here. He probably saw a possible chance of having land here for when his kids got big enough for it and that’s what happened.

The Nora who married this Murphy, I don’t know for sure whether the original one was Murphy or not, and Shea over here had nothing to do with the family, he was just somebody that 49

The O'Sullivans of Muingaphuca

somebody bumped into and he was looking for a little farm that would support two cows and chickens and stuff like that.

But our farm was always that same.

HELEN: But, Mom, you mentioned 40 or 50 acres and that farm now is only 19.

The O'Sullivans of Muingaphuca

HELEN: —to Murphy.

MARY: I’m not sure now whether the first tenant in that piece of land was Murphy or not, I don’t know, but when they came into our time where we could mix with them, they were Murphys then. They could have been in Gaffney for all I know.

HELEN: Okay.

MARY: It’s 20 acres. We always thought it was 20 acres.

HELEN: Twenty, whatever. What happened to the other 30 or 40 acres?

MARY: See, if half of it was 20 acres and this here 20 more, it must have been 40 acres altogether.

MARY: But if you have Murphy, at least that’s the last connection that I’ve had with them.

HELEN: Okay.

MARY: It was with those people.

HELEN: Well, did your grandfather give some to Nora that married Murphy and to Shea?

MARY: He might have let her have it, but he didn’t give her anything because it wasn’t

HELEN: You said that after you came to this country, your Aunt Mary, Mary O’Sullivan—

his.

MARY: Yeah.

HELEN: Yeah, I know what you’re saying, so.

MARY: Just the right to get in there and pay a rent—she was paying rent—to the English guy that owned it. And so was this family here.

But evidently my great, great grandfather, he still hung onto the bigger part and it’s been held as one farm ever since. That’s the way it seems to me, but none of this was explained to me.

It’s my mind got working on that as I thought more about it and saw the way it turned out.

HELEN: —got somebody to drive you and her to Groton to visit this person.

MARY: And there was somebody else along, too, I don’t know who it was.

The family, the descendants of that brother of Johnny Owen. We went to [Groton to visit] the descendants of him, but I don’t know what their names are.

HELEN: I may be able to find out some of this stuff just from other people on the road over at Muingaphuca or in the parish records.

HELEN: When your great grandfather Owen, he had your—we put this on the tape, it’s your grandfather whose name was John Owen, that was one of his sons?

MARY: I used to have their address here, I had a little address book and I don’t know what happened to it, it got lost somehow.

MARY: Yeah, John Owen was his son. But the father was Owen-Mór. They used to call—now I don’t know whether that was a legal Mór or not. That probably was a nickname the neighbors gave him, which meant he was probably a tall man, six or more feet, and they thought he was big.

HELEN: So, we were back talking about how the family got established there. Do you know where Owen-Mór came from?

So, he was Owen-Mór.

HELEN: And so, his sons were John Owen and was there another son you said?

HELEN: Oh, yeah, he went to New London [Connecticut].

MARY: But he must have gone there with the famine exodus, is that what you call it, that got out of Ireland?

MARY: No, but I don’t think they were as down and out as the people around Killorglin and there. I don’t know, but I think it would be Killorglin, right there.

HELEN: Killorglin.

MARY: Now, I have a feeling that my grandfather was from somewhere around here, you know. The original one, it would be somewhere around here. And you see at that time, Tralee was pretty well established as a city I’m sure—and Killarney. And if they had any culture or, what do they call it?18

HELEN: Yeah, the immigration.

HELEN: Education.

MARY: They had to go somewhere because they had nothing to eat.

HELEN: And then he had a daughter to Waterbury, right? That Bill—

MARY: Education or everything, I think that these people in here [the Tralee area] would way ahead of these people out here [the Iveragh Peninsula], see, because this is wild territory and

MARY: She must have come—all of that must have been arranged at the time of the famine, but I never heard anything about that.

HELEN: And then another brought her to— MARY: Murphy.

50

18

It seems that Mary and Helen were looking at a map, and based on their conversation, Mary was probably pointing to the area between Killorglin and Tralee, including Castlemaine and Milltown. DNA evidence suggests that the Curtin Clan have ancestors from this area.

51

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everything. And all of these places where you see the mountains and the lakes and everything, they never had anything, only just a chicken coop to live in.

Even Cork is in that book that you let me read that that Englishman wrote, you know.

HELEN: The American, you mean Inishkillane?

MARY: Yeah. See, the territory that he was talking about was probably all around from here around up to there.

HELEN: No, he did his study up here near Ennistymon.

MARY: Is it?

HELEN: He did his study up here in Clare.

MARY: Well, then this is another very remote place in Ireland and in those days especially because when the British came in, they came in here. And the middle part of Ireland, as I understand it, was pretty well developed, the ground was cultivated year after year and, you know, they had enough of everything.

The O'Sullivans of Muingaphuca

MARY: Then when Johnny Owen, my grandfather, he married a woman from Glencar and her name was Mary Murphy. I have never been up to Glencar and you know that that isn’t a thousand miles away from Caragh Lake.

HELEN: You better get yourself together so we can go to Ireland again this summer and get you up to Glencar. I’m not going to have you dying and saying, “Nobody ever took me to Glencar,” so you better get your act together.

MARY: Well, you know, when we were back five years ago [ca. 1984], I had hoped that I would get to Glencar then, but I don’t know what it was, that the weather was bad when we wanted to go or something, I don’t know, but I was disappointed because I wasn’t able to go to Glencar then.

HELEN: Well, who knows, we might get there this—we might get there this time. See it here, Mom, right here on the map, Glencar?

MARY: Yeah.

HELEN: See it there the other side of Caragh Lake?

So, they came in here and they took over what looked good to them and they pushed the poor out here and they said, “Go find a place for yourself.”

MARY: Yeah, uh-huh.

HELEN: So, it is a little bit of a distance from Killorglin.

And there was nothing but wild territory in through here when the English took over.

HELEN: England took a place from Dublin, from Dublin in here like this and it was like a diamond, down here to Wexford and in that, that was the area that they really developed.

MARY: From Killorglin to Caragh Lake is something between four and five miles

maybe.

20

HELEN: And here’s Glencar around the other side of it.

MARY: I never—I didn’t ever remember learning just the places but they came in here and they just pushed the poor out to the west coast. And all the cold and wet and everything can’t hit this place first before it gets here. 19

MARY: Where’s Caragh Lake?

HELEN: Right here. This little blue.

HELEN: Where did you say Owen-Mór’s wife came from? She’s the one that came from Glencar?

MARY: Yes, she’s from Glencar.

MARY: Yeah, that’s it.

A whole year to get the layout of Ireland and the relationship between one place with another

HELEN: And his wife’s name was, do you remember, was she a Murphy, too?

HELEN: At least a year, maybe more.

MARY: Wait a minute. Did I say Peg Fol?

MARY: Yeah.

HELEN: Oh, yeah, right.

MARY: That was the Owen-Mór’s wife.

HELEN: Well, your memory is not that poor, Mom, your memory is pretty good. It’s just we have to sort of tap into it by asking the questions and all.

HELEN: Yeah, that’s right.

MARY: Oh, dear Lord.

MARY: The first one that came.

HELEN: Now, listen, don’t try to read that now.

HELEN: Yes.

MARY: No. HELEN: I’m going to leave that book with you.

19

Mary is pointing out that the West Coast of Ireland bears the brunt of the worst of Atlantic weather, colder and wetter than the East Coast. The English settled primarily in the DublinWaterford corridor (Wicklow and Wexford Counties), the part of Ireland located closest to England geographically.

52

20

Killorglin to Muingaphuca is about 11 miles. That Mary never traveled to Glencar to visit family indicates how limited her life was when she was growing up.

53

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Remember you told me one time how your mother took you to a holy well after you had influenza?

MARY: I don’t know what it was but I had been sick. When I was a little kid, I was sick, not sick in bed but always delicate and everything that came along I got it. I don’t know what I was sick from, whether it was a bad cold or I think that there was something that my urine was off color. I don’t know how I got that, but I must have seen it in the pot.

The O'Sullivans of Muingaphuca

HELEN: Uh-huh.

MARY: We used to have to kneel on that. Nobody ever said prayers sitting up or lying in bed. You had to be on your knees to say the Rosary, everybody. And she depended on prayers and she must have made a resolution that she would go to the well and—for thanksgiving or something. That was a burden that she placed on herself if I got better. Well, evidently, I got better and she took me to the well with her and it was on the way to Glenbeigh.

You know. I don’t know if I was sick in bed or whether it was just something that went wrong with my kidneys; is it the kidneys?

You know how you go back by the old post office of ours?

HELEN: Yeah.

HELEN: Could be, the bladder. You could have had an infection anywhere, I mean who knows?

MARY: That low road that goes down? You continue onto that until you come to the river that goes from the lake into the ocean. I can show you where it is here.

MARY: Well, anyway I was 18 years old when I came to this country and I had never seen a doctor or a doctor see me. Because there was no money to have a doc to come.

HELEN: Where they always have that donkey with all the stuff that they’re selling up on the road by that bridge there?

HELEN: Mother, back to that time when you had been sick, you know, and you noticed that there was this change in color, was it blood or was it just a darker urine or something?

MARY: Yes. It’s farther, a little bit farther on than that.

Let me see, Killorglin, Caragh Lake. Where is Caragh Lake?

MARY: No, no, it wasn’t blood. It was a discoloration of some kind.

HELEN: And so, were you sick in bed at that time?

MARY: I don’t know, but I might have spent a couple of days or a week, I don’t know.

HELEN: You know, what I really want to talk about, though, is the time she took you to the holy well.21 MARY: Well, the reason she took me to the holy well was when I was sick. My mother was great for prayers. That was who she depended on, she depended on God because she didn’t have money. Nobody had any money. It wasn’t her. Everybody was in the same boat, but she had five children. Sometimes you don’t have that many.

HELEN: That blue right there is Caragh Lake.

MARY: Yeah. Well, see, this is the lake and this goes across the road there and that’s the bridge right there.

And this little well that she made the—there was about right there before you come to the bridge. That was where she got off the road, it was beside the road. Maybe that’s it right there.

I don’t know whether I said any prayers or not but she must have said the Rosary right there.

HELEN: Well, do you remember the day at all?

HELEN: And no husband.

MARY: No.

MARY: Oh, this was before my father died, I think.

HELEN: Could you just stop and just think about it for a minute?

HELEN: Oh, it was?

MARY: Let me see. I was about maybe—I don’t know now for sure whether my father was dead then or not. Could be. But anyway, when any of us got sick or had any trouble, my mother was praying all the time.

HELEN: Yeah.

MARY: I don’t know. I don’t know how old I was. I don’t know what day it was. But it might have been a Sunday or some—I don’t know.

HELEN: Somebody gave you a ride out there of course, you could not get out there.

MARY: Well, she probably had the donkey cart.

HELEN: Ah.

MARY: And we used to have to kneel on the cement floor in the kitchen, you know those cement floors.

HELEN: Yeah.

MARY: It wasn’t anything polished like this.

21

St. Finian’s Well in Cromane, Glenbeigh, is about 5 miles from Muingaphuca, and takes about 2 hours to walk.

54

MARY: We had a donkey and a nice good strong one, too, I remember and we used him to drive us to the market and sometimes on Sunday if we didn’t feel like walking, we could take him and have two or three people, one would sit on the right side of the donkey and the other one on the other side and then probably sometimes one of the kids would be in the back.

But that’s the only way that I think we could go out to the well because my mother was—I don’t know how she ever kept going.

HELEN: She was Irish.

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The O'Sullivans of Muingaphuca

MARY: You know, it’s only likely within the last year or two that I have really understood the life my mother had on that farm, but she never complained.

HELEN: Didn’t you tell me one time that your Uncle Jim had a horse and a little wagon or buggy or something, did I hear you say that?

MARY: Well, he used to come and plow the ground for the potatoes.

HELEN: No, I’m thinking of him coming and taking you down to Glenbeigh to visit your relatives down there.

MARY: My other—my uncle.

HELEN: The Gallivans down there.

MARY: His brother. Yeah.

HELEN: And did you ever tell me he had a horse and some kind of a cart that you would all go down in that, or did I dream that up?

MARY: I don’t know, dear.

HELEN: Okay. So let’s go back to the holy well visit because that interests me a lot.

MARY: Evidently that holy well had been going for years, that people went there to give thanksgiving or something.

HELEN: Did people ever bathe in the holy well?

MARY: No, it was too small to bathe in it but they would get water out of it.

HELEN: I see.

MARY: Probably drink it, you know.

HELEN: Or use it as holy water maybe?

Figure 9. Wether’s Well (Tobar na Molt), Ardfert, Co. Kerry, Ireland, 1933. In 1933, during a visit to Ireland, Beatrice Sullivan and her mother Mary O’Sullivan visited Wether’s Well. Mary Curtin’s inscription on the back of this photo explains the purpose of the pilgrimage: “This is the Wether’s Well Shrine.

Mother and Beatrice paid a round there in 1933 in Thanksgiving for the cure of my broken ankle.” The women behind the shrine appear to be Beatrice, on the left, and her mother, Mary, with a shawl over her head, on the right. Beatrice would likely have arranged for the photograph of the pilgrimage to show to Mary upon her return to America. The well is said to be where Saint Brendan was baptized.

MARY: Well, we could get all the holy water we wanted in church if we knew enough to get it. But this, there was—I don’t know—and the origin of that well or how it came to be was never explained to me.

HELEN: So, the Sunday you went with your mother, no one else was at the well?

MARY: Not at the time we got there, maybe before or after.

HELEN: Right. But you were there just the two of you?

MARY: Just the two of us. At the time I remember that she was on this side of me, I was over here. And I probably didn’t even know what it was all about, how it started, or why it was started. But in those days when people were so in need of everything, they had to make their own— HELEN: I think it was kind of a tradition in Ireland.

MARY: Yes. 56

57

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The O'Sullivans of Muingaphuca

HELEN: It’s still there. I took a picture of the holy well on the road—I’ll show you in my Irish pictures—when Joan Chevalier and I were there three years ago [1986]. 22 Did this holy well have any kind of a covering over it?

MARY: It had nothing on it that I know of, it was just—there might have been some kind of a little back to it, like sometimes you get a little mound on the back of something. The well was only about half the size of this table. It wasn’t a huge big one.

But there must have been something way back, maybe a hundred years, maybe more than that where some kind of a miracle or something was granted at that well. Now, I don’t know what it was. There was some reason for it being having a religious value to it. I don’t know if that’s the right word to use.

HELEN: Did it have a name?

MARY: Yeah.

HELEN: So that would have put it at about 1914, if you were born in 1902.

MARY: Yeah.

HELEN: When you’re 12 years old, about 1914. Now, Ireland was an English colony at that point and you were in a National School. So, the National Schools were established by England?

MARY: Yeah.

HELEN: And you were allowed to have religion taught in the school?

MARY: Oh, yeah, that was part of our schoolwork, the Catechism, we had a Catechism class.

MARY: I don’t know. The Caragh Bridge probably, because there was a bridge that went over that water that came out of the lake and headed on down into Dukes where the ocean was.

HELEN: So, it might be known, it might be known as the Caragh Bridge Well?

MARY: Might, might be. Yeah. But if you put it down there at least it will tell you where it was.

HELEN: Well, it’s on the tape so I don’t have to write it down because I can get it from there.

HELEN: Even though England had Ireland as a province, as a colony.

MARY: But they were pretty well controlled about how much religion they would teach.

I don’t know what the difference was. That was something that I never heard explained either.

HELEN: Who taught the religion?

MARY: The regular teacher.

HELEN: Was she a Catholic?

MARY: She was a Catholic, yeah.

MARY: Well, but that bothers me so much to think that life was so busy and demanding and still we never really got the reasons for all of that demanding and living traditional customs that they had. They were too busy.

HELEN: Did your parents speak Irish at home?

MARY: Yeah, my mother and my grandmother used to speak Gaelic when they didn’t want us to know what was going on.

HELEN: So, you weren’t really taught Irish in your own home?

MARY: Not in conversation, you know, back and forth. We used English all the time but we had to study Gaelic in Ireland and I won a blue Rosary bead for, you know, I suppose—maybe I must have been at the head of the class or something, but way up there somewhere because I don’t think they’d give more than one Rosary for just a prize.

HELEN: Now, what’s interesting is that you’re saying that you won a Rosary. If you went to school when you were five years old— MARY: I was six.

HELEN: You went at six and you finished the sixth grade, so you probably left school when you were about 12.

22

Joan Squillacote Chevalier (1937-1994) was a dear West Hartford friend of Helen’s. They first met in the early 1980s in a support group for women who had suffered the loss of a child.

Joan lived with cancer for 18 years.

58

HELEN: So that’s how, even though you’re in a National School she gave you the Rosary because she was a Catholic.

MARY: Well, you know, we were probably studying for a sacrament or maybe confirmation. Only that we had it long before 16 years old.

HELEN: No, the only point I was trying to get around here, Mom, was that you were taught religion, Roman Catholic religion and received a Rosary as a prize in a National School.

MARY: Now, that prize could have been given by the teacher. She might have got that Rosary in order to pep up the kids, you know.

HELEN: But at least she didn’t feel she was going to lose her job for doing something like that.

MARY: Oh, no. No. Now, I don’t know whether that was down in the list of studies or not, that might have been something added that she put on.

HELEN: Yes. MARY: And it might have been study that might have been after the other studies were all taken care of.

HELEN: Yes. MARY: But you see, we kids couldn’t see the difference in that.

HELEN: It wasn’t important probably to see the difference at that time.

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MARY: No. And of course, you were supposed to study your Catechism at home, too.

She’d probably give you a couple of chapters in the book and tell you, you know, for next week now I want you kids to answer questions on these two or three pages, whatever it was I don’t know. But I don’t know how I got the prize. I don’t think there was more than one Rosary given out. But anyway, I got a blue Rosary. It was something almost the color of this. So maybe that’s why I go for blue Rosaries.

HELEN: Could be. Mom, there’s something else I want to talk with you about. In one of the books that I read, not the Inishkillane by Hugh Brody that you read. It’s another book called The Irish Countryman and I’ll bring that to you to leave with you to read another time but I’m using it for the paper I’m writing right now so I still need it. 23 But he said there were distinctive traits about home life in the country, out in Kerry and Clare, that’s the area—the west of Ireland.

And he talked about this tradition of the “west room.” Now the west room was the bedroom that— MARY: I never heard of that.

HELEN: Never heard of the term “the west room”?

MARY: No. HELEN: Well, he called it a tradition that the old couple moved into the west room when they gave the farm to the son that got married.

MARY: Yeah.

HELEN: And I don’t know who was in it before they moved into it or whatever, but that all the family heirlooms, if there were pictures from America and little things from some gift somebody brought them and if there was a special chair or all of this, it would be in this west room, and it was a room of status.24

The O'Sullivans of Muingaphuca

MARY: I never heard of anything like that. But you would have to have at least a threeroom house, not a two-room house.

HELEN: No, because he spoke that for the two-room house, as well, which confused me, where did the son and his wife and their one, two, three, four, five, six children sleep while the old folks were in the big room, in the west room? It would be like the bedroom in your home in Ireland that has the fireplace in it?

MARY: Yeah.

HELEN: Now, you said that you never heard of the west room. Did you ever hear anything about the west of anything being more significant than the east?

MARY: No, I never heard that word used. Not in any of the way you’re talking about.

HELEN: Now, this very same room that he’s talking about, the west room, you and I talked about this one time but not on tape, that it would be the bedroom that you all slept in.

MARY: Yeah.

HELEN: Now, you said that you remembered as a kid that the room to the right of the center room [later Catherin’s room, see footnote]. That center room had the fireplace and you did the cooking and you all ate in that room and everything and then there was a room to the right of that, and that there were three beds in there, like three double beds?

MARY: Yeah. That’s where we were calling it “Katie’s room” in the recent years because that’s where she was to sleep. My brother, John, used to sleep in the partitioned part at the bottom of the kitchen. See, it was a very large kitchen.

HELEN: You’re referring now to the house that was there before the fire?

MARY: The kitchen and the bedroom and this lower room where John slept, that’s still there. Oh, no, they’re not, because the room that John slept in has been made into a kitchen and a little kitchenette or what do you call it?

HELEN: And the bathroom, the kitchen and the bathroom are in that area.

23

Hugh Brody. 1974. Inishkillane: Change and Decline in the West of Ireland. (Penguin Books); Conrad M. Arensberg. 1937. The Irish Countryman: An Anthropological Study (many editions available).

24

Editor’s note: When I visited the family home in Muingaphuca in 1970, at a time when Mary’s brother John and sister Catherine were still living there, Catherine occupied a room that fits this description. It was on the other side of the fireplace wall and had a small fireplace of its own, and better furnished than John’s room on the other side of the cottage. The furnishings include a large cupboard (armoire) that contained, among other things, linens, china, and photograph albums. John slept on what almost looked like a cot. Catherine’s bed was larger.

Catherine showed me the interior of the cupboard to prove to me that she had clean linens for me if I wanted to stay at the cottage. (I didn’t. One of them would have had no place to sleep, and there was no way they could have guests.) She also showed me several photograph albums with family pictures of the Curtin Clan dating back to the 1930s, including photographs of the Mary and Bill’s grandchildren born in the 1950s. She told me that Beatrice had sent her the photographs and albums over the years.

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MARY: Yeah, yeah.

HELEN: When I went to Ireland in 1976 and visited Uncle John, the house was, as you describe it, with the big center room and one small bedroom to the left.

MARY: Yeah.

HELEN: And then the bigger bedroom to the right.

Start telling me the story now. You were laying in that bed.

MARY: Yeah.

HELEN: And who would be next to you there?

MARY: Oh, I think probably Beatrice would be here.

HELEN: And then down at the bottom of the bed?

MARY: Well, there was Julia and then Katie.

HELEN: Yeah.

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MARY: See, there was four girls and just my brother. Now, I don’t know where he was, where he slept.

HELEN: Well, you were saying, and I didn’t have the tape on, but that you remembered water running down the wall next to the bed.

MARY: It wasn’t a pouring down but you could see the movement of water coming down because the wall was not very smooth like this and if you went and bumped into a little bump there somewhere, you would see the moisture sort of going on the side of it.

HELEN: From the birds and the thatch on the roof, right, they’d disturb the thatch?

MARY: Yeah, that’s how. Now, that wasn’t all over the room but in that spot right there, the birds must have got at it and that’s how I was able to see it. And I’ll tell you, I wasn’t sweating in there from heat.

HELEN: Yeah. I’ll bet.

The O'Sullivans of Muingaphuca

HELEN: Would she get like meal or anything in those for any animals or something like that?

MARY: Yeah, something like that. And she would sew them together and she would make kind of a mattress with it and stuff it up with straw that was wrinkled and sort of—you know, you wrinkle it around a bit.

HELEN: Softened up a bit.

MARY: That’s all our mattresses were made of that, these bags that came with some kind of supplies in it.

HELEN: Farm supplies like?

MARY: Yeah, I don’t know what it was. Flour sacks she used to make underwear for us kids. Our underwear next to the skin was made with flour sacks. The flour sacks were made of white stuff like this only heavier than this. It was—

MARY: This was the bed that my grandmother and grandfather slept in. Oh, well, it will go farther down than that, I guess. And there was a double bed here, and I don’t know, at this time that I remember. I’m not sure whether my father was alive or not, but there was another double bed here.

[Phone call. Recorder turned off. When the recorder was turned back on, the interview was already back underway.]

HELEN: Well, if your grandfather was in this bed with your grandmother, your father had to be alive because they died within a day of each other.

HELEN: Oh, okay. I see what you mean. So, prior to that, it was part of this great big kitchen?

MARY: Yeah, that’s right. But when my father got sick and had to be in bed, this is where my father died in this bed, and my grandmother and grandfather were there. So maybe we were moved over into here. I don’t remember. See, it’s funny that there’s only just a little bit here and there that I can remember.

MARY: Yeah. But there was a lot of work going on in that kitchen. There used to be a machine on the bottom part here somewhere for cutting up dandelions, is it dandelions. Is that you make the wine with?

HELEN: And how about where would your mother have slept then? Would your mother have been in this bed with your father when he was sick?

MARY: Well, I don’t know. I can’t remember that.

HELEN: Or was he so sick that he probably was by himself?

MARY: Now, this is where—now, this is where the kitchen is, there’s the door. Oh, this is where my brother wound up. There was a bed for him. Well, it wouldn’t be all the way across, it was this way that the bed was.

HELEN: Which way, at the back of the wall?

MARY: This way. This way. And there was a door here. There was a door here we went in. And I don’t know what there was around here, but it could be possible that my mother had a couch or something to sleep on, I don’t know. I can’t remember it.

HELEN: Do you remember putting—anybody ever putting straw on the floor and sleeping on the floor?

MARY: Oh, yeah. Yeah, she probably did that. My mother used to save bags that. Well, they were kind of not close woven or anything, they were loosely [woven]. Like to put hay into and I don’t know what they were used for or where they got them.

62

MARY: —that they sort of partitioned it off when my brother got big enough where he had to be by himself, you know.

HELEN: Yeah.

MARY: Well, my mother used to use those to feed the chickens with, you know. Put cornmeal with them and some other stuff, but it all had to be chopped up very fine. And that machine was in here somewhere. In the lower part of the kitchen.25 There’s a window right here, you know? There’s a window right there. And over here was the cow shed.

And I think that’s where the first O’Sullivan house or dwelling was in. And where they had the animals at that time. I don’t know, but when I was a year old, this house here was built.

So, I think they just built it onto the end of the old one and then used this for a cow shed for cows.

26

25

“Lower part of the kitchen” is a reference to the side of the kitchen with the entrance door and window. This is one of many examples in Mary’s description of the house where words like upper, lower, and front have very different meanings from American English.

26

The “new” house (built ca. 1903) was smaller than the “old” house (built in the mid-1800s.)

The 1903 house was built inside the walls of the old house, leaving space to the left and right of the new house. The space on the left was used as a cow shed, the space on the right was the milk shed. The west room shared a wall with the milk shed. The roofs of both sheds were long-gone by the time of my visit in 1970.

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The O'Sullivans of Muingaphuca

HELEN: Yeah, that makes sense in the tradition of there was a new family, your father had married your mother.

MARY: Yeah.

HELEN: You were born.

MARY: But I never heard that term “west room” used.

The O'Sullivans of Muingaphuca

MARY: That’s what they were living—to get in and out of the cold and the rain and everything and they had chimneys, you know, so they could have a fire. I don’t know whether the chimney would be here or whether you would have it over here when this was first built.

HELEN: I was reading that some of them didn’t even have chimneys. They had to open the door to let the smoke out.

HELEN: I want to know about the milk room that was over here.

HELEN: Well, the west would be this room over here, you know.

MARY: Oh, yeah. Well, anyway, this is the door going into the house.

MARY: But supposing this was the south, when you look out the window this is the

HELEN: No, what—

south.

MARY: No, no.

HELEN: Yeah, but this is what they call these rooms. This is the tradition.

HELEN: Didn’t you say it was down there?

I’m interested now back over here at this kitchen. When John got old enough so he needed some privacy—away from the girls—and he went over here and a partition was put up on this great big room here to give him a place?

MARY: Yeah.

HELEN: What happened to the machine for cutting the dandelion and making the chicken feed?

MARY: No, this is it.

HELEN: Okay.

MARY: This is it right here. Oh, that doesn’t belong there. Oh, this is the door that goes into the upstairs where Katie was. Katie used to call this her room when there was just her and John around, so this was her room and this is poor John’s room.

MARY: Oh, that had to be taken out.

HELEN: Did she call it “upstairs”?

HELEN: I think that machine is still on the property—

MARY: I don’t know. How could it be upstairs?

MARY: It is.

HELEN: Well, I know, but I just—there’s no stairs but people call things—

HELEN: And I never knew what in the world that was.27

MARY: Oh, you went up in the bedroom, that’s all.

MARY: Well, where is it now?

HELEN: Oh, up in the bedroom.

HELEN: I don’t know where it is because I have not been in Ireland in a year and a half, but the last time I was there it was in a space over here that has part of a wall standing but no roof on it.

MARY: Yeah, that used to be the milk room. It didn’t go as deep as the house went this way.

HELEN: Yeah.

MARY: They call it “above”.

HELEN: Did they call it “above”?

MARY: Yes. But that didn’t mean that the floor was higher.

HELEN: Could it mean that they had above—because Kathleen Costello uses the word “above,” above and below.

MARY: Yeah.

MARY: And it was short here only like a half of a room.

HELEN: Is above with more status?

HELEN: When was that added on?

MARY: It’s off the center part. You’re up and you’re down, maybe that’s it.28

MARY: Oh, we had that when I was a kid. After this house was built and I was only a year old when this house was built. Up until then, up until—before that I am pretty sure this must have been the old, old—the original, but when the poor people were pushed to the west, there was no buildings or anything around anywhere, and they put up a good-sized chicken coop and that’s what they were living in.

HELEN: I guess it’s just a way to say which area you’re talking about?

MARY: Helen, I have forgotten a lot of these things.

HELEN: Mom, sorry for distracting you.

HELEN: Yeah.

28 27

Editor’s Note: I saw the machine there in 1970.

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Note that the small sleeping room to the left of the center room was “lower” and the west room to the right was “upper.”

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You’re telling me about the milk room over here.

MARY: Oh, the milk room. Well, that was got like that. And I think it was set back a little bit on this side, too. And my mother used to have a table here and she’d have cans of milk on the table after she milked the cows and strained it and everything. She always has to strain the milk because in case any hairs dropped off the cow when you’re rubbing against her and everything and she didn’t want any hairs in the milk, so she would strain it and put it into these pans. Oh, bigger than that. They’d be round pans and she’d let it stand over all day and overnight and then the next day she, with a saucer, she would take the cream off them and put them probably maybe into this one over here, I don’t know. And when that got sour, that’s when the butter was made. You couldn’t make butter from fresh milk, it had to be soured in order to have nature take the fat from the main body of the milk. 29 Then when the potatoes were dug, at this time of year, you couldn’t leave them out winter in the field, so the potatoes would be stored here maybe. I forget whether it was just on the floor, I think, and just piled up, you know. At least I remember seeing them on the floor. Whether they always did that or not, I don’t remember.

HELEN: Was there a cement floor in that place, too, or was it a dirt floor?

MARY: I don’t remember. It might have. I don’t know whether it was cement or not, but what difference does it make? Anyway, that’s where the potatoes were stored for the winter and this is for the milk. But by the time the potatoes got in here, there was no extra milk, only just enough to use for your tea and you know, because the supply of milk is reduced until the cow comes with a new calf, then she has an abundance of milk.

HELEN: And then when the calf is weaned?

MARY: Oh, he gets milk for probably a couple of weeks or something, by that time they—and they have ways for cutting down the amount he gets and, you know, you feed him something else, yeah.

The O'Sullivans of Muingaphuca

HELEN: So, it all comes together. And at that time that cow would be mated again for another spring calf?

MARY: Yes. Yes. HELEN: So, while all those potatoes are in there using up storage space in that room, it doesn’t matter a lot because your mother’s not in the butter-making business as much?

MARY: Oh, they do very little butter-making in the wintertime because there’s not enough milk to do it. And then we had—and let me see, this was—when the cream is taken off these, you know, then you have skim milk and that’s for drinking and you can give it to the calves or whatever. There’s plenty of milk. We always had plenty of milk.

HELEN: And you would have the buttermilk, too, after the butter was made.

MARY: And the buttermilk, too, yeah.

HELEN: What else went on in that milk room, Mom? MARY: That’s all that I remember, that the milk was on the table there in the pans and this place was practically empty during the summer but it’s when the fall came and you dug the potatoes you had to have some place to store them. And besides that, up in one of the fields near the house, the one that as you come in from the road and here you turn over, and this is the field in front of the house, well, over here there was always something being planted there, it seems.

So, they would dig a place here and pile the potatoes there, more than what went in here, and they would put straw or something over the pile of potatoes to cover them up and then put sod or dirt over that to keep them, to help preserve them, you know, for the winter if there wasn’t room enough for them in here. I remember that.

HELEN: Now, Mom, you said in this room when John got older the dandelion grinding machine went out there, too, to the milk room?

MARY: Oh, yeah. That went out but there was still room enough there for it right there.

HELEN: But the new mother cow, keeps producing a lot of milk?

MARY: Oh, yeah, she keeps producing milk probably for all summer.

HELEN: And then it’s during that time when all that milk is coming in that you have all this extra milk and cream and everything for butter?

HELEN: I know how big it is because I’ve seen the machine, and it’s not that big.

MARY: And that’s a door. Well, it would fit in there. I remember seeing it in there. I don’t remember seeing it there recently, but I know when I went back to Ireland years later that that’s where it was.

MARY: Yeah.

HELEN: You saw it there when you were there with me in 1985, too.

HELEN: But then there comes a period when her body naturally stops producing as much milk?

MARY: Yeah.

HELEN: And that would be like at the time of the potato harvest in the fall?

MARY: Oh, but I saw it when Dad went with me first.30 But they weren’t using it for anything. It was just stuck there.

HELEN: Well, not at that time, but when it got put out there it was still being used, wouldn’t you say?

MARY: Yeah.

30 29

This is an example of the kind of skill and knowledge required to run a very simple farm in Ireland over a century ago.

66

Mary and Bill went to Ireland in the summer of 1967. That was Mary’s first trip back to Ireland since her marriage to Bill, and Bill’s first trip outside of the U.S. Their trip was a major event in the family, and we were all eager to hear their stories when they came home. They stayed about one month in Ireland. In addition to visiting family, they toured Ireland by car.

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The O'Sullivans of Muingaphuca

MARY: Well, chances are it was. They must have kept it going. They wouldn’t have bothered keeping it if it wasn’t a use of some kind.

HELEN: So, it ground just dandelions to go into this meal?

MARY: And cabbage and other stuff like that.

HELEN: But to make food for animals?

MARY: Yeah. [Joking:] I don’t remember them making any coleslaw. We didn’t use any of these salads that you’re having here.

The O'Sullivans of Muingaphuca

HELEN: Mother, I want to tell you again how happy I am that you’re giving me all this information. You are giving me something there’s no other person in this world can give me.

MARY: Yeah, but even now you’re saying that, I can’t be sure that everything I’m saying is exactly as it was.

HELEN: Well, who can ever be sure. This is a more exact account than I could get from anybody.

MARY: Yeah?

HELEN: So, let’s keep going now.

HELEN: Right.

We were talking about what other furniture or anything might in that big room.

MARY: They probably had them in Tralee and Killarney and places where they had fancy places and dishes and everything. And guests coming in, they probably had it, but we never knew what a salad was.

HELEN: Okay. Back to this bedroom [the “west room”]. Mom, you told me about the three beds that were in there.

MARY: Yes. HELEN: What else might be in that room?

MARY: Darn little. There was a table over here somewhere. There was a table here.

This is the window and this is another window.

HELEN: And what would that table be used for?

MARY: I don’t know. I don’t know, but there was a table there and if you had something that had to be clamped down, maybe you’d put it on there. I don’t know.

HELEN: Was there a place for storing clothes? I know you didn’t have a lot of clothes.

Where did you get your baths when you had a bath?

MARY: A half of a wooden tub, a barrel.

HELEN: And where would that be put?

MARY: Well, I don’t know but it wasn’t in the house all the time, it’s only when we decided we’d have baths.

HELEN: But it you were going to have a bath, would it be taken in this bedroom or in the kitchen by the fire?

MARY: Oh, in the bedroom. It would be in the bedroom in front of the fireplace there.

And somebody would bring it in and, you know.

HELEN: Set it up and everything?

MARY: Set it up, yeah. But I’m telling you we don’t have any bath every other day like they do here.

MARY: was some kind of a place to hang up clothes.

HELEN: Yeah, I can imagine.

HELEN: And then was there a chair in there anywhere or—you had a little fireplace, so did anyone have chairs in front of the fireplace?

MARY: No, I didn’t see any chair but I suppose you could always bring one up from the kitchen if you wanted.

HELEN: That fireplace was probably more just to put some heat in that room rather than a place for people to sit around?

MARY: And our heads weren’t washed every week or two either.

HELEN: Now where was the laundry done?

MARY: Oh, that will be down here in the kitchen? ] Oh, my mother would probably have the tub, maybe the half a tub that we were having— no, that would be kind of big for washing.

HELEN: You want to go out, Biff?

MARY: Yeah. That’s what it was for. We always had a blazing fire down in the kitchen.

There was a couple of hobs, one hob here and one here. 31 You could sit on that and with your feet out this way.

[Helen took Mary’s dog, Biff, outside, then resumed the interview.]

We were talking about the baths and— MARY: Oh, yeah. Well, gee, I don’t know. We all had separate baths. And now sometimes, you know, you put the little one in first.

31

A “hob” is a metal shelf at the side or back of a fireplaced level with the grate and used for heating pans or keeping food warm. a flat metal shelf at the side or back of a fireplace, having its surface level with the top of the grate and used especially for heating pans.

68

HELEN: That’s the way we got bathed as kids. I can’t imagine that you all got fresh water.

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The O'Sullivans of Muingaphuca

The O'Sullivans of Muingaphuca

MARY: So, I don’t remember anything about that. And then maybe you just got soaped and then maybe a pitcher of water was poured all over you or something. I forget just how it was, but it must have been something like that because we didn’t have any running water in the house.

But there was a lot of other places around that were worse off than ours and you think ours was bad, but the neighbors that we had around us, they thought we were rich, you know?

HELEN: Right.

MARY: We had to go up to a well that was way beyond this. See, beyond that there was the chicken coop right there. And there was the—oh, gee. The chicken coop came up here, well, we’ll call it right there. There was a door in there somewhere to go into the chicken coop, then there was a wall right there and over here there was a well that was—see this was the field in back of the house and—not the back of the house, there’s one in back of the house, too, but there’s a field right here. I forget just where it was. I’ll put it here for now. And there is the well and this is the wall here.

HELEN: Yeah.

MARY: Because we had a new house, for instance. After I got to be a year old, they decided they needed a house for me. And that meant that they made a bigger place and, well, things get modern over there, too, but not to the extent that it does here.

HELEN: Yeah.

MARY: So, whatever improvements they had figured out for a house that’s what they used for the house. And a lot of the kids that I went to school with, they thought we were rich because we had such a nice house.

And this is where we got water. When we needed water for tea or something, we came out and over here, got a pan or something. We’d probably get a smaller pan and dish it out of the well and that’s where we got the water.

HELEN: You know what I want to talk about—we’ve talked about this a lot of times but your memory is working better tonight and that’s why I want to talk about it again—is the day your father and your grandfather were buried.

And over here around this end of the house beyond where the haystack was and everything, there was a well up there that went deeper in the ground and if we ran short of water here, we could always get water here for washing clothes or whatever we wanted it.

MARY: My father died on a Sunday night after suppertime, although he had been sort of in a—what happens when you get— HELEN: A coma?

HELEN: And where did the clothes get hung to dry? Out on the bushes at the front?

MARY: —a stroke or something like that?

MARY: Bushes, yeah.

HELEN: Oh, was he in a coma kind of?

HELEN: So, the clothes would just get draped on the bushes?

MARY: Yeah, that’s right.

HELEN: Okay.

MARY: And we went to Ireland in ’67 and after he [Bill, Mary’s husband] was there a few days, you know, and he got to size up the place, one night on our way back to Foley’s,32 you know, he says to me, “You know, I think that the women do an awful lot more work than the men.” He said, “The women are the ones that are keeping things going. And these guys, you know, they fool around and sit around and they’re smoking and they’re talking and laughing and having a grand old time and the women are doing the hard work.”

HELEN: There was another reaction Dad had about Ireland.

MARY: Oh, yeah. Yeah. After he had a chance to see how everything was working and such, a lack of this and lack of that and, you know, he said, “How the hell did you ever get out of this place?” Yeah, that’s it. “How the hell did you ever get out of this place?”

MARY: I don’t know. See, I was only ten years—ten and a half years old or so almost 11 probably. And of course, my mother—if my father was dangerously sick—because see my father was in this bed.

And my grandfather was in this bed. And my grandfather had gone—walked to the post office to get his pension. I think it was on Friday. And after he got home—he had to walk there—you know where the post office is out, way out near the railroad station?

HELEN: Right.

MARY: Well, he had to walk over there in order to get his pension. And after he came back, well, he probably had a cup of tea or something and he went up in the haggard they used to call the place where the hay and the oats were stored, you know, that little four step stairs that goes up in front of the cow shed?33 HELEN: Yeah, that’s over here near the big well, right, Mom? MARY: Yes. It’s over here, see. Let me see now, where are we?

HELEN: Here’s the big well and the haggard would be over here.

32

Editor’s Note: In Killorglin, Bill and Mary stayed at “The Grove,” a bed and breakfast in the home of Mr. and Mrs. Liam Foley, located on the Killarney Rd, in an area of Killorglin known as Dromavally. One of the Foleys’ children still operates the property as “The Grove Lodge Guesthouse.” I stayed there for several nights during my 1970 visit to Killorglin.

70

33

“Haggard” in Ireland refers to an enclosure beside a farmhouse in which crops are stored. (The word is related to old Norse Heygarthr, from hey ‘hay’ + garthr ‘yard’.) Mary’s use of this word reflects the very ancient roots of life in rural Ireland.

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MARY: Yeah, yeah.

HELEN: Kind of to the front.

MARY: Well, anyway to get up into that place where the haggard is, there are three or four steps, stone, it’s made with stone, you know, heavy stone.

The O'Sullivans of Muingaphuca

MARY: And I don’t know if they ever found out what it was that caused his death. And then my grandfather, he’s been in bed over the weekend because he fell down and he’s not able to get up to go to the bathroom, I suppose, or anything like that and he died on Monday. And they were both buried on a Wednesday. And it was really something terrible to have two people come out of the same house to be buried on the same day.

HELEN: They’re still there.

HELEN: And how did your mother and your grandmother take this?

MARY: Yeah, they are.

MARY: Oh, they were sick I suppose, you know how you are when a close person died.

Well, anyway, he went up there to get some hay to put in for the cows or something and he fell down the steps. And evidently what happened was that he lost his—not that he got sick so much as probably lost his balance and maybe kind of a stroke or something. Something like that happened and he fell down.

HELEN: Do you remember them crying?

So, they put him to bed, that was I think on Friday, and Saturday he was in bed and Sunday, that’s when my father got whatever happened to him. Maybe my father got shook up over his father having that experience, I don’t know what it was. They told us nothing.

MARY: Well, yes, they did.

HELEN: But your father had been sick for some time though?

MARY: Oh, yeah. He had been sick in bed for two or three months, something where— maybe it wasn’t quite three months, but he was sick in bed.

And so that was Saturday, and Sunday my father died, Sunday. He got the stroke or whatever it was in the morning. At bedtime—my mother came down into the kitchen to get her own breakfast and she hears some kind of a noise up there [in the “west room”] and she knew that there was something wrong, that he needed something or, I don’t know, coughed or I don’t know what, and she went in the bedroom to see and he ends up on his back, you know, he had fallen back.

So, she must have probably helped him to sit up in bed to eat his breakfast. And when she went in to see what the noise was. He was way back, and he had fallen back and he couldn’t talk to her, I guess. I never heard that he did or not. And that was Sunday, Sunday night he just died.

As far as I know they didn’t have a doctor come. We never had a doctor in our house for anybody.

HELEN: Did you ever know what your father was sick with for two or three months; was it tuberculosis or— MARY: No, no. He had some kind of operation on his neck here. He had a growth or something here on his neck and he was operated on for that.

MARY: Oh, I’m sure they were, but I can’t see them. I can’t see them in my memory.

HELEN: Did all the neighbors come in on the Tuesday night?

HELEN: Like a wake at the house?

MARY: Well, I don’t know whether the neighbors knew that my father had died Sunday night or not. I don’t remember seeing any of them come in, but—and then I don’t know whether we kids were in the house or not or whether we went with neighbors. We might have gone up to Murphy’s or someplace at least part of the time because we were friendly with them. They were relatives of ours.

HELEN: So, this business of laying out the bodies and getting them ready for a wake and for burial and everything.

MARY: Yeah.

HELEN: Do you remember any of that stuff going on?

MARY: Not the preparation of it but I think we had a kitchen table that was kind of long, you know, like this. And it wasn’t awfully wide, I don’t know, probably about this width but it was much longer than this.

HELEN: Probably like that table in Kathleen Costello’s kitchen.34 MARY: Yeah, something like that.

So, they fixed it up so that the body could be laid out on this table and I’m sure my father was the one that was on that but they probably didn’t have Grampa on another table. They probably just laid him out on the bed. It just wouldn’t seem to make sense to have two tables with two people on.

HELEN: Where did he go for the operation; Tralee?

MARY: Yes, Tralee or Killarney, I don’t know which one.

And he recovered from that and he was able to do his work and he got sick again, but I don’t know how long he was sick but it seemed to me as I look back that it was probably a couple of months that he was sick. He was not probably in bed all the time but, you know, he wasn’t able to work outside.

HELEN: Yeah.

HELEN: Would they put the two men on the same table?

MARY: No, I don’t think so. No. I don’t remember that the two of them were together because the table probably isn’t wide enough for that.

HELEN: Did your father have a mustache?

34

Kathleen Costello, a second cousin of Mary’s. They were about the same age and were good friends growing up.

72

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MARY: I don’t know. I think he did, but it wasn’t a big bushy one if he did.

HELEN: Do you remember the neighbors actually coming into the house?

MARY: Not actually to see them come in but I know that there was people around. And the women, you know, would be all, you know, what they call keening, keening, that’s crying.

It’s a custom that they all cry together rather than just let the mother or the wife be crying and everybody listening to her.

HELEN: They would be crying in sympathy?

MARY: In sympathy, I think. Yeah.

HELEN: And then it would also be sort of a cover so the mother—the family could be crying and they wouldn’t be crying all alone.

MARY: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s it, I guess. And they call that keening.

HELEN: What did it sound like? You must have heard it there or somewhere else before you ever left Ireland.

MARY: I don’t know.

HELEN: In your memory what would you think it sounded like?

MARY: Chances are that we kids were not allowed to hang around. We might be allowed to go in and go out or probably go to the bedroom, but we wouldn’t be hanging around during the whole evening.

HELEN: Right. But the place was too small, you couldn’t—if that was going on, you’d hear it if you were there anywhere.

MARY: Oh, yeah.

The O'Sullivans of Muingaphuca

HELEN: It would almost seem to me that they could be crying for the person, too, because the loss was a loss to the whole area when someone went because you needed each other.

MARY: Oh, yes. And I think that neighbors would come in and they would stay a while and then a couple more might come in, you know, because in a house like that, you can’t have a big crowd of people.

HELEN: Especially in the winter and that was winter, right?

MARY: I think it was in March, or along there something like. And I don’t know what date it was that my father died.

HELEN: I’ll find out. It will be in the church record.

MARY: Oh. MARY: But you see my mother couldn’t read or write.

But she could add the price of things up. She knew how much it would cost for so much and so much, but she could not read or write.

HELEN: I want to get back to this funeral thing. What was the house lit by then, was it candles or did you have oil lamps?

MARY: We had an oil lamp that would be up on the side of the wall like that. That was the only light we had in the kitchen.

HELEN: Over the table near the door?

MARY: Yeah.

HELEN: And then whatever light came from the fire?

MARY: Yeah.

HELEN: What would it sound like? I’ve heard that word “keening” I’ve heard about it but like is it—could you try to imitate what it would be like? Just make the sound of what you think it would be like.

HELEN: Where was the table laid—where was the table placed for your father’s body do you think?

MARY: I can’t. I can’t. I can’t remember what it was like, only that I know that there was crying at every wake, like that’s the way it is. The neighbors and relatives—maybe the wife or the mother or the grandmother, whatever it is, she might be crying and they just cry with her. 35

MARY: I can’t remember. But I imagine that it was probably—that would be the door that led into the bedroom and that’s the fireplace over there, and I imagine there was two windows. No, there was only one window in that part of the kitchen. There was a window on the end where John’s bed was down here.

That’s about the size of it. Sympathy for her I think probably more so than the loss of the person. I don’t know. I was too young and too inexperienced to understand even the meaning of everything.

So that would be two windows to the front of the house. Well, I imagine that the table would be in front of that window here, you know, between the bedroom and the door that goes out.

HELEN: Under the oil light?

35

Editor’s Note: After I visited Ireland in 1970, my grandmother, Mary, worried that I would have the wrong impression of her and her family. She said to me, “That’s not the way we lived when my mother was alive,” referring to the very solitary life her brother John and sister Katie had at the farm in those years. “We had a very clean house and lived very good lives.” By not agreeing to demonstrate keening for Helen, something that Mary certainly had heard many times as a child, she is perhaps expressing reticence about identifying with these old Irish customs.

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MARY: Well, the light would be on the wall. It would sort of shine on the table because lots of times I used to do my homework there. But I’m telling you, Helen, the light was so poor, it wasn’t a good strong light like that.

HELEN: So, let’s talk about the next morning because this is something I’m very interested in.

MARY: I don’t know a blessed thing about the next morning. I don’t remember anything about getting out to the funeral. The only thing I know, I remember about the funeral is that at the 75

The O'Sullivans of Muingaphuca

graveyard I was standing next to my grandmother and she was wiping off the set of teeth. Like if I had taken out my teeth, she had this like the jawbone and the teeth were still on it. Imagine!

And she was cleaning the dirt off it because she wanted to put it back where the bones were.

See one of the people—and chances it was the father, my grandfather—that they had to open up Margaret’s grave. She was in this country and she got a bad cold during Lent. And evidently the cold was neglected and she got something wrong in her lungs probably, it might have been tuberculosis.

HELEN: It was very prominent at that time.

MARY: Yeah, it was. So anyway, she went to the doctor when she couldn’t do anything about it, and I suppose Aunt Mary or one of the older girls probably was with her, and he said that he thought that the only chance she had for recovery would be to send her to Ireland. Send her to Ireland for the summer I guess and, you know—I don’t know anything else, only that.

But I don’t know how long she was home in Ireland before she died and of course she had to be buried in, you know, their burial grounds.

And then when the two bodies were carried to the place to be buried, there was a place only for one so Margaret’s grave had to be dug up and of course by that time, the wooden casket had fallen apart and the body had decayed but the bones were there. And I’m only surmising all this because I can’t say word for word what happened.

HELEN: Yes, I understand, Mom. MARY: So, chances are that Margaret’s body was taken up for her father. I would say that that would be because the grandmother was still—the mother was still alive, you know, my grandmother.

So anyway, it would seem reasonable that the father would be the one that would go in Margaret’s grave and then when the bones were put back, you know, she would be with the father. Or he’d be with the daughter, whatever. And somebody must have seen the teeth, you know, the bone probably and whatever was there, and my grandmother of course wanted it right away to look at it and she was cleaning the dirt, the dust and dirt from the inside so she could put it back down in with the bones.

The O'Sullivans of Muingaphuca

MARY: Maybe they put them on carts, but I didn’t know anything about it.

HELEN: Well, if you remember being at the gravesite and seeing your grandmother holding the jawbone, you were there for the procession and everything, but you just can’t remember it.

MARY: Well, I probably—if they had cars, probably those people who had horses with cars big enough would take, you know, four or six people, there would be the driver of the car and then a person on the other side, that’s two. And then there would be probably somebody—two people here and then two more people. Maybe six people could be on a horse’s car. They wouldn’t have donkeys in that kind of a thing.

HELEN: Mother, was there a funeral mass?

MARY: I don’t know. I imagine there was.

HELEN: I mean I don’t know what was going on then either. St. James’s Church was built then, wasn’t it?

MARY: Now, I don’t know whether the church was finished or not because when I went to school—well, it could have been finished then. When I went to school, I remember that the teacher told us to bring in the names of our relatives in America, that they were going to send them tickets to sell to raise money to finish the church. So, I don’t know for sure if the church was entirely completed or not, but it must have been pretty well on the way.

HELEN: Well, I can find that all out. To get the dates and everything and put that together.

Your cousin Timmy O’Riordan.

MARY: Oh, he would be a good one to go to. He would know about this funeral business because he’s a lot younger than I was.

HELEN: Right. But his father was the undertaker, right?

MARY: Yeah.

HELEN: And his grandfather was the undertaker.

MARY: I think so, but I’m not sure.

That’s all I know about the funeral and the burial. I can’t remember anything else, only that.

HELEN: So, this would be a story that they would be talking about for a long time over HELEN: You don’t remember anything about the church?

there.

MARY: Yes.

MARY: No. HELEN: Or how the caskets were carried out of the house or was there wagons or donkey carts?

MARY: I’m pretty sure they carried the coffins on the shoulders of the neighbors.

HELEN: Four miles into town?

MARY: I think so. I don’t know for sure. Maybe not all the ways but I know that it was common to carry caskets on the shoulders of the neighbors. And I don’t remember seeing my father and my grandfather carried that way but it must have happened. They could never get to the burial place.

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HELEN: These two men dying within a day of each other.

MARY: Oh, yeah.

HELEN: Leaving two widows and five little kids and— MARY: But Timmy, the Father now, he’s a grandfather now I guess, he was younger than I was but I don’t know how much, how many years. And he probably doesn’t know any more about it than I do.

HELEN: But he probably heard the story, Mom.

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The O'Sullivans of Muingaphuca

The O'Sullivans of Muingaphuca

MARY: Oh, yeah, could be.

HELEN: Was that there when you were a kid?

HELEN: For a long time in Killorglin in the family they would have been talking about this I’m sure because it’s so unusual.

MARY: Yeah.

HELEN: And the plight of your poor mother, she’s not only left—she’s left a widow and she’s got the five kids and her mother-in-law to take care. She’s got to provide for seven people.

MARY: Yeah.

HELEN: Long like that and curving just in the same way?

MARY: Yeah. Well, see that makes the boundary line between us and the people next door. So that was common where your boundary was emphasized, I’ll say, with a boreen coming in, you know.

MARY: Yes. Yeah. And not only that but she’s out in the field digging all half of the day.

HELEN: You could be checking your boundary all the time coming in and out, too, sort of.

HELEN: Well, that’s part of what she’s got to provide, she’s got to make the farm go.

MARY: Her brother, Uncle Jim, he’d be now the grandfather to the fellow that worked on the house.

HELEN: Jim Gallivan?

MARY: Yeah, yeah. He would do rough work for my mother, like he would bring the horse to plow the rows for the potatoes and they always planted them in triple rows, of the seed, you know, they planted it. And they would have to have furrows where they could dig after they were planted a while, you know, say, oh, I don’t know it would be a month. They’d have to go through those furrows and dig up dirt to build up on the top of the—

MARY: Oh, the people next door, they weren’t very nice. The husband was all right but the wife was kind of a troublemaker.

HELEN: She always wanted your father to do something about letting her use the driveway there, didn’t she?

MARY: Yeah, she was. She wanted to come in—see the—we’ll say this is her land here and ours is over here. The boreen comes here. And it seems her boreen came in over here between her and the Sheas. And I don’t know what trouble there was between the two of them, I don’t know, but then she thought, well, she would try and come in on our boreen. It would have to be a joint boreen, you know, then.

HELEN: And make a break in the wall for her to get through onto her land?

HELEN: To make these mounds?

MARY: Yeah, to make the mounds. But he would come with the horse to do that but my mother would spend a couple of days helping him with some of the work that she’d be able to do.

HELEN: Uh-huh, yeah.

MARY: Helen, you don’t know what it’s like to be poor in Ireland. They’re rich today compared to what we had. And supposing before that, see, I was born in 1902 and the famine was in around the middle of the century before that and it was terrible. It was like having to live like animals in the cold weather and rain and everything. I don’t know how they ever survived.

HELEN: A lot of them didn’t survive.

MARY: Yes. Let me see. This is coming in from the road we’ll say, it’s coming in, and then her house would be over here. So, she would make a turn right there, have a gate go over to her—almost to her house. And my father wouldn’t agree to that. I guess he knew what would probably wind up like the people on the other side of her, you know, I don’t know. But she—I really don’t want to go into it.

HELEN: Oh, come on, Mom, tell me what happened.

MARY: Well, she’d think nothing of picking up a big stone and throwing it at you if she could. That’s the kind of a character she was.

HELEN: At you as a kid or like at your father?

MARY: I know it.

HELEN: It’s given the Irish a certain spirit that is not found in other people. There’s something about the Irish.

MARY: They had to fight so hard in order to be alive, to stay alive. And I was over there as a child and I didn’t know any of that stuff had been, you know, in existence.

HELEN: You know that long boreen36 that you have at the house?

MARY: Yeah.

MARY: At my father if she—well— HELEN: If he said, no, he wouldn’t let her use the boreen, she would let him have it?

MARY: She would if she felt like it. So, I guess he didn’t want to have any business dealing with her.

But that boreen I guess has been ever since my great, great grandfather came there. There probably was nothing but just plain land when he came, you know.

HELEN: And he cleared the land and— MARY: Yes.

36

Boreen is an Irish word meaning ‘lane’ or ‘small dirt road.’ It is also used in rural Ireland to refer to what Americans would call a driveway, when the boreen is unpaved and goes some distance from a road to a house.

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HELEN: —put up those stone fences and everything?

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The O'Sullivans of Muingaphuca

MARY: Well, he wouldn’t do that. He started it and then when his sons grew up, they helped him I suppose to make the stone fences and all that. Everybody had to contribute their part to developing it, you know.

So, I don’t know. What a poor country Ireland was when I lived there.

HELEN: What’s the furthest that you ever went from your home before you left for America?

MARY: The furthest that I ever went was as far as the cemetery and beyond the bridge, you know, in town.37 And on the other side was my Uncle John, he lived nine miles from our house.

HELEN: At Glenbeigh?

MARY: Glenbeigh. That’s the only place that I’d ever been.

The O'Sullivans of Muingaphuca

Now, there is Glenbeigh, there is the bridge. Now, there’s the bridge right there. This is where we saw the donkeys on the side of the road and everything.

HELEN: Yeah.

MARY: But anyway, if Cromane is up here, this is where my aunt’s farm was. And that’s what I said that that’s probably why the golf course was purchased there if the ground is fairly level.

HELEN: Mother, who called you Mollie when you were a kid?

MARY: I don’t know. I’ve been called Mollie ever since I can remember because my mother was Mary, my grandmother was Mary, and then I came along and I’m Mary. So, I suppose they said, “Well, which Mary are you talking about?” so it was common to call Mollie for Mary. It’s like Bill for William.

HELEN: So, everybody called you Mollie?

HELEN: Had you ever gone to Killarney?

MARY: No. Or Tralee. I was down to my cousin Kathleen Costello’s place a couple of times. And when I was a child, I don’t know how old I was, but I was probably only six or seven or eight, I was at Dooks where my Aunt Bertha lived. She had been in this country but she went back and she married this Donald Shea and that’s where the golf is in Ireland now [Dooks Golf Club]. His farm has been used as a golf course. I suppose the government bought it or somebody bought it and it’s used for golf.

HELEN: Aren’t they still living down there, Josie Shea?

MARY: Now she doesn’t live on the farm that she grew up on.

HELEN: They’re at Cromane?

MARY: She’s at Cromane. Dooks is a couple of miles from Cromane, I think.

HELEN: We were talking about where Dooks was where the Bertha Shea’s farm was?

And you said that Dooks is now kind of a famous golf course down here?

MARY: Yeah, that’s the golf area now where their farm was. In fact, I would think that maybe the area that my aunt who married Shea lived in, would probably be right about there [pointing to Dooks on the map].

MARY: Yes, but I should have been called Mary when I went to school but whoever took me, one of the neighbor’s kids took me and they told the teacher that my name was Mollie Sullivan and they didn’t say that I was O’Sullivan. And when my grandfather found out that the O was off the O’Sullivan, oh, he didn’t like that at all.

HELEN: Well, what did he have to say about it?

MARY: We were out in that field in front of the house, you know, we used to call it the garden, but it wasn’t a garden, it was just a plain field with grass on it. And I was walking in with him, we were coming towards the house and I don’t know what led up to it but I had just about started to school only a couple of weeks before that and he was talking to me about school, you know. And he—let me see now, how was it? He said that it wasn’t right to take that O off the O’Sullivan. That O, he says, stands for the O’Sullivan ceart. Ceart means proper or genuine or is the real thing. 38 HELEN: Authentic.

MARY: Yeah, authentic. Yeah, that’s it. That it should be O’Sullivan, that that teacher should not have done that. Of course, when I got on all my books and everything it was, you know, just Mollie Sullivan. And, oh, he didn’t like that at all.

HELEN: Did he go up to the school and tell them to change it?

See, this is the road that leads to Glenbeigh here and when you come to the bridge that crosses the water there, you’d have to go a little ways to Dooks. So, when I pinned it on there, that’s just about where Dooks is and you can go by the ground here. It’s all clear ground here and that’s probably why it’s a golf course, there are no lumps and hills and stuff around there.

It’s just south of Cromane.

HELEN: It’s right on the lake practically.

MARY: Well, he didn’t. He was only the grandfather.

HELEN: Did your father go up there or your brother?

MARY: I don’t know whether he did or not but they didn’t—well, they figured what harm does that make, you know.

HELEN: Well, true. You’re still Mollie O’Sullivan.

MARY: Dooks is between the lake. See there’s the lake.

37

The main cemetery in Killorglin is on the other side of the river, beyond the bridge over the River Laune. Mary is identifying it as the furthest she ever traveled from her home in Muingaphuca.

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38

Mary’s pronunciation of ceart was “karth” with a th-sound. The word ceart in modern spoken Irish ends with a hard t-sound (as in the word “cart”), not a soft th sound (as in the word “hearth”) as Mary pronounced it.

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The O'Sullivans of Muingaphuca

MARY: Yeah.

HELEN: Even if she says you’re Sullivan.

MARY: So, I don’t know.

Helen, that wasn’t important. My mother was run ragged and what difference would an O make to her in front of her name?

HELEN: Did Kate Lawler and I ever tell you that when we were in Ireland we went up the hill in back of your house?

MARY: Yeah.

The O'Sullivans of Muingaphuca

HELEN: —the English and the O’Sullivans were driven off of that land and dispersed.

There’s a record in the history of Kerry that says that Eugene O’Sullivan and a John O’Sullivan settled in land on Muingaphuca near Killorglin. So that could be what your grandfather was talking about that you’re O’Sullivan ceart – the genuine O’Sullivans—because you came from that place where the clan was established.

HELEN: You have said several times Mother that when you were living in Ireland, that you weren’t aware of it. Of the circumstances of your family’s life.

MARY: I wasn’t aware. I didn’t know I was poor because I had just as much and more than some of the people that lived around me within a mile or two miles or three miles.

HELEN: Did you ever go to bed hungry?

HELEN: To the top of the hill there you can look over and see Caragh Lake.

And there’s a big stone up there, there’s a big stone in the ground that you can sort of climb up on the stone.

It’s not that high, maybe three feet off the ground.

MARY: No, I don’t remember that. My mother always gave us hot milk going to bed and I know if we needed a piece of bread or something with it, we could have it. Oh, we had enough food in the house. We weren’t down to the last thing. There was always plenty of potatoes around and oatmeal and cornbread. Oh, dear.

MARY: Oh, there are a lot of stones in Ireland.

HELEN: Your mother always traded at O’Neill’s, didn’t she?

HELEN: But it’s a big one and you get up there. And Kate and I established a custom.

We said that whenever we go to Ireland—

MARY: Not O’Neill’s.

HELEN: No?

MARY: We’d have to get up on the stone.

HELEN: —we have to go up on that stone and when we’re up there, we holler out, “We are the O’Sullivan caerth,” as loud as we could do it. So, all of Kerry can hear it.

MARY: Oh, that Kate, she’s funny.

HELEN: Well, I think I told you that when I was in Ireland in Christmas of 1987, I went to a bookstore in Dublin and I saw a book on the history of Kerry and it talked about the O’Sullivan rath, R-A-T-H. Now, a rath is a fort like building.

MARY: It was Foley’s, was it? You know, I can’t even remember.

HELEN: I remember when Uncle John took us into one of the stores, the pubs after church on Sunday morning when I went there in 1976 with Matthew and Kathleen. 40 MARY: Yeah.

HELEN: He took us into O’Neill’s, and I thought you told me that your mother always traded there.

MARY: I don’t think it’s O’Neill’s though.

MARY: Never heard of it.

HELEN: It’s made in the round and there’s sticks up the side of it and it’s covered. It housed the clan some centuries earlier than when your great grandfather and all was living.

And I believe it was at the time that Cromwell came.

MARY: Yeah, Cromwell. He was a stinker, that Cromwell.

HELEN: That rath was down in lower Kerry and we’ll look for it on the map after I finish this little story because we’re going to run out of tape on this one tape in a minute.

MARY: When you say lower Kerry, that would be south Kerry.

HELEN: It was on Upper Bridge Street.

MARY: Upper Bridge Street, no. My mother never—she might have bought stuff there once in a while but it was on Iveragh Road only three or four houses up from Timmy Riordan’s. 41 That’s where she got all her groceries and things.

HELEN: Up towards the post office or towards Upper Bridge Street?

When you say up a few houses from Timmy’s, was it more towards where the post office is now in town?

MARY: Well, the post office is next door to Timmy’s, isn’t it?

HELEN: South Kerry, okay. And when the clan was dispersed after the rath was destroyed by—

HELEN: Yeah.

MARY: The English. 39 40 39

Note that Mary has a very good understanding of the history of the English occupation of Ireland, knowledge that was almost certainly passed down to her through the Irish oral tradition.

82

Helen’s youngest son, Matthew J. Moskey (1960-1990), and her niece Kathleen McKinley.

41

The road is still known as Iveragh Road, and is shown as “N70” on modern maps of Ireland. It is the main road that approximately follows the coast of the Iveragh Peninsula.

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The O'Sullivans of Muingaphuca

MARY: Well, a couple of doors from there. Oh, gee, I can’t think of the name of that store and I know it well, but I can’t think— HELEN: Well, if you think of it someday, write it down.

The O'Sullivans of Muingaphuca

HELEN: And the animals include the chickens and the cows and making the butter and so anything that’s associated with that, the women do it. Now, in your case because your father was dead— MARY: My mother had to do both of them.

MARY: Yeah.

HELEN: But it would be going out towards Muingaphuca?

MARY: No, it—

HELEN: So, where you might have some of these traditional roles, that a woman played strictly her role in order not to disturb her husband’s role, your mother did it all.

MARY: Yeah. She did it all.

HELEN: Going the other direction?

MARY: The direction, yes, towards Tom— HELEN: Neely’s store?

MARY: Yeah.

HELEN: Okay. All right.

MARY: Yeah. That’s where it was, but that’s where she used to get her sugar and flour and, you know, anything for the house, groceries.

HELEN: Did she sell her butter to that shopkeeper?

MARY: No, she didn’t because there was a butter and egg store out on Langford Street [in Killorglin], that’s beyond where the police are.

HELEN: Yeah, Langford Street. Shelogg [phonetic] Store is on Langford, isn’t it?

MARY: Yeah, that’s right. There was one, a small place there like a part of a building just the lower first floor and this man used to come in from some other place and Tuesday was our market day and he would be there to buy butter and eggs. If my mother had eggs or butter, she would go there, and eggs, and he would buy them and pay her and that’s the money she used to go to the grocery place.

And sometimes if she didn’t have any money to pay for her groceries, she had a record and she could charge it there for a couple of weeks or a month until she sold something.

Maybe a heifer or—a heifer is a young cow that hasn’t even had a period yet.

HELEN: So, you had a very different role modeling in your childhood.

MARY: We did. My mother didn’t have the time to spend with us kids that the average mother would have. Other mothers have time to talk to them. My mother would be out in the fields doing work that my father would be doing if he was alive.

Oh, I’m telling you when I think about it, I feel that I—although I did help, you know, whenever I could but I was—as I told you before, I was not a very strong child and my mother kind of was easy on me. Rather she would have expected me to help more if I felt, you know, good.

HELEN: But you were home from the time you were like 12 years old, right?

MARY: Yeah.

HELEN: You only went to sixth grade, helping her at home?

MARY: But I worked at a house, one of the rich places at the lake, at Stack’s. There was an old gentleman that— HELEN: Was he the squire or something, did they call him squire?

MARY: I don’t know what he was. He never did much of anything, only putter around and drive his car.

HELEN: A horse-drawn car you mean?

MARY: Well, he had a little motorcar, a Ford or something like that, I forget. But I used to work in the kitchen.

And the bullock is the young bull. So, when your calves grew up into that size, then you could have them—take them to the fair and sell them and that would give you some money to catch you up on, you know, what you’re behind.

HELEN: How old were you when you went there?

HELEN: Yeah. And one thing that I think was very unique about your family growing up—in Ireland the division of labor is between seasonal work is what the men do and the continuous work is what the women do.

HELEN: So, between 12 and 16, though, you were home helping your mother?

MARY: Yeah.

MARY: Oh, I must have been 16 maybe.

MARY: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I forget how long I was there [at Stack’s], maybe a year, maybe it was more than that, a year and a half, something. I don’t know exactly.

HELEN: Did you go to live there when you were 16?

HELEN: So, the planting and harvesting and turf cutting and that type of work is seasonal and the taking care of the animals— MARY: Is all year round.

MARY: Yeah, I had my own room. It was a big house with all kinds of rooms in it.

HELEN: Is the house still there?

MARY: Yeah, it’s still there.

HELEN: Is that that Ard-na-Sidhe?

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85

The O'Sullivans of Muingaphuca

The O'Sullivans of Muingaphuca

MARY: No, that’s a different place. That was Lady Gordon that lived in that house.42

“Where’s the boy?”

Helen often told the story of her first meeting with her Uncle John O’Sullivan in the summer of 1976. She had of course written ahead to tell her uncle that she would be visiting, and that she would be bringing both her son Matthew J. Moskey (1960-1990), and her niece Kathleen McKinley.

When the three Americans arrived at the O’Sullivan farmhouse in Muingaphuca, Helen entered the house first. Matthew was still outside.

John’s first words to my mother were not “Welcome” or “Lovely to see you,” but rather, “Where’s the boy?” He was of course happy to see Helen and Kathleen, but in his mind, Matthew was a direct male descendant of John’s father and grandfather, and thus was a male who was connected to the O’Sullivan land by bloodline and Irish tradition.

Figure 10. Lady Edith Gordon (1871-1945) (Source: Library of Congress)

42

Ard na Sidhe, means “Hill of the Fairies.” Lady Edith Susan Leeson-Marshall Gordon was born in 1871 in Milltown, Co Kerry and married well-known English cricketer and cricket historian Charles Seton Montague Hume Gordon in 1901. In 1913 she began building Ard-NaSidhe. Lady Gordon was a paradoxical character. She was a member of the Anglo-Irish Ascendancy but she was also a Nationalist and a Sinn Fein supporter. She left Ard-na-Sidhe in 1935 after the breakdown of her marriage as she could no longer afford to keep the house. She was a keen golfer and instrumental in setting up the famous Dooks Golf Course mentioned elsewhere in this interview. She died in Lismore, Co. Waterford, in 1945.

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Figure 11. Lady Gordon’s home Ard-na-Sidhe overlooking Caragh Lake. Mary Sullivan worked here as a young woman and had fond memories of Lady Gordon’s kindness to her and to all Irish children. (Source: Library of Congress.)

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The O'Sullivans of Muingaphuca

The O'Sullivans of Muingaphuca

HELEN: Who was Lady Gordon?

MARY: Yeah, all of this was done outside, I guess.

MARY: Oh, she lived in that house and she was English to begin with, I guess. And I don’t know, she probably had a lot of money and she wanted to—I don’t know how she happened to come there.

HELEN: Was she there all the time or was she— MARY: Oh, she’d be off going on a trip someplace, but she had two or three maids and—two maids anyway, and she’d probably take one of them with her and the other one was home keeping the house going.

HELEN: Did you ever get inside that house when you were a kid?

HELEN: Would you walk down there? Is that how you got there?

MARY: Oh, yeah, that’s the only way you could get there.

The kids would be running around looking at the different flower gardens that she had and down onto the lake.

HELEN: Would she be out there herself with you or just send the servants out?

MARY: Well, she’d probably show up and, you know, talk a little while to the kids or something, but she wouldn’t stay with us all day.

HELEN: Did you spend the whole day there or a good part of the day?

MARY: Well, probably a couple of hours, you know, something like that.

But she must have been a very rich woman and she was probably divorced from her husband or something. I don’t know. You don’t ask those people anything.

HELEN: Well, you called this a tea party?

MARY: No, I don’t know what it was. Because the kids were all over the place, they did a lot of damage in her gardens, too.

HELEN: Is that right?

MARY: Yeah, like kids that don’t know anything about nice flowers or anything, you know, climbing trees and they’re probably special trees, you know.

HELEN: Did you go swimming in the lake?

MARY: No, I was never swimming in the lake and I never saw anyone swimming in there. Nobody had any bathing suits.

HELEN: Back to Mr. Stack’s house. 43 Did his house have a name? You know, a fancy name like— MARY: I don’t know. Maybe it did, but all those houses have a name.

Figure 12. The Paved Garden of Ard-na-Sidhe, overlooking Caragh Lake. The site of the garden party that Mary describes in her interview. (Source: Library of Congress)

MARY: She used to give a tea party every year. One party. And I don’t know, chances are that it would be the end of the year like along in say maybe June or something like that. The weather was good anyway. But she would have this party for the kids and there would be all kinds of food, you know, to eat. And now I forget what it was, but I imagine it was sandwiches or something. I don’t know, I can’t remember what kind of food.

HELEN: For all the kids at Caragh Lake, is that it, or— MARY: In that school.

HELEN: And you would go down to her house?

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HELEN: So, you went there when you were 16 and you had a job in the kitchen?

MARY: Yeah.

HELEN: Did you work in the dining room? Did you serve the food in the dining room to him or anything like that?

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Stack, a descendant of Major-General Nathaniel Massey Stack (1809-1874), owned 1,205 acres of land overlooking Caragh Lake in an area known as Glannagilliagh, about a 15-minute walk from Mary’s childhood home. “Squire Stack,” for whom Mary worked, was a relative of General Stack who had inherited the property, known during the time that Mary worked there as “The Hollies.” The house is still standing, though operated as a vacation rental home with many modern additions and amenities. More information about the house can be found on Facebook; search for “Natural Retreats The Hollies.”

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The O'Sullivans of Muingaphuca

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MARY: No. He was living alone, nobody else there—and it was very seldom that he would have anybody come in to eat anything with him. I don’t ever remember him having, you know, like a couple coming for a meal or anything. There was another girl besides me, you know.

MARY: Patrick Joyce, J-O-Y-C-E. HELEN: Where did they live?

MARY: Oh, they lived about half a mile away from me.

HELEN: Yeah.

HELEN: On what street?

MARY: And she took care of his meals and took care of his bedroom and dusted around and, you know, that sort of thing. But there was practically nothing for her to do in that place.

MARY: Oh, it wasn’t a street, it was a farm.

HELEN: Well, every farm is on a road or something, was it—

HELEN: And what exactly did you do?

MARY: Well, the road that leads from the school into Killorglin.

MARY: Well, there was two cows and I used to have to milk the cows and take care of the milk. And I think that there were some chickens around, too, so that they’d have eggs, you know. And I’d have to keep track of that and pick up the eggs and feed the chickens, and just what in any house is necessary.

HELEN: Okay.

MARY: That’s the entrance to his place.

HELEN: Uh-huh. And was he the same age as you or older or younger?

HELEN: Did you have to make butter from the milk, the cream?

MARY: No, because I don’t think we had enough milk and cream for that. Two cows don’t make much milk. I don’t know. I don’t know what we did for butter.

HELEN: So, did you work in the kitchen besides?

MARY: Well, that was my area was in the kitchen, but the other girl was in the kitchen most of the time, too.

HELEN: Right. But I mean you were also out, you had to milk the cow?

MARY: Yeah, two cows there was.

MARY: Oh, he was a little older I guess maybe, I don’t know, a year or something, I don’t know. I never asked him how old he was. I don’t know if I intended to marry him or anything. I suppose if I stayed in Ireland my mother would have to make a deal with some guy that had a little farm and he wanted to get hold of it and get going. I don’t know.

HELEN: Where were these dances?

MARY: Well, once in a while somebody would have a dance at their house, you know, but there wouldn’t be a great big crowd, probably 10 or 12 boys and 10 or 12 girls, you know, or maybe more than—there would be more girls than boys.

HELEN: Would you have that in the kitchen?

HELEN: Two cows and feed the chickens. So you had these dairy tasks that you had to do, too.

MARY: Yes, in somebody’s kitchen, yeah.

MARY: Oh, yeah.

HELEN: Did they call that a ceilidh?

HELEN: Now, when you were inside, what did you actually do inside? Wash dishes or make bread or—?

MARY: Well, I don’t know if I did the dishes or not. If she was the cook, she probably washed her own dishes. I forget all about that.

HELEN: Yeah, well, it wasn’t a wonderful job so.

MARY: No, it wasn’t. It was just something to get a little spending money with.

HELEN: Did you have a boyfriend ever in Ireland before you left?

MARY: Yeah, I did for a while but it wasn’t anything.

MARY: I never heard it called that. It was a dance, that’s all.

Once in a great while there would be an all-night dance. It would last through the night, you know, because it wouldn’t get started until after dark and there would be food served and there would be, oh, a couple of sessions during the night where everybody would sit around and there would be singing. Each one had to sing a song, and somebody would probably get the idea to tell a story, you know.

And then after they got rested, you know, a couple of hours—probably not a couple of hours, an hour maybe, then they’d go back, the guy with the violin would start up again and they’d be on the floor dancing again.

HELEN: No, but what was that like? What was it all about having a boyfriend there?

What did that mean? You saw him at a dance or—?

MARY: Yeah. And sometimes the boyfriend would walk home, you know, with the girl and then if she was with another girl or two, they wouldn’t mind him coming along, I guess. I don’t know. I even forget about it. The only thing I know was that I got a little attention from him.

HELEN: And it would last all night long? Until daybreak?

MARY: Well, until—yeah, ‘til daylight and then everybody would go home.

HELEN: And did couples sneak out to do a little smooching outside by themselves?

MARY: Oh, maybe, but you wouldn’t see them. They’d probably do it sneaky, as you say.

HELEN: And you went to some of those dances?

HELEN: And what was his name?

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MARY: I went to one that I remember.

The O'Sullivans of Muingaphuca

HELEN: On a Sunday afternoon?

HELEN: And how old were you?

MARY: I don’t know. I must have been 17.

With all the people around and one of your neighbors is the host and hostess, you know—I imagine some of them would probably sneak out and get better acquainted, whatever you want to call it, I don’t know.

HELEN: Did you ever have any of these crossroads dances?

MARY: Oh, yeah, up where the school is. In front of the school where the water pump is. If they could find a part of the road that was fairly smooth, you know, and not stones bumping up in it, you know, they could start a square dance.

HELEN: When would you do that, like on a summer evening?

MARY: On a Sunday afternoon. We were going up to the cross to see if there was going to be a dance. If there was going to be a dance, we would, you know, stay; otherwise we’d come home.

HELEN: So sometimes you’d meet this Joyce boy, what was his first name, Michael?

MARY: Patrick.

HELEN: Patrick, Patrick, right. Patrick Joyce, you’d meet him up there sometimes?

MARY: Yeah, well, his uncle was married into that Murphy family that I told you that Nora, my grandfather’s daughter?

HELEN: Yeah.

HELEN: Well, how would you know that? Would somebody come by the house to tell

MARY: That she married—I don’t know. I think the name was Murphy, but anyway he was sort of an in-law of the Murphys, see, because his uncle was married to one of them. There was some connection there to a marriage, so that he was kind of well-known in the family, you know.

MARY: No, no. I remember about the day somebody had cigarettes, did I tell you about

HELEN: I see, uh-huh. So, he would show up at those dances, too? And then he’d walk you home?

MARY: Yeah, yes. Sunday afternoon sometimes they would. If somebody came with an accordion or a violin to make the music, that was the signal that we would have a dance. you? that?

MARY: Yeah, he’d probably walked me home.

HELEN: Yeah, one time you did mention that.

MARY: Well, I don’t know how I got with the others, maybe a couple of them stopped or maybe when we came home from church they might have said, “How about if we go up to the cross this afternoon, see if there’s a dance.” And it must have been agreed. “Well, we’ll meet at say three o’clock or four o’clock.”

So, the only thing I can remember about it, is walking along the road with these—I think it was three other girls, there’d be four of us. And one says, “Oh, I got a pack of cigarettes.” Oh, she would think it was a million dollars she got. And, oh, everybody’s, “Oh, yeah, yeah.” And so she takes the pack of cigarettes out and opens it up and she lets each one take one. And, of course, I’m there and I never—I don’t know if I ever—I knew that there was such a thing as cigarettes but there was nobody in our house that was smoking. My brother wasn’t old enough to smoke anyway, even if he wanted to, because I was a year and a half older than he was.

So, then she gets the matches out and, you know, lets each one take a match and light it up and after one or two had their cigarettes going, they didn’t need any more matches so they just held the cigarette for you, you know, to the end of yours and take a couple of puffs on it and that got it going.

And when I took the first puff, I said, “Is this what it is? Ow.” You know, I took it and threw it into the ditch. How could anybody enjoy that sort of thing? But I remember so well saying, “Is this what that cigarette tastes? I don’t want it,” and I never had a cigarette after that.

That was my only smoking experience.

HELEN: So you were on the way to a crossroad dance?

HELEN: And you weren’t in the same direction of his house either because he’d be taking the road into Killorglin to go home, and so he’d have to go the opposite direction to walk with you?

MARY: Yeah, but he wouldn’t go up to the school and out the road again to get home.

He’d probably just go through across fields and through the Clifford family’s area, and his house was up on the little hill in back of that. That would take him only about five minutes to go home, well, if he went up to the school and had to go out towards the Killorglin Road, it would probably take 10 or 15 minutes to go. So, you know how people cut across other people’s land and they think nothing of it.

HELEN: I wouldn’t cut across one of those fields, no way. So that Patrick Joyce, he was your only boyfriend?

MARY: Yeah.

HELEN: And did you break his heart when you left to go to America?

MARY: I don’t know—well, it wasn’t that serious and besides, he died from the flu in it must have been 1919. You know how so many people died from that flu that went through Europe after the World War? HELEN: Did a lot of people die in the Killorglin area?

MARY: Yeah, a lot of people did, even in Muingaphuca. You know between from the Gallivans down where John lives and up to the school?

HELEN: Yeah.

MARY: Yeah.

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The O'Sullivans of Muingaphuca

MARY: And, you know, in between, I think we lost about six people that died from the flu.

HELEN: And that was not a heavily populated area?

MARY: Well, I can’t say, but it seemed to me I heard somebody say that there was six people that got lost in that flu.

MARY: Yeah.

HELEN: Hanley, from Rochester. And her brother was the man of the house then, with his wife and his four children. And his mother and father were the old people that were there in the house. But the house is big, it’s lovely.

MARY: Oh, is that across the lake?

HELEN: But I mean Muingaphuca Road isn’t heavily populated today, so you can imagine what it was back in 1918.

HELEN: Yeah.

MARY: Oh, I was in there.

MARY: Well, Muingaphuca Road was about the same families but then the land isn’t being used now. They come back and they stay a while and they go someplace and get a job that will keep them going for a while, I guess, and I don’t know.

HELEN: What was your relationship with your brother and your sisters? In other words, like did you play with them a lot, were you kind of their caretaker, or you know what I mean, they took orders from you or, you know, were you the second mother?

MARY: It seemed that as we got bigger, you know, say 12, 13, 14, we had work to do, you know, there was things that had to be done and I don’t know whether there was any assigned to me especially. I imagine I had to do something.

I remember once I made a shirt for my Uncle Jim, but that was after my Aunt Bertha died.

My grandmother used to head down to Dooks, you know, to where the Sheas were?

HELEN: Yeah, we went there, too. I’m sure we did in 1985.

MARY: Yeah, well, now I know who you’re talking about.

HELEN: But the time I went there with your brother, John, when they opened the door and the young man who was the head of the house, his face lit up and he said, “John, how good to see you. Come in. Come in.” And he told me later that day that your brother, John, never went visiting anywhere and didn’t bother with people or anything, and that it was so wonderful that he went out with us and it was so great to have him be with us.

MARY: My poor John. I don’t know what happened to him.

HELEN: Well, you do know what happened to him. H is life could not be fulfilled in the traditional way in Ireland.

MARY: That’s right, yeah.

HELEN: Yeah.

MARY: And it seems my grandmother went there, probably she might have stayed for a week or something after her daughter, Bertha, died. And anyway, I think Bertha had four or five children, too. And I don’t know who was taking care of them, was it the father or what? But anyway—didn’t we meet one down in Cromane?

HELEN: Josie?

MARY: Yeah, Josie. She’s one of them, and she had a sister, Mary, I think. And there’s one up in Rochester, New York, you remember that she came here to visit us a couple of— HELEN: Well, she’s the daughter of Josie’s sister because Josie’s sister lives at Caragh Lake. And remember we went there?

I went there with your brother, John. I have pictures of it and we’ll go over the pictures someday and you’ll remember the names. When we went up to the door and rang the doorbell— MARY: Don’t tell me she had a doorbell.

HELEN: It’s a nice house. Yes, because the son and his wife are living there and they have four children and they had added on a wing for a bed and breakfast.

HELEN: It’s a number of reasons that entered into it.

MARY: Well, what were we talking about when we led up to that?

HELEN: You were saying that your grandmother went down to Cromane after Bertha died.

MARY: Oh, yeah. And she stayed there probably a week or so to kind of see if she could level things off.

HELEN: Okay, Mom, so you were saying your grandmother went down to Cromane after her daughter, Bertha, died.

MARY: To Dooks she went, not to Cromane.

HELEN: To Dooks, okay. She went to Dooks after her daughter, Bertha, died to stay a week or so with the children?

MARY: Yeah.

HELEN: And she brought back her daughter Bertha’s sewing machine?

MARY: And where is this?

MARY: Yeah.

HELEN: At Caragh Lake.

HELEN: And then what did you do with it?

MARY: Caragh Lake, the name Caragh Lake covers a lot of space.

HELEN: I can’t tell you exactly where, Mom, but I have pictures, I’ll show you. But it’s the mother of the Ilene, I think, who’s from Hanley.

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MARY: And then that’s when I learned how to sew on a machine. And I made a shirt, a dress shirt for my Uncle Jim. I don’t know if his wife had died by that time, but anyway he had nobody to sew for him and my mother cut out the shirt and I put it together. And it had that little band of a collar, you know, and then you’d put a white collar over on top of it?

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HELEN: Uh-huh.

MARY: When the collar got dirty, you just took that off and washed it and put it back on again.

The O'Sullivans of Muingaphuca

when readymade clothes came on the market, you know, then there wasn’t the demand for dressmakers that there was before. And she gave up the dressmaking for a living and she went to work—she went to work—

HELEN: Oh, pretty neat way to do it.

HELEN: Now, you just brought this picture in to show me of your Aunt Jo.

How old were you then when you first started sewing on a machine?

MARY: Yeah.

MARY: I think I must have been probably 15 maybe.

HELEN: And then you started making other clothes for the family/ MARY: Well, yes, any sewing that had to be done, my poor mother was glad I guess because she wouldn’t have to stay up until eleven or twelve o’clock at night sewing.

HELEN: What was the sewing machine like, a foot pedal machine?

MARY: No. No, it was one of these you put on the table and you have to go like this to keep it going. You’d turn the wheel with your right hand and guide the cloth with your left hand.

HELEN: Well, that was a big advancement over the sewing by hand.

MARY: Oh, that was a great thing for me to make a shirt for my uncle. It’s a shirt to wear with a suit to go to church.

HELEN: Did you start making your own clothes then, too?

MARY: Well, yes. I was making stuff for myself and the rest of the family, I think.

HELEN: You told me once when your Aunt Jo came home for the summer and you were going back in June with her to the United States, she had made you a navy-blue suit?

HELEN: And you said—when she had come home for that visit in Ireland, had she already given up the dressmaking at that point?

MARY: Oh, yeah, she had been doing housework for, oh, maybe ten years. Something like that.

HELEN: But she was a very classy lady so she didn’t do kitchen work.

MARY: No. She was the second girl they used to call it. Answered the telephone, answered the door, wait on table, dust the living room, and arrange the flowers and, you know, that sort of thing.

HELEN: Yeah.

MARY: And also made the beds for the owners of the place.

HELEN: It’s interesting in this picture she’s wearing a ring on her right hand.

MARY: Well, she was going with a guy but they never went and got married.

HELEN: Here, Mom, put the magnifying glass on it.

MARY: Oh, yeah.

MARY: Yeah. So, she made it on that machine.

HELEN: See the ring on her right hand?

HELEN: Where did she get the material, did she go into town and buy it?

MARY: Oh, yeah, you can see it better.

MARY: Oh, you could get it in town, you know.

HELEN: It’s a good-sized ring, too, whatever it is.

HELEN: What place would you shop at in there?

MARY: Yeah.

MARY: There was a store in Killorglin, it was halfway down the hill from where the police station was, halfway down. Between that and the bank that’s at the corner. And that’s what they sold mostly was cloth, you know, all kinds of cloth, cotton, and wool and stuff and blankets, and stuff like that.

HELEN: So what kind of cloth was it, a cotton suit that she made you or wool or what?

MARY: It was kind of a cotton cloth, but it’s heavy. It was navy.

HELEN: Yeah, that’s a cotton twill.44 MARY: And she didn’t even need a pattern or anything. And she was a real dressmaker for years and then I don’t know how long before this, let me see, oh, it doesn’t matter anyway but

HELEN: But she’s a classy lady.

MARY: But chances are she made this herself.

HELEN: Yeah.

MARY: And this one here for her sister, Bertha.

HELEN: So, let’s go back to your departure for Ireland. She went down and got the cloth and picked out what she would make you a suit. Do you remember what the style of your suit was, was the skirt all the way to the floor?

MARY: No. It was—now gee, I don’t know. I would say it’s halfway between the knee and the ankle. I couldn’t say. Because I wasn’t aware of style at that time.

HELEN: Did she make you a nice blouse to go with it?

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Cotton twill was a practical choice for Mary’s suit. The fabric does not wrinkle easily and is stain resistant.

MARY: I imagine she did although I can’t remember now, but I must have had a blouse to wear underneath.

When I came here, Mae O’Brien gave me some of her clothes.

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And then I guess Beatrice probably used the machine after I left. I don’t know. I haven’t heard anything what happened to it.

HELEN: She never really was into sewing in this country though.

MARY: She wasn’t. No, she always wanted me to sew for her.

MARY: But you know, Helen, after I came here, Mae O’Brien suggested that I go to evening school if I could get a chance, that it would help me with my work, you know, and I did.

It started late in September, not as early as the regular school started, but I think it started like towards the end of September and then it was over something like in April. And I went three nights a week, sometimes I would miss for some reason or other and it helped my English a lot even though it wasn’t a regular high school training, you know, but it did help me. And I used to have to write compositions, and I think I did arithmetic also. And there was something else.

HELEN: American history?

MARY: I don’t know if I did American history.

HELEN: What was the other thing?

The O'Sullivans of Muingaphuca

HELEN: —in the living arrangements, and the— MARY: Yeah, I know.

HELEN: —communication, literature, art, music, farming, health care. Whatever goes on to make up the way a nation lives is their culture.

MARY: Yeah.

HELEN: It’s not just the symphony.

MARY: But they’re not thinking about culture in Ireland, they’re wondering if the potatoes are dug and if this is done and if the— HELEN: But you always give me the sense—or I always get the sense, it’s not something you do. I get the sense that you’re a little bit—I don’t know if ashamed is the right word of how poor all that was.

Look at the culture we’re in today, a drug culture, a sex culture, it’s whatever happens that is your culture, like it or not that’s it. So, you don’t have to apologize for it, Mom. Ireland was a very holy, spiritual place to be living.

MARY: Let me see now. Oh, I did some studying on or try typing but I never used it because I wasn’t a typist at The Travelers so it was kind of time wasted, I think. But it gave me a chance to see what these schools are here compared to ours.

And at school you see the way things are done, but I was very busy. I went to school, I used to help Aunt Mary in the house, you know, do the dishes and things like that. And I don’t know, I was busy all the time and I sewed for myself and I used to—I don’t know if I did any crocheting then or not, but I think I did some knitting.

But I could see how the Irish immigrants were looked down on, you know. Here and there, they’d get kicked around in one thing or another and people kind of laugh at you, you know, especially if you pronounce a word different from the way they pronounce it, you know, you can see them—and I’m telling you that doesn’t make you feel very—I don’t know how you’d say it, so I was determined that my kids were going to have more than I had in order to make their way in the world.

HELEN: Well, you took care of that by coming here. You wouldn’t have much to say about it if you stayed in Ireland, that’s for sure.

MARY: That’s right.

Oh, I’m glad I came. But there was so much about life that I didn’t understand.

HELEN: But it’s that way for everyone. It may have been more dramatic— MARY: Yeah.

HELEN: —for you, Mother, because you changed cultures.

MARY: And in other countries, too, you have culture, but in Ireland you had poverty, that’s all.

HELEN: But see culture, Mother, is whatever is going on— MARY: Yeah.

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MARY: Yeah.

HELEN: Very poor but very good people and very holy people who led saintly lives, they weren’t perfect, no, but, you know, you don’t need to apologize for it.

MARY: Well, I don’t think I’m apologizing, but I see things now that I didn’t see before.

And I think we can do a lot for ourselves if we know how to do it or if somebody encourages us to do it.

HELEN: Or that your surroundings give you the opportunity to do it.

MARY: That’s right.

HELEN: And there was no opportunity in Ireland.

MARY: But the people in Ireland and especially on the west coast, all they knew was how to raise vegetables and cows and things like that, but as for to make their lives better, they could see no way of doing it or they wouldn’t know how to go about to do it if they wanted to.

HELEN: Would you say that the whole culture of Western Ireland was focused around maintaining proper marriages to continue landholding and farming and basically keeping that land in a family through a good marriage and that the whole culture was centered around that in Western Ireland?

There was a farm family, there was land, they worked the farm to give it to a son who would get a wife who would bring in a good dowry?

MARY: Uh-huh.

HELEN: They tried to get a dowry for a daughter to make a marriage so she could go into another farm. If you couldn’t go into this farming thing, and they couldn’t match you to a shopkeeper in town—because to me, from what I’ve learned, the shops were to the town people what the farms were to the country people. They made their living and supported a family out of a shop.

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MARY: Yeah.

HELEN: The farmer made his living and supported a family out of the farm. So sometimes a farm girl would get matched to a shopkeeper’s son or it might go the other way, too, where a shopkeeper’s son got matched to a farm girl if there wasn’t a boy to give that farm to in the family.

MARY: Yeah.

HELEN: But would you agree that that was the main focus of all life there, centered around the male inheritance of farm or shop and the necessity of proper marriages to make that work?

MARY: Well, I guess that’s the way they saw life— HELEN: No, I’m asking you, do you think now reflecting back on it, would you agree with it that that was the main focus of all life? Yes, you had to feed the children but, you know, beyond that it was this—nothing was to change, that this is what— MARY: Well, you know, I don’t think that they could see that it was possible to make a change of any kind, that’s the only thing that seemed to be available to them.

HELEN: But do you agree that that’s sort of what the whole focus of life was?

MARY: Well, I suppose so because there was nothing—there was nothing in view that would be different than this.

HELEN: And there was no local government to help anybody get out of that either.

MARY: That’s right. There was nobody advising them.

Now, sometimes I think the priests, if they wanted to, or maybe they couldn’t, that they could advise some of those farmers where they could help one another and help themselves with the right advice.

HELEN: Sometimes I think we expect too much of priests because they’re spiritual leaders and they’re—because they were educated and the only educated people, I think that town’s people and farm people maybe looked to them for certain favors, or not favors really, I don’t mean that, but guidance that they couldn’t get anywhere else. Or some political power or something, I don’t know, I haven’t studied it enough to really come up with the way I would define it.

MARY: I’m not talking about priests doing big things for people. But twice a year there was always what they call “stations” where the priest would come out with his assistant who would be also the alter boy. They would come out—it would be published, you know, the week ahead that there’s going to be a station—they called them stations—at the Sullivan house in Muingaphuca. And that will give you people a chance to have Mass and holy communion and confession, and people knew about it. So, they know that the station was going to be at the O’Sullivan house on Monday at nine o’clock. You say that, nine o’clock.

The priest comes out, the people know about it so they gather around, they try to be at the house at nine o’clock. Some will be late just like they’re late for Mass here. And the priest would come and he would go into the bedroom and sit in a chair. There would probably be a fire going

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in the fireplace and you go to confession. You go into the bedroom and had confession to the priest, then go out, somebody else would come in.

In the meantime, his assistant is setting up the table, the altar. The kitchen table that they have in every house, they put it up on two chairs to raise it so it will alter the height and when everybody’s confession is over with, Father starts and puts on his, you know, vestments and has the Mass and give the communion to the people, he gives a sermon like he—some kind of a sermon, I don’t know what.

And I don’t know when the collection is taken up, but anyway each farmer is expected to give according to, you know, his standing. If he has two cows and the land to go with it, he won’t be expected to pay as much as the guy that has four cows and a horse probably and more land to go with it. That’s over with and everybody leaves to go home.

So, in the meantime the housewife is up in the bedroom and she has the fire going so she makes a pot of tea and whatever else she’s got for the priest, and he has a little table up there and he has his breakfast. And, if he feels like it, he has his assistant come along to sit with him, eat with him.

But now in my way of thinking about these things, I think that it wouldn’t be any harm at all or not asking too much for the priest to say, “Now, I notice that there are no fruit trees around here anywhere. Nobody’s got an apple tree or anything. There is no fruit trees. Now if you fellows would like each of you to plant an apple tree, we can get in touch with someplace where they sell that stuff and it can be ordered and each one pay for his own tree and plant it and you would have some fruit for your family.”

Not a place did I know around Muingaphuca where they had an apple tree.

HELEN: Well, I can guarantee you that if they had women priests, you would have been one of them and there would have been an apple orchard on every farm in Ireland.

MARY: Well, I don’t mean that they should have a big fancy— HELEN: I know, Mom. MARY: But I think there was a lot of ways that they could put the ideas into these guys’ head. Some of those guys are so stupid they don’t know how to do anything, only plant a potato.

HELEN: And then they had the wife doing that.

MARY: That’s it. And Dad was saying that he thought the wife did more than these guys, they’re sitting around smoking and talking.

HELEN: You know, Mom, you have no idea of how many ideas a priest may have planted in men’s mind and they just said, “Ah, bash with that.”

MARY: That could be. That could be.

Of course, when I was over there as a kid, I was taking everything like everybody else did and I wouldn’t have an idea of anything about that, but it’s only— HELEN: Well, remember their songs, Mom, “And the strangers came and tried to teach us their ways. They scorned us just for being what we are,” you know, that’s part of the Irish thinking. I mean they were so persecuted for so long, it was like they’re not going to take any orders from anybody.

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MARY: Oh, I don’t know. Now that, I don’t want to give you the idea that I’m condemning all the priests just— HELEN: No, no, no.

MARY: But that’s just an example. They’re here and there, more lots of ways they could give them ideas and sometimes that’s all guys need, is the idea to do something.

HELEN: Well, you know, the men in Ireland resent the priests historically with some of what I’ve been reading and this comes out in fiction more than in like a history book.

MARY: But if it’s in fiction, it’s not true. It’s just an ab— HELEN: No, fiction is true. What’s in fiction is true, there is nothing in fiction that’s not true unless you want to talk about science fiction, other worlds and planets that we don’t know anything about.

The thing that’s not true in fiction is that you can’t exactly name a character like Helen Curtin Moskey, who lived during this period, she was born in this year and died in this year and during her lifetime she did all these things.

MARY: Yeah.

The O'Sullivans of Muingaphuca

HELEN: They just didn’t want to hear anything from him because he was interfering in their personal lives. Now, right or wrong or whatever, this is something that happened. We know it because it happened in your life, and I know it because it happened in my life.

And this is the way that the church, it isn’t just Ireland, but we’re talking about why men in Ireland wouldn’t listen to the priest or maybe why a priest wouldn’t give advice to the men in Ireland because there is this kind of a barrier there.

MARY: I don’t know. Of course, but I think you know when people get married, when they’re getting married, they should be told those sex rules that you were just talking about, but they can’t wait for you to get married to—I don’t know what, and then they tell you— HELEN: You get some son to inherit the farm in the next generation.

MARY: But if they—the farm is only suitable for one son and they have five sons, what are they going to do with the other four?

HELEN: They emigrate.

MARY: Yeah, but supposing they can’t emigrate?

HELEN: I don’t know.

HELEN: This person lived during these years and then in this fiction story and novel it says when she was a child, she went to school and did this, and then when she was such an age she met a certain person and she married, and then she had these children or there was a dowry arranged for the marriage and she had these children and the children emigrated.

And, you know, you know, you construct a story that’s historically true because you know it from all kinds of records, church records, vital statistic records, history books that have been written about the area. So, the story is true in the basis of the story, it just can’t be totally true for the particular character whose name was Helen Curtin or whatever, you see?

So, fiction is true, it’s just not authentic to the letter about each individual life and what happened in those lives. And you can get more truth in fiction than you’ll get sometimes in a biography or an autobiography because you can conceal the identity of people and tell what truly happened without exposing a particular person’s life.

MARY: Well, I think we ought to be told before we married what our obligations are, but we don’t hear about that until afterwards.

HELEN: Nobody would get married.

Well, I’m getting kind of tired and you might be exhausted, too, so why don’t we just cut this off.

MARY: Yeah, I think we better.

HELEN: Mom, this was terrific and your memory is so good tonight.

[End of audio.]

MARY: Yeah.

HELEN: But it does tell you the kinds of things that happened in that environment. And one of the things that the men in Ireland resent the priests about is that the priests interfered with their sex life. You see, in Ireland sex was not to be enjoyed. Sex was not to be used for anything other than the procreation of children, and when a woman reached the point where she felt that she couldn’t have any more children because physically she couldn’t handle it or they couldn’t feed any more or whatever, that would be the end of their sex life. And the priest told the woman not to have sex and she’d tell the husband she can’t have any more sex because she can’t have any more children and so the men resented the priest.

So, getting advice from the priest did not set well with a lot of Irish men.

MARY: But that’s different from planting an apple tree.

HELEN: But you see, Mom, they turned the priest off.

MARY: Yeah.

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The O'Sullivans of Muingaphuca

A KERRY ETHNOGRAPHY: The History of the Descendants of Owen-Mór O’Sullivan, Muingaphuca, Caragh Lake, Co. Kerry, 1826-1992

By Helen Curtin Moskey

Figure 13. Mary Gallivan O’Sullivan (September 26, 1873—1950), the Matriarch of the O’Sullivans of Muingaphuca. This photo was likely taken in 1927 when Mary Sullivan was home in Ireland prior to her marriage to Bill Curtin. (Photo courtesy of the McKinley Family)

Figure 14. Saint James’s Church, Killorglin. This photo was taken around the time of the centenary of the Church in 1988. (Source: Killorglin Archives)

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THE HISTORY OF A KERRY ETHNOGRAPHY

My work as editor of the volume has consisted primarily of (1) providing supplemental information (primarily in footnotes, and sometimes in [square bracketed] comments in the text), to help readers understand some of the historical and cultural context of things discussed in the Ethnography, especially obscure terms and concepts in Irish history and law; (2) making sure that relationships among various generations of the O’Sullivan family were clear enough for younger readers who may not have known any of the people whose lives and stories are recorded here; (3) doing minimal line editing to assure clarity and uniformity of style and format; and (4) creating footnotes to compensate for the absence of a bibliography, which at some point became detached from the manuscript, and lost.

By Stephen T. Moskey About a month before my great-great-Aunt Jo (Johanna O’Sullivan 1876-1938) was scheduled to return to the United States from a visit to Ireland in 1920, she asked my maternal grandmother, Mary Ellen Sullivan Curtin (1902-1991), then a farm girl barely 18 years old, if she would like to go to America with her. At first, my great-grandmother Mary Gallivan O’Sullivan (1873-1950) said no. She felt that Mary was too young, and my grandmother, being a devout Roman Catholic and obedient daughter, accepted her mother’s pronouncement without question.

My editing of Helen’s wonderful style of writing has been with a light hand, and the story you are about to read is entirely in her own voice.

Within a week, my great-grandmother had second thoughts. She came to see that she should not and could not deny her daughter the opportunity for a better life in America. She understood, as you will learn in the study that follows, that a rural Irish family with no men, one boy, one woman and three girls would never be able to provide dowries to pay for the marriage of each of the girls. My great-grandmother and her children lived a hardscrabble life close to poverty and saving the £70 to £100 Pounds Sterling required for even one dowry for one of the girls would have been impossible.

My great-grandmother thus consented to emigration for her daughter Mary. Within a few years another daughter, Bridget (1905-1976; Beatrice Sullivan, as she styled herself once she was in America—Auntie Bea to many of us) followed her older sister to Hartford, Connecticut, to start a new life there. This left only the youngest, Catherine, to be “married-out,” though you will eventually learn the sad story of Catherine’s decline and ultimate unsuitability for marriage.

In 1927 my grandmother married William Charles Curtin (1900-1980) and with him had five children: Maureen (1928-1968, my godmother), Robert (1930-2010), Helen (1931-2003, my mother), Patricia (b. 1933), and John (1937-2011). Each of Mary and Bill’s children married, and a total of 19 grandchildren were born of those marriages. Then great-grandchildren came along, then great-great-grandchildren, and sooner than we think, great-great-great grandchildren will be showing up on the family tree. By my count there have been some 60 people (children of William and Mary, their grandchildren, their great-grandchildren, and even great-great-grandchildren) born in the United States who trace their Irish ancestral bloodline back to Eugene O’Sullivan and Mary Gallivan of Muingaphuca, County Kerry. Counting marriages and adoptions, the Curtin Clan now probably approaches 80 people—or more. Had my great-grandmother not reversed her denial of my grandmother’s wish to go to America, none of us would have been born. So, thank you GreatGrandmother O’Sullivan!

My mother, Helen Curtin Moskey, wanted the Curtin family to be able to read her account of the O’Sullivans of Muingaphuca. Before her death in 2003, she asked me to undertake publication of the Ethnography for the family, and appointed me her literary executor. She also hoped that the Ethnography could be made available to other scholars and researchers. I have thus made arrangements for copies of this publication to go, in Ireland, to the Killorglin, Killarney, and County Kerry libraries and historical societies, as well as to the archives of St. James Church in Killorglin, where generations of O’Sullivans worshipped and prayed, including many of the readers of this volume. Copies will also go to libraries and historical societies in Connecticut.

Figure 15. The William Curtin Family, 1961. From left to right: John, Maureen, Bill, Mary, Helen, John, and Patricia. This photo was taken during a family picnic in the back yard of 8 East Main Street. Many of the older members of the Curtin Clan remember the event. The kids loved it that their aunts and uncles played Red Rover and other outdoor games with them. A very happy memory for all of us who were there. (Photo courtesy of the McKinley Family)

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The O'Sullivans of Muingaphuca

1994 PREFACE TO A KERRY ETHNOGRAPHY

There would have been nothing to prime the pump, so to speak, for my conversations with family in Ireland: had I not come to them with some prior knowledge about the family, I doubt they would have been very forthcoming, and this study might never have been written.

By Helen Curtin Moskey

The Irish historian Art Cosgrove has said that “tradition is what is held by society in general, and to be genuine it must be heard from many informants.” To discover the traditions of Muingaphuca, I asked repeatedly in Muingaphuca and Killorglin about several generations of my O’Sullivan ancestors. In doing so, I quickly earned the nickname “Question Box.” People could not understand why I would want to know “all that from the past,” and often answered my questions with a question of their own. Through my patient persistence, and by their accepting me as one of their own, they eventually believed my explanation that I was writing a family history for my mother’s 90th birthday.

This ethnography has its origins in the oral history of my maternal ancestors, the Owen-Mór O’Sullivan family, and is about peasant life in the small dairy community of Muingaphuca, a townland of Killorglin, in County Kerry, Ireland. The family is descended from one of Kerry’s three great families from the Eoganacht dynasty: the MacCarthys, the O’Sullivans, and the O’Donoghues.

This study is based on four major sources: (1) historical research I conducted in Ireland; (2) the folk memory (defined below) of members of various branches of the O’Sullivan family still living in and around Muingaphuca, Caragh Lake, the Iveragh Peninsula, and Killorglin; (3) my own observations of life in modern-day Muingaphuca, recorded in interview notes, diaries, and letters I wrote during ten visits I made to the area between 1976 and 1992; and (4) recorded and transcribed interviews I conducted with my mother, Mary Ellen Sullivan Curtin (1902-1991), between 1986 and 1989 in our family home in Portland, Connecticut. These sources produced a vast number of intimate details about life and survival in this rural community, both for my family, the O’Sullivans, and for their friends and neighbors, focusing on the years 1900 to 1920, the decades of my mother’s childhood in Muingaphuca, and 1934 to 1960, the years of decline and loss of the community’s traditional way of life.

One of the rewards of this effort is my deeper understanding of the peasant traditions and values of Kerry which so strongly influenced my own childhood in the United States and shaped my Irishness.

For a total of six months over several visits between 1976 and 1992, I lived alone in the onestory, three-room O’Sullivan farmhouse in Muingaphuca, rebuilt in 1980 on the site of the house my mother had been born in 1902, which itself was the site of an earlier O’Sullivan home from the mid19th century. My closest neighbors lived about a quarter of a mile away. They treated me as a daughter who had “come home” to Ireland, for children, grandchildren, and even great-grandchildren of native-born Irish people are under Irish law Irish citizens at birth, regardless of the country of their birth. Upon request and with proper documentation of births and marriages, the Irish government issues an Irish birth certificate which can be used to apply for a Republic of Ireland passport. The United States government allows me to hold both U.S. and Irish citizenship as well as dual passports.

My Irish passport was invaluable for my research in Ireland, for it gave me access to records of 19thand 20th-century contracts with British landlords; school, hospital, and county records; birth and death certificates; and records of the Roman Catholic Church, especially baptismal records.

The information I received from multiple sources has given me confidence that my mother’s stories, and the stories I heard in Ireland, meet the standards for being folk tradition and folk memory, as defined by Cosgrove: When we speak of Irish folk tradition, we mean the ordinary people’s account of their own way of life over the period covered by the folk memory, which in general reaches back over about two centuries. A large body of that memory was recorded in permanent form, that is to say in writing, in the second quarter of this century, mainly from people who were then elderly, but clear minded and articulate. A person of 75 years old in 1935 would have heard, as a child or young adult, the memories of people who were themselves young about 1820, and who would have heard their own grandparents telling of events and conditions in the middle of the eighteenth century. 45

Using Cosgrove’s chronological metric that folk memory reaches back over about two centuries as my guide, I calculated the oldest period of memory for the Owen O’Sullivan family.

My mother was 74 years old in 1976, the year I began to write down her recollection of our ancestors. The stories she had heard from her grandfather, born in 1835, were stories he would have heard from his grandparents. Thus the oldest period of memory for the Owen O’Sullivan family of Muingaphuca is roughly the 25-year period between 1775 and 1800.

In addition to seeking accurate information on ancestors and family lineage, I wanted to understand what caused the gradual collapse of traditional life in the west of Ireland starting in the first two decades of the 20th century, the 20 or so years corresponding to my mother’s childhood and teen years. I also wanted to know why, prior to my first trip to Ireland in 1976, my mother was reluctant to talk about her childhood in Ireland. Although St. Patrick’s Day was celebrated in my childhood home in Portland, the happy-go-lucky verses on the greeting cards we received did not reflect the deep sadness my mother always seemed to carry with her about Ireland.

Contrary to idyllic scenes on greeting cards of Irish cottages with curling white smoke, or wee people in top hats searching under rainbows for pots of gold, peasant life in Muingaphuca before 1970 was harsh. Details about that harshness were difficult to uncover, for Kerry is wrapped in protective layers of secrecy about the lives of its people. Meaningful discussion of the past is often evaded in conversation, especially if there is fear it might cast the Irish in a negative light.

Without having had prior information about the family of my great-great-grandfather Owen-Mór O’Sullivan, it would have been impossible to obtain the information I sought about my ancestors.

In Muingaphuca, I discovered that information is steadfastly withheld from strangers, even though the families who have been there for generations know all of Muingaphuca’s secrets. The events of every family and every individual in the family affect the community at large, define its world and become its history recorded in folk memory. It took me time to build relationships with

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Art Cosgrove, Marriage in Ireland (Dublin: College Press, 1985), 99.

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the people of Muingaphuca, even those I was related to through bloodline or marriage. Each time I “returned home,” as the Irish say (even if you were not born in Ireland, you always go “home” to Ireland because you are Irish), the friendships I had formed on earlier visits were renewed and strengthened. Between visits I exchanged Christmas cards or an occasional letter with my newlydiscovered family and newly-made friends. Over the years we forged bonds of trust that enabled them to share with me the stories passed down by our ancestors, especially about life in the early 20th century. I asked my sources for truthful answers to specific questions about the O’Sullivan family.

PROLOGUE TO A KERRY ETHNOGRAPHY

This ethnography is the family’s first written history. I am convinced that, through writing it, I have come to understand family history as it was and is still understood by family members in Ireland who grew up immersed in that history. I compared responses I received from different people, including my mother, and correlated that information with the results of my research of church and government records. I am confident that the history of the Owen O’Sullivan family and the community of Muingaphuca is accurately represented in this ethnography.

In writing this ethnography, I have profited from the work of others and their names are enshrined in the bibliography. I am deeply indebted to Thomas Doyle, a member of the Killorglin Historical Society, for his advice and assistance with research; to Professor Jane Nadel-Klein of Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut, my academic advisor for this project; and to all the sturdy Irish who shared information with me.

I owe a special thanks to my mother, who endured my persistent questions for years. Without her keen memory and forthrightness about the harsh realities of her childhood and early 20th-century peasant life in Kerry, this ethnography would not have been possible. Though I’ve been the one to write down the family history, it is my mother who remembers the past and helps to narrate this story.

Excerpt from: The Broken Hearts: An Autobiography

By Helen Curtin Moskey Growing up, my Gaelic-Irish ancestry seemed equally important as was my American identity, although I was told very little about family history. My father, William Charles Curtin, was born in South Windsor, Connecticut, on August 22, 1900, the son of William Curtin and Helen Kennedy. His older brother, Walter, died when my father was three or four, and Dad was brought up alone in a working-class Irish-American home in East Hartford, Connecticut, across from the Belden Street railroad yards.

My mother, Mary Ellen Sullivan, known as a child and young woman as “Mollie,” was born in Muingaphuca, Killorglin, County Kerry, Ireland, on April 17, 1902, the first-born of Eugene O’Sullivan of Muingaphuca and Mary Gallivan of Upper Tullig. My mother’s father died when she was almost 12, of tuberculosis, and her paternal grandfather, known as Johnny-O, died the same day in the same room of a stroke. The widows of Eugene and Johnny-O then worked the farm together and brought up Eugene’s five children, age 6 to 12, in a day-to-day existence close to poverty.

My mother’s aunt, Johanna O’Sullivan, paid for her passage to the United State in June 1920. Another of her father’s sisters, Catherine O’Brien, and her daughter, Mae O’Brien, helped my mother settle in Hartford, Connecticut. Mae, then 28, was American born and took Mother under her wing. “There’ll be no pot-walloping for you, Mollie,” she said. Mae helped Mother find employment at the Travelers Insurance Company in Hartford, where she worked until May, 1927, when she returned to Ireland for a six-month visit.

Mary Ellen Sullivan Curtin (1902–1991).

In October 1927, Mother returned to America. When her old boss at the Travelers saw the diamond engagement ring my father had given her the previous April, he asked Mother when she would marry. Because she planned to be married in May of 1928, the Travelers would not rehire her, as they did not employ married women. My father insisted that they marry immediately.

Mother had paid for a new roof and other desperately needed repairs to the home in Ireland, and Dad had splurged on the engagement ring, so their resources were thin. Financial insecurity became a permanent part of my Mother’s life in America, as it had been for her family and ancestors in Ireland.

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In love and gratitude, I dedicate this work to the memory of my mother,

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The O'Sullivans of Muingaphuca

CHAPTER ONE

KERRY

HALLOWED GROUND A poem by Helen Curtin Moskey The living presence of Owen-Mór O’Sullivan, my great-great-grandfather, hovers near his land on Muingaphuca Road facing the Slieve Mish Mountains of Dingle.

He was born in Kerry, educated in the hedge schools, and signed his name in 1826 to agreements with the Rector of the Church of Ireland for rental tithes for these twenty acres.

With callused hands he cleared this land of rocks, piled them into stone walls, and crushed stone for his boreen to keep his donkey and cart from sinking in the mire.

He built a two-room hut with three-foot-deep walls of wattle and mud in the side of a hill, sheltering it from west winds that blew in from the Atlantic, three miles off.

1. The Physical Scene He married Margaret Foley, a hearty woman who lived halfway up Caragh Lake hill, at a turn called the Devils’ Elbow; had five children with her, fought tuberculosis and eviction, ate weeds in the Famine, battled rain, rain, rain, gales off the ocean, and incessant damp.

He prayed in times of need at the holy well near the Caragh River bridge, and trusted God. He loved Ireland and, Being a Fenian man, he plotted with O’Dwyer and Moriarity and Murphy in the dark fields at night, a conspiracy, against the English.

These twenty acres are Owen-Mór’s Legacy to seven generations, a legacy of land, freedom, family.

Do you still want to know if this place is for sale?

He dug two deep wells, planted oats and potatoes, kept two milk cows, and raised pigs for the rent.

Cooring with neighbors for mutual aid, he cut hay in the fields, and hauled home peat from the bog on his back.

—October 1, 1992

On its south and west coasts, County Kerry is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean; on the north by County Limerick; and on the east by County Cork. Kerry comprises 1,163,000 acres, of which 594,000 are lowland mineral land; 440,000 are mountains and hill; and bog covers the remaining 129,000 acres. The geography of Ireland affects the climate of Kerry in two main ways: through the sea, which influences temperature; and the mountains, which influence rainfall. At the meteorological observatory at Cahersiveen, 20 miles south of Muingaphuca, the winter mean temperature is 45 degrees Fahrenheit, and the summer’s mean is 60F. The sea temperature off the southwest coast of Ireland is moderated by the Gulf Stream and the Atlantic drift, which cause winds from the south and west to stay fairly warm, but moisture laden. The annual rainfall in County Kerry averages 55 inches, although in the mountainous areas of south Kerry, there is three times more rain than in the flatland of north Kerry. Typical of Kerry on the whole, snow falls in Cahersiveen, on average, five days a year, but stays on the ground only once in two years. Hail falls in Kerry on an average of 23 days a year in Cahersiveen, slightly more than anywhere else in the British Isles. Generally, there is little change in Kerry’s climate from one season to another, but its weather—temperature, wind, rainfall, sunshine, and humidity—can change at any time of the day. 46 Although County Kerry’s natural beauty is not surpassed in all of Ireland, most Irish people from other, more developed areas of the country (Dublin, Cork, etc.) still think of Kerry as a backward place. The distance between County Kerry and County Dublin on Ireland’s east coast is approximately 200 miles, but for people in both counties, the cultural distance is much greater. In general, County Dublin society is more educated, intellectual, wealthy, and powerful in contrast to Kerry society and its way of life, which exemplifies simple peasant values of spirituality, family, community, and work. The more industrialized and urban atmosphere of County Dublin was shaped

by England’s 800-year occupation of Ireland, during which time Britain controlled government, land, religious expression, and economic development of the country. During that period, roughly 1169 to 1923, the west of Ireland was badly neglected, particularly in the development of infrastructure and industry. Due to its proximity to England, east coast industry and infrastructure, including what is now Northern Ireland, were well developed to meet Britain’s political and economic interests. As fertile land in eastern and central counties was confiscated by the English, the Irish people were pushed further and further west the onto rocky barren land along the Atlantic coast that could not feed its native population during the Great Famine (1845–1851).

After achieving independence from Great Britain in 1921, the Republic of Ireland continued to feel the enduring presence of British influence, especially in the large Anglo-Irish populations of its east coast counties, and in the loss of the six counties in the north: Deny, Tyrone, Fermanagh, 46

Barrington, [unidentified work], p. 148. Editor’s Note: The bibliography for A Kerry Ethnography was not among Helen’s papers at the time of her death. I have reconstructed missing bibliographic references where possible. Otherwise, citations are presented as they appear in the original manuscript.

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Antrim, Armagh, and Down. Separated in 1923 from the 26 other counties that now constitute the Republic of Ireland, in what was thought to be a temporary measure, those six counties now form a separate country, Northern Ireland, which is part of Great Britain. Northern Ireland’s majority is Anglo-Irish (Protestant), and the minority is Gaelic-Irish (Roman Catholic). Mixed marriages have diluted the Celtic influences in Northern Ireland and the eastern counties of the Republic, but Kerry’s Gaelic-Irish have traditionally married their “own kind” —Roman Catholic people of Irish stock. As a result, Celtic traditions and Roman Catholic beliefs and practices are deeply embedded in the Kerryman’s way of life.

appearances, and one Dublin paper reported that with all the moving statues in Ireland, the real miracle was that they were not bumping into each other. A shopkeeper I know who went to Ballinspittle told me that with the size of the crowd she didn’t see much, but that going there was “a moving experience.” Such is the wit of the Irish.

In County Kerry, the predominate names are still McCarthy, O’Sullivan, and O’Donoghue, names recorded in the history of ancient Kerry, 100 B. C. to 400 A. D., as descendants of Eoganacht kings of the ancient kingdom of Munster. 47 Today, Kerry is part of the province of Munster which, with three other provinces, Leinster, Connaught, and part of Ulster, form the Republic of Ireland.

Kerry is viewed by both Irish and Anglo-Irish on the industrialized east coast as “backward,” a place where remnants of Celtic spirituality and 19th-century values still exert a major influence on attitudes and values. The people of Kerry pay little attention to what others think, and hold a deep pride in their respect for personal freedom, nature, and a simple way of life, which they believe is inherent in Celtic spirituality. A noticeable characteristic of Kerry’s Celtic spirituality is a keen awareness of supernatural powers which communicate with humans through the elements and all forms of nature. This concept of Celtic spirituality is explained by Richard Stivers.

The Gaelic culture was a mixture of folk custom and belief not unlike those of other folk cultures....was concerned with man’s total relation to and place within nature. There existed in the literature and oral tradition ‘a sense of the harmony and mystery man’s place in nature. Included was a pagan yearning for communion with all of nature....’the gods dwelt among the hills, and the living spirits of the land were ever present.’ Thus, animistic and pantheistic orientations were prevalent. The traditional culture was able to exist side by side with Christianity because the Celts never formalized their beliefs into a religion. The folk culture appealed to the imagination and emotions rather than to the intellect. Yeats noted that ‘everyone is a visionary if you scratch him deep enough...the Celt is a visionary without scratching’. 48

Celtic spirituality is expressed in the belief held by some Kerrymen that “God is trying to tell us something” through natural disasters such as earthquake, flood, or drought. Messages also come in the form of certain supernatural events, such as one that occurred in August 1985, during one of my visits to Ireland. There was great excitement in Kerry and Cork over a “moving statue,” and thousands of people thronged by bus and car every evening from Kerry to a small roadside shrine in Ballinspittle, Cork to see the “moving statue of Ballinspittle.” The phenomenon of the moving statue began each evening at dusk, when the shrine glittered with lighted candles, and no amount of reasoning convinced believers that the perceived movement of the facial features on the statue was caused by flickering candles and imagination. Church groups hired tour buses to Ballinspittle, and within a week, other moving statues were reported in other locations. The media covered the

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Figure 16. Mary Ellen Sullivan’s Certificate of Naturalization, No. 2604958, May 27, 1927. Mary became an American citizen just before her visit to Ireland in the summer of 1927. She married William Curtin in November, 1927. (Moskey Family Collection)

Barrington, op. cit., 19.

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Richard A. Stivers, A Hair of the Dog: Irish Drinking and American Stereotype (State College, PA: Penn State University Press, 1991), 58-59.

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2. The Irish Language

CHAPTER TWO

Ancient Celtic heritage is still expressed in the continued use of the Irish language, now spoken in Kerry mainly in the Gaeltacht on Dingle Peninsula, a mountainous area peppered with stone beehive huts dating to sixth-century monastic life. Gaeltachts are sparsely populated areas in the west of Ireland which are dedicated to the preservation of Irish, once the mother tongue of all Irish people. The Irish language lost importance in Ireland once English became the language in daily use by the majority of native Irish people in the 19th-century. In spite of various movements by the Gaelic League in Ireland since 1893 to restore Irish as the mother tongue, that ideal was finally surrendered when compulsory qualifications in the Irish language were dropped in 1973 for Leaving-Certificate examinations, and civil service entry.

Government grants have been given to Gaeltachts to promote and restore native Irish culture through language. It was intended that Irish would be the only language spoken in the Gaeltachts, but the Gaeltachts’ commitment to Irish has been questioned by others who charge that English is spoken there at will by its permanent residents. 49 Still, its language schools draw school children from all parts of Ireland, especially Dublin and other east coast locations where such excursions for children are affordable. On a year-round basis, sessions of several weeks duration for children and adults offer opportunities to perfect Irish language skills.

Today, the Irish language is taught in both private and national schools in Ireland, and some academic subjects are taught in both Irish and English. In spite of the work of the Gaelic League for nearly a century, revival of the Irish language as the mother tongue has failed. Unemployment is extremely high in Ireland, and except in the Gaeltachts, where fluency in Irish can bring employment to a few people, Irish youth see no economic value in learning the Irish language. One of my favorite places for meeting Irish teenagers was on a bench in front of the Killorglin Library, where they came with burgers and fries, and a Coke from the “take away” across the street. We’d soon be chatting and when I asked about their interest in speaking Irish, they asked a few questions of their own: “What other country is interested in speaking Irish?” and, “Will speaking Irish get me a job, even in Ireland?” Since English is the mother tongue of the United States, Canada, England, Australia, and New Zealand, the countries to which most Irish have emigrated, and the common language of the European Economic Community (EEC), Ireland’s youth see no future for Irish in today’s global economy. Although no longer a requirement for entry in civil service, it is necessary for some civil service jobs, including Ireland’s national police, the Garda. Some university-educated Irish still fight to keep Irish alive as a sign of Irish identity, but its status as the mother tongue of Ireland has passed.

KILLORGLIN 1. The Town Killorglin is a 12th century market town located 14 miles west of Killarney in County Kerry. It is comprised of 27 townlands that extend into four baronies, Trughanackmy, Magunihy, Dunkerron North, and Iveragh, the barony to which the townland of Muingaphuca belongs. Although Killorglin is more economically secure today than it was in the past, it has a long history of poverty, which is relevant to understanding how life was lived in Muingaphuca in the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century.

Kieran Foley, a local historian, provides glimpses of early Killorglin in his book, History of Killorglin. According to local tradition, fishermen’s huts were the first homes on the site of modern day Killorglin, although that cannot be verified. The River Laune has a long history of salmon fishing, and a fishery partnership between Samuel Keays of Cork, Mr. Ronayne of Youghal, and William Dodd of Killorglin, trading as “K.R.D.”, flourished there in the 19thcentury and first half of the 20th-century. 50 Its offices on the bank of the River Laune have been turned into “The Fishery,” a store that features River Laune smoked salmon, Irish designer clothing, sweaters, woolens, crystal, and china, all at reasonable prices. A fine restaurant on the second floor provides entertainment with the traditional ceilidh of rural Ireland, an informal evening of song, story, and dancing. The Fishery is a popular lunch and dinner stop for tour buses, and tourism, Ireland’s second most important industry, is very important to the economy of Killorglin. The restaurant operates year-round, and is used during the off-season for wedding dinners, anniversary parties, and Saturday night ceilidhs for locals, where entertainers perfect their programs for the next tourist season.

Killorglin’s castle, Castle Conway, now in ruin on private property behind the Allied Bank, was recorded by an analyst’s entry of 1215 A.D. as one of a string of Norman castles. The River Laune fords at Killorglin and the castle-controlled movement across the river. Early histories mention that Killorglin and its castle were burned and razed in 1280 A.D., which indicates that there was a settlement in Killorglin by that date. 51 According to Foley, early records of Killorglin define it as a poor and wretched place, an image that still haunts Killorglin. A census taken around 1659 lists 26 people, 22 Irish and 4 English, living in Killorglin Town. A 1682 visitor wrote that there were few signs of Killorglin’s reputed past glory except “ruins of a large country church and hospital...and other old rubbish.” In 1822, a visitor wrote that “for dirt and dreariness, Killorglin may vie with any inhabited place in the universe.” An 1848 traveler who stayed overnight in the town wrote that it was “evidently a place of very little business and seemed to hold a suspended existence between poverty, decay, and dilapidation.” A journalist recorded in 1869 that when he crossed the bridge into Killorglin, he 50

Kieran Foley, History of Killorglin (Killorglin: Killorglin History & Folklore Society, 1988), 120-125.

51 49

Foley, op. cit., 1-14.

Scheper-Hughes, p. 60.

116

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came upon “a cluster of the most primitive hovels used as human habitations that could be found in the three kingdoms” 52 — all of which leaves little doubt about Killorglin’s humble beginnings.

2. Puck Fair

From 1871 to 1911, the number of inhabited houses increased from 176 to 219. During the same period, Killorglin built a new bridge, the town was connected to a railroad line, and the magnificent St. James Roman Catholic Church was built. Other improvements included new schools, shops and shopfronts, a hotel, a bank building, and a piped water supply. A creamery was set up in 1898, and electricity arrived in the town in 1916, although it was not available in Muingaphuca until the 1970s.53 Today, Killorglin’s business community is confident that Killorglin’s position as a thriving business center on the Ring of Kerry is secure. Agriculture is still central to Killorglin’s economy, but some industry has also arrived, such as factories for leather fashions, pharmaceuticals, and construction safety bolts. Killorglin has a small public library, but its books are not well cared for by readers, and the number and selection of books is extremely limited. National primary, secondary, and vocational schools provide education for Killorglin’s children, and also offer some night classes for adults. A few Killorglin families send their children to private boarding schools, some as far away as Dublin, and most children from the Killorglin schools are not prepared to go on to college. There is an apathy throughout Ireland about the value of higher education, for unemployment in the country is very high, and even those with college degrees cannot find work. Although there may be opportunities in the European Common Market for younger Irish and many already “commute” between Ireland and England (which has a large Irish population), Killorglin teenagers have no interest in living on Europe’s mainland.

The majority of Killorglin town residents are employed in small shops, pubs, banks, and manufacturing plants in Killorglin, Killarney, and Tralee, and most Muingaphucans are farmers.

Regardless of their source of income, all are economically interdependent. Muingaphuca’s families shop and carry on their business in Killorglin, and Killorglin is Muingaphuca’s gateway to Irish and European dairy markets for milk, cream, and butter, and livestock markets for meat, wool, and leather. The two communities maintain friendly ties through intermarriages of town and country families, membership in St. James Roman Catholic Church, and various civic and business organizations which involve farmers with industry and banking. Farmers stop at a pub for a pint of Guinness and a bit of gossip on their weekly trips into town to collect “the dole,” a subsidy which is given to every family with children, regardless of need. Other than meeting in town while on errands, socialization in both Killorglin and Muingaphuca occurs mainly within the family, and Muingaphucans have fought and defeated every attempt to consolidate town and rural primary schools, a move which would have triggered significant changes in socialization, especially for the children.

52

Ibid., 122.

53

Ibid., 122-124. Editor’s Note: There was no electricity at the O’Sullivan farm house when I visited there in 1970.

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Killorglin, first recorded in English annals in 1212 A.D., is well known throughout Ireland, Europe, and by Irish-Americans as the home of Puck Fair, reputedly the oldest animal fair in Europe. The fair is held each year for three days and three nights between the dates of August 10 and 14. The origin of the Fair has been lost in antiquity, but some historians believe that it began as part of a pagan fertility rite, since a wild male goat, or puc, is the fair’s symbol. In ancient practices, the puc was a pagan symbol of continuity. Others put the origin of Puck Fair a mere 500 or 600 years ago, although the first official record is for 1601, when a British Royal Charter was granted for holding the fair. Each year the symbolic goat is captured from the wilds of Glencar in the Mac Guillycuddy Reeks, a mountain range between Killorglin and Killarney, then paraded through the streets, and crowned King of the Fair before being elevated to a Royal Tower in the town square, where he reigns for three days.

The first day of Puck Fair is called Gathering Day, and this day’s events are devoted to children: contests in Irish step-dancing, art, music, and athletics. A major attraction is a carnival, complete with rides, and open from noon until one o’clock in the morning. Early in the evening of Gathering Day, a marathon race is held for adults and teenagers, preceded by slapstick comedy on the art and rules of competitive running, all performed at the starting line by Killorglinites dressed as working farmers. As each runner crosses the finish line in front of the Killorglin Library, s/he is handed a bottle of milk to quench his thirst, in much the same spirit as an athlete is handed bottled water at the end of an Olympic event. Gathering Day concludes with a long noisy parade of children, vehicles, bands, clowns, clubs, politicians, honored visitors, a float carrying the 12-yearold “Queen of the Fair” with her court of ten young princesses, and finally, the puc, King of Puck Fair.

The parade begins at ancient Drumwalla Cemetery across the Laune River, and as it crosses the narrow Laune Bridge and enters the town, throngs of spectators are pressed back against storefronts by the lead vehicles and parade marshals. When the parade reaches the town square at the top of Upper Bridge Street, a welcome is read in Irish, German, French, and English by the Queen of Puck Fair, followed by a dose of blarney from Killorglin’s politicians, sing-a-longs for the crowd, and announcements of lost children, all blasted over loudspeakers. When the puc is crowned, the crowd gives up a roar, and he is hoisted to the top of the three-story Royal Tower which is decorated with flying pennants and banners promoting the national beverage and good health: “GUINNESS—It’s Good For You.” For 48 hours, King Puck reigns three levels above the fair, well fed and protected from the elements. His coronation is followed by a concert from the stage of the Royal Tower by one of Dublin’s popular bands, and group dancing in the crowded Square lasts until one or two o’clock in the morning.

The second day of the fair, known as Livestock Day or Fair Day, is devoted mainly to the sale of horses, ponies, and cattle. The livestock fair, which begins at 4:00 a.m. and ends at 2:00 p.m., is internationally famous. According to the Visitors Guide to Killorglin, in former years many armies bought their remounts at the fair. The center of Killorglin, whose normal town population is 1,500, is extremely small, and although the livestock fair is confined to the upper end of Market Street, opposite St. James Catholic Church, the animals are driven through the streets of town during the day as they arrive and are moved from the animal transport trucks parked alongside every available road in Killorglin. As a result, the town streets are littered with dung, a problem made worse by 119

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rain, a frequent intruder at the fair. Experienced fairgoers can be spotted by their footgear, rubber wellies. Streets are hosed down periodically by shopkeepers, but the problem can’t be solved until Livestock Day is over.

low lights and partially drawn curtains that leave just enough space to see that there is something mysterious happening inside. Killorglinites, most of whom are Roman Catholic, profess a disdain for fortune telling. Even to satisfy a curiosity about it, they would not risk being seen entering or leaving a fortune teller’s trailer during the fair, for fear of what the neighbors would think. Men try to outdo one another in displays of strength by slamming a sledgehammer on a metal plate to ring the bell for a prize. Adults and underage children play the slot machines for 50p (equal to $0.75) at the “chance” tent. Others peruse the long rows of vendor stalls which are set up at curbside for housewares, clothing, hats, gadgets, toys, and trivia. When darkness falls around ten o’clock, another concert kicks off street dancing around the Royal Tower in the Square, which again lasts until one or two o’clock in the morning.

A large gathering of Ireland’s Travellers attends Puck Fair. They camp in trailers, tents, and pony-wagons in a field behind the library, the only public building with public toilets. The name “tinker” is derived from the sound of the hammer striking metal when metal working was an early craft and smiths travelled the Irish countryside as early as the fifth century. By 1175 A.D., the words tinker and tynkere began to appear in written records as surnames. 54 Although scholars continue to differ on the exact origins of Irish Travellers, most generally agree that they are indigenous to Ireland. Court sums up that position: “The consensus is that present day Tinkers are a people of varied but uniformly Irish background: descendants of several kinds of travelling or homeless Irish who were brought together through shared adversity.”55 Several factors must be evident in the life of an itinerant to validate the ethnic identity of Travellers. Gmelch states that although information on Irish Travellers prior to 1850 A.D. is not available, it is likely that much of the information which is available today holds true for earlier periods. 56 The more dominant factors that have traditionally determined the Traveller ethnic identity are: a common way of life that includes itinerancy, limited economic opportunity, and marriage within one’s own group, often to a relative. Travellers are also distinguished from other Irish people by use of an argot, or “Tinker’s Cant” known as Shelta or Gammon; and by prejudice and discrimination against them from settled Irish.

On Livestock Day in 1991, teenage Traveller girls in black leather jackets rode bareback to display their fathers’ horses to potential buyers. They were quite willing to make conversation with Americans, and wanted to know if all Americans lived like the people in “Dallas,” their favorite American TV show. They seemed disappointed when I said that “Dallas” was soap-opera entertainment and that I knew no family that lived like the stars of “Dallas.”

Travellers do not receive much positive recognition from settled people in Ireland, but they are respected for the quality of the horses they sell, and Puck Fair is a favorite place for reunions of Traveller families, often called clans. Their horses and ponies strengthen the reputation of Puck Fair as the best horse fair in Ireland. Although I did not understand a word that was being said in his patois of Irish, English, and Tinker cant, it was a unique experience to watch a Traveller horse dealer negotiate the sale of a horse through inspections of the animal’s teeth, stud capability, hoofs, flank, and other attributes, then seal the deal with a dab of spit in a handshake.

The third day of Puck Fair, Scattering Day, has a slower pace. It’s a day to enjoy the shops, vendors, street magicians, actors, musicians, and friends. In the early evening, King Puck is ceremoniously removed from his throne and paraded through town before his trip to Glencar, where he is released back into the Mac Guillycuddy Reeks. Their work now completed, the Fair Committee gathers at The Fishery to relax with a good meal and enjoy a ceilidh with visitors, while across the Laune in town, revelers prepare for a final night of drinking and dancing in the Square. At dawn, the clean-up crews restore Killorglin to order within a matter of hours.

Residents of Killorglin and its 27 townlands have mixed feelings about Puck Fair. It is a time when many farmers drink to excess in public. Farmers’ wives of Muingaphuca may attend a daytime event, but not with their husbands, and they do not visit the pubs. If their husbands come home drunk, they sleep it off in the back seat of their cars, behind the house, where their wives hope they will not be seen. Although Puck Fair is a homecoming event and a great economic boost to the Killorglin area, the Fair has had a reputation for drunkenness and fights, especially faction fighting, which haunts the town to this day.

The great era of the factions occurred between 1805 and 1840. People fought over some real or imaginary insult, or possibly to show their disrespect for English law by settling things in their own way. People fought for diversion, amusement, and for the sheer love of fighting, and winners became heroes whose victories were retold at firesides throughout the county. Foley writes: Faction fights were much more than minor scuffles or bouts with fisticuffs. They were, in fact, large scale battles. The rival factions might have been families, namesakes, clans, parishes, or baronies. Bystanders, even strangers, would often join in. Those who intended taking part usually had their weapons--seasoned blackthorn or ash plants--with them. The others would probably have grabbed an ash plant from the nearest hedge. Later, scythes and pitchforks came to be used. Women frequently took part. Their weapon was often a stone in the toe of a woolen stocking ....A detachment of Milltown-based troops fired 120 rounds of ammunition in breaking up a faction fight at Puck Fair in 1813. 57

Women and children usually stay at home on Livestock Day until after the animals have left and the streets have been cleaned. In the evening, as loudspeakers compete with the music of the carnival rides, people stroll and visit with friends on the sidewalks, or meet at the pubs and coffee shops. Fairgoers stand in line to have their fortunes told by Traveller women in tiny trailers with 54

George Gmelch, The Irish Tinkers: The Urbanization of an Itinerant People (Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press, 1985), 13.

55

Artella Court, Puck of the Droms: The Lives & Literature of the Irish Tinkers (Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 1985), 21.

56

57

Gmelch, op. cit., 10.

120

Foley op. cit., 39.

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Foley’s account brings to mind a story my mother, Mary Sullivan Curtin, told me that happened in at the time of Puck Fair around 1910. The story involves a neighbor, Mrs. Naughton, a woman who settled things with a stone, as described in my mother’s account of the incident:

Killorglin’s 1986 vote is that Killorglinites understood the connections between the Church and Ireland’s political history, and the Church and repression of individual rights, and decided they had had enough.

The Naughtons lived next to us, and they had trouble with the O’Sheas on the other side.

Mrs. Naughton was a “tinker-fashion woman” who liked her drink and got into nasty moods. The women around our place worked hard and went to town once a week on egg market day, but she went to town two or three times a week. She wanted my father to let her use our boreen and to break through our stone wall so she could drive up to her door.

He wouldn’t do it, so while he was sitting in his pony cart at Puck Fair, she threw a stone at him and made a deep gash in his head, which could have killed him if it landed an inch further back. He didn’t have her arrested because nobody wanted to call the British authorities into their problems. It must have been the drink in her.” 58

As regards divorce, a majority of people in Killorglin feel that the Church is not sympathetic enough to the plight of women and children, or in some cases, of men and their children when wives leave their husband and children. In some cases, a woman leaves her husband to live with another man in Ireland, and takes her children with her. Killorglinites believe that in theory, divorce already exists in Ireland, and that its name is “desertion.”

The 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries in Ireland society had some very rough edges, and Killorglin tolerated a high level of revelry during Puck Fair. Even today there is no arrest for drunkenness or disorderly conduct unless someone is hurt. Neither the town nor the Garda are equipped to handle the crowds that now attend Puck Fair. What originally was a three-day event for the people of County Kerry has extended into a week-long tourist festival for people from all over Ireland, the United States, and Europe, and its crowds severely strain the public resources of Killorglin.

I witnessed the Gathering Day parade in 1992. An estimated 10,000 people were packed into the town square for the parade, and it was impossible to move. People who had been drinking, rudely pushed and shoved to make their way through the crowd. Others were afraid their pockets might be picked, and pushed back. A few scuffles erupted, and it was a frightening experience because the Garda were nowhere in sight, even though the Garda station is on the second floor of a building on the Square. Perhaps they stood guard from there, free of the crowds? All in all, it is a fun-filled, gala atmosphere with lots of drinking and very little violence. For the people of Kerry, to whom the fair really belongs, it is tradition, where the past comes to life for a few days.

A spouse, usually the husband, simply leaves, goes to England, takes up residency, and files for divorce if he wishes to remarry. As former British subjects, all Irish have the right to British citizenship, and there is a great deal of employment and “desertion” traffic between the two countries.

It has not been unusual for a deserting spouse to go to the United States, where for the past 20 years, alien Irish have hidden out in Irish-American communities, particularly in New York, until s/he acquires a green card, or citizenship through a lottery system. Marriage to an American citizen is another option for alien-Irish to get United States citizenship, and may occur without the Irish person first divorcing the spouse in Ireland. Killorglinites make no apology for their approval of the divorce referendum, and believe that legal divorce in Ireland is the only way to establish justice for spouses and children who have been deserted or abused.

In spite of the Church’s ban on birth control, Killorglin’s doctors display contraception information in waiting rooms, and the majority of young couples today have only two or three children. At Sunday Mass, many young people leave the church at Communion time, some pulling their young children out with them. When I asked why, I was told that some leave at Communion because the Church considers that those who practice birth control have relinquished the right to receive Communion, the sign of acceptance of all church teachings. The Irish Church does not recognize the primacy of “conscience” in matters pertaining to sex.

3. The Divorce Referendum In addition to centuries old reputation for revelry, drunkenness, and fighting at Puck Fair, Killorglin more recently has been the brunt of unfair jabs and jokes about its morality. It is the only town in Ireland which passed the 1986 divorce referendum, which had been opposed by the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland. The liberal vote of Killorglin, traditional patriot territory, was more about individual rights and freedom than about morals. In issues that involve the authority of the Church, few Catholics in Ireland will openly oppose the Pope or the Irish bishops, perhaps out of a fear of retaliation, excommunication, damnation or “what the neighbors will think.” 59 My reading of 58

Interview with Mary Sullivan Curtin. Editor's Note: The recording from which this extract was transcribed has been lost. The interview probably took place late in 1989 59

Editor’s Note: This account of the 1986 referendum was written over 30 years ago. In the intervening years, the complicity of Irish bishops in condoning or hiding a long history of abuse of women and children by Catholic clergy (both priests and nuns) has become public, and the standing of the Church in Ireland as a moral authority has been irreparably damaged.

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MY JOURNEY

By Beatrice Sullivan, ca. 1926

It was on the twenty-second day of October in the year nineteen hundred and twentythree that I began my travels from my home in Ireland to the United States of America at the early age of eighteen years. I often recollect the sadness and loneliness of my departure from both my home and family to which I had been so attached.

On the morning of the twenty-second I arose about six o’clock and got ready for my unknown journey. As usual, I sat down to breakfast with the rest of the family but my thoughts were not on breakfast that morning so I had only a cup of tea (few people drink coffee for breakfast in Ireland). After breakfast was over my luggage was placed on one side of a jaunting car and biding a tender goodbye to my friends and relatives, I got on the other side of the car with my brother, who drove me to the railroad station for the seven-thirty train. There were more friends at the station to see me off and that made me doubly lonesome. Then a few more goodbyes and the train started. My loneliness was extreme long after my home disappeared from view.

I rode on the train for four hours and finally arrived at Queenstown which was the port I sailed from. A porter from the Imperial Hotel met me at the station and took me and my luggage to the hotel where I had secured reservations. Then I had dinner and when it was over, I went to the American Consul to have my passport vised and afterwards I had to appear at the United States Health Bureau for examination. After three days in Queenstown, I sailed on the S.S. Franconia.

Fig. 17. The Curtin Children. Clockwise: Bob, Maureen, Helen, Patricia. Center: John

The first day I was on the steamer I became seasick and didn’t recover from it until the seventh day. Thus, I lost much of the beauty of the ocean. The ocean is really beautiful when it isn’t rough and we were fortunate to have a calm sea. There were concerts and dances on the ship, also different games which made the voyage pleasant for those who were well enough to enjoy it. The ocean trip lasted eight days and before I sighted land, I saw a flock of birds and it reminded me of the “Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner.” We were detained in Boston harbor for a day owing to the fact that another steamer had landed ahead of us and the immigration authorities couldn’t handle so many emigrants in one day.

After we got off the steamer, we had to go through another examination and having passed it, a guide put us on our respective trains and then I proceeded on my way to Hartford. My sister met me at the railroad station and I was glad to know that all the uncertainty of the trip was over.

The End. Editor’s Note: This is a transcription of Beatrice’s handwritten essay that appears to have been written for a night school English class in Hartford, Connecticut. I found this in Mary Curtin’s attic in the East Main Street house around 1981 when I was helping her clean it out after William Curtin’s death in 1980.

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Figure 19. The Bill and Mary Curtin Wedding Party, 1927 and 1977. The 1927 wedding party reunited at Bill and Mary Curtin’s Fiftieth Wedding Anniversary Celebration, on November 6, 1977. An anniversary Mass was celebrated at Saint Mary’s Church, Portland, followed by a reception and dinner at the Buckboard Restaurant, Glastonbury. Left to right: Leon Mullen (best man), Bill, and Mary. (Moskey Family Collection) Figure 18. Beatrice Sullivan on her way to Ireland, 1949. (Photo courtesy of the McKinley Family.)

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CHAPTER THREE

are many versions of the pooka myth which fit the topography of Muingaphuca and its black sky, as the Irish writer W.B. Yeats has described so poetically:

MUINGAPHUCA

The pooka seems of the family of the nightmare.... His delight is to get a rider whom he rushes with through ditches and rivers and over mountains...especially he does love to plague a drunkard: a drunkard’s sleep is his kingdom....at times he takes more unexpected forms...the form of a fleece of wool, and at night rolls out into the surrounding fields, making a buzzing noise that so terrifies the cattle that unbroken colts will run to the nearest man and lay their heads upon his shoulder for protection.” 62

1. The Swamp of the Pooka During the 19th-century Irish was the mother tongue of people living in Muingaphuca. According to local historian Thomas Doyle, the Irish place name Muingaphuca, arose from local myth, and means “swamp of the pooka,” although for families who live in Muingaphuca, its traditional meaning is “swamp of the fairies.”60 Muingaphucai is the correct Irish spelling.

The myth of the pooka has been in print in Ireland since the 19th-century. Some scholars suggest that that Muingaphuca is derived from the Irish word poc, a he-goat. Speculation also exists that the pooka is the forefather of Shakespeare’s “Puck.” Both poc and Puck underlie local interpretative links between Muingaphuca, the “Swamp of the Pooka,” and Pooka as the poc hegoat of Puck Fair. The reference to swamp is a constant reminder of the wet bogs of Muingaphuca.

Attendance registers at the Glounaguillagh School (‘glen of the grouse’) show home addresses of some students as “Muingapooka.” There is no proof when the word Muingaphuca came into use, but the name was initially recorded when Muingaphuca’s boundaries were defined for the first time by map makers working on the first Ordnance Survey of Ireland in 1841 and 1842. 61 In local folklore, the pooka is a black animal the size of a horse or a donkey, but with piglike characteristics, possibly a connection to the importance of pigs to 18th- and 19th-century Irish farmers. In their time, the pig was “the gent who paid the rent.” Mischievous, but not evil, the pooka roams at night, and any person out after dark runs the risk of being forced by the pooka to ride on its back on an all-night jaunt, dismounting only at daylight. As with all folklore, there were practical reasons for the myth of the pooka. They were a warning that people should not be out on Muingaphuca’s dangerous bogs at night.

Muingaphuca’s peat bogs are composed of decayed bog oak and bog deal (fir), and the bogs also contain phosphor, a substance known to emit light or ignite spontaneously in warm weather. Seeing flashes of light in darkness or semi-darkness without understanding their origins would have frightened people and probably gave rise to the folklore of the pooka. During a midnight thunder and lightning storm which occurred while I was in Muingaphuca in 1983, before I learned about phosphor in the ground, simultaneous flashes of lightning from the ground and the sky nearly turned the night into day. It was an extraordinary experience.

During an Irish summer, daylight lasts until ten o’clock in the evening. One evening after visiting a neighbor, Marie Moriarity, I got up to leave at about 10:30 p.m., intending to walk the quarter-mile to my house. Marie and her 20-year-old son, Niall, a strapping Gaelic football player, insisted that Muingaphuca was not safe to walk in after dark. I joked about the Pooka taking me for a ride, but was not allowed to leave until I agreed that Niall would drive me home.

I asked another neighbor, Doni Fenton, if it was safe for me to walk home at night after dark, even though I knew he had probably already heard from Marie how I had foolishly planned to walk home alone. Everything I did in Muingaphuca was of interest to locals. Doni warned me it was very unsafe, and told me a story about my Uncle John which he had heard from his father, a story with echoes of the pooka and the dangers of night in Muingaphuca: Uncle John was a teenager crossing a dark field between his house and Doni’s father’s house late one summer night when he came upon cattle thieves who had come down from the hills to steal a few cows. The thieves wanted to kill John on the spot, but Ger Hassett, their leader, wouldn’t let them touch him, saying that John was “the last of the name,” the only son of a man who had died, and they let John go home. After that, John would not cross the fields at night. 63

This occurred in 1921, when the Black and Tan War had spread to Killorglin. Foley talks about night violence in the Killorglin area during this period: Battle and murder and sudden death were not long arriving in Killorglin....the inevitable result of the advent in our midst of a batch of Black and Tans...some local girls who had been seen in the company of Black and Tans had their hair cut off ..two Black and Tans were shot dead in Hillville while returning to barracks having seen two girls home...MacCollum’s house was set on fire as was the Sinn Fein hall and the adjoining Foley’s garage...Denis O’Sullivan was taken from his home in the Square and was beaten and shot...he died a little over a year later. 64

2. After Dark Although Muingaphucans scoff at the notion of a “pooka,” they will still not walk any distance at night, for Muingaphuca is a quiet, lonely place, and County Kerry is well known for its dark sky.

In Kerry, postcards are sold which have only a black surface and the words “Night in Kerry.” There 60

A pooka (in Irish púca, plural púcaí) is a horse-like creature of Celtic folklore considered to be bringers both of good and bad fortune, and thus able to either help or hinder rural and coastal communities of Ireland.

61

The story about my Uncle John O’Sullivan lives in the folk memory of Muingaphuca, and that memory gives impetus to Muingaphucans’ fear of the dark even now. In addition to the mythic pooka, 62 63

Editor’s Note: Doni Fenton’s house is within view of the O’Sullivan house, certainly well under a quarter of a mile of open, gently sloping terrain.

64

Doyle interview, August 16, 1990.

128

W. B. Yeats, ed., Fairy and Folk Tales of Ireland (New York: Scribner’s, 1988), 383.

Foley, op. cit., 100-101.

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The O'Sullivans of Muingaphuca

Kerry has traditionally been known “patriot country.” By night, its wild hills and fields have been rendezvous points for both patriots and enemies, a sharp contrast to its uneventful days of pastoral peace before the early 20th century.

and cover it with a bit of Irish wit, or “crack,” as they call it in Kerry. Laughing, I said I hadn’t flown across the Atlantic to make a barbecue style coal fire in the cottage that had become accustomed to the sweet smell of Irish peat. We all laughed, continued with a few more minutes of small talk, and I left. That night, six bags of peat were at my door. A few days later I dropped off the usual two-liter bottle of Paddy’s Old from Champ’s Off-License store in Killorglin and no more was said about coal bricks or peat.

3. The Land Muingaphuca comprises approximately 663 acres, most of it suitable for dairy and sheep farming, but it also contains peat bogs, the traditional heat and energy source for Ireland. Sections of Muingaphuca’s bogs were long ago assigned to tenants by landlords, and although boundaries are not marked, they are well known and carefully watched by every resident. In the summer, men, women, and children cut deep rows of sod from the bogs, leaving pools of standing water, and stack their fresh-cut sods to dry on the bog’s surface. Residents drive daily over the roads between the bogs, and know to the day and hour who is in the bogs cutting, stacking, or removing peat. Woe to anyone who does not belong there! Land is valued above all else in Muingaphuca, and that message is clear in everything Muingaphucans do and say.

My visits to Muingaphuca have been in summer, and Doni Fenton, whose ancestors have been the O’Sullivans’ closest neighbor for generations, each year has supplied me with enough dry turf for a peat fire every evening. That tradition began as a gesture of good will after a rather humorous incident. Doni rents our 20 acres on a renewable 11-month lease for 100 Irish Pounds ($145). On an unannounced visit by my son Stephen in 1986, he discovered that there was no water in the house, and that the water pipe to the house had been cut to divert water to a trough that Doni had installed in a field for his cows. Doni admitted that he had cut the pipe. Water was reconnected within a day or two with a “T” connection, but in the meantime, my son had to stay in town until the water was reconnected. Doni gave him few bags of peat and from then on, he also left peat outside the cottage whenever I stayed there.

Reciprocity oils the social wheels in Muingaphuca, and whenever Doni gave me peat, I bought him a two-liter bottle of Paddy Old Irish Whiskey, the Kerryman’s favorite, which costs 14 Pounds ($20). As the land tenant, Doni has a key to our cottage, and has looked after the electric booster radiators that heat the house. He knows that my small peat fire at night is not meant to heat the house but is my way of recreating a sense of the past. I thought that “Paddy for Peat” was a mutually satisfactory arrangement, but I learned that in Muingaphuca, ‘peat’ is just another word for land.

In the summer of 1992, a day or so after I had arrived, I stopped to see Doni and his wife, Mary. We were in the farmyard chatting, catching up on family news, and making small talk about the weather. Nearby, an open shed the size of a two-car garage was stacked to the roof with dry peat. I mentioned that I was nearly out of peat, and Doni said I might want to get some coal bricks at O’Shea’s store at the Cross [the crossroads], explaining that coal bricks made a better fire than peat, and burned longer. I sensed that I might soon find myself in the middle of a haggle over peat, reminiscent of old boreen disputes in pub jokes, so I realized that something else was on his mind.

The Irish use “double-speak” instead of confrontation, especially in situations where they are unsure of the outcome, but would like to control the direction the conversation takes.

Shortly after the coal-brick conversation, I learned from the agent who handles the rent contract that Doni was interested in owning our farm. Michael, his 25-year-old son who has taken up farming alongside his father, wanted to marry and live in Muingaphuca without waiting for his father to retire. In Ireland, a farmer collects his old age pension at age 70 if he no longer owns a farm. At age 52, Doni is not in a position to retire, nor would he want to, for farming is his life.

From 1850 to 1975, farmers’ sons waited until their late forties and early fifties before inheritance practices allowed them to marry, but young men today are unwilling to wait beyond their twenties.

Other farmers on the road were also interested in the property, including the agent’s sister, but the agent was quick to add that the O’Sullivan farm “really wasn’t worth very much.” News travels fast in Muingaphuca, and I had already heard that Doni had inherited a second farm less than two miles away, but that the house was not in livable condition. Three farms would at least triple Doni’s land.

A few days later, without my having mentioned anything to anyone about the conversations with Doni or the agent, a cousin, Dan O’Conner who lives a few miles away in Cumnifanida, on Caragh Lake, warned me that I should watch out for the farmers near our place, saying, “They’re a bunch of land-grabbers in Muingaphuca.” My cousin may have been protecting his own interest in the property, hoping to find out if it was for sale. We are both descended from the same O’Sullivan great-great-grandfather, Owen-Mór O’Sullivan, so the O’Sullivan farm is an ancestral site for him as well as for me. In rural Ireland, the most important issue, owning land, has not changed much for the past 200 years. Land is still everything, but no longer for nationalist reasons. It began to look as if Doni was an “ordinary” farmer on the road to becoming a “strong” farmer, which would provoke the ire of other ordinary farmers in the townland. There is a sharp watch on ordinary farmers who try to rise to the status of a strong farmer and outdo their neighbors. If the seller is another farmer, he would rather let a stranger have the land first.

4. The Caragh Lake District Muingaphuca, together with four other Killorglin townlands—Glounaguillagh, Coomnifanida, Tooreenasliggaun, and Treanoughtragh—form the Caragh Lake District. Until the 1950s, when postal operations were centralized in Killorglin, the Caragh Lake District had its own post office, located about two miles from the O’Sullivan farm. As a child, I had overheard conversations between my mother, her sister, and their aunt, Catherine O’Brien, about stolen money and the Caragh Lake Post Office—one small room in the two-story house of the postmistress, Miss O’Dwyer.

I was tempted to ask if he by any chance knew who had been cutting turf from the O’Sullivan bog since my uncle died in 1978, but decided to use “double-speak” like the Irish do,

When a son or daughter emigrated to the United States, it was expected that “remittance money” would be sent home to Ireland whenever s/he could afford it. This obligation developed in 19th-century Ireland at a time when there was no old age pension, and money from America was so important to a family’s income that a letter without money was known as “an empty letter.”

In Muingaphuca, families came to depend on remittance money even after the old age pension was

130

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established in Ireland for farmers. Remittance money was saved for major family needs, such as a dowry for an unmarried daughter, or to buy passage to American for a younger sibling. Once all children were either married in Ireland, or had emigrated, remittance money was put toward a nest egg for the parents’ old age. 65

a small beach where I relax, swim, and muse in total peace about the O’Sullivans and the past.

Without warning, a “fairy blast” can turn the surface of the lake into whitecaps and break the silences with whistling trees that in earlier times must have inspired myths of fairies and what Lady Gordon called “phookies”.

One of the complaints about the Caragh Lake Post Office was that people at the post office were nosey and could not be trusted, that letters from a son or daughter in America were steamed open and read, then resealed and delivered. If there was no money in a letter when it was delivered, recipients usually believed that the money had been taken at the Post Office and could blame Miss O’Dwyer to explain the absence of remittance money in the letter from America. Accusations against the Post Mistress were never proven, but I heard similar comments about the Caragh Lake Post Office during my visits to Muingaphuca. Lady Gordon described the post office as “...a place principally used as a Bureau of Information, and presided over by a Post Mistress addicted to making the most of the facilities afforded by her profession for the acquiring of local intelligence.”66 Possibly the flood of Post Office stories reveals the basic Irish mistrust of anyone outside the family. Perhaps the Caragh Lake Post Office was a Sein Fein intelligence operation, or perhaps the stories are all part of the myth of Muingaphuca! For whatever reasons, the Caragh Lake Post Office holds a special place in the folklore of the District.

In the Caragh Lake District, out of sight at the ends of secluded boreens that are hardly noticeable from the road, several small farms touch the shores of Caragh Lake, where cows drink at the water’s edge. Four nineteenth-century “great houses” are hidden by the trees around Caragh Lake: Ard na Side, Ripley, Lakefield, and The Hollies. Those four houses, and The Great Southern Hotel, demolished in the late Twenties, provided employment and on-the-job training for young people after they left school, normally at age 14.

Growing up, I developed a great curiosity about Ireland, and wondered why my mother seldom wrote to her family. When I was older, I learned that during the Depression years, we often got our groceries and heating oil on credit, and that few letters were written to Ireland because there was no money to send. I always thought there must have been other reasons and some of my questions were answered in my research of the family history.

5. Caragh Lake Although its shores do not touch the boundaries of Muingaphuca, the northern tip of Caragh Lake can be seen from the high ground of the O’Sullivan farm. The MacGillycuddy Reeks form a backdrop for the five-mile-long, one-mile-wide lake, and the natural beauty of mountain and water draws artists and nature lovers, but few tourists. Most of the lake is private, thus its pristine freshness has remained unspoiled since my mother’s childhood in Ireland. An outdoor adventure and education center, Cappanalea, was built about ten years ago in West Oulagh, and offers courses in many aspects of outdooring. 67 Because it is six miles from Killorglin and does not offer entertainment, Cappanalea attracts mainly Kerry people who can afford lessons in sports like camping, mountaineering, rock climbing, windsurfing, fishing, sailing, and environmental studies.

The main significance of Caragh Lake for the people of Muingaphuca has always been employment, not recreation. Whenever I am in Muingaphuca, I go to a secret path opposite the old Caragh Lake Post Office, now a private home, and descend a narrow footpath to Caragh Lake and 65

Doyle interview, 1990.

In 1917, my mother Mary’s first job in Ireland was as a cook’s assistant at The Hollies, owned then by Eyre Stack, an English bachelor, at the time in his early 30s, who had inherited it from his widowed mother, Catherine J. Stack, His unmarried sister Kathleen Stack, also lived there and the family belonged to the Church of Ireland, the Irish branch of the Anglican church.

There were four servants, all Roman Catholic, all unmarried: John Brown, coachman, age 24; David Houlihan, farm hand, age 51; Mary Dunphy, cook, age 22; and Julia Diggin, housemaid, age 18.

As the cook’s assistant, Mary’s duties included the care of two cows and the dairy. She milked the cows, strained, cooled, and stored the milk; kept the dairy room and dairy utensils clean; and helped Mary Dunphy in the kitchen. The cook, just a few years older than My mother, had the surname “Browne” in the 1901 census, and probably was the daughter of John Browne, the 24year-old coachman. Mary Sullivan had done all those chores at home, so the work wasn’t difficult.

She had a bedroom of her own, and a bathroom--quite a change from the “po” in the corner of their cow shed in Muingaphuca. But she was homesick, and every few days, she walked home to see her mother. In 1920, she left Muingaphuca from Caragh Lake Station with her Aunt Johanna headed for Queenstown, and a steamer to New York. Her sister Bridget (who later took the name “Beatrice” after she emigrated to America), who had just turned 15, took her place at The Hollies. 68 In 1921, the Black and Tan War had spread to the Killorglin area, and Eyre Stack’s house became a safe house for Sinn Feinners. Like many members of the Anglo-Irish ascendancy, including his neighbor Lady Gordon, Stack was a Republican, meaning he believed in the establishment of an independent Irish Republic free of British rule. Barely 16, Bridget (Beatrice) became a member of the Sinn Fein women’s auxiliary Cumann-na-mBan, Irish for “Company of Women.” In The Winds of Time, Lady Gordon, owner of the “Great House,” Ard-na-Side wrote about firing her female help because they were members of Cumann-na-mBan, but not because she opposed the Irish rebellion.

Rather, she did not want her own life at Ard-na-Side disrupted by “the Troubles,” which would have happened if one of her staff were implicated in actions against the British. After Lady Gordon 68

66

Lady Edith Gordon, The Winds of Time (London: John Murray, 1934), 134.

67

Link to www.cappanalea.ie for information on the current use of the property.

132

Editor’s Note: Bridget or Beatrice? Many readers of this Ethnography knew Bridget Theresa O’Sullivan as Beatrice or “Auntie Bea.” For references to her during her childhood, she is called “Bridget (Beatrice).” After emigration to the U.S., she is referred to simply as “Beatrice.”

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went to bed, her female staff would sneak out “to be found drilling at the gate and route-marching round the country with the ‘boys’.”69 According to my Aunt Beatrice Sullivan, members of the Cumann-na-mBan met on Sunday afternoons for “a social gathering,” and her part in Sinn Fein operations was to leave food and clean clothes for the Sinn Feinners who hid in Eyre Stack’s barn at night, some of them no older than she. In the morning, as she took care of the cows, she checked the barn for clothing left there to be laundered, and for messages to be delivered. The Sinn Feinners in Kerry were guerilla fighters on the run. Sinn Fein was secret and dangerous, and according to local lore, Eyre Stack knew that his barn was being used, but unlike Lady Gordon, he never fired his Sinn Fein sympathizers, for he knew that if his house was a safe house for Sinn Feinners, it would remain a safe house for him, too. Throughout the Black and Tan War, Eyre Stack lived his usual quiet life and shunned politics, confident that if nothing changed, The Hollies would not be burned down.

country, and prepare for emigration to English-speaking countries in the British commonwealth as described by one historian of the Irish diaspora:

In 1992, on my last day in Ireland, with two cameras over my shoulder, I went again to the gate of The Hollies only to find that it was still locked. I was determined to photograph the place where my mother had worked. The road to the house sloped gently under a copse of shade trees to a bend where suddenly an explosion of pink and white rhododendrons framed a lovely white house.

Numerous gables with windows trimmed edged with carved woodwork sprouted on the roof and looked like a row of praying hands, wrists edged in white lace. To the impoverished peasants of late 19th and early 20th century Muingaphuca, The Hollies must have looked as imposing as Buckingham Palace looked to the poor in Dickens’s London. I knocked on the kitchen door to ask permission to photograph the house. There was no answer, and feeling as if I were in a 1917 timewarp, I worked my two cameras and recorded for history the place where the modern world first opened its arms to Mary Sullivan.

6. Education The National School system was introduced in Ireland in 1831, 50 years ahead of a comparable system in England, to provide free elementary education for children of all religions. Schools were under the control of a patron or manager who had the power to appoint or dismiss teachers, and the responsibility for funding one-third of the cost of the school. Rev. Edward Fitzgerald, the agent of Judge Day, Glounaguillagh’s landlord, was backed by both Catholic and Protestant clergy in Killorglin when he applied to the National Education Board for help in building a school at Glounaguillagh for the Caragh Lake District. He made clear the conditions in the district, stating it was inhabited “by a poor class of farmers amongst whom the English tongue is hardly understood and from the remoteness of their situation destitute of the means of attaining without assistance the blessing of useful education.”70 Irish was the mother tongue in Muingaphuca, but between 1840 and roughly 1900, only English was spoken and taught in the National schools. Although English in the schools brought about the downfall of the Irish language, learning the English language and the ways of the British was essential if native Irish were to get along with their landlords, make their way in their occupied

69

Gordon, op. cit., 133.

70

Foley, op. cit., 113.

Traditional practices were falling into disuse; in much of the country popular culture was approximating middle-class urban standards. In part these changes were desired and designed by the Protestant Ascendancy. Some land lords... were careful to bestow favors on ‘only such as speak English,’ and many Protestants were eager for the eradication of the Irish language among Catholics since ‘[i]t makes them consider themselves a distinct people from their countrymen who speak the language of the state; and exposes them to the designing views of those who wish to avail themselves of the prejudices flowing from that distinction. Accordingly, in the government-financed National Schools established after 1831, ‘[t]he chief lesson to be learned by the school children was ignorance—not to say contempt—of Ireland and everything Irish, and reverence for England and everything English. Even in districts where Irish was the only language spoken, the children were taught that English and not Irish was their native tongue. 71

7. Dairy Farming Although most of its farms are not large, dairy farming traditionally has been the economic mainstay of Muingaphuca. In the 1852 Griffith’s Land Valuation, the size of the O’Sullivan farm is shown as “18-1-38” which meant: 18 acres, one rood (one-fourth of an acre), and 38 perches (five-and-onehalf yards). Small in comparison to farms in central Ireland where land of better quality had been confiscated in the Cromwellian period (1649-1661) and given to British soldiers in lieu of pay, the O’Sullivan farm was large enough that its tenant could be listed as a “farmer,” not a “cottier” or “laborer” in a census. (See Chapter 5 for a discussion of these types of tenants.)

In 1901, the O’Sullivan farm had enough land for five cows, and for the calves that were raised for sale as heifers. Milk production depended not only on the size of the herd, but on the quality of the soil to provide spring and summer grazing, and three harvests of winter hay and silage.

Today, most Kerry farms and dairy operations are at least partially mechanized, and few would require the full-time work of more than two men, usually the farmer and his inheriting son.

During my mother’s growing up years in Ireland, 1900-1920, and until after World War II, all work was done by hand, with the help of one horse and a plow. Every family member, including the children, worked on the farm. For major tasks, especially those dependent on good weather or a specific market demand, relatives, called “friends,” helped one another through a system of reciprocity called “cooring.” Many Kerry families are related, for there were a limited number of candidates for marriage in the latter half of the 19th-century when the population drastically thinned out after the practice of subdividing land was abolished, which forced young men and women who had no prospect of marriage to emigrate. It is fair to say that in Muingaphuca, every family is related to at least one other family. Cooring, which includes helping families that cannot reciprocate in cooring because of serious illness or death of the farmer, is still practiced in the Caragh Lake District.

But the favor will be returned someday: a true Kerry farmer is beholden to no one. On the appointed day, farmers and their sons arrive with the equipment necessary for the day’s job, such as cutting a 71

Kerby A. Miller, Emigrants and Exiles: Ireland and the Irish Exodus to North America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 75 134

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The O'Sullivans of Muingaphuca

field of hay, harvesting a field of potatoes, shearing sheep and dipping for worms. The threat of rain is always a factor in Muingaphuca, and at haying time, farmers work from dawn to dark to cut, dry, or bale hay before the rain arrives.

mountains of Dingle Peninsula. Due west is the Atlantic, and beyond that, County Kerry’s “next parish,” Boston. 73

8. Grey Monuments Granite fieldstones that covered Kerry since the Ice Age were removed from the land, one field at a time, by generations of Muingaphuca’s farmers. These were then used to enclose fields, build houses, animal shelters, pave boreens, and mark boundaries. Stones were so numerous that to dispose of them, stone walls were erected everywhere. These turned Kerry’s hills into huge patchwork quilts of every shade of green. They stand as mute monuments to the native Irish men and women who, driven west by the British until there was nowhere else to go, rebuilt their lives in the wilds of Kerry and along its rocky coast facing the Atlantic.

On the O’Sullivan farm, an abandoned stone limekiln calls to mind the self-sufficiency of the 19th-century Kerry farmer. Fire in a limekiln heated limestone to a temperature where it could be pulverized into lime with hammer blows, then used as fertilizer in the fields. Lime was also mixed with water to manufacture other substances such as whitening, sizing, or glue to make whitewash for the inner and outer walls of a cottage. Built close to the road for easy delivery of limestone, and to keep the smoke and odor of fired limestone away from the house, the limekiln is now just another mute relic.

At the last curve of the long boreen to the O’Sullivan farmhouse, the stone wall curves and forms a recessed circular pen, four feet in diameter, for the geese my grandmother raised for the Christmas dinners of British landowners, agents, and owners of the great houses. The goose pen is as sturdy today as the day it was built, but is missing the removable cover and door that protected the geese from the red foxes that roamed freely at night in Muingaphuca. They still build lairs in Muingaphuca, and I’ve often seen red fox in my headlights at night on Muingaphuca Road. A red fox figurine is also used as a decoration for stone gates in the area, and a popular restaurant a mile away on the Glenbeigh Road is named The Red Fox Inn. 72 Today, my great-grandmother’s goose pen is overgrown with a bramble of blackberries and wildflowers that seem to have taken root on every stone wall in Kerry.

Behind the house, fields rise to the highest point of the O’Sullivan land, and when I go to Muingaphuca, I climb over cow dung and stone fences in wet fields to reach that spot from which to the south, a corner of Caragh Lake looks like a blue inkblot at the foot of the MacGillycuddy Reeks, and to the north, Cromane’s beaches touch Castlemaine Harbor beneath the Slieve Mish

At the top of the hill, an oval granite rock about five feet long and three feet wide projects from the black soil. In 1985, when I took my mother on her last trip to Ireland, I named that monument “The Caerth Stone” in memory of “Johnny-O,” my great-grandfather. On each visit to Muingaphuca, I stand on “The Caerth Stone,” cup my hands around my mouth, and reclaim the land and the authentic O’Sullivan name with Johnny-O’s words to Mary when she was a child: “We are the O’Sullivan caert.” And like a true Kerrywoman, I wonder what the neighbors will think if they hear my voice echoing in the deep silence of Muingaphuca. 74 The abundance of stone walls in Kerry would suggest that stone in Kerry is not worth much, but stone in Kerry is valuable enough to be stolen, even from a relative. On a trip to Muingaphuca in 1980 with her sons Bob Curtin and John Curtin, Mary drove up to the O’Sullivan farm unannounced, and found Denis Galvan (Gallivan), her matriline al first cousin’s son, busy removing stones from a stone wall near the road and loading it onto a truck. The following is a verbatim transcript of Mary’s account of the incident.

I said, ‘Hello, Denis, what are you doing here?’ I got some stupid answer, as short as possible. Then I said, ‘You know you have no right to do that.’ He said he needed some stones to finish a building. ‘Oh, as if a mother and her sons don’t have the right to say anything about their stones?’ It got my Irish up. He had no word from me to take it.

Crissy Miles and Kathleen Bell [cousins who lived nearby] knew they were taking the stones but thought the Galvans had permission from our family. According to Beatrice, they always wanted to get that farm, they knew the farm would be vacated someday. How we kids worked on that place. My poor mother working all day and half the night. We got good example from my mother and if my father was alive, we would’ve gotten good example from him too. My mother wouldn’t take ten cents of someone else’s property. My mother couldn’t read or write but she knew what was right.

Mary waited and watched Denis while he rebuilt the wall with the stones he was stealing, but he never apologized to her. During the remainder of our stay in Muingaphuca, my mother and I went to the home of Denis Galvan, as we had always done on our visits, to see Denis’s mother and Mary’s first cousin, Mary Ann, but Denis was “never home.” He knew he had done something very wrong, and did not want to face my mother.

73

Editor’s Note: It is often said humorously in Kerry that Boston, Massachusetts, where many, many Kerry people have family, is the next diocese west of Kerry. Actually, there is truth to that saying!

72

Editor’s Note: The inn is still in existence, though now part of a larger tourist attraction, the Kerry Bog Village. www.kerrybogvillage.ie

136

74

Editor’s Note: Though Helen spelled this word caerth, its proper spelling in Irish is ceart. Her mother’s pronunciation of ceart as “karth”, with a th sound rather than t, was likely an Anglicized version of the word.

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The O'Sullivans of Muingaphuca

CHAPTER FOUR

EOGANACHTS The preceding chapters, with their cameos of Kerry, Killorglin, and Muingaphuca, provide the context for a short history of the O’Sullivan Eoganachts, my ancient O’Sullivan ancestors.

Figure 20. The insignia of the Cumann na mBan, of which Bridget (Beatrice) T. O’Sullivan was a member.

During the Anglo-Irish War of 1919-1921, the rural members of C na mB (its abbreviation served as the basis for the insignia shown here) provided food, clothing, and shelter to fugitive Irish Republicans who were sought by the English. (See page 37.)

The ancient O’Sullivan family of Kerry had two main branches, the O’Sullivan Mórs and the O’Sullivan Beares. The history of the O’Sullivan family in Kerry, which includes the Owen O’Sullivan family of Muingaphuca from which I am descended, is recorded in a mythic style by one Kerry historian: The first Goidelic king of Munster may have been the invader Mug Nuadat. He was also called Eogan Mór [pronounced ‘Owen Mor’]. He was foster son of the god Nuada, hence Mug Nuadat, servant of the god...One of Mug’s descendants was Eogan from whom descended the great Munster family of the Eoganacht, to which O’Sullivans, MacCarthys and O’Donoghues belonged. 75

Barrington also describes confiscations of O’Sullivan (Owen-Mór) land in Kerry and the transplanting of families by English law during the Cromwellian period (1649-1660): Many families managed to evade them, often staying on their own lands according to the ancient pattern, as tenants of the new proprietors. In this way, O’Sullivan Mor survived in Killarney until the last of the name died over a century later. [...] The great landowner displaced in Kerry by Doctor William Petty (1623-1687) was Owen O’Sullivan Mor who had played a prominent part in the recent rebellion and forfeited the lands his family had acquired four and a half centuries before. He was not transplanted. Instead, he managed to acquire some lands formerly held by the Brownes at Tomies, Killarney and, here, in much reduced circumstances, an O’Sullivan Mor held out for over a century. Petty let the O’Sullivan Mor lands to the descendants of an ancient family, the O’Mahonys, who now began a steady rise to wealth. [...] Not only English adventurers profited from the disturbed times. 76

Jeremiah King records that O’Suilleabhains [Irish spelling of O’Sullivan] of Clan Cashel were driven out of their rath [ancestral stronghold] and Irish kings were dispossessed of their land at Knockgrafton, in Tipperary, in 1193 by Anglo-Norman invaders, forcing the Eoganacht kings to migrate westward and eventually settle in what is now the Killarney section of Kerry. King lists several pages of O’Sullivans who are descended from those 12th-century Irish kings who migrated west, and among them are “John and John of Muingaphuca, a baile in Killorglin, about 15 miles from Killarney.”77

75

T.J. Barrington, Discovering Kerry: Its History, Heritage, and Topography (Dublin: Blackwater Press, 1976), 19.

76

Ibid., 90-92.

77

Jeremiah King, County Kerry Past and Present: A Handbook of the Local and Family History of the County (Cork: Mercer Press, 1986), 307.

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The O'Sullivans of Muingaphuca

The O'Sullivans of Muingaphuca

From the Cromwellian period (1649-1660) up until 1870, only Irish people who had converted from Roman Catholicism to Protestantism (mostly Church of Ireland, a part of the Anglican Communion) were permitted to own land. For Catholics, conversion to Protestantism was tantamount to renouncing not only their religion, but their Irishness as well. Even so, not all Eoganacht O’Sullivans were unwilling to give up Catholicism in exchange for their land. The MacGillycuddys of Kerry, a branch of the Eoganacht O’Sullivans, gave up Catholicism for the political and economic benefits of membership in the Church of Ireland; namely, retention of their extensive land east and south of Muingaphuca. A major mountain range, The MacGillycuddy Reeks, which includes Carountoohill, the highest mountain in Ireland, was named for them. 78 The MacGillycuddys’ conversion to Protestantism allowed them to retain their land, and most of the family never returned to Catholicism.

Figure 22. O’Sullivan Farm House, Muingaphuca, Caragh Lake, Co. Kerry, summer 1976. This is the O’Sullivan homestead as it appeared in the summer of 1976 when Helen first visited Ireland. John Eugene O’Sullivan, Mary Curtin’s brother, was still living here alone at the time this photograph was taken. (Photo by Helen Curtin Moskey.)

Figure 21. William H. Curtin (1868-1938, center) and Helen Joan Kennedy Curtin (1873-1928, right) at the beach (photo before 1928). (Photo courtesy of the McKinley Family.)

78

Barrington, op. cit., 97.

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The O'Sullivans of Muingaphuca

CHAPTER FIVE

MARRIAGE IN 19TH- AND 20TH-CENTURY KERRY This short account of marriage and land customs in Kerry in the early 1800’s prior to the Great Famine of 1845-1851 and the forced emigration that followed sets the context for discussion of the Owen-Mór O’Sullivan family in Muingaphuca. Their history, like that of the O’Sullivans of ancient Munster, is tied to the land, and land is retained through patrilineal blood lines.

The Irish historian S. J. Connolly establishes a three-part social class system for rural Ireland: farmer, cottier, and laborer:

Figure 23. O’Sullivan Farm House, Muingaphuca, Caragh Lake, Co. Kerry, 2001. This is the O’Sullivan homestead as it appeared after Bob and John Curtin, Mary and Bill’s sons, made numerous additions and improvements to the house. Bob and John wanted to make the house a vacation destination for their siblings, nieces, and nephews, many of whom did indeed stay in the house. For those who stayed here in the 1980s and 1990s, it was the memory of a lifetime to sit before the old hearth with a cozy peat fire and imagine what life was like century earlier. However, at the time this photo was taken, the house was uninhabitable, overcome by water, mold, dampness, and mud. (Photo by David McKinley.)

Rural Ireland in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries had a highly complex social structure, varying from region to region and defying any single attempt at classification, which was why so many contemporaries fell back on the convenient but misleading general label ‘peasant.’ Behind these complexities, however, lay the basic distinction common to rural societies everywhere, between those who had access to sufficient land and those who did not. On the one hand there were the tenant farmers, families whose holdings were sufficiently large to give them a standard of living clearly removed from mere subsistence, and a reasonable measure of security from one year to the next. On the other there were the rural poor: the occupants of holdings too small to support a family adequately, the cottiers who rented potato patches from the farmers and paid their rent in labour on the farmers’ lands, the landless labourers wholly dependent on the work they did on other men’s holdings. 79

There are no exact records of peasant land and marriage practices from the late 18th- and early 19th-centuries, so some generalizations have to be made. In the early 1800s, the land custom in Kerry regarding marriage (within one’s own class) was, with the landlord’s permission, to give the young couple, when the man and woman were children of farmers (as defined above), either land that had gone vacant, land that the young couple would reclaim, or more likely, a section of the groom’s father’s leased land, usually five acres, just enough to erect a mud hut, plant oats (called ‘corn’ in Ireland) and potatoes, the staple of the Irish diet, and possibly graze one cow. The new groom thus would have the status of a cottier, one who worked as a farmhand for the landlord to earn his rent.

Laborers, who belonged to no particular farmer, were given no land, but were allotted a quarter acre for a mud hut and a potato patch. Marriage matches for the laborer class took place within two days of a pub meeting, usually at a fair, where such matches were made. Reports by commissioners sent to rural areas by the Irish Poor Inquiry in the mid-1830’s indicate that in Kerry, early marriages were universal, with the usual marriageable age for a man being 20, and from 16 to 20 for a woman. Early marriage and the high fertility rate of young couples produced large

79

S.J. Connolly, “Marriage in Pre-Famine Ireland,” in: Art Cosgrove, ed., Marriage in Ireland (Dublin: College Press, 1985), 80.

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families, which are cited as the reason for 18th- and 19th-century pre-famine social problems such as competition for land, underemployment, and ultimately the disastrous famine of 1845-1851. 80

CHAPTER SIX

Traditional requirements for achieving adult status in the community also contributed to early marriages. Irish folklore expert Caoimhin Ó Danachair concluded that it was marriage that defined adult status in rural Ireland, irrespective of a man’s or woman’s age: Irish tradition did not regard the attainment of a particular age by an individual as conferring any particular status on that individual. ‘Coming of age at twenty-one’ was a legal concept which meant very little to the ordinary people. On the other hand, marriage brought an important change of status. On marriage, both the man and woman reached full status, irrespective of their age, while the unmarried person, of any age, was still regarded as a lesser being. A young married woman of twenty had all the independence, all the rights, all the privileges of a full member of the community, while her unmarried aunt of fifty was still called a ‘girl,’ and, if she lived in the family home, was not more than a dependent, still subject to restriction and authority of the head of the family. In the same way, a young married man of twenty-five was regarded as his father’s equal, and treated as such, while his unmarried uncle of fifty was still a ‘boy,’ to be ordered around or set to menial tasks. 81

Forced emigration for children of Irish cottiers and laborer was not established until after the potato famine of 1845-1851. British authorities, fearing that another famine might starve the country again, sub-division of rural land was discontinued and forced emigration for nearly all children of cottiers and laborers, and all but two children of farmers, was imposed. In the new arrangement, a son of a tenant fanner, at first the eldest, but later the youngest, inherited tenancy rights to the land when he married, but marriage could not occur until his father retired.

Inheritance by the youngest son provided for a longer period of control by the father before retirement. If the tenant farmer was financially secure, retirement might occur at age 65, otherwise retirement occurred at age 70, when the father was eligible for the old age pension. In exchange for control of the farm, the son and his wife took care of the old couple until they died. If necessary, the wedding dowry from the son’s wife was used by his parents as dowry for an unmarried sibling. Dowry money was meant to compensate the old couple for the farm and secure their financial position for their old age, but often did not, because it went out from the family again as barter for sibling marriages.

OWEN-MÓR O’SULLIVAN Stories about Owen-Mór O’Sullivan (born circa 1800, unknown death date) told by my mother and her three siblings inspired me to research and reconstruct the family’s history in Muingaphuca. I have been able to confirm many aspects of their account of family history through research into established histories of Kerry, Killorglin, and Muingaphuca. This research included official Roman Catholic Church (diocesan) and County Kerry (government) records, and 19th- and early 20thcentury Kerry newspapers held in the collection of the Kerry Library in Tralee. The accounts given by my mother and her siblings have also been corroborated, and in some instances expanded, by neighbors and relatives in Muingaphuca, people who either grew up with Owen-Mór’s greatgrandchildren or heard stories about the O’Sullivans from their own parents and grandparents.

The first proof of Owen-Mór O’Sullivan in Muingaphuca is a contract signed by Owen Sullivan, a shortened version of Owen O’Sullivan, the anglicized form of his original Irish name, Eoghan Ó Suilleabhain. The first known contract signed by Owen O’Sullivan was a Rectorial Tithe Agreement dated August 11, 1826, payable to the Rector of the Church of Ireland’s Killorglin parish. 82 During the British occupation, English landlords determined how a farmer would be identified, and required that all native-Irish, then British subjects, use an anglicized version of O’Stheir Irish names. Although Owen O’Sullivan complied and anglicized Ó’Suilleabhain to Sullivan, and dropped both Ó and Mór on tithe agreements and land records, Owen O’Sullivan Mór is the name that has been passed down in the family’s oral history, which my mother and other members of the family in Ireland confirmed. In Muingaphuca today [1990s], Owen O’Sullivan is still known as Owen-Mór, and is referred to as such in this study.

Through a compilation of dates from known birthdates of other family members, land valuations, census records, and other sources, I am confident that the name Owen Sullivan in the August 11, 1826, tithe contract is my great-great-grandfather, Owen O’Sullivan of Muingaphuca.

There are two Patrick Sullivan signatures on that contract, and one of them may have been the previously unnamed brother of Owen-Mór, who left Ireland during the Great Famine (1845-1851).

Although the place name Muingaphuca did not appear on maps until the Ordnance Survey of 1841– 1842, other surnames on the 1826 Rectorial Tithe Agreement are the same surnames as several of the O’Sullivan family’s closest neighbors in Muingaphuca today. Those families also have oral histories in Muingaphuca which date back to the mid 19th-century. My mother knew that she was at least the fourth generation of the Owen O’Sullivan family born in Muingaphuca. From OwenMór to my grandchildren born in the 1970s and early 1980s, there are seven generations of descended from Owen O’Sullivan (Owen-Mór) of Muingaphuca. Many of these descendants, including my children and grandchildren, the sixth and seventh generations, respectively, have visited Owen-Mór’s land.

According to my mother, Owen-Mór migrated to Muingaphuca from “the Killarney area, but a little up towards Tralee,” after a dispute with an English landlord had forced him off his land.

80

Cosgrove, op. cit., 78-79.

81

Caoimhín Ó Danachair, “Marriage in Pre-Famine Ireland,” in: Cosgrove, op. cit., 99-100.

82

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Tithe Applotment Books (1823-1837), Local History and Archives Department, Kerry Library (Tralee).

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The O'Sullivans of Muingaphuca

A priest who was a relative of Owen-Mór told him that land was available in a “more remote place” where the landlord was more reasonable (see the biography of Sir Edward Denny, Appendix A). The family thus ended up in Muingaphuca. Disputes with landlords were common during the British occupation, for the Irish never accepted Britain’s occupation of Ireland and the confiscations of their land. A commemorative brochure from the 1998 centennial of St. James Church in Killorglin lists two O’Sullivans as parish priests between the years 1750 and 1791, and one of them may have been the relative who encouraged Owen-Mór to resettle in Muingaphuca.

and through this practice women retained their individuality and a certain independence in identity. Margaret Foley was affectionately known in Muingaphuca as “Peg Fol,” the name by which she will be identified throughout this study.

Owen-Mór’s son, John-Owen, told my mother (his granddaughter) when she was a child that Owen-Mór was educated in a hedge school (location unknown). John-Owen was educated in the hedge schools of Killorglin. Foley states that during the ban on Catholic education in Ireland, fee-paying schools, called hedge schools, were established, and although the name implies an open-air school, that was not the case in Killorglin. 83 An 1826 report of the Commissioners of Higher Education Enquiry showed that there were six hedge schools in the Killorglin area in 1826, all located in thatched buildings of stone and lime, stone and clay, or stone and mud.84 Catholic farmers deeply resented having to pay tithes to the rector of the local Church of Ireland, although they had little choice in the matter. They understood the practice of lay people supporting the clergy and a church, for in addition to the tithes they paid to the Church of Ireland, they paid tithes to their own parish, St. James Roman Catholic Church in Killorglin. Their anger was intensified by the fact that often a portion of the Rectorial tithes to the Church of Ireland went to lay people, a practice that originated with the Protestant reformation, when church lands and tithes were placed in lay hands. Tithes to lay people were a property right, and like other property rights were inherited, leased, or sold.

Including Owen Sullivan, the 1826 Tithe Agreement was signed by 22 of 25 people who were “summoned to a Vestry held in the Parish Church of Killorglin for the purpose of carrying the tithe composition into execution.” The Tithe Agreement names Judge Day as the landlord, and the total tithe, 400 Irish Pounds was claimed by Rev. Conally O’Neile, Rector of the Church of Ireland in Killorglin. Judge Day did not deal directly with farmers, but used agents and in some cases subagents to arrange leases and collect rents.

Owen-Mór married Margaret Foley from Devil’s Elbow, two miles from his farm, where the high road at the edge of the mountain above Caragh Lake makes a hairpin curve. In the 18th-, 19th-, and early 20th-centuries, a married woman was known by her maiden name throughout her marriage, a carryover from ancient Brehon law which gave women more equal rights with men,

Owen-Mór and Peg Fol had five children Catherine, Mary, Johanna, Cornelius, and John.

The eldest son, Cornelius, was the only child who emigrated, and he settled in Groton, Connecticut.

John inherited the rental rights to the farm. No records are available for the children of Owen-Mór and Peg Fol because various political and religious upheavals between the English and the Irish during the 19th-century made valid records impossible to maintain. Some 19th-century British land and population records, and some Roman Catholic Church records of baptisms, marriages, and deaths in Kerry have survived, but both sources are incomplete.

St. James Roman Catholic Church in Killorglin kept 19th-century baptismal records which included the child’s date of birth, and the names of the sponsors, but no records are available for the years 1851 to 1884, the period when the youngest of Owen-Mór and Peg Fol’s children, and the eldest of their grandchildren might have been born. There are three explanations for the missing church records. One, a fire in the church destroyed the records; two, the parish priest and his housekeeper had a dispute over her wages and she took revenge by burning the church records; or three, Father George kept no records, which is untrue, since a few pages of his records did survive him. Father George was very unpopular with his parishioners and fellow priests, and Foley’s history quotes from Diary of Archdeacon John O’Sullivan now in the collection of the Kerry Diocesan Archives: A curious fellow is George, at war with the whole world. A great agitator, he is constantly in hot water, in the middle of some trouble or other...Yet with all his tugging with the world, all admit him to be a regular, zealous priest tho’ so wrong-headed and intemperate. 85

The 1826 Tithe Agreement does not specify how many acres Owen-Mór leased. My mother knew that Owen-Mór rented two tracts of land in Muingaphuca, and her information was confirmed

by Doyle’s research of Griffith’s Land Valuation of 1852. The homestead of Owen-Mór and Peg Fol in 1852 (the site of the O’Sullivan farm on Muingaphuca Road today), had 18-plus acres; the other holding had 20 acres. The 20 acres were a quarter of a mile away from the O’Sullivan farm, at the intersection of the five roads which form Glounaguillagh Cross, referred to locally as “The Cross.”

It was unusual that a small farmer in Muingaphuca would have two landholdings, suggesting that Owen-Mór may have acted as a sub-agent for the landlord, or that at the time when sub-division of land had just been discontinued, he was planning ahead for the marriages of his daughters, and the inclusion of leased land in their dowries. 86 The ages of his daughters in 1852 are unknown, but

83

From Wikipedia: Hedge schools were small informal illegal schools, particularly in 18th- and 19th-century Ireland designed to secretly provide the rudiment of primary education to Catholic children. Under the penal codes imposed by the British, the Catholic Church in Ireland was not allowed to have schools. Instead Catholics set up highly informal secret operations that met in private homes. Historians generally agree that they provided a kind of schooling, occasionally at a high level, for up to 400,000 students by the mid-1820s. While the hedge school label suggests the classes took place outdoors, classes were normally held in a house or barn. Subjects included primarily the reading, writing and grammar of the Irish and English languages, and arithmetic.

84

85

Foley, op. cit., 59

86

Most likely, Owen was a sub-agent for the landowner. Griffith’s Valuation, accessed through Ancestry.com, shows that the land around the Owen Sullivan property in Muingaphuca was owned directly by Sir Edward Denny, [4th] Baronet. Owen’s name is listed where the name of Sir Edward would normally have occurred. The records also indicate that Owen was landholder for property occupied by a William Murphy. The family names recorded in the Valuation are still associated with Muingaphuca and with O’Sullivan family history: Riordan, Foley, Moriarty,

Foley, op. cit., 112.

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The O'Sullivans of Muingaphuca

Owen-Mór’s youngest son, John-Owen, was seventeen in 1852, and Owen-Mór’s daughters could have been of marriage age, which at that time averaged 26 for women. No buildings are recorded on the 20-acre property in the 1852 Griffith’s Valuation, which implies that the daughters who later lived there had not yet married, and that Owen-Mór’s land did not include the site of the Glounaguillagh School. If he had owned the school land, that also would have been recorded by Griffith.

children). But the prospective bride faced several obstacles: her brothers stood closer in line to inherit property and she had to wait until her father relinquished the land. 87

The local landlord, Judge Day, probably had donated land for the school and the schoolmistress’s house, since Rev. Edward Fitzgerald of the Church of Ireland was both agent for Day’s land, and for the unknown person who made application to the National Education Board for assistance in building the Glounaguillagh School. The folk memory of Muingaphuca, as expressed by several people I interviewed there, insists that the land where the school is still located was once rented by Owen-Mór. If that is so, he would have rented that land sometime between 1826, the date of the Rectorial Tithe Agreement, and 1840, the year the first Glounaguillagh School opened.

However, taking all that we know into consideration, I conclude that that Owen-Mór was not the donor of rented land for the school, but rather, he rented land adjacent to the school property.

The 18-acre holding was the better of the two tracts, valued by Griffith for ratable purposes in pre-decimal “old money” at four Pounds, eight shillings for the land, and nine shillings for the buildings. The 20-acre tract was valued for land only at eight shillings, indicating that it was poor quality land, but not bog, or Griffith would have noted that in his survey. The 20 acres near the Glounaguillagh School was later divided, and some or all of it may have been occupied by at least two of Owen-Mór’s daughters, Mary and Johanna.

In 1847, a new Glounaguillagh School (also called the Caragh Lake School because it served all five townlands in the Caragh Lake District) replaced the original two-story, two-room mixedschool that had opened in December 1840. The 1840 school had one teacher, Timothy Sugrue, who lived on the second floor of the school building. In 1847, Mrs. Sullivan, whose given name is unknown, was added as schoolmistress. The boys and girls were taught on different floors, which suggests that Sugrue moved out of the school building by that time. Thirty-nine years later, in 1886, the name of Kate [Catherine] O’Sullivan appears as the schoolmistress. She may have been OwenMór’s daughter, Catherine O’Sullivan, who married Patrick McKenna, though the names Catherine and O’Sullivan are so common in Kerry, that she could have been completely unrelated to Owen-Mór. The 20-acre land lease possibly was given by Owen-Mór as part of a dowry at the time of his daughters’ marriages, as described by the American sociologist, Richard Stivers: The ideal marriage would involve a bride whose dowry included a sizable plot of land that could help support both families (the groom’s parents and siblings and his wife and

Clifford, and Murphy. Sir Edward was known during his lifetime as a benevolent landowner (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_Edward_Denny,_4th_Baronet). He was a descendant of Sir Anthony Denny, confidant of King Henry VIII.

An exchange of land near the Glounaguillagh School from Owen-Mór to two of his daughters was confirmed in 1992 by several of Owen-Mór’s great-great-granddaughters. Various land acts between 1880 and 1923 were enacted to begin restoration of the land to the Irish, and the 1923 Land Act which was enacted to adopt a final land settlement plan to effect the transfer of land from the British or Anglo-Irish landowners to the Irish tenant farmers and farm workers who occupied those lands. Exactly when, and under what conditions Owen-Mór rented, then transferred land to his daughters is unknown, but descendants of his daughters Mary O’Sullivan Murphy and Johanna O’Sullivan Sweeney eventually acquired ownership of the land. 88 1. Mary O’Sullivan Murphy Daughter of Owen-Mór and Peg Fol Owen-Mór and Peg Fol’s daughter, Mary O’Sullivan, married a Patrick Murphy, and they settled on some portion of Owen-Mór’s 20 acres near the Glounaguillagh School. Most of their portion was sold to the developer of Caragh Village, which will be discussed shortly. Today, there are two homes on what remains of Mary O’Sullivan Murphy’s land, and each is owned and occupied by descendants of two of her great-grandchildren, Kathleen Joy and Maurice Joy, who are siblings.

The name Joy is a shortened version of the name Joyce.

One house, built in 1978, is occupied by Michael Murphy (not related to any other Murphy mentioned in this ethnography), the widower of Kathleen Joy Murphy who died the same year, a few months after the house was completed in 1978. Kathleen’s mother was Hannah Murphy Joy, the granddaughter of Mary O’Sullivan and Patrick Murphy.

The second house is next door to the home of Michael Murphy. It’s a new house on land inherited by Mary Joy O’Connor of Ballinskellig from her father, Maurice Joy, the brother of Kathleen Joy Murphy. Mary Joy O’Connor built the new house in 1991 as a vacation home for herself, her daughter, and baby granddaughter. Mary’s daughter is a news commentator for BBCTV, and lives in London with her husband, a TV producer for the BBC. It is a second marriage for him, and Mary’s granddaughter, their first child, was born in 1991. In Ireland, a country that does not recognize divorce, this “BBC” marriage, as it is known locally, is viewed as adultery, and in Muingaphuca, they are the only couple with divorce as part of their history.

There are tensions between Michael Murphy and his deceased wife’s first cousin, Mary Joy O’Connor. Michael says the tensions are over Mary’s new house, although land disputes in Ireland all seem to have had a much longer history than Mary’s new house would imply. Because it is a vacation house, Mary Joy O’Connor’s house is exempt from real estate taxes, while Michael next

87

Richard A. Stivers, A Hair of the Dog: Irish Drinking and American Stereotype (State College, PA: Penn State University Press, 1991), 55.

88

The 1886 Glounaguillagh School that my mother attended was rebuilt and enlarged in 1974 and today serves as a community center for the year-round residents of the Caragh Lake District.

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door must pay taxes on his house. Also, Michael is a bit self-righteous, and highly irritated over the sneaky methods his sister-in-law used to build her new house on the old Joy homestead.

emigrated to Hartford, Connecticut, where their daughter Nora married a man named Ed Healey.

The Healeys’ daughter, Catherine, married Joseph O’Connell. Sheila emigrated to Hartford, Connecticut, never married, and befriended my mother and her sister Bridget (Beatrice) after they had emigrated to Hartford.

The original Joy homestead had been designated as a historical landmark and thus could not be torn down to build a new home without the approval of the Land Commission. Michael claims that, without permission, Mary built outer walls of a new house around the outer walls of the old historical home, then without permission, tore down the old house from the inside and finished the new shell’s interior. He strongly objects to what she has done, claiming that she, in his words, “manipulated things” and has broken the law. As a double-speak method of dealing with many issues, Ireland operates on an honor system which does not punish offenders. As a result, the honor system is often not honored, and problems are multiplied rather than solved. But the Irish have a reputation for resistance to rules that violate their individual rights, and it appears to Michael that there is nothing he can do about Mary’s misdeed. In practice, he does not want to wage a legal war, for she would surely retaliate, but it is just “the principle of the thing,” he told me.

Other people in Muingaphuca have made their own comments about Mary Joy O’Connor’s house. It sits too close to the road (where they cannot miss seeing it). It looks like a tiny estate that has been dropped on a postage stamp (rather than the comfortable weathered look of other homes in Muingaphuca). The windows have too many small panes (in English style rather than the traditional three-paned windows of Irish houses). Lined, matching valances and drapes are closed, even during the day (when daylight should be lighting the house and allowing a passerby to look in). A double garage, a gate with an “estate” name in gold relief on a two-foot high sign, handsome dogs on leashes, Mary and her daughter’s aloofness—all these airs seem out of place in the simplicity of Muingaphuca, an unpretentious place with remnants of 19th- and possibly even late 18th-century values.

In 1992, while buying a few groceries and catching up on local news, or possibly generating some in the tine O’Shea store at the Cross, Patrick, its owner and the possessor of all knowledge about Muingaphucan families, introduced me to Mary Joy O’Connor, explaining that we were cousins. I was delighted to meet a cousin and hoped she could shed some light on the O’Sullivan family through her knowledge of her great-great-grandmother, and great-great-aunt, Johnny-O’s sisters. We chatted about our ancestry for a short time, and Mary confirmed that indeed, we were third cousins, and that her great-great-grandmother had gotten land from her father, Owen-Mór.

Beyond that, she seemed uninterested in the O’Sullivan family history, and I have not spoken to her since.

2. Johanna O’Sullivan Sweeney Daughter of Owen-Mór and Peg Fol A second daughter of Owen-Mór and Peg Fol, Johanna O’Sullivan, married Donal Sweeney, and they had five children: Donal Jr., John, Mary, Hanna, and Sheila. Donal Jr. married Margaret Byrne from Tralee; their married daughter lives in the United States.

John married a woman named Bridget Reardon, and they had eight children: Bridget, Catherine (Kitty), Mary, Ellen, Anna, Julia, Patrick, and Michael. Bridget, Kitty, and Ellen live locally in the Killorglin area; the others have died. Mary, while still a baby, fell into the kitchen fire and was disfigured by burns when her cradle was turned over by a pig in the kitchen. She married a man named “Liberty” O’Reilley. Hannah married a man named Brosnahan; the 150

John Sweeney, the youngest son of Johanna O’Sullivan and Donal Sweeney inherited Johanna’s land, and his descendants sold all of Johanna’s portion of Owen-Mór’s 20 acres in the 1970s to a Dr. O’Connell from Cord, the developer of Caragh Village, which consists of 15 small, upscale vacation homes. Caragh Village is attractively laid out on three cul-de-sacs, each with five houses. Caragh Lake is about a mile away. Dr. O’Connell, now [1994] about 55, no longer practices medicine. Local gossip hints that when he was in cork, he lost his medical license because of his involvement in an abortion, but no one knows why the procedure was performed or what the health of the mother was. Things are still black or white in Kerry.

I visited Donal and Johanna O’Sullivan Sweeney’s elderly granddaughters, Bridget Sweeney and Ellen Sweeney Reardon, who lie together in Killorglin, on Mill Street, a few doors from St. James Church. A few days later, I called on their sister Catherine (Kitty) Sweeney, who lived in Glenbeigh, about 10 miles south of Muingaphuca. At the house on Mill Street, I also met Ellen’s daughter, Maureen Reardon King, my third cousin, who had recently returned from England to live in Killorglin. Although all of these visits were hospitable and friendly, none of Owen-Mór’s three great-granddaughters—Bridget, Ellen, or Kitty—offered additional information about the family, and I sensed the typically Irish secretiveness and reluctance to share information with a “stranger,” even a cousin. They confessed to not knowing as much about the family as I did, which is a possibility although I am not quite ready to believe that.

3. Catherine O’Sullivan McKenna Daughter of Owen-Mór and Peg Fol Catherine O’Sullivan, the third daughter of Owen-Mór and Peg Fol, married James McKenna from Cromane, a fishing village about five miles away on Castlemaine Harbor in Dingle Bay. They had three sons, Michael, James, and Patrick, and possibly other children. Michael married in Ireland and had one son, whom I have not yet located. Patrick and James emigrated to the United States.

James returned, did not marry, and died in Ireland. Patrick married Mary Ann Murphy, the daughter of his first cousin, Michael Murphy, son of Mary O’Sullivan and Patrick Murphy. The marriage of Patrick McKenna and Mary Ann Murphy was a first cousin once removed marriage that was sanctioned by the Church.

Contrary to the common belief in Ireland that, for genetic reasons, relatives closer than the fourth degree of kinship could not marry in 19th- and 20th-century Ireland, marriage to a relative, even a first cousin, was often sanctioned by the Church. Because two and three generation stem families often lived in the same (small) house, the Church feared that pre-marriage sexual activity between cousins might frequently occur if people thought that they could be married after the fact.

Chastity, not genetics, was the main concern and the reason for a Church-sanctioned folk ban on cousin marriages, as discussed by Cosgrove: The prohibition [on less than fourth degree of kinship in marriage] had nothing to do with any fear of genetic disorders...but the danger to family life that could arise if the possibility

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The O'Sullivans of Muingaphuca

of subsequent marriage might foster concupiscence among those of opposite sexes dwelling in the same household. 89

CHAPTER SEVEN

JOHNNY-0

In Ireland’s sexually repressed society of the latter half of the 19th- and all of the 20th-centuries, the use of “double-speak” language was meant to avoid all discussion of human sexuality.

1. The John-Owen O’Sullivans of Muingaphuca

4. Cornelius O’Sullivan Son of Owen-Mór and Peg Fol

The Census of Population returns of March 31, 1901, show that my great-grandfather, John-Owen O’Sullivan, son of Owen-Mór and Peg Fol, was born in 1835. In Kerry tradition, a boy’s given name is followed by the first name of his father. John-Owen was shortened to Johnny-O, the name by which he was known in Muingaphuca, and the name I will use in this ethnography. Johnny-O was educated in the Catholic hedge schools of Killorglin, and although the Glounaguillagh National School opened for boys in 1840, Johnny-O completed his education in the hedge schools, probably because subjects were taught there that were not taught in the national schools, especially Irish language, history, poetry, and music.

Cornelius O’Sullivan was the oldest son of Johnny-O and Peg Fol. He was my mother’s greatuncle, and she remembered visiting him at Groton, Connecticut, shortly after her arrival in the United States in 1920, but remembered nothing else about him. I have not yet located any descendants of Cornelius in the Groton area.

The 1901 census also shows that Johnny-O’s wife, Mary Murphy, my great-grandmother, was born in 1843. Mary Murphy came from Laugher, Glencar, a scenic place in the MacGillycuddy Reeks, five miles from Muingaphuca on the southern end of Caragh Lake. In Muingaphuca, Johnny-O’s wife was known as Mar from Lar, and will be referred to in this document as Mar.

5. John-Owen O’Sullivan Son of Owen-Mór and Peg Fol

With an 18-acre farm, Johnny-O was in the farmer social class and would have lived in a home typical of mid-19th-century Kerry farmers: a one-room house constructed of stone and lime, stone and clay, or stone and mud, with wooden rafters and a thatched roof. Cottier and laborer classes (see Chapter 5), who had no formal rental contracts with landlords, would in a house constructed of mud, which was its eponymous name in official records: mud hut. An Irish mud hut of the 19th-century had three-foot-thick mud walls strengthened by rushes, a construction that provided adequate insulation against winter wind and rain. In the construction of mud houses, spaces were created in the mud walls for a door, and usually one window, by filling the spaces with sods of turf which, when the mud dried, were simply knocked out. A 19-century mud house had a mud floor, a hearth, and a wattle canopy to carry smoke from the fire through a chimney hole in the roof.90

When Patrick McKenna died, Mary Ann Murphy married a second time. She and her new husband, Michael McAllen from Cahersiveen, settled in Waterbury, Connecticut, and had six children: Margaret, William, Thomas, John, Christopher, and Genevieve. When Michael McAllen died, Mary Ann Murphy married again. John Sugrue, also from Kerry, was her third husband. They did not have children.

The youngest son of Owen-Mór and Mar, John-Owen O’Sullivan will be discussed separately in Chapter 7, for, as the inheriting son, and my great-grandfather, the history of Johnny-O is a long one.

Johnny-O and Mar-from-Lar had seven daughters and one son. The likely birth order (including dates where know or approximated) was: Margaret (March 31, 1866), Mary, Nora, Catherine, Eugene-John (February 8, 1873), Johanna (April 9, 1876), Bridget (April 28, 1879), and Julia. Eugene-John (pronounced “U-gen”), the only son of Johnny-O and Mar, was my mother’s father, my grandfather.

Margaret, presumed to be the eldest, seems to have been born on March 31, 1866, probably the year after the marriage of Johnny-O and Mar. Couples with large families usually produced their first child within a year or a year-and-a-half of marriage. Most marriages in Kerry took place during Shrovetide, the Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday before Ash Wednesday. Considering Margaret’s birthdate, Johnny-O and Mar likely married in February 1865, when Johnny-O was 30 and Mar was 22.

89

90

Cosgrove, op. cit., 27.

152

The Kingdom (newspaper, Killarney, Co. Kerry), 14 July 1992, 15.

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The O'Sullivans of Muingaphuca

Working back from their 1865 marriage date, and assuming that Johnny-O’s father, Owen-Mór, retired when Johnny-O married, and at the same age, 65, I estimate the birth date of Owen-Mór at around 1800. According to my mother, Johnny-O was born in Muingaphuca on the same land where she had been born. On the basis of her testimony and other data, I believe that the Owen Sullivan who signed the 1826 Rectorial Tithe agreement was Johnny-O’s father, Owen O’Sullivan-Mór (Owen-Mór). Considering that, in Irish tradition, adult status depended on marriage, it is most likely that as a signer of a Rectorial Tithe contract with the Church of Ireland, Owen-Mór was married, and at age 20-six had full status in the community.

school the required number of days, either because of illness, inadequate clothing such as shoes and coats, lack of food for the child’s mid-day meal, or because their labor was needed at home.

The extent of a family’s poverty ruled the lives of children and determined their fate in life in all respects.

2. School Days (Circa 1875) According to my mother, all of Johnny-O and Mar’s children were educated at the Glounaguillagh National School, although the education of their seven daughters cannot be verified in school registers. School registers for females begin in 1903, about 20 years after the birth of Johnny-O and Mar’s youngest child.

Glounaguillagh School registers for males begin with 1858. A Eugene O’Sullivan appears in the school records for 1878 as student No. 234, entering on July 25, 1878, at age five. Neither his full name, Eugene-John, nor his February 8, 1873 birthdate are shown on the school register, so it is can only be inferred that this Eugene O’Sullivan is the only son of Johnny-O. The lack of a birthdate in school records would not have been unusual, for birthdays were not celebrated in Muingaphuca, and a five-year-old child probably would not have known the exact date of his birth.

Possibly due to British-Irish political and religious tensions, Catholic parents did not accompany their children to the National School, even on the first day. An older sibling or neighbor child would have taken five-year-old Eugene-John to school and presented him to the schoolmaster without knowing his birthdate.

As shown in the old school registers furnished by Mrs. Joan O’Shea, the current [ca. 1990] principal of the Glounaguillagh School, on June 29, 1889, at age 16, a Eugene O’Sullivan was struck off the school rolls after attending for 11 years and finishing all levels. Children moved from one level to the next, not at the end of a school year, but after passing the examination for each level in five subjects: reading, spelling, writing, grammar, and geography. The length of Eugene O’Sullivan’s education, 11 years, raises questions, because his sisters completed their primary schooling in only seven or eight years.

There were no vaccines for childhood diseases, no medical treatment unless a person was seriously ill, and children often missed weeks or months of school because of illness, or because their labor was needed on the farm. Ireland’s Education Act of 1892, although not strictly enforced, required that children age six to 14 attend school for a minimum of 150 days a year. To ensure that parents fulfilled that requirement for every child, there was a 12-month school year, July to July; school was in session six days a week, Monday through Saturday. There was only one vacation, three weeks in April.

Figure 17. Beatrice and John O’Sullivan Stopping at Kate Kearney’s Cottage, Gap of Dunloe, 1933. John and Beatrice Sullivan on horseback in the Gap of Dunloe. Kate Kearney’s Cottage in the background is still open as one of the major tourist attraction in the Gap. Kate Kearney was a woman of exceptional beauty and character who lived in Kerry in the years before the Great Famine of 1845 to 1849. Kate distilled a particularly potent form of poitin (a sort of moonshine whiskey) called “Kate Kearney’s Mountain Dew.” So strong that it could not be drunk without being diluted at least seven times its own quantity, this Mountain Dew was illegal. But Kate ignored the law and continued to create her special liquor and sell it to tired travelers in need of reviving. (Photo courtesy of the McKinley Family.)

Children attended school at the discretion of their parents, and there was no maximum number of days a child could attend. Mrs. O’Shea told me that in the late 19th- and early 20thcenturies, very few students completed all levels, except in families where education was important. Even so, many families who valued education were not able to send their children to 154

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3. Seven Daughters Emigrate

involved Nora and/or Jeremiah. She told the truth to the questions she was asked, and as a result of her testimony under oath, her Aunt Nora harbored ill feelings towards My mother for the rest of her life. There was almost no further involvement between them, or Aunt Nora’s children.

Emigration for at least six of their seven daughters was the only way that Johnny-O and Mar could arrange a proper marriage match for their only son, Eugene-John, who, as the only son (even though the youngest) would inherit the farm and continue the patrilineal line of the Owen O’Sullivan family in Ireland.

The exodus of their seven daughters began in the 1880s when a friend of the O’Moriarity family, their next-door neighbors, changed her plans to emigrate to the United States. The friend’s ticket for boat passage was offered to the O’Sullivan women. Although Margaret is presumed to be the eldest, the ticket was bought by Mary, and she was met in America by her father’s brother, Uncle Cornelius. Once settled in a job, Mary sent money home for a sister, and one by one, the O’Sullivan daughters bought passage to Hartford, Connecticut, where, although they were unable to carry on the O’Sullivan name, they reestablished future generations of the Owen O’Sullivans of Muingaphuca in Connecticut. By 1901, all of Eugene’s sisters were living in Hartford, Connecticut.

Mary O’Sullivan Kelly O’Sullivan Daughter of Johnny-O and Mar Mary O’Sullivan married a Mr. Kelly, c. 1885, and they established a boarding house for single men on South Prospect Street in Hartford. When Mr. Kelly died, Mary married Michael Sullivan and they had one child, Eugene Sullivan. Because people of English extraction in the United States ridiculed the Irish for their “Irishness,” and the English preference for anglicized names in subordinates, most Irish emigrants (including My mother) dropped the “O” from their surnames in the interest of advancement in their new country.

Margaret O’Sullivan Daughter of Johnny-O and Mar Margaret emigrated to Hartford, did domestic work there, and did not marry. After an unspecified time, her health had deteriorated greatly, and a doctor in Hartford suggested that a trip to Ireland and a good rest would help her to get better. Margaret had tuberculosis, but whether the disease, fatal at that time, was properly diagnosed, and whether Margaret was told, is unknown. Because of the stigma of tuberculosis, Irish families could not name the illness truthfully, even if they knew what it was. She came back to the home of her childhood, now the home of her brother Eugene O’Sullivan and Mary Gallivan and their family, and her retired parents. As an unmarried woman, there was nowhere else for her to go.

Because there is no death certificate for Margaret at the County Kerry Registry of Births, Marriages, and Deaths in Killarney, the exact date of her death is unknown. My mother recalled that when she was age seven or eight, Margaret came to live with them and died in their house.

Margaret’s illness and death has a mystical quality about it. When Margaret was so ill and died, my mother was told that Margaret had lived the life of a saint. In Hartford she worked long hours and prayed constantly. During Lent, she fasted too much, more than could be expected of anyone, and got run down, caught a cold that turned into the flu, and never recovered from it. My mother estimated the year of Margaret’s death to have been 1911.

Catherine O’Sullivan O’Brien Daughter of Johnny-O and Mar Catherine O’Sullivan married Joseph O’Brien from Cromane, County Kerry, probably in 1890 in Hartford, and was living on South Governor Street in 1920 when My mother arrived. Their eldest child, Mae, was born in 1892, and died in 1985. They had three other children: Joseph, Catherine, and Cornelius; all three had difficult lives and died prematurely. Their son Joseph worked in a restaurant during Prohibition and travelled to New Haven and Bridgeport. He had the misfortune to collide with the law over bootlegging, was severely injured in that encounter, and spent a number of years in a hospital near New London, where he died. The circumstances of his hospitalization were not revealed, and may have involved a long-term mental illness. Catherine died at Saranac Lake in New York after a long battle with tuberculosis, Cornelius had cerebral palsy and died in his early forties after years of hospitalization.

Nora O’Sullivan Sullivan Daughter of Johnny-O and Mar Nora O’Sullivan also married Jeremiah Sullivan from Ireland, although not related to her sister Mary’s second husband, Michael Sullivan. They lived on Fenwick Street in Hartford, Connecticut.

Their six children were Mae, Josephine, Jerry, Agnes, Helen, and Margaret. In the 1920’s or early 1930’s, a legal summons required my mother to appear in court and give testimony in a case 156

Bridget O’Sullivan O’Shea (1879—1916) Daughter of Johnny-O and Mar Bridget O’Sullivan, like most of her sisters, worked in Hartford as a domestic after she emigrated to America. After a few years in Hartford, her health deteriorated after she survived what was probably the flu. 91 She returned to Ireland, where she married Daniel ‘Junior’ O’Shea. Bridget O’Sullivan and Junior O’Shea had six children in rapid succession after their marriage: Daniel, Eugene, Mary b. 1909, Josephine, Bridget b. 1911. Their last-born child, Morris (born some time before 1916), emigrated to the United States. They lived at Dooks, a place about six miles from Muingaphuca, near the Caragh Bridge, on level land that was beautifully situated near the Atlantic Ocean. Eventually the O’Shea farm at Dooks was taken over by the British and converted into The British Golf Club, the first golf club in Kerry. Today, it is one of Ireland’s most popular golf courses.

There is family folklore around Bridget’s life and death which includes dreams that led to discovery of a hidden bottle containing a mysterious potion, miracle cures, mysticism, abuse, and 91

Helen’s speculation that Bridget had influenza is probably not correct. The only flu epidemic in the U.S. in the late 19th century was 1889-1890, too early for Bridget (who was born in 1879) to have been in America. She more likely returned to Ireland because she had TB, which caused her death in 1916.

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grudges. Bridget’s granddaughter, Josephine O’Connor McCarthy of Killarney (born around 1950), told me that Bridget’s sister, Johanna, had had a dream in the United States about Bridget in Ireland, and finding a miraculous cure for Bridget’s illness. Johanna had dreamt of a blue bottle buried in a stone wall on the O’Shea farm at Dooks, and wrote to Bridget to tell her about the dream, and exactly where the bottle was located. The bottle was found, but Bridget was afraid to drink the liquid without knowing what it was. She died on Christmas Day, 1916, of tuberculosis, leaving six very young children, and a husband despised by her family.

obedience, conformity, loyalty, and even love from their children. Even if a child has been abused by parents, the child must never give cause for anyone to say a bad word about the family.

Kathleen Costello, my mother’s matrilineal second cousin, told me that besides tuberculosis, Bridget was an abused wife who came home to Muingaphuca on more than one occasion for help from her parents, Johnny-O and Mar, often with her head split open, and cuts and bruises on her face and body. Bertha’s abuse was also recalled by her first cousin, my mother’s sister and my aunt Catherine Mary O’Sullivan (born1907) in Ireland who, at the mere mention of Bridget O’Sullivan O’Shea’s name, blessed herself, and with deep moans and mumbled prayers, said, “Oh, my God, how that man beat her!”

Bridget’s granddaughter, Josephine O’Connor McCarthy, told me that her mother, Mary O’Shea O’Connor, harbored a grudge for years towards my grandmother over a sewing machine that Bridget O’Sullivan O’Shea had brought back to Ireland from the United States. Josephine understood that my grandmother, Mary Gallivan, had “taken” the sewing machine after Bridget died, and that Mary Gallivan had no right to the sewing machine because she was not a blood relative of Bridget. I listened carefully to Josephine McCarthy, and said I was surprised to hear her story, because I had been told it was Mar who had brought the sewing machine home because all of Bridget’s children were too young to use it, and left it at that.

My mother told me how the sewing machine came to Mary Gallivan’s house, because she was very proud of the first man’s shirt she made on it when she was 13. Mary Gallivan cut the shirt out, and my mother sewed it for her mother’s brother, Uncle Jim. Mar, Bridget’s mother, took the sewing machine from Dooks because Bridget’s children were all much too young for it. Mar brought it to Mary Gallivan’s house because that was where Mar lived.

When Bridget died, Mar went to Dooks to help care for Bridget’s children who were all under eight years of age. Mar gave the sewing machine to my mother, her eldest grandchild in Ireland, because she did not want Junior O’Shea to have it. Bridget had bought the sewing machine in America with money she had earned as a domestic, and her sister Johanna, a dressmaker, had taught her to sew. In rural Ireland, the money a woman earned, such as egg and butter money, was hers, and Mar felt that way about the sewing machine. She knew that if she left it in Dooks, Junior O’Shea, the man who had so badly abused her daughter, would sell it for whiskey.

I could not tell Bridget’s granddaughter, Josephine, the story I had heard about her grandfather’s abuse of her grandmother. Josephine’s mother, and her grandmother and grandfather O’Shea, all were dead, and it would have been cruel to speak of those things. Josephine would imagine that I was lying, or making up a story, to make my grandmother, Mary Gallivan, look good at the expense of her O’Shea grandfather. Other than the Traveller women who I met and spoke with at length during several visits to a women and children’s shelter in Dublin in 1987, all Irish deny family violence, even though violence is learned early in families through the use of corporal punishment as the primary form of discipline for children of all ages in Ireland. Irish parents demand 158

Figure 25. William C. Curtin, left, around age 7, with an unidentified child, right. Ca. 1907. (Photo courtesy of the McKinley Family.)

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The O'Sullivans of Muingaphuca

Julia O’Sullivan O’Brien Daughter of Johnny-O and Mar

narrowed through inheritance money or other assets. A farmer’s child might also marry into the families of craftsmen, shopkeepers, and professionals if economic parity could be arranged.

Julia returned to Ireland within a short time of having emigrated to the United States, and once back in Ireland, married her old boyfriend, Denis O’Brien, presumed to be the brother of Catherine O’Sullivan’s husband, Joseph O’Brien in Hartford. The marriage of Julia and Denis occurred sometime before December 1903, the date when their names were listed as sponsors at the baptism of my mother’s brother, John. Julia and Denis had four children. Julia died young, sometime around 1910, in the tuberculosis epidemic that swept over Europe and the United Stated, including both Kerry and Hartford.

The one gap that could not be crossed was that faced by the landless laborer. The breach between farmer and laborer was the greatest class distinction in rural Ireland, and the differences in social class and lifestyle prohibited intermarriage between farmer and laborer classes. Farmers had a status to maintain and were bound by the traditions of the dowry and the marriage settlement.

Without the restraint of class and dowry, the choice of marriage partners was often impulsive and poorly matched. Laborers married at will, were mobile, and travelled until they found work, then were allowed to live in a mud hut on someone else’s property as payment for their work. When a laborer was no longer needed on a farm, he had to find employment elsewhere and provide another mud hut for his family. The agricultural laborer and his family lived in poverty all of their lives.93

Margaret, Bridget, and Julia O’Sullivan could have all contracted tuberculosis in either Ireland or in Connecticut, and all three came home single and in poor health, supposedly with “the flu,” and all three died within five or six years of their return. 92 Johanna O’Sullivan Daughter of Johnny-O and Mar The aunt who brought Mary Curtin to America in 1920.

The good name of a family was of prime importance in a marriage match, and was a stronger deterrent to wrongdoing than legal or moral laws. Children were brought up to give no one cause to talk about them, and misdeeds were thought of as a slur on the family name rather than a sin.

Families took pride in knowing that nothing could be thrown against their good name:

Johanna O’Sullivan emigrated around 1895, to Hartford, Connecticut. She was taken on as an apprentice as a dressmaker, and worked in that trade for about 15 years, until ready-made clothes came on the market and there was less demand for dressmaking. She was, according to my mother, “a classy lady” who sewed her own dresses, and when she was employed as a domestic, she was the “second girl,” meaning that she answered the door, telephone, waited on tables, dusted the living room, arranged the flowers, and made the beds of the master and mistress of the house.

‘Dacent [decent] people married dacent people,’ and any blot on the family name, even of age-long standing, reduced one’s prospect of a good marriage. Certain diseases were thought to be hereditary, chief among them tuberculosis and mental illness-‘consumption,’ and ‘lunacy’ in common speech. Polite people hesitated even to use these words. Euphemisms were called for—‘they are a bit delicate, you know,’ or ‘they are a bit odd, God help us!’

And, naturally, any family reputed to suffer from these was at a disadvantage in the marriage market. 94

Johanna “kept company” with a man in Hartford, but never married, and in November 1919, she went back to Muingaphuca for a six-month visit with her mother, Mar, who by then had been widowed. Bridget and Julia had died, and Johanna was Mar’s youngest living child. Johanna stayed with her mother in Muingaphuca until June 1920, when she returned to Hartford, Connecticut, and took my mother Mary with her.

Successful negotiation of a marriage match in rural Ireland also depended on an assurance to the bride’s parents that their daughter would be the unchallenged mistress of her new home. In families where unmarried siblings of the groom still lived at home, marriage matches were more difficult to arrange. There was little privacy in the small, often crude houses of the 19th-century, and no room for feelings of displacement or hostility towards the new mistress of the household by the man’s siblings, some of whom might be considerably older than the bride.

4. Matchmaking in Muingaphuca, circa 1901 As Cosgrove points out in Marriage in Ireland, in a marriage match, social and economic parity between the prospective couple was absolutely necessary, especially between farmers: children never married beneath the status of their fathers. Although there were many economic grades of farmer, with some considerably more successful than others, being on the lower end of the hierarch was not necessarily a social obstacle if the financial differences between two families could be

92

Editor’s note: At the time that Margaret, Bridget, and Julia were in the U.S., Hartford had two hospitals: Hartford Hospital, founded in 1854, and Saint Francis Hospital, founded in 1897. A poor, single, working Irish woman would not have been able to survive financially if she were hospitalized and couldn’t work. Returning to Ireland to recover, or die, was her only option. But in returning to Ireland, she was at least assured of a roof over her head, a bed, food, care provided by family, and a decent burial if it came to that.

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Although much has been written about marriage matches being struck at fairs, and having a bride signed, sealed, and delivered in two days, that was not the case in the marriages of farmers, including the descendants of Owen-Mór O’Sullivan of Muingaphuca. A marriage match was the most important decision a farmer could make. The match could not cross social classes, and was arranged with great care.

In 19th- and early 20-century folk tradition, professional matchmakers, usually men, travelled from place to place, gathered information about candidates for marriage, and negotiated marriage matches for a fee. Professional matchmakers were not often used in the Caragh Lake District, for people knew everything they needed to know about one another, and more. Sharing information, or gossip, was a form of social protection because cultural conformity was considered 93

Cosgrove, op. cit., 103-104.

94

Cosgrove, op. cit., 104.

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the foundation of order in their lives, and conformity or lack of conformity was the basis for a sound judgment of character. It was not unusual for young couples to have “fallen in love” before any discussion of marriage was initiated by either’s parents. For a marriage to be valid in the eyes of the Catholic Church, it had to be the free choice of the couple. Men and women had the right to refuse a match arranged by their parents, and even if a couple had already fallen in love, the parents of either partner could disapprove of their child’s choice of a spouse. A matched marriage was an economic transaction, an exchange of property, children, land, and dowry, and all parties, parents included, had to be satisfied they were getting a “good bargain.”

In Kerry, the wedding celebration was provided by the bride’s family, and indicated not only their social standing and financial status, but also their pleasure at the match and respect for the groom’s family. There was no “honeymoon,” although the groom’s parents usually stayed at the home of a relative for a few days to give the newly married couple some privacy. Cosgrove suggests that Shrovetide marriages were followed by a period of abstinence, implying that sexual relations during Lent were taboo, even for newlyweds:

The first overtures of a marriage match could be initiated by either the man or the woman to their parents, or the parent to a child, and was then mentioned in a casual way by a trusted friend or relative to the other family. Casual conversation and indirect language gave both parties plenty of leeway to end a preliminary conversation without there having been an actual proposal or refusal of a marriage match. 95 Outright rejection of a match implied that there was a serious problem in one or both families, and this would present obstacles to future matchmaking.

Final discussion of the match prior to agreement on a marriage contract took place at the home of the groom, where the bride’s parents, possibly for the first time, saw the inside of the house and its furnishings, both of which may have greatly improved in preparation for negotiating the marriage match (as was the case for Johnny-O and Mar’s son, Eugene-John, my grandfather). Daily life in Muingaphuca at the turn of the 20th-century was focused on work and survival, and the home was considered private, even sacred. Although people knew a great deal about one another, they did not visit each other’s homes if they were not related, other than for a wedding or a wake.

At the final discussion of a match, the woman’s parents gave a critical assessment of the man’s family and farm in order to make a judgment about whether that family deserved to have their daughter, for no decent family allowed their daughter to “marry down.” A farm included land, animals, the house and its furnishings, and other farm buildings, such as a dairy room, the byre (barn), piggery, and chicken coop. The amount of the daughter’s dowry was negotiated in proportion to the reputation and standing of the man’s family, as well as the value of the farm.

95

Editor’s Note: In her memoir, Lady Edith Gordon, for whom Mary Curtin had worked as a girl, referenced the non-committal nature of conversation and discourse in Kerry: “It is significant of the inhabitants of the South of Ireland that the present tense of the verb is nonexistent, conversation being entirely carried out by the means of the future and conditional mood.” (Winds of Time, p. 117). In 1986, while hitch-hiking through Kerry down near Valentia Island, I experienced this myself. A man who picked me up asked me, as soon as I was in the car, “Now, who would your people be?” When I told him, he said, “Ah, I know the family, and one of my cousins would be related by marriage to your great-grandfather Eugene.” I was dumbfounded, but it was an example of how “small” Kerry is. Note the use of the conditional “would” rather than “are” or “is”—just as Lady Gordon described.

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...the favoured day for marriages in Munster and Connaught was Shrove Tuesday, which falls between 3 February and 9 March. [...] Many peasant populations have tended to marry in spring, whereas Irish Protestants (perhaps less eager than their Catholic counterparts to embark upon seven weeks’ abstinence straight after the wedding feast) were more inclined to marry in the second half of the year. 96

Cosgrove believes that Shrovetide marriages had a practical side which made sense economically. A marriage on one of the three days preceding Ash Wednesday made marriage the first major economic transaction of the year. Weather permitting, potato planting began on February 1, but reached its peak around St. Patrick’s Day, March 17; followed by the March 25 removal of laborer to new masters; and on Gale Day, May 1, the auction of leaseholds took place.

97 Marriage dates early in the year also allowed for the exchange of assets from the bride’s dowry to the groom’s siblings in time for the migration and emigration seasons which began around the first of May. Functional matters were more important than physical desire in driving the Irish into marriage.

After the great famine of 1845-1851, when further subdivision of land was stopped and consolidation was the goal, small plots of land were no longer rented to young couples, thus preventing them from early marriage. Without the possibility of marriage, courting by young couples would surely result in the births of illegitimate children, which would not reduce the number of people the land could feed or support, and Ireland would become a country without morals, living in sin. To prevent this, the Church stepped in, and the virtue of Chastity was imposed on society to such an extent that eventually males and females seemed to lose interest in one another. The number of marriages dropped and the age of marriage went up.

For single Irish men, male bonding around a culture of pub drinking replaced sex, and drunkenness replaced orgasm for satisfaction. 98 For a single Irish woman, prayer, religious ritual, and preoccupation with everlasting rewards in the next life replaced her hopes for marriage and a 96

Cosgrove, op. cit., 123-124.

97

Editor’s Note: My grandmother, Mary Curtin, once told me that when she was growing up, St. Patrick’s Day was always thought of as the first day of spring, even though the vernal equinox doesn’t arrive for more than a month after St. Patrick’s Day. 98

Editor’s Note: When I visited Ireland in 1986, I went out for a bar night in Killorglin with one of my cousins who was about my age (late 30s) at the time. I experienced first-hand the pub culture that Helen describes here. The pubs we visited were not ones that American tourists would visit, or even know about, and there were no women present. The bars were bastions of rural Irish male culture of more than 30 years ago: noisy and smelling all at once like a farm, peat fire, tobacco, and beer.

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The O'Sullivans of Muingaphuca

family. With these extremes in the lives of men and women, and the imposition of chastity, a stony silence and secrecy regarding sexuality and reproduction descended on Catholic Ireland.

My mother’s spinster cousin, Kathleen Costello, born in 1918, told me that young women in rural Ireland were given no sex education and went into their marriages “innocent” and confused. Females of any age were not allowed to witness the breeding of cattle, sheep, horses or other animals. A cow was brought to the bull for mating in a field away from the house. This unnatural “innocence” would have made it difficult for a newly married couple to adjust to intimacy while sharing a one- or two-room house with the groom’s parents, and possibly a sibling or two. The obligatory abstinence that followed a Shrovetide marriage would have been a factor in postponing an active sex life. The large size of Irish families indicates, however, that the problem of “innocent wives” was eventually solved.

5. Preparation for Eugene-John’s Wedding In 1900, in anticipation of a marriage match for my grandfather Eugene, the 19th-century stone cottage in which Johnny-O and Mar had raised their family was replaced by a what was known as a class three house, the most typical type of dwelling in Muingaphuca at that time. In the March 31,1901, census records, of the 33 houses in the townland of Muingaphuca, 22 were Class 3 houses. At that time, such houses were required to be built of stone walls, a roof of wood and thatch. The house also had to have two rooms for family occupation and two windows in the front of the house. Such 1901 Class 3 houses were significantly “upgraded” from what had been required for similar classification during the 1841 census, when a class three house had to be built of mud. 99 Census records for 1901 show that there were four outbuildings on the O’Sullivan farm: stable, byre (cow house), dairy, and piggery. This indicates that the farm livestock included a horse or donkey, or possibly both; milch (milk) cows; a few dry cattle; and pigs. The 1901 census did not list a barn, turf shed, or fowl house, so we can assume that fodder for the livestock, and peat for heat and cooking, were stored under a lean-to, away from the prevailing winds. Like most families, they would have kept a few chickens which would have roosted in the lean-to and grazed in the farmyard. 100 Although my mother was in the last generation born in Ireland, all of her children, and many of her grandchildren and great-grandchildren have walked the fields in the hope of understanding the past and feeling the once strong heartbeat of the O’Sullivans of Muingaphuca. 101

99

Figure 18. Bridget (Beatrice) Sullivan’s British Passport, used when she emigrated to America in 1923. The visa (right) notes that the “Holder intends to remain indefinitely.” (Moskey Family Collection.)

Foley, op. cit., 23

100

Thomas Doyle, Killorglin Historical Society, personal communication, August 1990.

101

Editor’s Note: Mary Sullivan Curtin was the only one of her siblings who married and had children. Though there are other descendants of Owen-Mór, they never had a claim to the farm in Muingaphuca.

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CHAPTER EIGHT

the bride was now in control of the butter making and its profit, those traditions are not part of the folk memory of Muingaphuca.

EUGENE-JOHN O’SULLIVAN 1. A Kerry Wedding On or about February 3, 1901, my grandfather Eugene-John O’Sullivan, age 28, married Mary Gallivan, age 27, of Tulligbeg, a Killorglin townland in the barony of Trughanackmy, adjacent to the north-northwest boundary of Muingaphuca, a mile from my great-grandfather’s John Owen O’Sullivan’s (Johnny-O’s) farm. 102 From the hill where the Gallivan farm is situated, the O’Sullivan farm was within clear sight, as it is today. Although the townland of Trughanackmy is not in the Caragh Lake District, Eugene and Mary Gallivan, the names by which they were known in Muingaphuca, and which therefore will be used in this ethnography, probably would have met each other years earlier at Sunday afternoon dances or hurling games at the Cross, at Puck Fair in Killorglin, and other social occasions. Due to the short distance between their homes, and the opportunities for meeting that must have naturally occurred, it is quite possible that Eugene and Mary Gallivan had already “fallen in love” and discussed marriage before any attempt was made by Eugene’s parents (my great-grandparents John Owen O’Sullivan, “Johnny-O,” and Mary Murphy) to arrange a match.

My aunt Catherine, the youngest child of Eugene and Mary Gallivan, told me with pride that her mother’s dowry was “100 Pounds.” My Aunt Catherine did not marry, was never more than 5 miles from her home, and every detail of the lives of family members and family events was of primary importance to her. I learned to trust her memory about the past.103 Catherine also gave this account of her parents’ wedding, which is transcribed here nearly verbatim: The cows were put out in the morning as usual, and the wedding took place at the Gallivan’s house in Tulligbeg at two o’clock in the afternoon. The priest came to the house and married them, and took up a collection. There was no Mass. The Gallivans made the wedding dinner and at four or five o’clock, all the friends and neighbors of the two families came. There was Irish whiskey and punch, 104 and a man played the violin for people to dance the reels. The families and neighbors gathered at the Gallivan’s house and danced until milking time, when my mother and father went to their new house.

Eugene and Mary Gallivan’s wedding was typical for the period. Although Cosgrove 105 mentions several old customs for the bride’s first entry into her new home, such as the groom’s mother yielding control of the house by handing her new daughter-in-law the tongs for the fire, symbolic of her new role as mistress of the hearth, or handing her the churn dash to indicate that 102

Cosgrove, op. cit., 111-112, suggests that couples married on the Monday or Tuesday before Ash Wednesday, Shrovetide. In 1901, Shrove Tuesday was February 4, and we know from family oral history that they were married on the Monday of Shrovetide 1901, i.e., February 3.

103

Cosgrove (op. cit., 107) notes that a “healthy dowry” would be as much as 70 or 80 Pounds.

104

Editor’s Note: I remember my grandmother Mary Sullivan Curtin telling me about “punch.”

It was made from a mixture warm water, sugar, and a bit of whisky. She said her mother made this punch for Christmas and that she and her siblings were allowed to have some.

105

Eugene and Mary Gallivan had five children in rapid succession: Mary Ellen (my mother, known as Mollie to friends and family in Ireland), born April 17, 1902; John Eugene, December 14, 1903; Bridget (“Beatrice”) Theresa, born May 1, 1905; Julia Ursula, born July 4, 1906; and Catherine, born January 1, 1908. In less than seven years of marriage, the household rose from four to nine: Johnny-O and Mar, Eugene and Mary Gallivan, and five children, the oldest only five years and eight months old.

2. The Eugene-John O’Sullivans At Home In 1901, when my grandparents John-Eugene and Mary set up housekeeping, the O’Sullivan farm had a new Class 3 house with two rooms, a large kitchen and a bedroom, and several farm buildings. The dairy was attached to the bedroom wall at the northwest corner of the house. The byre (cow shed) and the stable were attached to the opposite end, on the southeast. Two deep wells, about 20 feet away from each end of the buildings, provided water for the family, the dairy, and the animals. The placement of each room, and the location of the farm buildings on opposite ends of the house, served the practical needs of the family and the farm. The bedroom (occupied by my great-grandparents Owen O’Sullivan (Johnny O) and Mary Murphy) on the cooler northwest end was separated by the kitchen from the sounds and odors of the byre and stable. The dairy, one room attached to the wall of the old couple’s bedroom, provided some insulation and protection to their room from winter wind and rain. The dairy had an outside door, and one window for light and ventilation. Away from the animals, and close to the well, the northwest end was the most sanitary location for the dairy. Later, a chicken coop was added to the dairy on the northwest end.

The three-sided byre and stable at the southeast end of the house received more sun and less wind than the dairy room, and the house gave some protection to the animals from winter rain and wind that roared in from the Atlantic, three miles west.

As was the custom in Kerry, the “old couple” (the parents of the groom) took the bedroom, which always had its own small fireplace. In rural Kerry, this room was not referred to as “the bedroom,” but as “above.” Intended or unintended, “above” allowed references to that room to function as private space for the couple without the inference of intimacy that “bedroom” carries.

It also emphasized the status of the old couple in the family. Like most retired parents, Johnny-O and Mar did not give up all control of the farm immediately, or cease doing a share of the work.

They were overseers of the day-to-day operation of the farm. At night, the kitchen served as a bedroom for the young couple and their children. Some families broke through the front wall in the old couple’s room to create a separate doorway to the outside, which would allow both couples more privacy, but this was not the case for Eugene O’Sullivan and Mary Gallivan. The old couple could disappear to the room “above” whenever they needed privacy, but without a separate outside entrance for the old couple, the young couple’s privacy depended on the generosity and thoughtfulness of their parents. Johnny-O and Mar came and went through the living space of Eugene and Mary Gallivan, which must have created moments of great stress on the young couple, although custom required that younger people defer to their elders in all circumstances. Somehow, it all worked.

Cosgrove, op. cit., 114.

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The O'Sullivans of Muingaphuca

The kitchen, the larger of the two rooms, had served triple functions: kitchen, living room, and sleeping space for Eugene and Mary and their children. In a typical kitchen of the period, one or two “settles,” long high-back wooden benches faced each other at right angles to the fireplace and were used by the family for chores, for sitting by the fire, visiting with relatives, drying laundry, and every practical need. At bedtime, the settle’s high back was dropped level with the bench seat, the straw mattress and bed linen that were stored during the day under the seat were removed, and the bench quickly became a comfortable bed. Once out of the cradle, children slept either on a cot, on the second settle, or at the foot of their parents’ bed.

Heart picture in the kitchen is lit by a small electric light attached to the bottom of the picture, and a long cord trails to the nearest electricity outlet. In 1900, other wall hangings might have included a picture of the Blessed Virgin Mary, a calendar, or a picture of Daniel O’Connor, the great Catholic leader of Ireland who was born in nearby Cahersiveen and stumped through Kerry demanding Catholic emancipation.

Families adapted their sleeping arrangements to suit changing conditions in the family, such as serious illness, or the maturation of children, which required separation of girls and boys. Girls and young adult women were in their mother’s charge until they left home. Boys were in their mother’s charge only until they made their First Holy Communion at age eight or nine. Then the father assumed charge of his sons, and different sleeping arrangements were made for them. They either slept in an open loft, over the far end of the kitchen, or in a small room that had been walled off to make a second bedroom, referred to as “below”.

The kitchen fireplace was the central point of life in the home, and all activities and gatherings occurred around the open peat fire. The fireplace had a wide chimney that also served the smaller fireplace in room “above.” The wall behind the kitchen fire was black from smoke, but the ends of the wall and its two hobs were kept white with frequent applications of whitewash. A black iron crane, which could be swung to any position over or in front of the fire, stood on a rod, its leg, at the left of the fire. A long arm extended from the crane, and halfway along that arm, another arm hung down from which various length hangers held black pots and kettles, all of which were tended with long black tongs. A covered pot, called a bastible, was used for baking bread or roasting meat.106 When the item to be baked or roasted had been placed inside, the cover was overlaid with red-hot peat coals to create the effect of an oven. At night, the fire was ‘smoored’. by raking red coals to the side, then covering them with hot ashes dampened with water, which kept the “seed” of the fire alive and red. In the morning, the fire was kindled by the mistress of the house with dry twigs and chips of peat, then circled with long sods leaning tepee-style over the blaze. The kitchen fire was the center of all activity, summer and winter, and was not allowed to go out. A peat fire was the only remedy for the year-round dampness of a stone cottage.

A large dresser (Americans would call this a hutch) was placed against one wall in the kitchen. It held all the family’s dishes and kitchen utensils. There were cabinets on the top part of the dresser. A counter at the mid-point was used to stack dishes and also served as countertop or workspace. Drawers filled out the bottom half of the dresser. Dampness was a constant problem in Irish cottages, and bread, biscuits, flour, sugar, tea, and other food and household equipment were stored in tins in the dresser drawers.

Every kitchen had a picture of the Sacred Heart of Jesus with a votive lamp of red glass, lit with either a short candle or a small oil lamp. Today, in every Catholic home in Kerry, a Sacred The bastible was an amazingly versatile piece of cookware that could be used to fry, stew, and bake food.

106

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Figure 27. Interior of Saint James’s Church, Killorglin, ca. 1920.

This postcard was found among Mary Curtin’s collection of family memorabilia. (Moskey Family Collection.)

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The O'Sullivans of Muingaphuca

The O'Sullivans of Muingaphuca

3. Daily Life, 1900-1920

with spring calving and the rush of milk that followed. But then, most of the butter was sold to get cash for other necessities.

By 1900, tillage farming107 had been replaced by dairy farming, and daily life for the O’Sullivans centered around improvement of the farm and its equipment, the care of five cows and their calves, pigs, chickens and eggs, geese or turkeys, a horse, and a donkey.

There were distinct divisions of work for men and women. Men were responsible for the production and marketing of cattle and crops, while the work of the farmyard was the business of the woman: milk, butter, fowl, eggs, and feathers, as described in this passage: The farmer’s wife took her produce to market, sold it to the best advantage and controlled the money thus gained. A common sight on market day was the stream of horse and donkey carts being driven by women to the town and returning in the evening with goods purchased in the town. Young girls shared in this trade. Even small girls were given a clutch of eggs and a hatching hen, which, properly managed, brought pin-money, while grown daughters on a farm might have a large flock of hens, geese, or ducks, and later, turkeys. There was a country saying: Tis many the girl made her fortune from the egg money. No doubt the farmer’s wife spent much or most of the money gained on household needs and on her own and the children’s clothes, but the point is that she controlled the money in her own right, and few husbands would fly in the face of popular tradition by interfering in the system. 108

The work scale was out of balance, in men’s favor. In addition to the farm work, women also had the physical burden of pregnancies and childbirth, care of the children and the old couple, the home, meals, the baking of bread, and all household tasks. The primary concern of all was daily survival of the family and the animals. Influenza, childhood diseases, cold, and tuberculosis were common. Medical services were not readily available and most children never saw a doctor.

My mother was not examined or treated by a doctor until age 18 when she was processed through emigration, including examination by a doctor, at Ellis Island, New York, in 1920.

Daily schedules were dependent on the season of the year, the chores it required, and the number of hours of daylight and dark. At the summer equinox, June 21, daybreak is Ireland is at 3:30 a.m., and the sun sets at 10:30 p.m. — a total of about 17 hours of dawn, daylight, and dusk. On December 21, the winter equinox, daybreak in Ireland is at 8:30 a.m., and dusk begins around 3:00 p.m. in the afternoon. These extremes in light and dark set the rhythms of the farm and determined the daily schedules of a Kerry farmer and his family.

In the summer, cock-crow was the signal that cows must be brought in from the fields for milking, and calves must be fed. Calves, depending on their age, were fed either pure fresh milk, a mixture of fresh and sour, or sour milk only. During the winter months, when the weather was cold and wet, there were fewer chores for the family. On winter nights, and on days when the weather was cold and wet, the cows were kept in the byre. Milk production dropped drastically in the winter and although there was enough milk to drink, the family had very little butter. The season for butter began

The dairy work and profit belonged to the mistress of the house, my grandmother Mary Gallivan. She kept the dairy and all dairy utensils clean and sanitary, milked the cows, raised the calves, made the butter, and took it to market. Often the retired woman on a farm would have a cow of her own, one she probably had raised from a calf, and the profit from that animal went to her. Mar gave her granddaughter Mary, my mother, 20 Irish Pounds from the sale of a calf she owned when Mary emigrated to the United States in 1920. The butter and egg money belonged to the woman of the house and was spent at her discretion on family needs such as groceries, household items, and clothing, without being accountable to her husband about how much she had earned or how she spent it.

Poverty was never far away, and families took whatever opportunity they had to earn money. When building projects were started in the area, farmers worked on them to supplement their income from agriculture. Starting around 1890, farmers in Muingaphuca worked to build the Valentia Farranfore Great Southern and Western Railway that which ran through Muingaphuca just a half mile from the O’Sullivan farm. Seventy years later, the rail line was dismantled it after its last run on January 30, 1960.

Another project that provided supplemental income was the installation of six miles of pipe from Lake Cummernamuck to Killorglin in 1885, although that did not solve all water problems, for they then had corrosion of the water pipes and lack of water pressure to contend with. (Those problems were not totally resolved until the 1970s, an indication of how slowly things moved in Kerry even into the late 20th century.) Farmers transported the pipe and other supplies with their donkeys and carts from the railroad station at Caragh Lake, or the Ballykissane Pier in Killorglin, and worked on every improvement to the water line until the mid-1970s when a fully modern system was completed.

Kerry farmers built Kerry’s infrastructure, county roads, and bridges, and before 1931, with shovels over their shoulders, walked four and a half miles from Muingaphuca to Killorglin, then over the mountain to Tralee, another 15 miles, to find work. A neighbor farmer, Doni Fenton, told me that he credited Éamon de Valera 109 with ending that hardship. Hiring markets were held every Tuesday at the Square in Killorglin. They ended gradually during the World War II years, 1939 to 1945. Doni explained the post-World War II economic improvements in Ireland in very simple terms: “Before the war there was no money available to the people,” he told me. “Hitler got the ball rolling for money.”

Today, a green telephone booth across from Coffey’s Pub on Upper Bridge Street is Killorglin’s historical marker of the Tuesday hiring fairs, and the passage of an era. Technology has replaced the shovel.

Potatoes and bread were the staple of the Irish peasant diet. Meals were simple, nourishing and satisfying and the O’Sullivan family always had enough to eat. Breakfast for everyone 109

107

Tillage is the agricultural preparation of soil by mechanical agitation of various types, such as digging, stirring, and overturning, using hand tools such as shovels, picks, mattocks, hoes, and rakes.

108

Cosgrove, op. cit., 110.

170

Éamon de Valera (1882-1975) was an Irish politician, born in New York, who was instrumental in laying the foundation for the establishment of the Republic of Ireland and bringing it into the 20th century after more than 750 years of English occupation during which time the Irish people were suppressed, persecuted, and disenfranchised of civil and religious liberties.

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The O'Sullivans of Muingaphuca

was hot oatmeal, bread, and tea with milk and sugar. The mistress of the house was responsible for baking the various kinds of bread: brown, soda, cornmeal, scones, and for special occasions, bread or scones with raisins. In the butter season, there was plenty of skim milk for drinking, and buttermilk was used for making bread, poured onto potatoes in place of butter, and for drinking. Most of the farm’s butter and eggs went to market for cash, or to paid off debt to a shopkeeper or merchant. Fruit was not purchased, but blackberries grow wild in Kerry, and if there was money for sugar, they were turned the berries into jam. Very little was purchased, and nothing was wasted.

Saturday night was bath night, and for this and other privacy needs, the room “above” was used. The family bathtub, half a wooden barrel, was placed in front of the small fireplace, then filled about a third with warm water. Bath time was not playtime, and children were bathed quickly, youngest first, then rinsed with a pitcher of fresh water and dried with a flour-sack towel. Shampoos with a bar of soap were separate event, usually done outside every other week. Although there were two wells, drawing and heating water for the personal needs of nine people, as well as for cooking, laundry, cleaning, dairy chores, and watering the animals was a huge job. Even with two wells and rain barrels, there were times when there was a shortage of water.

The mid-day and evening meals consisted of whatever was available that day, or that season, usually potatoes, vegetables, bread, buttermilk, and tea. Once a week, they each had an ounce or two of meat, and one or two eggs. Children took bread and milk to school for their mid-day meal, and after school snacks were baked potatoes off the peat fire, and served with buttermilk.

The evening meal was called “tea,” and it was taken first by Johnny-O and Eugene. After my uncle John had made his First Holy Communion at age eight or nine, he was allowed to join the men at the table for tea. When the men finished, Mar, Mary Gallivan, and the four girls ate their evening meal. Meals were taken separately because Irish peasant society was patrilocal, patrilineal, and patriarchal, and women deferred to men who did not want to put up with small children at their meals.

Care of the children belonged to the women, but there was a practical side too: there were not enough chairs or dishes for a family of nine to eat together. Although eating separately served the practical needs, it also emphasized the separation by sexes necessary in a society that offered few possibilities of marriage and demanded Chastity as a birth control method.

In the long evenings of summer, the family did chores after dinner, or the women and children occasionally walked to a relative’s house on a practical errand such as exchanging eggs for hatching, returning something borrowed, or to help in times of need. Recreation was not part of their lives, and work was a form of prayer and sacrifice, for there was always work to be done: hay to be cut and tossed for drying, or stacked into hayricks and moved to the haggard; cows to be milked; butter to be churned; and fences to be mended. Farm upkeep without adequate equipment or resources was an unending job, and many repair jobs were done as cheaply as possible, requiring those repairs to be made over and over. Being resourceful without expending any cash is so engrained in the Kerry farmer that even today, the first attempts at repairs will be done on a low or no-cost basis with whatever is at hand; for example, mending a gate with short bits of yellow, green and white polyester cord knotted together to make a rope, all the while hoping the repair holds. If it works, there is little concern about how it looks, as long as it is not in the area of the house. Some gates along abandoned boreens at the roadside are one-of-akind.

After tea in the winter, the family spent the evening in the kitchen. The peat fire gave off some light, and if a good gust of wind and rain roared down the wide chimney, the room filled up with smoke, too. Education was important to the O’Sullivans and one oil lamp above the kitchen table gave light for the children’s homework every evening. My grandmother, Mary Gallivan, made most of the family’s clothes by hand, and sewed at night at the table or in front of the fire. My great-grandfather Johnny-O was retired, but my grandfather Eugene worked in the evening repairing a piece of equipment, or was in and out attending to animals. The family had a weekly newspaper, which was read in the evenings. Occasionally, Johnny-O or Eugene made a visit to a neighbor, or had a neighbor come to visit, to deal with a business or family matter.

172

Laundry was done by hand on a washboard with water heated in kettles over the peat fire. It was a burdensome job for Mary Gallivan, and when the children were old enough, they helped her. The family’s clothing supply was very sparse, so clothing was not changed daily, and washing was done on daily as-needed basis and dried outside on the bushes in dry weather, or near the fire inside during cold, wet weather. Sheets were changed when weather permitted their drying outside the same day that they were washed, or when other more important chores were done. There were long periods of serious illness when proper care of the sick significantly increased laundry chores. The family could not afford to buy clothing, Mary Gallivan could not sew extra clothing for her family by hand, and there was no extra storage space. They got by with what they had without complaining. Some of those around them lived in more severe poverty.

The children worked after school in the potato fields or in the vegetable garden in the haggard.

The haggard, a raised plot of land on the southeast end of the house, contained the vegetable garden and a well, and in the absence of a barn, hayricks and other farm necessities were stored in the haggard under tarps and makeshift shelters. The children also hauled water from the fountain at the Cross, ran errands to relatives’ homes or to O’Shea’s store, and cared for younger children.

A daily chore for my uncle John was grinding vegetables to make feed for the chickens, turkeys, and geese. Feed for the fowl was made from edible parts of vegetables--potato skins, cabbage leaves, roots, tops, and peelings of carrots and turnips, and, according to my mother, something that she called “dandelions.” Whatever was available was put through a large grinding machine which stood on four legs, powered by muscle and a 12-inch diameter wheel with a handle. The ground-up vegetables were mixed with meal and scattered on the ground for the fowl. The grinding machine, rusted and broken, still stands today in the old dairy room but was kept in the kitchen during its years of use, probably from 1900 to 1950.

During my ten visits to Muingaphuca, I have seen very few dandelions, but plenty of nettles, so my mother’s use of the word “dandelion” seemed odd. She was, however, very precise in her use of language, and I believe she purposely used the word “dandelions” as a substitute for “nettles.”

Nettles were, in fact, used to feed fowl, especially turkeys, which my grandmother did raise at various times. The memory of the O’Sullivan family included the stories about the Cromwellian confiscations when families were put out of their homes and saw them destroyed, and then the Great Famine when more than a million people died. Many displaced, homeless Irish tried to survive by eating raw nettles, which burned their lips and mouths, and turned them green. It was all they had to eat. My mother had heard those stories, and when she told them to me, she would be visibly upset, and could hardly say the word “nettles.”

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The O'Sullivans of Muingaphuca

The O'Sullivans of Muingaphuca

4. Christmas in Kerry, circa 1910

5. Obedient Children

There were no secular celebrations of birthdays, anniversaries, or holidays other than Christmas.

The English exported their traditions of Father Christmas and the “cult of the family,” which had developed in England during the Victorian era, from England to Ireland. Some of these took root in rural Irish homes. In my mother’s home, fresh holly was picked from bushes near the house, and three sprigs of holly were tucked behind every holy picture, one each for the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Holly also decorated the mantle, the wall above doors, and the sill holding the white candle in the kitchen window. The window candle served as a lighted invitation to the Holy Family should they pass by looking for a place to stay at night.

Two and three-generation stem families needed high levels of patience, tolerance, politeness, and self-control to survive in their small houses. 110 Children learned very young to keep their opinions to themselves, speak softly, and obey without question, which gave parents control, but caused emotional and mental problems for too many Irish, both in their childhoods, and in adult life. Some parents carried the lessons of violence of their own childhoods with them for life, and because it was culturally expected and encouraged, many passed the tradition of control through violence on to their children:

Some of my grandmother’s turkey’s and geese were sold to the English landlords and the Anglo-Irish gentry in the great houses for their Christmas dinners, producing extra cash for some Christmas treat. On Christmas Eve, the children were given a special treat, punch made with boiling water, a drop of Irish whiskey, sugar, and spiced with a clove. This was served with raisin bread and jam. In the morning, each child received an orange and a few hard candies from Father Christmas. My mother remembered her disappointment one Christmas when she had prayed for weeks for a ring, and didn’t get it. A crisis in faith nearly followed.

Although basic chores for the animals had to be done on Christmas, it was a day unlike any other day. The house was decorated with holly, they had their presents of an orange and candy, a chicken was roasted for dinner, and the Murphys and Sweeneys came to visit—a gathering of grandparents, uncles, aunts, and cousins.

At Christmas, shopkeepers gave their best customers a gift, often a fruit cake or a container of jam. One of the few things from my grandmother’s house that has survived, and which I treasure in my own home today, is a seven-inch white pitcher with a floral design in relief. On one side the relief is pure white, the other it is gold, and the bottom is marked Made in Czechoslovakia.

My mother brought it back to Hartford from Ireland on her visit home in 1927 after she had become engaged to my father on her 25th birthday, April 17, 1927. She left for Ireland in June, knowing that it might be the last time she would see her mother. My grandmother gave my mother the white jam-jar pitcher for her new home and life as a married woman. Coming from the poverty of Ireland and the richness of my grandmother’s heart, it is symbolic of the dowry a peasant woman brought to her marriage.

The white pitcher had been filled with jam when it was given to Mary Gallivan one Christmas by Mr. P. K. Foley in his shop on Iveragh Road, a few doors up from the current post office. It was customary for shopkeepers to give their best customers a gift at Christmas, which gave a certain status to both the shopkeeper and the recipient, for everyone was otherwise tightfisted. My grandmother bought all of her groceries there, and when there was no cash, she had a credit account, which she paid as promptly as she could. Although she did not read or write, she was an excellent manager of money.

...parents have been conditioned to expect both immediate obedience and unconditional respect from their children. If either of these parental ‘rights’ is violated, canings or beatings with a strap may follow to enforce the ‘natural order of parental dominance. The cardinal sin of early childhood is boldness,’ and a bold child is, by definition, one who questions the orders that come down to him, who does not do as he or she is told, or who does not demonstrate proper shy and deferential comportment before the elders. 111

A practicing child-psychiatrist in Ireland described the demands of total obedience: The family home in Ireland is a novitiate for violence. Even from the cradle the child is made to feel rejection, hostility and open physical pain...In order to invite [this] morale-breaking treatment from his parents all the Irish child has to do is be normal. It is the normality of childhood which sets parents’ teeth on edge. They take no joy in childishness. 112

In asking her about corporal punishment in her childhood, my mother hesitated for a long minute, then answered, “I remember that once my mother switched me on the bare legs for coming back late from the fountain at the Cross with water she needed for making butter. I had stopped to play and then spilled half the water running home to make up for lost time.” When I asked her if it had experienced corporal punishment that once, or if it a regular thing, she avoided saying it was just that once, but did not say that it happened other times either. She told me: “They were kind of easy on me, I was kind of — sort of — delicate you know, not really strong.” I sensed that it would be inappropriate to push my mother any further, even though I was unsure of exactly what she meant

110

A stem family is one in which a couple's firstborn child lives with them in the family home, and that child's spouse moves into the home of said in-laws, so that the younger couple's children are raised in the home of their grandparents. Usually, the younger offspring move out upon marriage. In the Irish version of this, the oldest son would live with his parents and his wife and children.

111

Nancy Scheper-Hughes, Saints, Scholars, and Schizophrenics, Mental Illness in Rural Ireland (Irvine: University of California Press, 1982), 154.

112

174

Ibid.

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by “delicate.” In Ireland, the word delicate was double-speak for consumption, 113 a topic which my mother refused to talk about. “They never told us anything,” she said about this, and many other difficult or taboo subjects. My mother told me that she once had a “miraculous” cure and that her mother took her to the holy well to give thanks for her healing. I have often wondered if she had tuberculosis, which was so common in those days. 114

home was the primary means of attaining holiness, and was more important even than going to church every Sunday in Killorglin.

6. Religious Practices in the O’Sullivan Home My mother had a vivid recollection of the visit to the holy well near the Caragh Bridge that spans a spill from one of the lakes in the MacGillycuddy Reeks, and which runs through Dooks to Dingle Bay. On a Sunday in late Spring, when my mother was about 14, her mother, Mary Gallivan, drove five miles in a pony trap over dirt roads to the holy well to give thanks for her daughter’s “cure.”

She never said what she had been cured from, but there were numerous references to her having been “delicate” as a child, and she had a stoic conviction for her entire life that enough prayer will change any situation. The trip to the holy well remained clear in mother’s memory; indicating that it must have been very important at the time.

The holy well was a small pool marked by a circle of granite stones on a grassy slope. The stones held a variety of icons in glass jars: holy pictures, medals, scapulars, burnt candles, all left at the well to testify to the power of prayer, and of the water at that spot. My mother recalled that other people were at the well, men and women, and that they all chanted the litany of the rosary as they slowly circled the well. This type of worship traces back to pagan Celtic spirituality adapted to Roman Catholicism.

Each night before bed, at a signal from Mary Gallivan, chairs were pulled out so that the seats could serve as elbow rests, and the entire family, including the men, knelt on the cement floor to pray the family rosary.115 Saintly piety through prayer and penance was the spiritual goal of their lives, and corporal punishment was part of a person’s initiation into the saintliness of conformity to the laws and obligations of the Holy Roman Catholic Church. Prayer, penance, and obedience at

113

Consumption was a term in use for hundreds of years in English-speaking countries to as euphemism for TB, and also for depression or other mental health conditions that led to weight loss and general physical decline.

114

TB can affect virtually any part of the body, including the spine and joints, but most commonly the lungs. About half of pulmonary TB infections cure themselves, so it is possible that Mary had TB as a child or adolescent.

115

Editor’s Note: Many of Bill and Mary Curtin’s grandchildren, especially those born in the 1950s, will remember saying the Rosary in their living room in the dark after dinner, the only light coming from the bulb over the sink in the kitchen. My grandmother, Mary, once told me that this was how they prayed the Rosary in Ireland when she was growing up: after dinner with only the light of the peat fire. For those of us who experienced this, these family Rosaries were a direct connection to life in Ireland a half century earlier.

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The ability to attend church on Sunday was affected by several factors. Between November and April, most farm families, although very religious, could not get to Killorglin every Sunday for Mass at St. James Church. The age and health of various family members, weather conditions, and the availability of transportation determined whether anyone in the family got to church. When family members did get to church, there were seating options based on the amount of the seat offering you paid at the door. An offering of one penny gave you a seat in the center; one-half penny allowed you to sit on a side aisle; and no offering allowed you to stand. Bachelor men did not enter the main body of the church, but hung around inside the vestibule at the main door, or outside if the church was crowded. This is still the case during as summer when people come “home” to Killorglin, mainly from America. Male grouping at the church door was another way to emphasize the acceptance by the Irish of separation of the sexes, the Church’s imposition of Chastity as the solution to land problems, the woman’s responsibility for children, and the bonding of Irish males. 116 After church, the male bonding rites continued at a pub for a “quick drop or two” while the women and children ran an errands at the stores that were open on Sunday for limited hours, a necessity for country people who could not travel to town on other days, and a source of extra business for the shopkeepers.

A different sense of church and church community was generated through the twice-a-year “Station,” which consisted of having Mass and Holy Eucharist celebrated in your neighborhood, preceded by the sacrament of Penance. Each neighborhood knew its schedule and which families belonged to the Station, and families took turns hosting. On Sundays, announcements were made from the altar at St. James Church to remind people of up-coming event: deaths and funerals, civic and school matters, and the schedule for the Stations for the next few weeks. This practice continues at St. James Church in Killorglin today, even though people have radio, TV, newspaper, and telephone for the latest news. Announcements at Sunday Mass are the final word for the week and serve to keep the Church central to individual lives. Attendance at your Station was obligatory unless you wanted a personal visit from the Parish Priest to inquire about the state of your health, physical and spiritual.

Great preparations preceded the hosting of the Station, which occurred for each family once every several years. Women welcomed the Station at their home. Although it meant work for them, it was also an opportunity to get chores done that many husbands put off for years. The house and windows were thoroughly cleaned; a few new items might be purchased for the home; walls inside and out got a new coat of whitewash; gates and fences near the house were repaired and put into good working order; and the property as a whole was tidied up.

The parish priest (the priest in charge of St. James ) and his curate (assistant priest) arrived at the appointed home at about 9:00 a.m. on a weekday. The Station community assembled gradually for individual confessions before Mass. While the kitchen was set up for Mass by the 116

Editor’s Note: I attended Mass at St. James several times in the 1970s and 80s and saw this gathering of men at the back of the church and out front of the church, even as the Mass was being said. I interpreted this as the men substituting “going to Church” for “being at Church.”

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curate and the woman of the house, the parish priest was given the room “above” to hear confessions in front of the fire. Hearing confessions was not a responsibility that would have been given to the curate, for how would the parish priest know the condition of the souls in his flock if he did not hear their sins and grant them absolution? In a two-room house, the room “above” was the only place where the priest and the penitent could have privacy. The presence of a bed in the room made it an ideal setting for an examination of conscience and Church rules about chastity, sin, and pleasure. There was some hostility on the part of farmers towards any priest who counseled their wives about marriage, but especially about chastity in marriage, or about the husband’s responsibilities when a wife felt that she could not care for any more children. The peat fire in the fireplace provided a symbol of the fate (Hell) awaiting anyone who lived and died as an unrepentant sinner.

sent children to school only if the child had shoes and a coat. My mother remembered jumping barefoot over thin ice and hoarfrost as she ran barefooted to school on the first cold mornings of winter, but her mother did manage to find coats and shoes for the season. In some families, children were kept at home until an older sibling had outgrown a coat or shoes. In other families, siblings alternated attendance, sharing coats and shoes. British law required school attendance at least 150 days a year, and the registers for Eugene and Mary Gallivan’s children show that every child exceeded the requirements, and averaged 195 school days per year.

When all confessions had been heard, Mass was celebrated in the crowded kitchen. Often, the kitchen table was raised on two chairs so that everyone could see. After Mass, a collection was taken, and each farmer was expected to give “up to his standing,” according to the size of his farm.

The farmer with two cows was not expected to give the same as the farmer with four cows and a horse, for example. The parish priest would then ask for a volunteer to host the next Station in six months and then everyone left for home. The parish priest expected breakfast, and if he was in a generous mood, he might invite his curate to share the feast of oatmeal, eggs, bread, tea, and possibly meat, served by the farmer’s wife in front of the small fireplace in the room “above.”

Otherwise, the curate left with the others, or waited outside to drive the parish priest back to Killorglin in his pony trap. Parish priests were quite authoritarian and outspoken, and those who earned a reputation for demanding too much food from the hosts at Stations were chastised, sometimes in print, by their bishops who often had more compassion for the poverty and struggle of the people than the parish priest.

7. School Days (1908-1918) Since 1830, there had been separate primary schools in Ireland for Protestants and Catholics, established according to which religion held the majority in the area where the school was being built. In Kerry, as in all Ireland, the land was owned by Protestants, mostly British but there were some Irish who had married into English families and converted to the Anglican Church of Ireland.

They were and are known as the Irish (or Anglo-Irish) Ascendancy. 117 Otherwise, nearly 100 percent of the population was Roman Catholic. Most of the Protestant families in the Muingaphuca area were English and wealthy. They had tutors for their children in their homes, or children went away to boarding schools in Dublin, or England.

The Glounaguillagh (Caragh Lake) School was for Roman Catholic children. Most families were poverty-stricken, and could not adequately feed or clothe their children. In the winter, parents 117

Members of the Ascendancy tended to follow English practices in matters of culture, science, law, agriculture, and politics, but often defined themselves as simply Irish or British, and rarely Anglo-Irish or English. Many became administrators in the British Empire or senior army and naval officers. Others were prominent Irish nationalists. Lady Gordon, for whom Mary Curtin O’Sullivan worked, was a member of the Anglo-Irish Ascendancy and was supportive of Irish independence.

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On May 11, 1908, at age six, my mother, Mary O’Sullivan, entered the Infants Class as Registration No. 215. All children were registered for the Infants Class, regardless of their entry age, and remained there until they had passed the test to enter Standard One. After 34 days in Infants Class, Mary was moved to Standard One. Although she should have been registered under her given name, Mary Ellen, a neighbor’s child had taken her to her first day at school, and my mother was registered as “Mollie,” the name she was called at home.

One afternoon shortly after my mother started school, her grandfather (my great-grandfather), Johnny-O, met her at the boreen gate, and asked the typical parental question, “What happened in school today?” My mother told her grandfather that her teacher, Miss Rebecca Wellings, had told her that her family name was “Sullivan,” not “O’Sullivan.”

Johnny-O puffed up, red with anger, and said, “We are the O’Sullivan caert—and no one can change your name. Your name is O’Sullivan. The Irish word caert loosely translated means “authentic, genuine, right, real.” My mother got her first lesson in the consequences of British rule when the English teacher anglicized the family name. Subsequently, all of Eugene and Mary Gallivan’s children were registered as Sullivan in Glounaguillagh School records. The parents said nothing about this to the school. Complaints to a national school about the anglicization of Irish names would have labelled the family as “Sinn Fein rabble rousers,” my mother told me, and no republicans (supporters of Irish independence from the U.K.) in Kerry would dare draw attention to themselves.

Although Irish history, poetry, music, and language were banned in the national schools from the beginning, and were not officially included in the curriculum until the mid-1920s, after the establishment of the Irish Republic, the movement to teach the Irish language in the national schools began much earlier. Starting around 1912, my mother was taught Irish in the Glounaguillagh School and earned a prize in Irish, for which she received a blue rosary. 118 Her grandparents were native speakers of Irish, so she would have been able to speak and learn Irish from them.

My mother remained in school until September 18, 1915 when, at age 13 years and five months, her name was taken off the rolls, without her having completed Standard Six. Her teacher begged her mother to let My mother finish school, saying, as my mother recalled, “She can read the stars.” But her father and grandfather had died a year earlier, and she was needed at home so 118

The parish priest from St. James in Killorglin oversaw the school and was responsible for its academic and financial success. The gift of a rosary was thus permitted in a school for Catholic children.

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that Bridget (Beatrice) who had been out of school for six months helping her mother by watching her younger sisters, could go back to school.

My uncle, John-Owen, was registered in the Infants Class on March 14, 1910, at age six years and three months. During his school years, the schoolmasters were Michael Sugrue and James Griffin. Male students in the national schools paid a fee according to the standing of the family, but no fees are recorded for John-Owen. Based on the fact that they had shoes and coats, and enough to eat, my mother told me that she was under the impression that the family was better off than many neighbors, which may have been true. However, school records that I examined show that the O’Sullivans were not required to pay for John-Owen’s education. John-Owen was crossed off the school rolls in January 1917, at age 13 years and one month, without having completed Standard Six. He too was needed at home.

The O'Sullivans of Muingaphuca

She gave a tea party once a year, probably at the end of the school year, in June, when the weather was good. There was all kinds of food—sandwiches, sweets, candies. All the kids in the Caragh Lake school walked down to her house, and the party was held outside. There were kids running around looking at her flower gardens, down to the lake, all over the place. They did a lot of damage in her garden. Kids that didn’t know anything about nice flowers. They’d be climbing her trees— special trees. She would show up, talk to some of the kids, but wouldn’t stay with us all day-probably just a couple of hours. She must have been a very rich lady. Probably divorced from her husband, or something like that. You don’t ask those people anything.

Bridget (Beatrice), Registration No. 260, entered school at age six on May 8, 1911. In 1915, the year she turned ten, she did not attend school between March 21 and August 29. Her mother, Mary Gallivan, widowed in 1914, was trying to run the farm alone and Bridget (Beatrice) stayed home for five months to take care of her two younger sisters while her mother worked in the fields. She was readmitted on August 29, 1915 and remained in school until June 1918, when at age 13 she had completed Standard Six, and was the only child in the family to do so .

Julia, Registration No. 283, entered school on May 13, 1913 at age six years and ten months, and left school in June 1919, at age 12 years, 11 months, probably due to illness. Julia died two and one-half-years later on January 12, 1922, age 15, of pulmonary tuberculosis.

Catherine, the youngest, began school on May 25, 1915 at age seven years and five months, and left school, without having completed Standard Six, at age 14 in June, 1922, the year her sister Julia died.

8. A Garden Party for the Irish Children One of the outstanding events of every school year was the garden party that Lady Gordon gave in June at Ard-na-Sidhe (Hill of the Fairies) for all the children in the Caragh Lake School. Although she was Protestant, Lady Gordon was interested in the education of Ireland’s children, especially the Catholic children whose families could not afford private education. She provided some books for them, cooperated with the parish priest in helping to upgrading the quality of their education, and occasionally visited the school.

Ard-na-Sidhe is a huge estate on a small hill above the shore of Caragh Lake, with several complexes of buildings such as garages, quarters for the servants, stables, other storage facilities, and extensive patios and gardens. In 1992, I visited Ard-na-Sidhe, which is now a small hotel, and asked permission to photograph the grounds. The owners of the hotel were very cordial and pleased to speak with someone who had heard stories of Lady Gordon from someone who had actually known her at the turn of the century. I explained the relationship of my mother and Lady Gordon as being one of a peasant family’s daughter and a benefactress to the school. They had not known about the garden parties around 1910 that Lady Gordon gave the children at Ard-na-Sidhe and were delighted to hear of them. My mother provided this account of the parties at Ard-na-Sidhe:

180

Figure 28. Mary Ellen Sullivan (left), 1927, on her visit to Ireland before her marriage to Bill Curtin. (Moskey Family Collection.)

On the reverse side of this photo, Mary wrote: “This picture was taken of Annie Foley and me on top of the mountain which is close to the school I attended (Gloungaguillagh). I was on my first visit home, reliving the simple life of my youth, and working on the farm. Mother was very interested in hearing about my coming marriage to Bill, and I suppose she wondered if she would ever see me in the flesh again. This was in the summer of 1927. (She died in 1950.)”

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Editor’s Note: Lady Gordon’s Garden Party for Irish Children According to Lady Edith Gordon’s memoir, The Winds of Time, she gave a party for children only once. Lady Gordon wrote that she had become bored entertaining in London and thought that a party for schoolchildren would be a fun distraction for her. She loved Irish children, and seems to have preferred them over English children. She describes a conversation with the local schoolteacher, Mrs. Maguire, in which she told the teacher: “Irish children are quite as well educated as English ones. They are not only more intelligent, but better conducted and better mannered. English children cannot in any way be compared to Irish children.” Excerpts from her lengthy description of the party follow. 119 Punctually, on the appointed day, the children marked in procession up the avenue to the house, each child carrying a mug, which, after they had seated themselves on the grass, was filled with tea, while large slabs of bread and jam and cake were handed round on trays.

Once the games and sports began, the proceedings grew hilarious. The three-legged races, in which the first starters were Dan’s father [Dan was Lady Gordon’s gardener and handyman], aged 80, and my new housemaid, immediately placed matters on an uproarious footing. The sack races in which the competing boys fell in heaps on top of each other; the hill-climbing competition in which an group of three arrived in the first heat at the top of a precipitous mount; the tug-of-war, the various races and games, all met with wild success.

Later, the children assembled on the terrace in front of the house and the schoolmaster proceeded to make a speech. Beginning with a flowery reference to “the lake of crystal like a sea of glass spread at our feet,” he went on to show that, through much of the beauty of the scene was undoubtedly due to the Almighty, there was no denying the fact that the original conception had been largely improved upon by me.

I suggested that the children should sing. The sound of their clear young voices in that most haunting of melodies, “Let Erin remember the days of old,” their happy faces outlined against the background of mountains and lake bathed in the gilded light of the setting sun, made an unforgettable impression. Personally, I had only one regret in wishing them goodbye, and that was that I could not have a school treat every day.

The lyrics to “Let Erin Remember” follow.

The O'Sullivans of Muingaphuca

LET ERIN REMEMBER Lyrics by Thomas Moore (1808)

Set to the tune of “The Red Fox” Let Erin remember the days of old Ere her faithless sons betrayed her.

When Malachy wore the collar of gold That he won from the proud invader.

When her kings with standards of green unfurled Led the Red Branch Knights to danger.

Ere the emerald gem of the Western World Was set in the crown of a stranger.

On Lough Neagh's banks as the fisherman strays In the clear cold eve declining, He sees the round towers of other days In the waters 'neath him shining.

Thus shall memory often in dreams sublime Catch a glimpse of the days that are over.

Thus sighing, look through the waves of time For the long-faded glories they cover.

119

Gordon, op. cit., 119-121.

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The O'Sullivans of Muingaphuca

CHAPTER NINE

On a Friday, March 20, 1914, Johnny-O walked the four-mile round trip to the Caragh Lake Post Office to get his old-age pension. Coming back, he went up four stone steps to the haggard to get water from the well, and fell coming back down with the water. Johnny-O had had a stroke, and never regained consciousness. His prayers were granted and he did not see Eugene die.

DEATH IN MUINGAPHUCA 1. An Epidemic of Death, 1910 An epidemic of early deaths descended on the O’Sullivans of Muingaphuca around 1910. Two of Eugene’s sisters, my mother’s Aunts Julia and Margaret, died of tuberculosis. Because Margaret was unmarried, she had been cared for by her mother, Mar. The two-room homestead was crowded to the walls with ten people: Margaret, Johnny-O and Mar; Eugene and Mary Gallivan, their five children: Mary, John, Bridget (Beatrice), Julia, and Catherine. Tuberculosis is passed through air, animals, and milk, and in their close quarters, the entire family was at risk of being infected with tuberculosis, which had no effective prevention, treatment, or cure, though about half of the time, it cured itself.

In 1910, the year his sister Margaret died, Eugene, then 37 years old, became quite ill with a cold, and a cough, which the family thought was influenza. Slowly Eugene lost the strength to complete a full day’s work, but he carried on with the routines of daily life. It was quite normal for people to walk long distances, and locals driving pony carts on the road usually stopped to pick people up if they had room. Eugene had been at Puck Fair to sell cattle that day, and spent the evening visiting and drinking too much at the pubs. Walking the four and a half miles home, he fell down on the side of the road, where he lay in the dark until he was found in the morning by his father, Johnny-O, cold, wet, and burning with fever. Eugene was put to bed and weeks passed without improvement. The doctor came out from Killorglin on horseback. He prescribed some medicine and total bed rest for Eugene. His wife Mary Gallivan took over his work on the farm under the guidance of Johnny-O, who did as much as he could to help her. My mother was eight years old; Catherine, the youngest, was two.

As far as the children knew, their father had the flu, although with three recent deaths from tuberculosis in the family, and deaths from tuberculosis occurring all over Ireland, the doctor must have told Mary Gallivan and Eugene’s parents that Eugene had tuberculosis. The exact periods of the phases of Eugene’s illness are unclear, but as with normal progression of the disease, Eugene developed a swelling on his neck as the tubercle lesions in his lungs spread to other lymph tissue.

The swelling was operated on at the Killarney Hospital, and eventually Eugene resumed some chores to the extent possible. His wife, children, parents, and relatives continued with the heavy work to keep the farm going. Major tasks were accomplished with help from the Murphys and Sweeneys, who lived hear the Glounaguillagh Cross, and the Gallivans from Tulligbeg. The daily work of the farm fell to my grandmother, Mary Gallivan, with whatever help she could get from Eugene’s parents, relatives, neighbors, and the five children. My mother’s memory of her mother was that she worked from early morning until late at night, seven days a week. Eugene’s illness lasted four years; there were short remissions where he resumed some light chores, but during the last six months of his life, Eugene was completely bedridden.

Johnny-O knew that Eugene was going to die, and talked about it every day with his closest neighbor, Michael Fenton, Doni Fenton’s grandfather. Doni told me he had heard the stories of the troubles of the O’Sullivans from both his father and grandfather. Johnny-O prayed that he would go before his son, Doni told me, as it would surely kill him to see Eugene die first.

184

Eugene and Johnny-O lay in separate beds in the same bedroom Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Mary Gallivan and Mar surely would have known that their deaths were imminent. The people of Kerry had much experience dealing with the death of family. Death was part of everyday life in peasant Ireland: infants, children, young people, old people, adults all died at home. My mother and her siblings spent most of those three days with their cousins at the home of their greataunt, Mary O’Sullivan Murphy, and their cousins, the children of Mary’s son Michael, who had inherited her farm.

On Monday morning, March 23, 1914, Mary Gallivan brought Eugene a cup of tea and a few spoons of oatmeal. When she returned to the kitchen, she heard the loud sound of death in the bedroom. Eugene died in her arms, his father in a coma in a bed on the other side of the room, with Mar at his side. In the early hours of Tuesday, March 24, 1914, Johnny-O died peacefully in his sleep. In less than 20-four hours, son and father had died in the same room. My uncle John-Owen, ten years old, was the only male O’Sullivan now alive.

2. A Kerry Wake and Funeral Folklore on wakes, funerals and burials in the Caragh Lake District in the 19th-century was collected in 1987 by Tom Doyle of the Killorglin Historical Society from John O’Brien of Oulagh West, Caragh Lake. The O’Brien’s and the O’Sullivans were related through marriage. Two brothers (or first cousins) of John O’Brien’s father married two of Eugene’s sisters: Joseph O’Brien married Catherine O’Sullivan in Hartford, Connecticut, and Denis O’Brien married Julia O’Sullivan after her return to Ireland from Hartford.

Wakes were held at home, and it was the custom to open the window of the dying person’s room to allow the soul to leave the room on its way to eternity. The dead person was usually laid out on a bed or table. For a double wake, two beds would have been necessary and so the wake was held in the kitchen, which left the bedroom available for the family. Undertakers were unknown then, but Tado O’Riordan, a first-cousin of Mary Gallivan, was a coffin maker in Killorglin. A few narrow, shallow coffins were usually kept in stock and all “Uncle Tado” had to do was carve the names, dates of death, and age on the breastplate of the lids of the coffins, and deliver them to the O’Sullivan farm in a horse-drawn cart.

To conduct the wake properly, three kitchen tables were needed. Two tables were borrowed, one from neighbors, the Fentons, and one from Johnny-O’s sister’s family, the Murphys. Family and neighbors furnished whatever extra was needed for a double wake: sheets, food, and chairs. Sheets were hung from the rafters with ropes to create a canopy and backdrop for the two bodies which were laid out, side by side, on two sheet-draped kitchen tables. The third kitchen table, also covered with a sheet, was placed crosswise at the bottom of the other two to hold the traditional objects necessary for a 19th-century-style wake.

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The O'Sullivans of Muingaphuca

Johnny-O and Eugene belonged to the Roman Catholic Third Order of St. Francis, a confraternity of laymen who followed the life of St. Francis, and tried to exemplify the virtues of Chastity, Poverty, and Obedience, and Charity towards the poor. There was also an order for women, which was called the Second Order of St. Francis, established by the woman who had loved St. Francis and followed his spirituality by establishing the Poor Clares. For burial of members of both confraternities, the women of the Second Order of St. Francis, whose lives followed the spirituality of the Poor Clares, provided a brown habit identical to the habit of the Franciscans. Johnny-O and Eugene were laid out for burial with their bodies dressed in the brown Franciscan habit.

Families are buried in very small plots in Ireland, usually wide enough for two narrow graves. Burial sites are assigned by the Roman Catholic parish, usually the parish of the birthplace of the wife. Because two of Johnny-O’s daughters, Julia and Margaret, had predeceased him, he (and Mar) were to be buried with them, as would Eugene (and Mary Gallivan), in the O’Sullivan family plot in the Dromavalla Burial Ground in Killorglin [also known as Dromavally].

Twelve candles, representing the Twelve Apostles, were placed for Johnny-O, and 12 for Eugene, on the sheet draped table at the foot of the bed. At night, 11 of the 12 candles were lit for Johnny-O, and 11 for Eugene. Twenty-two candles were kept burning throughout the night. The unlighted candles represented Judas, the betrayer of Christ, and the sinful nature of man, which Johnny-O and Eugene had shed with death.

Plates of snuff, pipe tobacco, and white clay pipes were also on the wake table for the tobacco ritual. Pipes were filled with tobacco by a family member, then offered to, and kept by each man who came to the tables to pay his respects to the deceased. A pinch of snuff was offered to the women. Alcohol was served at wakes, usually whiskey for the men, and port wine for the women. Tea, bread, and jam were also served, and many of the mourners stayed all night to keep watch with the family over the bodies of Johnny-O and Eugene.

Four or five women known as keeners cried together in a style known as keening, a highpitched whine and wail. Although this was not constant through the night, there were two shifts of keeners who took turns in relays of keening, and started another round of keening as new people arrived. It was also customary for men as well as women to cry when they entered the wake house.

The keening was particularly loud and emotional when the dead bodies were leaving the house, on the way to the cemetery, and at the burial.

It was tradition for the casket to be carried out of the house by four men of the same surname as the deceased, or by four blood relatives, and since there was no funeral mass in the church then, shouldered directly to the graveyard. Johnny-O’s casket went out first as a sign of respect, but also to honor his wish to die before his son. When the cemetery was a great distance away, caskets would be taken on the back of a horse-drawn cart, and although Drumwalla was about four and a half miles away, the two caskets were shouldered all the way to the cemetery.

A neighbor, Ellen Moriarity, who was 92 years old when I spoke to her in 1991, was 14 at the time of the deaths and shared funeral of Eugene and Johnny-O occurred. She told me she remembered seeing the two caskets being shouldered, one behind the other, because everyone in the neighborhood went out to stand at the side of the road as a sign of respect and farewell to Eugene and Johnny-O as the caskets passed by. The procession took the shortest route to town, over the railroad tracks that went through Muingaphuca, a short distance from the O’Sullivan farm.

The caskets were shouldered to town in relays of men, not all of whom would have been relatives, for it was considered a privilege to shoulder a neighbor’s coffin. The four-and-a-half mile walk to the cemetery would have been too much for Eugene’s young children; they went in pony carts with Mary Gallivan and Mar. 186

Washing of the body was the only preparation for burial in a simple wood casket; vaults are not used to protect remains from wet ground, and in time, the grave sites sink. Family members dig the graves when a death occurs. They look for the most sunken grave in the family plot, and that is the grave that is opened. As the grave is opened, bones from the last burial appear in the soil, are laid alongside the opening of the grave at ground level, and are reinterred alongside the new casket.

My mother remembered very little about the wake or the funeral procession, but vividly remembered the burials. At Dromavalla Burial Ground, she stood next to her grandmother Mar at the side of the open grave. Only one grave had been opened, but was dug deep enough for the two caskets. Mar was crying as she bent down to pick up a skull lying on the ground next to the open grave. It had dirt on its teeth, and Mar brushed the dirt off with a large white handkerchief, keening and calling over and over the name of Margaret, her daughter, who had been buried there around 1910.

The two caskets were lowered into the grave on ropes, Johnny-O first to honor his wish that he would die before his son. Mourners threw dirt on Johnny-O’s casket until it was covered, and then Eugene’s casket was lowered. Margaret’s bones and skull were placed alongside Eugene’s casket by Mar, and the family threw fists of dirt until there was nothing but the black earth showing, and then men closed the grave with shovels. There were no flowers to cover the stark black earth, and no grave marker. These were the treasured memories that my mother shared with me, and they overwhelmed me the day I stood at the O’Sullivan grave with my Uncle John on my first visit to Ireland in 1976. I felt as if I were back in 1914 with the little boy, John (now standing next to me as an adult, my Uncle John), Mary, Bridget (Beatrice), and Catherine. In a way, I was looking for all the other family members I had not known.

3. The Collapse of Traditional Life Life in Muingaphuca has been controlled and its secrets protected by Kerry traditions for centuries.

Early in the 20th century, enjoying a productive traditional life in Muingaphuca hinged on two requirements: one, that each family was independent and willing to work hard for the necessities of life; and two, that a family had physical and mental health. Both conditions were required to seal a good marriage match. Incurable physical diseases and all mental illnesses were thought to be hereditary, and families afflicted with either illness suffered not only from the illness, but from social isolation as well. The future of a farm and the continuation of family blood lines were threatened by incurable illness, for healthy families were afraid to marry into families with incurable diseases, physical or mental.

Collapse of traditional life due to incurable illness was not an isolated occurrence in Kerry in the first few decades of the 20th-century, because tuberculosis was endemic in Ireland. Neither

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The O'Sullivans of Muingaphuca

animals or humans were tested for the presence of tubercle bacilli, so that tuberculosis was transmitted through the air, and through milk, which at that time was not pasteurized.

and was destroyed. 120 Although both depression and mania increased in severity and frequency, her condition was not diagnosed for over 50 years. Neighbors spoke of her as “bold” or “queer.” I remember my mother and her sister, my Aunt Beatrice, whispering about “that Katie,” so even they were getting reports of what was going on back home.

The hardship, suffering, death, and social isolation that tuberculosis caused was a factor in bringing on depression and other forms of mental illness, such as schizophrenia, in vulnerable families. Although mental illness was not uncommon early in the 20th century, it was rarely acknowledged, diagnosed, or treated. In children, mental illness was seen as a behavioral problem, and children with behavior problems were given severe corporal punishment, and as they became adults, were avoided and referred to as “queer.” If a family was unable to handle a patient with mental illness, the patient was committed to an insane asylum, usually for life. Families were severely stigmatized by incurable illness, and once a family member was identified as tubercular or “queer,” the possibility of a strong marriage match for any other family member was destroyed, or at the very least, seriously damaged.

Death on an unbelievable scale was closing in on the O’Sullivans of Muingaphuca in 1914.

Another of Johnny-O and Mar’s daughter, Bridget O’Sullivan O’Shea, was approaching the final stages of tuberculosis at her home in Dooks, where she died in 1916, leaving six young children.

Within eight years, Mar had lost three daughters, her only son, and her husband. Her retirement was over: she was needed now more than ever, but was able to do less. She had 15 young grandchildren close by, ten without a mother, five without a father.

Her granddaughter Julia, the third daughter of Eugene and Mary Gallivan, was sick with “the flu,” which usually meant the early stages of tuberculosis, and another granddaughter, Catherine, the youngest child of Eugene and Mary, was eight years old, already a “difficult child” who had just started school. As an adult, Catherine would be called “a queer one,” and many years later after much trauma to the family, would finally be hospitalized and diagnosed as manicdepressive. Destruction had been loosed upon the O’Sullivans in the form of Ireland’s two most dreaded scourges—tuberculosis and mental illness—and the world of Mary Gallivan O’Sullivan collapsed around her.

4. Catherine Misbehaves As a child my Aunt Catherine O’Sullivan could not live up to expected behaviors of obedience, respect, and conformity in a society where children were to be seen and not heard. She was, according to Irish custom, a perfect candidate for the corporal punishment that was administered in every Irish family, although there is no direct proof that it was given to Catherine. From all the reports I have heard in Ireland from relatives and neighbors, Catherine was “bossy” to her older siblings, aggressive towards cousins, possessive of her brother, and disobedient to her mother. My mother refused to discuss the topic of corporal punishment of her and her siblings, except to say, “My poor mother, what she went through.”

After Catherine left school, she demonstrated domineering behavior towards her brother John-Owen and her mother. She also worked harder in the fields than any man, as if she were “driven” to earn her own keep. She knew that information was power. All mail coming into the home was intercepted by Catherine from the postman at the road and read, regardless of its addressee. Sometimes she showed the mail to her mother, brother, and grandmother, sometimes not. Mary Gallivan, Mar, or John-Owen never knew if a letter from the United States had arrived 188

In 1948, unbeknownst to her mother or brother, Catherine sent a cable to her sister Beatrice in the United States, saying that their mother, Mary Gallivan, then 74, was dying and that Beatrice should come home. A week later, Beatrice flew to Shannon, and when she arrived at the farm, her mother and brother were surprised to see her and wondered why she had not let them know she was coming. Mary Gallivan’s heart had weakened, but she was by no means dying. Beatrice had walked into a living hell: the house and the farm were a shambles. Packages containing clothing and food that My mother and Beatrice had been mailing home for years were stacked in the room “above,” unopened. John-Owen and Mary Gallivan had been terrorized by Catherine’s threats about what she would do if they dared to open a package.

Beatrice stayed in Ireland with her mother for a year and tried to reestablish some order, but was unsuccessful. Catherine resented her efforts and blocked every attempt to make changes.

Beatrice was one more person to terrorize and during her year in Ireland, her hair turned white.

John-Owen was mentally ill with paranoia and depression. He accused neighbors of trying to steal his cattle, of lurking in his fields at night. In a society where male bonding was the primary source of socialization outside the family, John-Owen had become a recluse in deep depression. 121

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Editor’s Note: When I visited my great-aunt Catherine and great-uncle John in the O’Sullivan cottage in 1970, Catherine took me into her bedroom, closed the door, and opened her cupboard to show me a box of letters that had come from relatives in America over many decades. Many if not most were from my great-aunt Beatrice. There were also dozens of photographs of the Curtin family, including pictures of me as a baby and young boy. She seemed to know each letter and each photograph by heart, and it was clear that these were precious connections to family in America that she knew only through letters and photographs. She told me about incidents and events in my early life of which I had no memory. She had essentially memorized the letters from her sister Beatrice, and had a very sharp memory of things from 20, 30, even 40 years before that she had never herself witnessed. She also took out a large wad of Irish money and offered to give me what I wanted, but I refused and told her she needed to keep that for herself. She loved me and wanted to show that love in some way. I was the first-born grandson of her sister, and, at that point, the only American descendant of Eugene and Mary that she had ever met.

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Editor’s Note: In 1970, I found my great-uncle John to be quiet and reserved, but pleased that I was there. “We heard that you would come,” he told me, “but we didn’t know when.” When I told him that I was going to France to study French, he looked at me almost blankly, not quite comprehending exactly what I had told him. He fixed me tea, fried some sausages, and we had a meal of tea, sausages, and buttered bread. I visited John and Catherine several times over several days, and each time he fixed me that same meal, sometimes sending me down to Shea’s store to buy bread or milk or more sausages. I made a reference to “the Irish brogue” and he laughed.

He knew what I meant, but told me that “brogues were shoes, not talk.” Catherine’s interaction

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The O'Sullivans of Muingaphuca

Forty years later, Scheper-Hughes identified the condition that Beatrice encountered when she came home in 1948, but which had not yet fully blossomed throughout the west of Ireland.

Scheper-Hughes uses the term, “anomie” to define this disintegration of rural Irish society:

In 1948, Beatrice decided that she had to leave Ireland, and never come back. She sought the help of the St. Vincent de Paul Society in Killorglin, which had many educators and social reformists on its board. They helped her understand that what had happened in the O’Sullivan family was happening all over Ireland, and it was no one’s fault. The old order of peasant life was passing, people could not adjust, and as a result, a large number of people were emotionally and mentally ill. The once stable world of peasantry had deteriorated, a terrible anomie had set in among middle-aged bachelor men and spinster women, and no one seemed to know what to do about it. Beatrice’s denial about the family’s situation was finally broken. After a year in Ireland, in which her own health diminished, she had accomplished nothing. Beatrice’s mother, still alive and in relatively good health, encouraged her to go back to America. The St. Vincent de Paul Society promised that they would look in on the family, especially to care for my grandmother Mary Gallivan who was then 76. Beatrice returned to the United States in June 1949, and never visited Ireland again. Mary Gallivan died in 1950 of heart failure and Catherine and John-Owen withdrew even further into their world of Irish madness.

The combined effect of the steady erosion of the community through childlessness and emigration, the disintegration of traditional values and familism, the constriction of village social life and institutions, and the national policy to retire even young and able-bodied farmers can be observed in the contagious spread of a spirit of despair an anomie in Ballybran. This anomie is expressed in drinking patterns and alcoholism, in sexual devitalization, and most profoundly, perhaps, in the high incidence of mental illness, especially schizophrenia, among middle-aged bachelors. 122

During that 1948 visit, Kathleen Costello, a close cousin, tried to convince Beatrice that Catherine was mentally ill, but Beatrice refused to believe it, saying, as Kathleen Costello recalled, “there’s never been anything like that in our family,” and blamed their condition on John-Owen’s marriage match having been refused. Without a dowry coming in, Catherine could not “marry out.”

Beatrice was in a state of denial about the five deaths from tuberculosis. Beatrice and Mary had both refused to acknowledge tuberculosis even to themselves. TB was in some way shameful, so the cause of death was always described as influenza. County Kerry death certificates which I obtained listed the cause of deaths for all five as tuberculosis. The family medical history was hidden behind untrue stories about courtship and marriage plans that the Roman Catholic Church had supposedly not allowed. And then an influenza epidemic that took six other people in Muingaphuca helped provide cover for the many TB deaths in the O’Sullivan family. Denial about tuberculosis and mental illness was their only defense against the social stigmatization that came with those diseases, but no amount of denial could prevent the collapse of John-Owen and Catherine’s lives. Stigmatization, isolation, the total loss of marriage possibilities, the absence of the male leadership once supplied by Eugene and Johnny-O in Ireland’s patrilineal, patrilocal, and patriarchal society had destroyed the family’s ability to function.123

with me was verbal, though her speech was difficult to understand. She spoke what I perceived to be a very rustic, old form of Irish, addressing me as ye. I did a lot of the talking, just telling her stories about the family in America. Holidays, vacations, parties, church activities. She was interested in everything. John’s interaction was largely non-verbal: fixing food, making tea, taking me on walks around the property. He was happy I was there. I was the oldest of my generation, a male, and he could relate to me on that basis. When my mother Helen went to Ireland many years later with my brother Matthew, the first words he said to my mother when she arrived at the cottage was, “Where’s the boy?” Lineage and descent are important in Irish culture and society, especially patrilineal blood lines. Great-Uncle John was very happy to meet Matthew, another male descendant of his parents.

122

Scheper-Hughes, op. cit., 53-54.

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Editor’s Note: Other than that the packages were gone, what I saw inside the house in 1970 was virtually unchanged from what Beatrice had seen 22 years earlier, in 1948. My grandmother, Mary Curtin, was very distraught when I returned from Europe and told her that I had visited John and Catherine. “That’s not how the house was when my mother was alive,” she

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In 1950, perhaps in response to the death of her mother, Catherine poured kerosene on an open peat fire in the kitchen causing a fire that destroyed the roof and furnishings, though not everything was lost. Both Catherine and John-Owen were badly burned on their hands trying to put the fire out, and neighbors had to hold Catherine back from reentering the house in the midst of the flames for she apparently had hidden a large amount of money, collected over the years from the mail that had been intercepted at the road, and it went up in flames with the unopened boxes from America. The St. Vincent de Paul Society arranged hospitalization for Catherine at St. Finian’s in Killarney, the county mental hospital, and John-Owen went to West Oulagh Caragh Lake, to live with John O’Brien, a relative through marriage.

Two O’Brien men had married two of Eugene’s sisters, Catherine and Julia, 60 years earlier. For two years, John-Owen lived and worked on the farm of John O’Brien and his three sisters at West Oulagh, and in their home, John’s alienation diminished. Catherine received some treatment at St. Finian’s. The O’Sullivan house in Muingaphuca was rebuilt, and John-Owen and Catherine went back to Muingaphuca to live. My mother and my father William C. Curtin, visited them in 1966, and saw that their lives were again deteriorating. Catherine set the house on fire a second time a year or two later, but the fire was controlled and the house survived with minor damages. Sometime in the early 1970s, Catherine was recommitted to St. Finian’s Hospital in Killarney where I visited her in 1976, and some years later was transferred to St. Columbanus Hospital in Killarney, a home and hospital for patients with both mental and physical conditions.

As late as 1980, after Catherine had been hospitalized for years in St. Finian’s Hospital, the County Kerry mental hospital in Killarney, my mother was unable to acknowledge Catherine’s mental illness and blamed her “condition” (and John-Owen’s) on the fact that because neither Catherine or John had married, they had not had a satisfactory life. Their problems were blamed on the fact that John was in love with a girl he could not marry because she was a second cousin, and without a dowry coming in to the farm, there was no dowry money for Catherine to “marry out.” Knowing how

said to me in a plaintive tone. “We never lived that way when I was growing up. The house was always clean and neat.”

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The O'Sullivans of Muingaphuca

Irish families are very good at keeping their secrets secret, even from other family members, I was very curious to know the truth around John’s courtship and marriage prospects.

Touhy would be used to marry-out Catherine. At the final marriage match meeting at the O’Sullivan farm, at which the marriage contract was to have been drawn, Catherine, standing behind her mother Mary Gallivan, her uncle Jim Gallivan, and her brother so that they could not see her, raised and shook her fist at Mr. Touhy. Catherine’s raised fist and look of anger gave several messages: one, if Debbie Touhy is “brought in here,” she will never be the mistress of this farm; and two, that Catherine did not live by the norms of traditional Irish society. The match was never agreed to: the Touhy family withdrew their interest in the marriage.

I was unable to fully determine if my uncle John-Owen and grandmother Mary Gallivan were ever told the truth about the refusal because Catherine Gallivan Touhy was unwilling to talk about what happened after the refusal. She told me that I could see that for myself what the consequences of such a marriage might have been by remembering what the physical and mental condition of both John-Owen and Catherine, their broken lives, and the neglected farm had been.

I do believe, however, that despite what relatives still living remember (or think they remember), my uncle and grandmother were in fact told the truth, for the people involved were not only related, they were very good friends. The strength of family friendship, and the love that JohnOwen and Debbie Touhy had for each other, is evident in the fact that even with a tuberculosis history in the family, and gossip about Catherine being “bold and a bit queer,” the Touhys were prepared to seal the match.

Figure 29. Brother and sister: Catherine M. and John Eugene O’Sullivan, summer 1976. In 1976, during her first visit to Ireland, Helen took her Aunt Catherine out of the old people’s home in Killarney where she was living to bring her to Muingaphuca for a day visit to see her brother John and the farm. Despite their depressed circumstances, Katie and John maintained a certain lifelong dignity and confidence, as had generations of their ancestors before them, traits that are clearly revealed in this touching photograph. (Photo by Helen Curtin Moskey. Moskey Family Collection) 5. The Marriage Match Refusal Because of the bonds of friendship I had established with my mother’s first cousins over a span of 16 years and 10 visits to Muingaphuca, and the more progressive thought and attitudes of modern Irish about facing the realities of their lives, I finally learned in 1991 why the marriage match that had been arranged for John-Owen was refused. My mother’s first cousin, Catherine Gallivan Touhy, told me the story, and she knew the details well, for the intended bride-to-be was her husband’s sister, Debbie Touhy. When other cousins and two close neighbors, Doni Fenton and Mike Clifford, found out that I had been told this, they felt free to contributed their versions, which were basically the same as Catherine Touhy’s. It was quite simple, my Aunt Catherine O’Sullivan had interfered with my Uncle John-Owen’s marriage match.

John-Owen and Debbie Touhy had met through the families, had fallen in love, and in 1934, wanted to marry. John-Owen was 30, and his sister, Catherine, was 20-six. The dowry from Debbie 192

John-Owen and his uncle Jim Gallivan had a friendship known in Ireland as the “avunculate.” In an avunculate relationship, the mother’s brother gives the boy the affection, support, and friendship that is denied by the boy’s father because of the father’s need for absolute authority over the “boy” until the father retires. The avunculate was extremely important in the O’Sullivan family because both John-Owen’s father and grandfather had died when he was ten years old, and John-Owen grew up in a house with six women.

Another proof that the truth about the marriage refusal was known in the community was that the refusal was not an impediment to a good marriage for Debby Touhy. A few years later, she married a man from Glenbeigh, raised a family with him, and their marriage fit the cultural patterns of traditional farm life. John never stopped loving Debby Touhy, was not interested in anyone else, and withdrew from society. He must have realized that with tuberculosis and mental illness so visible in the family, all chances of marriage for either him or Catherine were gone. Even if another match could be made, their lives would be a living hell with Catherine in the home. Given her rebellious nature and “queer behavior,” a match would never be arranged for Catherine. The O’Sullivans were considered to be of farmer social class, and although there was illness in the family, John would never consider a marriage beneath his class, even though that might have been possible to arrange.

He gave up all interest in improving or maintaining the farm, except to provide enough potatoes for the table, and hay for the cows.

In 1982, with the help of the St. Vincent de Paul Society, Catherine was transferred to a smaller hospital, St. Columbanus in Killarney, a home and hospital for mentally ill elderly. I visit her several times on each visit to Ireland, and the staff has shown me her medical records. The diagnosis of her illness is manic-depressive. The family now calls it a “convalescent hospital” rather than openly admit the double stigmatization of tuberculosis and mental illness which caused the total collapse of traditional life for the O’Sullivan family in Muingaphuca.

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The O'Sullivans of Muingaphuca

In 1980, a new house was built on the original site and was attached to the 1900 dairy room, now roofless and sprouting spires of grass from its gables, but the old three-sided byre on the opposite end has been replaced by a one car attached garage. The old dairy room is a reminder of the past, and the long history of the Owen-Mór O’Sullivans on the land.

CHAPTER TEN

MUINGAPHUCA TODAY (1994) After, World War II, modernization of Kerry’s infrastructure and the introduction of technology to industry, labor, and communications rapidly exposed Muingaphucans to new ideas and outside influences which drastically changed their way of life. Although many remnants of old values and old superstitions have lingered, eventually the intrusion of the outside world on Muingaphuca collapsed its traditional way of life. Not every family adopted post-World War II changes and held on to past traditions, thereby preserving the “old ways” while new ways grew up around them.

That mix of old traditions and new ways of life exists in Muingaphuca today.

Ownership of a farm is a major factor in Muingaphucan identity, especially for farmers whose ancestors, like mine, were tenants of English or Anglo-Irish landlords before the Free State was established in 1916, and land was subsequently restored to the native Irish under the Land Act of 1923. Unless a family dies out, farmland is not available for sale in Muingaphuca. Land titles are passed from one generation to the next, and occasionally a transfer of a farm is made to a descendent not born in Ireland, as was the case with the O’Sullivan family when the lineage died out in Ireland, and ownership of the land was transferred to my two brothers in the United States.

In order to own a farm in Ireland, the owner must either farm the land himself, or rent the land to the first applicant, for the economy of western Ireland can only be improved through full use of the land for agriculture. Land is rented on 11-month renewable leases, a system which prevents the renter from ever claiming ownership of the land. There are also common grazing lands on the steeps surrounding Caragh Lake, and grazing rights are controlled by the town of Killorglin and the Kerry Land Commission in Tralee.

Figure 30. Catherine M. O’Sullivan, Killarney, 1976. Aunt Kate in a happy moment, sitting in the sunshine near flowers, as she visited with her niece Helen, grand-niece Kathleen McKinley, and grand-nephew Matthew Moskey. (Photo by Helen Curtin Moskey. Moskey Family Collection.)

Today, in addition to the old dairy farms which are still in operation near Caragh Lake, the land around Caragh Lake includes several 19th-century manor houses, a few of which are operated as small exclusive hotels or rented as upscale vacation homes, owned mainly by English and Germans who vacation or retire at the lake.

Since the 1980’s, some farms in Muingaphuca have been significantly improved through a land reclamation process funded by government loans to small farmers. In the reclamation process, heavy equipment is used to push top soil aside, dig four to five-foot drainage trenches around all sides of a field, clear the field of rocks, and transfer the rocks to the open trenches. The top soil is restored, and the smooth field is planted with high quality grass for grazing dairy cows and sheep.

Reclamation provides the opportunity to increase the size of the dairy herd, although farmers are cautious to not exceed eligibility limits for the European Economic Community (EEC) dairy subsidy to small Irish farmers. The EEC subsidy is an important economic benefit to the farmers in Muingaphuca, and throughout Ireland, because their opportunities to significantly expand income through enlarged dairy operations are quite limited, even for ambitious, hardworking farmers.

Most houses in Muingaphuca are one-story buildings on cement slabs, and are constructed of limestone blocks covered with smooth stucco. Older houses, most of which have been rebuilt since the 1970s, if they are occupied, are three or four room variations of the old traditional style cottages, have the house’s one entry door in the large center room, and only one window in each

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The O'Sullivans of Muingaphuca

room. As in the traditional Irish country cottage, the center room has often retained the huge open fireplace which in earlier times provided the main source of heat and cooking fire for the family, although today the fireplace may be fitted with a black iron stove. When a black iron stove is installed, the fireplace opening around the stove is filled in with limestone blocks and plaster to protect the room from the gales and rain that roar in during the winter months from the Atlantic, three miles away. Other heat sources are also used today, such as propane gas space-heaters, or electric boosters that store electricity at night when rates are low, and release heat during the day.

A large two-story well-cared for house, matching lace curtains on all its windows, stands close to Muingaphuca Road, providing the only access to the piggery. The road is often blocked by trailer trucks on their way to or from the piggery with loads of feed for the pigs, pigs for the market, or slurry, a thin mixture of pig dung and urine, for fertilizer on the fields. The owner has eight children, the largest dole, the prettiest wife, the most hired help, and several cars. He collects his dole in the early afternoon on Thursday, when the waiting line has disappeared. There is an unspoken acceptance in Muingaphuca of the difference between the financial and social status of the piggery family and other farm families. There is a resentment, though, on the part of retired people in Muingaphuca who are not farmers, but who pay taxes and do not receive the dole, that in spite of his financial success, the owner of the piggery collects the dole like everyone else who has children. The piggery owners obviously enjoy but do not flaunt their financial security, are good neighbors with well-behaved children who all work on their farm, are there to help in times of need, and contribute in various ways to the life of the community.

A number of new homes have been built in Muingaphuca since the mid-70s, and although they are of basic limestone blocks and stucco BS are often painted a pastel color rather than white like a traditional Irish country cottage. Most new homes resemble a suburban ranch style or Cape Cod American, home rather than the traditional Irish cottage. New homes are furnished comfortably, somewhat like the homes of average middle-class people in the United States, although on a more modest scale, and with fewer luxuries. New houses are larger than the traditional cottage, usually have more windows, smaller fireplaces, ornamental doors, a central heating system, and a one or two car attached garage. Many up and coming younger couples take great pride in the appearance of their new homes. Although the garage is sometimes used as the husband’s place of business, access is from the rear of the house and the front doors of the garage are kept closed. This is a noticeable change from many older farm houses where the yard is a receptacle for what appears to be junk.

Farmers in Muingaphuca rarely live in a new, or substantially improved house, as that would be a signal that they are making money. If that were to become apparent throughout the country, the welfare that small farmers receive could be withdrawn or lowered. Small farmers have lobbied politically from a position that economically they are treated unfairly. As a result, small farmers were made eligible for a family dole, a form of welfare which is calculated on the number and ages of his children. There is no embarrassment about this; in fact, farmers are quite proud that they have managed to get both the dole and the EEC subsidy. All small farmers with children of school age receive the dole, regardless of financial need. On Thursday, dole day in Killorglin, whether actually well off or financially strapped, farmers in their work clothes meet at the dole line at the cashier’s cage at the movie theater in Killorglin, stand around chatting, and often proceed to one of the pubs to talk business over a pint or two before heading home.

It is important to community life in Muingaphuca that one does not appear to have more material wealth than one’s neighbors, and for that reason, no farmer in Muingaphuca would declare his financial success to the community by building a new house, or owning a new car. A common bond, and a favorite topic of conversation, is the gloomy economic situation that they all face.

Although farmers are certainly not wealthy, they are perceived by others as exaggerating their plight, being deceitful about their circumstances in order to influence government to continue the dole as it presently is, based on the number of children, rather than on a proven need.

Owners of the new homes in Muingaphuca are usually the married sons and daughters of a local farmer who has given them a piece of land for a house, even though they do not farm, so that his family will live close to him, care for the parents when they are old, and possibly take over the farm. In addition, his grandchildren will not have to attend town schools, which Muingaphucans fear corrupts the good country values that have been passed down for generations.

The local Glounaguillagh School is also thought to be academically superior to the schools in Killorglin, which are thought to be filled with rowdy town children.

New houses in Muingaphuca are also owned by another group, people who grew up as children in Muingaphuca, worked in England for 40 or more years, and have come home to retire and build a new home. They often have sizeable English pensions paid in English Pounds, and want to build on a piece of the family land which has been farmed for years by the inheriting brother or sister.

A number of such retirees have experienced a more exciting life in London and other cities, and have more worldly tastes and opinions than their brothers and sisters who never left Muingaphuca.

These differences tend to set up a certain competition in which real or imaginary hurts are perceived, especially when more than one sibling has returned, and there is more than one new home on the property. Adult sibling competition sometimes results in gossip, backbiting, and long silences between siblings which can last for months, and even years. Because I am a neutral party, I hear about these problems, and to remain neutral, I change the subject.

Unlike the beginning of this century when the school served only the children, it is now a community center for adult recreation as well as for children’s education. The center sponsors an adult card tournament called “The Knockout,” for the game “31.” The Caragh Lake District Drama group stages one J. B. Keane play per year in the school’s auditorium, and use the school’s kitchen for preparing the tea and cake that go with such events.

The one exception in Muingaphucans’ reticence about showing off one’s success or financial status is the owner of the huge piggery, John Dwyer. Dwyer is a descendant of one of the men whose name appears with the name of Owen Sullivan (Owen-Mór) on the 1826 Rectorial Tithe Agreement mentioned earlier. The piggery looks like a sprawling factory complex that covers an acre or more of land, and its two silos pierce the sky like rockets. The piggery is located diagonally across the road about a quarter of a mile from the O’Sullivan farm.

John Sullivan (no relation), who returned from London to Muingaphuca for retirement with his wife, Jane, told me that there is a great deal of superstition around the card games, although belief in banshees and fairies, he says, went out with the arrival of TV. He complained that an O’Shea woman from town who teaches in the school and prepares the children for their First Holy Communion (implying that she should live an exemplary life that does not include superstitions), performs certain routines for good luck before playing cards. She walks three times backwards around the chair before starting a game of “31,” and during the game, crosses and uncrosses her

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The O'Sullivans of Muingaphuca

legs to get better cards. Patrick O’Shea, owner of the tiny store at the Cross, changes seats with his partner if his cards aren’t good. John Sullivan told me that such stuff has come down from the time of the Druids a thousand years ago, and he “made mention of it” to the tournament leader to have it stopped because the card-players were taking it too seriously. It seems that John may have been taking it all too seriously himself, or, possibly, having lived in England for 40 years, had absorbed attitudes and values of another culture, and no longer appreciated the rituals of Kerry’s superstitious folkways, especially since he didn’t know the game of “31” and couldn’t play! With the largest satellite dish in Muingaphuca in his back yard, he would rather watch TV and get the world’s important news each evening at 9:00 p.m. via the BBC. I told John that if I lived there, I’d want to learn the game so I could protect myself by being there, and stay up-to-date on the local gossip (which John thrives on) at the same time.

Neighbors still watch for a sign of morning chimney smoke as a sign that daily routines are underway and that all is well. A smoke signal is especially important today in situations where a farmer lives alone, and that is not an unusual situation, for the women of Ireland have changed since World War II. They are not concerned about doing “their part” to continue an obsolete way of life which is unsatisfying.

Next to agriculture, tourism is Ireland’s second industry, and in an indirect way, it is essential to the economy of Muingaphuca. Kerry’s natural beauty draws tourists who vacation in Ireland and are a market for the products of Kerry’s craftspeople: knitters, weavers, potters, musicians, artists, and jewelers, many of whom specialize in Celtic design and themes. The majority of tourists in Ireland stay in bed and breakfast houses, B&B’s, run by Irish women, usually with the help of their husbands and children. The unemployment rate is very high in Ireland, and for many families, the income from a successful B&B is the major source of the family’s annual income.

Many families vacate their bedrooms during the peak tourist season and sleep in the garage, which has been discreetly converted to a family dormitory, or in a small summer house which has been built at the rear of the property for that purpose. Irish families today are still large by American standards, but B&B children are usually exceptionally polite and well mannered, and at least during the tourist season, follow the Kerry tradition that children are to be seen and not heard. Many teenage children work with their parents in the family B&B as waiters and waitresses in the dining room, laundry, gardens, as chambermaids, and perform other chores as needed. The parents are freed to extend hospitality and take care of special needs of their guests, plan menus, food shop, and prepare the meals. The man of the house often provides taxi service to guests for a fee.

Although there are only a few B&B houses in Muingaphuca, there are many in Killorglin, which provide summer jobs for ambitious teenagers from Muingaphuca who are out of work the rest of the year.

They are busy converting their traditional Irish family life to a mini version of American society.

Muingaphuca is in the heartland of Kerry tourism. Kerry’s ancient ring forts, Lakes of Killarney, Ring of Kerry, MacGillycuddy Reeks, Skellig Michael, a monastery on a rock in the Atlantic; Dingle Peninsula and its sixth century beehive huts; “Dooks,” Kerry’s first golf course; Cahersiveen, the home of the patriot Daniel O’Connell; and many other attractions, including Killorglin’s Puck Fair, are all less than an hour from Muingaphuca. Prior to establishment of the EEC, Ireland’s tourists consisted mainly of first, second, and third generation Irish-Americans who had come “home for holiday.” But today, large numbers of Europeans vacation in Ireland, and send their children to Ireland for summer camp. The accessibility and friendliness of the Irish appeals to many Europeans who return to Ireland as the ideal place to relax while they improve their spoken English.

Some things have not changed at all in Muingaphuca. Although there is still a sense of community, and families are concerned for the welfare of one another in times of need, there is not much socialization between families, and work remains the center of life as it was during the time of my grandparents, great-grandparents, and beyond.

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Technology has replaced the shovel, and government regulations on farming subsidies, dairy sanitation, tuberculae testing for animals and milk, and the economics of the EEC keep farmers busy and secure enough that they do not work outside their farms. Wives of farmers no longer are involved in the old “egg and butter” enterprise, and do not participate in the work of the farm and animals.

Figure 31. A great-grand-niece and great-grand-nephew meet their great-grand uncle for the first time, summer 1976. From left to right: Kathleen McKinley, John Eugene O’Sullivan, and Matthew F. Moskey, standing in front of the hearth of the O’Sullivan farmhouse, Muingaphuca. (Photo by Helen Curtin Moskey. Moskey Family Collection)

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The O'Sullivans of Muingaphuca

THE PORTLAND STORIES

INTRODUCTION TO THE PORTLAND STORIES

By Helen Curtin Moskey

By Stephen T. Moskey INTRODUCTION

By Stephen T. Moskey 201 8 EAST MAIN STREET 203 MY CHILDHOOD BEDROOM 205 MISTER EMERSON 209 THE ACKERMANS OF FREESTONE AVENUE 211 THE HARTFORD CIRCUS FIRE — JULY 6, 1944 214

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Over the course of several years after her diagnosis with cancer in the mid-1990s, Helen wrote many poems, essays, short stories, and pieces of personal memoir as she sought to understand her background, her life from childhood to adulthood, the loss of her two sons, and the impact of cancer on her life. She wrote about her life experiences for creative writing courses at Trinity College, at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, and at other writing programs around the United States. As part of this process of self-discovery-through-writing, she produced poignant memoirs of her early life in Portland, Connecticut. These stories provide American context for the history of the American descendants of Owen-Mór O’Sullivan and Margaret Foley, and thus are an important adjunct to Helen’s Kerry Ethnography. The stories also provide some fascinating and colorful detail about life in Portland and in the Curtin family in the 1930s and 1940s.

The five stories reproduced here begin with the Curtins moving into 8 East Main Street in 1934, followed by a short piece in which Helen reminisces sbout the childhood bedroom that she shared in that house with her older sister Maureen. The neighborhood was a lively place in the 1940s, and two neighborhood stories follow, one about a mysterious Mr. Emerson and the other about the boisterous Ackerman family that lived on Freestone Avenue. These stories bring the East Main Street neighborhood of 60-plus years ago to life for those of us who remember it as it was in the 1950s through today.

The “Portland Stories” end with Helen’s account of how the family barely missed being caught up in the tragic, horrendous Hartford Circus Fire of 1944. As a family, as the Curtin Clan, we are perhaps all here today thanks to Mary Curtin’s — Grammy’s — Irish intuition and good common sense.

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The O'Sullivans of Muingaphuca

8 EAST MAIN STREET Excerpt from a fragment of Helen’s manuscript “The Broken Hearts: An Autobiography” (dated February 1995) My earliest recollection of my life are of the summer of 1934, when I was nearly three and a half years old. We lived on the first floor of the Reynolds house at 475 High Street in Middletown, Connecticut. Jimmy Reynolds, the only son in a family with five daughters, all of whom were then in their thirties but still unmarried, was playing a game with me in the side yard – “Race You to the Summer Chairs.” These were dark green Adirondack chairs, uncomfortable but study. I took giant steps to his baby steps and of course I won. We were both laughing and when I won, he held me up in the air to proclaim me the winner. I liked the attention and perhaps that was the beginning of my competitive spirit. I suspect it had already showed itself elsewhere.

There is little else I remember of our years in Middletown except being in a crib in the bedroom off the kitchen at nap time. Light showed around the edges of a dark green shade and I sucked my thumb, whimpering because I was in there alone. A story about my having picked the blossoms off of old Mrs. Reynold’s tulips, every one, followed me into my teen years, but I have no recollection of that. Even at the tender age of two or three I had an eye for beauty and loved the look, smell, and feel of flowers.

We moved to the house where I grew up on April 28, 1935. I had just turned 4 in March but that move is as close to me now as when it happened. The house had been built in the early 1900s, possibly 1905, and the previous owners were Bill Peterson and his wife Clara. They owned the William R. Peterson Oil Company on Main Street and our property had five garages, two in the front for cars, with another space for company offices, and three deep garages at a right angle to the others, in the back. A long dirt and gravel driveway curved around the side of the office to the back section.

Our new homestead was located at 8 East Main Street in Portland, Connecticut. It was an ideal place to grow up. The town population at the time was about 2,500, including the farms outside town. Our place was a block from the small center of town, a two-minute run through the back lots and the brownstone arch between the Town Hall and Buck Library. I spent many afternoons at the library looking at National Geographic magazines, planning my world travels when I grew up.

My first memory of 8 East Main Street is going there with my father, who was then 34, and a card playing friend of his, Ted Powers from Perry Avenue, to set up sulphur candles in tins throughout the empty house where they would burn until they burned out with all the doors and windows tightly closed. The house needed a clean-up after the previous owner’s move, and once the cellar and attic were emptied to the town dump, the sulphur would kill any bed-bugs that might have been in the house, a common fear when moving.

Figure 32. The Curtin Children, ca. 1933. At the time they moved into 8 East Main Street, Bill and Mary Curtin had three children. From left to right, Bob, Helen, and Maureen. (Photo courtesy of the McKinley Family.)

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The empty house seemed so big to me. There was a double kitchen and four other rooms downstairs, three bedrooms, a hall, a walk-in closet and bathroom upstairs, and a screened in porch the size of two rooms at the rear. My younger sister, Patricia, born in 1933, was back at High Street with Mother, but my sister Maureen, age 6, and my older brother, Bob, age 5, were with me at the new house for that first visit. We ran through the empty rooms, opening and closing doors, up the front stairs to the bedrooms and down the kitchen stairs. This was a house for hide and seek and 203

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even had glass doors between the two living rooms. The house had potential but needed a tremendous amount of work. With the double lot and five garages, and a ten-room house, $5,000 selling price must have been a bargain. But my parents remortgaged the house over and over to remodel it and make ends meet during hard times.

MY CHILDHOOD BEDROOM I want to write about the bedroom I shared with my sister, Maureen, when I was a child. Ah yes, those feather pillows. We would plump them as much as we could to get them to look bigger than they really were when we made the bed. In some ways, we were big kids playing house with real furnishings.

I had terrible allergies back then, but really didn’t know what they were. My mother thought that we had colds. I think she had the same problems that we did with allergies, but she was brought up in the wilds of Ireland and never saw a doctor until her examination at Ellis Island when she arrived in the United States at age 18. Later in my adult life I was tested for allergies, and lo and behold, I was allergic to feathers, pollen, dust, mold, dog, cat, etc. etc.

Since I have gotten my allergies under control with polyester pillows and I have had new houses that I try to keep as dust free as I can, I don’t have any of those terrible “colds”.

There was one radiator in the room, on one wall of the outside corner of the room, the northwest corner. It was high and narrow and was painted with aluminum paint so that it shined, but not in the dark. We used a long radiator brush that had twisted wires between the brush and handle. We could bend those wires to get into nooks and crannies and get the dust out. We used that brush about once a month when we were doing a super job on the room. What I remember about that radiator is that big balls of dust came puffing out of it and the more dust I found, the more satisfaction I got.

There is another thing I remember about that radiator. The sounds it made. The radiator creaked, groaned, hissed, crackled, and sometimes sputtered a fine spray of water out of the valve at the top, probably after one of us kids, most likely the boys, had tinkered with the valve.

All the radiators in the house talked, sometimes loudly, and as much as we knew that it was the radiators, if we were alone in the house (which was very seldom, as parents didn’t go out much in those days) someone would always start up with some kind of scary, creepy, ghost story. And we, naïve, would actually get scared. But the radiator got really hot and on cold nights we really loved that radiator!

Figure 33. 8 East Main Street, Portland, Connecticut, family home of the Curtins from 1934 until Mary’s death in 1991. The bay window and the garage at the back were added later. The house to the right was built and occupied by Bill and Mary’s son Robert J. Curtin, his wife Nancy O’Brien Curtin, and their children William and Erin. (Photo by Stephen Moskey 2018)

We girls each had only a few set of underwear or socks, and I felt sometimes that I didn’t even have underwear or socks that I could call my own. Talk about community living. I remember having to share my underwear and socks with my sisters when theirs hadn’t been washed and mine had. I thought it was very unfair, because they could keep their things clean if they wanted to. They were just lazy. Mother thought that we could wear them for days—that would certainly have been the case in Ireland—but very early in my life I decided that I liked to have clean underwear and clean socks every day. So I would wash them out in the bathroom sink every night, roll them in a towel, and put them on the radiator to dry while I was sleeping.

Sometimes it took more than a day or a night to dry them if we were in-between seasons and the radiator wasn’t on as frequently as in the dead of winter. I always tried to stay ahead of things.

The early wallpaper in the room has faded from my memory, but I do remember that it was faded and water spotted from leaks in the roof which worked their way to the ceiling and walls. There were brown streaks on the wallpaper at strategic spots— leak spots. At some point, probably after a new roof had been put on the house, the room got repapered. I remember that a man by the name of Olsen was the paperhanger.

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in place. There were also latches about an inch and a half wide on the outside of the window frame, and once the storm or screen was in place, Dad would adjust them so that the window was held in from the outside as well as from the inside. That way, some smart kid couldn’t drop or push the window or screen out from the inside.

The three girls in the family (yes, there was my sister Pat, too, who is three years and nine months younger than I) and from the time that we were seven or eight years old we were doing much of the cleaning of the house. It wasn’t that my mother used us for child labor: we wanted to help her because she was always so busy cooking very good meals for us, sewing most of our clothes, repairing and making over clothes, and praying. She was BIG on prayer.

Anyhow, we liked to have our home looking nice and there was no TV in those days, very few outside activities, and it was natural that we should help. My older brother, Bob, my twin, 124 did the yard work and washed the kitchen floor—things like that—and the kitchen was the size of two rooms, so that was a job. I did it many times, too. We always cleaned the living room and dining room, polished furniture, etc. on Saturday mornings so that the house would look good for the weekend when we might be apt to have [un]expected company, usually someone from “the gang” in East Hartford, or the guys at the “Hose House.” That group brings back WONDERFUL memories, but that is the subject of some other journal-workbook entry.

Right now I want to finish writing about the room.125 There were two doors in the room, one to the adjoining bedroom and one too the landing at the top of the front stairs. We had sliding latch locks on the inside of the flush side of the door, and in addition on the other side of the door that went to the adjoining bedroom there were hook and eye locks so that side could have privacy too. There was a lot of door slamming going on with five kids in the house. Mother didn’t like that and she would bellow up the back stairs from the kitchen to “stop that fighting.”

Figure 34. Maureen and Helen Curtin on Helen’s wedding day, June 4, 1949. Maureen is adjusting Helen’s veil in the bedroom they shared at 8 East Main Street. (Moskey Family Collection.)

The ceiling was stained with brown water spots, too, for the same reason. There were plaster walls and plaster ceilings in that house. No plaster-board in those days. The ceiling was not smooth like the ceilings of today are, because there was an unevenness in the repair plastering jobs and from the room leaks. The plaster loosened, chipped, and fell out in places.

The paint also chipped off, flaked off. These spots would be repaired, the ceiling would be painted again and for a few months it might look nice. I would lie in bed and look at those spots like one might look at Rorschach test ink spots, trying to see things in the variable in the designs.

The two windows in the room did have screens in the summer and storm windows in the winter. Dad didn’t always get those storm windows up, if I remember right. Putting the storms and the screen in and out was a very big job. Ladders were needed and the storm windows were heavy and glass could easily be broken. The windows were cleaned at that time too, and we kids had to help clean the storm windows while they were on the ground. Dad would go up the ladder and clean the outsides of the windows of the house, then go down and get a storm window, back up the ladder and put it in. There were hook and eye hinges on the outer window sill and up at the top of the frame so that someone would be on the inside to hook them in once Dad had them 206

What did I see from those two windows in the room? I had a clear view of the corner of Freestone Avenue and East Main Street, which is the street where we lived. I could see the church spire of St. Mary’s Church in the winter when the sky was clear without trees. At the other window I could see the “lots” where we played softball nearly every night in the summer in teams made up of boys and girls. (I grew up during a time where boys and girls shared equally in games and activities.) The old public grammar school was also on the “lots,” and in the summer when the carnival parked there, I could see that from my window, too. Mom hated that week more than anything else that happened in that neighborhood. We kids loved it. I saw the Town Hall, the “pipes” in back of the town hall—huge new sewer pipes stored there for future use. We loved to jump the pipes as a daring adventure, but that was strictly forbidden because one of the neighborhood kids had broken an arm doing that. We did it anyhow sometimes. I saw some neighbor houses, our back yard, and all of the vegetable gardens. During World War II everyone

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Helen and Bob were less than one year apart in age. Children born within 12 months of each other in Irish-Catholic families were often called “Irish Twins.” Helen and Bob told everyone that they were twins.

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If Helen wrote about weekend visitors, the essay has been lost. The “gang” from East Hartford is probably a reference to relatives and childhood friends of Helen’s father, William Curtin; and the “hose house,” to members of the Portland Fire Department.

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The O'Sullivans of Muingaphuca

had a Victory Garden and we were darn proud of our garden. There were no weeds in our garden and our vegetables won many prizes at the 4H-Club Fairs. But all of that is another story.

MISTER EMERSON Last night a memory popped into my head about when I was a child and hoboes would come to our door for a meal. It was in the period of approximately 1938 to 1942.

There was one gentleman in particular who came through twice a year, spring and fall.

He told us he went south in the winter, probably to Florida, because he needed to be where it was warm. He was a nice old man, very much the gentleman, and my mother taught us to respect him because he was down on his luck, homeless, and probably without a family. So we did treat him with respect and addressed him as “Mister.” We learned that his last name was Emerson, but still, we called him “Mister.” I wonder what he thought about being called “Mister” and being greeted and treated as if he were someone special.

Growing up, we led a secluded life even though we lived in town. Mother told us very little about life, or sex, or the world, so we were naïve. We had no grandparents, only one aunt who did not marry, no uncles, and no cousins. We had family in Ireland, of course, but we knew little about them and it would be many years before I or anyone ever met them. I suppose that this old man was some kind of image of a grandfather or an old uncle to us.

The house we lived in had both a front door and a kitchen door at the street side of the house. Our hobo always came to the kitchen door. We children would go to the door if we were at home, and if I was the one to go, I’d come running back into the kitchen calling, “Mom, Mr. Emerson is here,” in a voice that must have made him feel welcome. I was always glad to see him because he bought with him something of a sense of the world outside of our experience at home in Portland.

He never was invited into the house. Mother would come to the door to greet him, and would always ask him if he would like to have something to eat. Of course he said, “Yes.” While mother was preparing a plate for him, we children would be out on the back step with him, talking with him, but really looking him over, noticing everything about him. He was very kindly to us children, told us little stories about places he had been, and teased us a little about us being good children. It was obvious to us, as young as we were, that he liked us.

Figure 35. Saint Mary’s Church, Freestone Avenue, Portland, circa 1910. The cornerstone of Saint Mary was laid on April 15, 1877. Generations of Portland Catholics were baptized, confirmed, married in, and buried from Saint Mary’s. In 1972, the Church was closed due to structural weaknesses and went through a lengthy renovation and repair. It was re-dedicated in 1978. In June 1991 the Church was destroyed as the result of an electrical fire. The building that had been spiritual home of the Curtin Clan, the church where we were baptized, confirmed, married, and buried from was gone forever. (Photo source: eBay)

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At the time, I had no idea how old he was, but looking back, I would say that he was around 60. He was a small man, medium height, say 5’8” or so, but he was of slight build--there wasn’t an ounce of fat on him. He was always dressed in dark clothes, grey or black, and wore a dark fedora hat. When he walked, I noticed that his shoes were always too big for him, and his socks did not stay up on his thin legs. They were always rumpled around his ankle, probably because they were not washed often and lost their shape. His shoes were not shined, but they weren’t scuffed either. He probably put a little shoe polish on them, but then didn’t bother to polish it off to a shine. That would have looked a little out of place with the rest of his attire.

Imagine a hobo with shiny shoes?

His complexion was ruddy, and he had a rather large bulbous nose with porous skin. He wore steel-rimmed glasses that seemed to be down on the end of his nose most of the time. He was bald in the forehead, but his hair, what there was of it, was light and wispy, long around his ears, and he pulled it back over his ears.

He was a knight of the road, but probably called himself a travelling salesman, for he did have things to sell. He had a little case with what you might call “notions” in it, small useful 209

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items like thread, needles, pencils, erasers, tape measures, rulers, pads of paper, thumbtacks, common pins, safety pins, shoelaces—things like that. These things were for sale. My mother usually bought some little thing from him; after all, she gave him a free meal. Perhaps he gave her some small thing as a thank you.

THE ACKERMANS OF FREESTONE AVENUE

I would often sit out there on the step with him while he was eating his meal. I liked to see a hungry person eat. He always removed his hat to eat. My mother gave him a small bowl with hot water and soap so that he could wash his hands before he ate. Sometimes my mother would call me into the house and tell me that it wasn’t right for me to be out there watching someone eat. She was right.

The Ackermans were one of the most interesting families in the neighborhood. They moved into our neighborhood about ten years after we did, in the late 1930s or early 1940s, and by the time they arrived, we Curtins were well-settled citizens in Portland, Connecticut. We lived near the center of town, and that was a nice working-class neighborhood, but not as classy as up-street, towards Gildersleeve where the town’s oldest families lived, and most of its professional people, too. However, we had Judge Flood Just a few doors away from us. 126 The Judge’s sister was Mrs. Gaffney and she was a friend of my mother.

I knew that he had no home, and I felt sorry for him and I felt good that my mother gave him food. We didn’t have a lot of money, we did have lots of bills, but we always had enough food that we could give a hungry man a meal. He was very thankful.

We always wondered who this man was, where he came from, if he had any family. He was a mystery. We learned years later that we were his family, at least in his eyes.

One day my mother got a telephone call from a morgue in Massachusetts. Mr. Emerson had died and on his person was information that in case of death, his nearest relative was my mother. Of course my mother could not accept the body and the responsibility for burial, so the state of Massachusetts buried him as a homeless person. And we grieved over the death of Mr. Emerson. Not just that he was dead, because we understand that all people die, but that he died alone, without family.

We thought that we were just one more stop on the road for Mr. Emerson. He thought of us as his family.

This unusual relationship speaks to me of what brotherhood is all about. This man was a fellow American, and a brother in the human society, and that is how we treated him. I dare say that we gave that man more genuine affection as a human than some people get from their true families. Whatever it was, it impressed that man. We were his family.

The thing I remember most about Mrs. Gaffney was this. She had one son, Harold, and a husband, Leo. In their house, a rented duplex, they had three bedrooms—one for her (she was not well), one for her husband, and one for her son. Our family had five children, two boys and three girls, and we had three bedrooms, too.

Mrs. Gaffney would come to our house in the afternoon for a cup of tea with my mother every couple of weeks. She wasn’t really a gossip, she was just nosey. Invariably, the conversation would get around to where we all slept. It bothered her how three girls could sleep in the same room, especially when there was a spread of six years between us, and the bedroom had one double bed. How she knew that I don’t know. Maybe she noticed when the sheets were on the line that there were no twin bed sheets. I remember hearing my mother say to her, “Catherine, don’t you worry about it. We put them to bed one at a time, and as soon as one of them falls asleep, we pick her up and hang her by the back of the neck on one of the coat hooks in the closet. That way there is plenty of room for everyone and all the problems are solved.”

You know what Mrs. Gaffney said? “You’re trying to fool me. Don’t they wake up when you try to move them?”

Back to the Ackermans. They came from way up near the Glastonbury town line, off of Route 17. They lived up there for at least a few years before they came into town. They had seven children: five boys and two daughters. A couple of the boys were older than my oldest brother, Bob, and that suited him just fine. He always wanted to do things that were older, and my mother was trying to hold him back. Dad wasn’t around that much at night because he was a salesman of electric appliances and made calls for the sale at night when the men were home.

The Ackermans moved into the “long row” on Freestone Avenue. That’s what we called the building because there were four units in it, all duplexes with two rooms down, and two

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Thomas C. Flood, who was born in 1886 and died in 1948, was Portland's town clerk and a member of the town's Engine Company 1. He served as a bankruptcy referee, was on the State Bar Examining Committee, and was an officer for the Connecticut Probate Assembly. He was a member of the Young Emerald Total Abstinence Society and the Ancient Order of Hibernians and was on the board of directors for the Diocesan Bureau of Social Services for the Hartford Diocese. Judge Flood’s descendants remained friendly with the Curtin family for many years.

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rooms up. At that time, there were no indoor bathrooms, and there was a row of outhouses in the back—another “long row.” At the time, the Lees also lived there on one end of the row, and the other end house was occupied by a family named the Atkinsons. One of the Atkinson girls was Norbertine, and the boy, Wesley, was in my brother’s class. Wesley was kind of soft and plump.

My mother thought that the Ackermans were kind of “wild.” They had shotguns. My brother Bob loved that because he had a gun, too. It was either a 22 rifle, or a 20-gauge shotgun.

The guns were never aimed or shot in the neighborhood. The boys would go off to some field to target shoot, and it always made my mother nervous. Dad gave Bob permission to have the rifle, and I know he took care of teaching Bob how to use it. We were not a careless family in any way. But the Ackermans were different: that’s what made them so interesting.

The most obvious thing about them was that one of the boys, Walter Ackerman, had lost a leg in a gun accident up there near Glastonbury on Isinglass Hill Road. When it happened, his older brother Bill ran three miles as fast as he could to get home and get help. In the meantime, Walt lay on the ground and nearly bled to death. Because Mom knew about that accident and the loss of a leg, she was very, very unhappy about my brother Bob having a gun of any kind. The way it was in our family, Dad made the decisions about what the boys would and could do, and Mom made the decisions about the girls.

One day after they had moved into the neighborhood, Walt and my brother Bob were coming home from “somewhere” and Walt was hopping on one leg, supported with one arm around my brother’s shoulder, and with the other arm he was supporting his wooden leg which he was carrying on his other shoulder. It seems that it was hurting him and he couldn’t stand it, so he took it off and carried it home. At that time, with a wooden leg, as a boy grew, the leg would get tight around the stump, which in Walt’s case was above his knee. The wooden leg would have to be scooped out to make it roomier. It was one wild sight to see a kid carrying his wooden leg over his shoulder.

Mrs. Ackerman was very different from my mother, who was very proper about everything. The Irish won’t give anyone the opportunity to say anything bad about them. Mrs. Ackerman rolled her nylon stockings down to her ankles—something my mother would never do. Her stockings were held up with a tight girdle. Actually, it made sense to roll them down because that way they did not get runs and snags in them, especially when you had to go through long grass to get to the outhouse, and I don’t think that the wooden seats were sanded, shellacked and free of splinters.

Mrs. Ackerman wasn’t a very good cook, or a good housekeeper. I can’t say I blame her what with seven sons, a husband, and one daughter. Eight men can make a lot of mess, and they were rough around the edges. They didn’t wash their hands before they ate, or after they used the outhouse. These things disgusted my mother. She had her way finding those thing out: asking masked innocent-sounding questions of us kids.

The O'Sullivans of Muingaphuca

I don’t know how good or how bad a woman she was. I could see that she loved her children. She did not make a fuss about things and they were good kids. They just were not clean. And Mrs. Ackerman did not cook and fuss about table manners like my mother did.

My brother Bob tells the story of the day he was in the Ackerman house and Mrs. Ackerman opened the buttons on her blouse, took out a breast, squeezed it, and shot milk across the room, just to provide a little entertainment for the boys. She was breast feeding a baby at that time and said something like, “Sorry, boys, I just needed to unplug the hose.” That was typical of Mrs. Ackerman.

Another reason why my mother didn’t want us there was that the “long row” had a reputation for all the families that lived there having head lice. Mom believed that if there were head lice, there probably were bed bugs there, too. I think I only stepped into that house once, just out of curiosity. I was a very clean girl and the thoughts of getting head lice or bed bugs frightened me.

Mr. Ackerman was a tall thin man with blond hair. I never knew much about him, where he worked, or what he did for a living. We were brought up not to ask nosey questions of our friends about their parents. We were also told not to answer nosey questions about our parents.

That’s the way it was in those days.

The boys in that family had blond hair, too. They also had wide mouths with big teeth and large noses. They were handsome. They all smiled a lot, and laughed with big, noisy laughs. They were very down-to-earth people who dealt with life on its terms, not on theirs.

The family did not belong to any religion and the children were not baptized. That bothered my mother a lot and when Bill Ackerman showed an interest in our religion, Catholicism, my mother jumped on that and before Bill Ackerman knew what was happening, he was converted, baptized, and confirmed. He went into the Navy, came home looking wonderful, and my sister Maureen fell in love with him. That went nowhere, much to my mother’s relief.

Bill went back to the Navy and Maureen went away to nursing school. Eventually the Ackermans moved out of state.

Years later, sometime perhaps in the 1970s, Bill Ackerman showed up at my mother’s door one day from California. He had a lovely wife and two children with him. He told my mother that she was a powerful influence in his life and that he never forgot her, that he thought about her more than she would ever know, and that he owed her a lot for showing him that he could do something worthwhile with his life.

We loved to go to the Ackermans. Mrs. Ackerman smoked cigarettes. She was the only woman we knew who smoked. That was Forbidden. Bad woman! But she was fun. She poked fun at her boys, and at us, too. She saw through the fact that she was in a neighborhood that was too uppity for her. Can you imagine living in a “long row” with a “long row” of outhouses and that being too uppity?

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The O'Sullivans of Muingaphuca

The O'Sullivans of Muingaphuca

THE HARTFORD CIRCUS FIRE

WAKING TO MORNING IN MUINGAPHUCA (1994)

In my memory of Thursday, July 6, 1944, Dad had worked the midnight shift at Pratt & Whitney Aircraft in East Hartford. He normally got home about 7:30 a.m., ate breakfast, and went upstairs to bed to sleep. But on this morning, Dad was still up at 8:00, talking with my mother. I was in the kitchen with both my parents, and some of the other four siblings were there, too.

Dad should have been in bed by now, but he was talking to Mom about taking the family to Hartford that day to see the Barnum and Bailey Circus.

In Memory of Aunt Kate

We children (Maureen, age 15; Bob, 14; Helen, 13; Pat, 10; and John, 7) were usually not allowed to listen in on parental discussions, but I was there in the kitchen and heard Dad talking to Mom about going to sleep for a few hours and then taking the family to the Barnum and Bailey Circus in Hartford that afternoon That was just like Dad! He grew up in America, an allAmerican boy, big tattoo on his arm—eagle and flag—and he wanted to give us kids the allAmerican experience of going to the Big Top Circus.

I was waiting silently, breathlessly, for the decision they would make. But Mom had no interest in seeing the circus. The idea of a circus and crowds of people, circus animals, all of the tremendous heat of a July day that was already 80 degrees at 10:00 a.m. (and probably would rise to the 90s by afternoon) was not appealing to her.

I believe, however, there was more to it than that.

Mom was a person with second sense. She had premonitions, dreams, and other extrasensory perceptions that often turned out to have some validity, and her thoughts on that day prevailed. “It’s too hot,” she said. “There will be crowds of people and it’s hard to keep track of you five kids in the huge crowds.” And then, almost prophetically, she said: “ Crowds panic sometimes, I just don’t feel right about it. It’s too hot.” She told my father, “You need your sleep.” Dad tried hard to convince Mom that it would be a great outing for the family, but Mom held firm to her conviction that it was not a good thing to do. It could be dangerous keeping track of everyone in the crowd, the heat, the animals, etc., etc. Dad gave in and we did not go.

The temperatures that day went to a high in Hartford of 88 degrees. We had the lawn sprinklers out that afternoon. In 1944, even at age 13, it was okay to enjoy that cooling in your own back yard with your ten and seven-year-old siblings. Pouting about parents’ decisions was not okay. Mom could not in good conscience agree to going to the circus that day, and so we did not go.

By Helen Curtin Moskey

The fierce buzz of two black horseflies mating over my bed.

Lace shadows on cement floor, sunlight through Irish crochet.

Two goats bleating objections to my car in the yard, flee from me as I open the kitchen door.

A creamy cow grazes near moss-grown walls; her calf bumps her udder with its milk-stained snout,

News of a fire at the Hartford circus fire spread within the neighborhood during the afternoon, and we turned on WTIC Radio from Hartford to hear about it. We were all speechless: we could have been among the victims were it not for the protection of Almighty God who spoke to our mother through her common sense, and revealed to her that such a family outing could be dangerous for us.

juts its tongue for the long teats.

We were very subdued that night. We said the family Rosary together and safe in our home. In retrospect, I understand how the Israelites might have felt when the tenth plague, the death of the first-born, bypassed them. What thanksgiving could I give to the Lord for saving the lives, rerouting the destinies, of me and my family?

My heart tells me

There is a calmness on this rocky land.

I should stay here forever.

Copyright © 1994 by the Literary Estate of Helen Curtin Moskey.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I wish to thank those who have assisted in the preparation and publication of this book.

As my mother’s literary executor, I wish to thank the many people who helped her a quarter-century ago in conceptualizing, researching, and writing the Kerry Ethnography, especially Professor Jane H. Nadel-Klein of Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut—Helen’s teacher, mentor, and, I think, a role model for her. Dr. Nadel-Klein went far beyond what any professor is expected to give to her students and continued to advise Helen on the Ethnography for at least a year after her graduation from Trinity.

Thanks are also due to the historical societies and libraries in Ireland where Helen conducted her research with original, primary sources on Irish and O’Sullivan family history. Mr. Thomas Doyle of the Killorglin Historical Society (now the Killorglin Archive Society) shared with her his own research on the Caragh Lake and Muingaphuca area and sat for interviews with her. (Those interviews have been lost.) His work and the interviews are cited in the Ethnography’s footnotes.

Helen also consulted the records of Saint James’s Church, Killorglin; did research at the Killorglin Historical Society and at the Killarney Historical Society; and found references to the land of Owen-Mór O’Sullivan in tax records at the Kerry Library in Tralee.

As I worked on preparing these materials for publication, I received splendid assistance from Jana Fuhrmann, who transcribed The Mary Curtin Tapes, re-typed the “Lawler Manuscript” of Helen’s Kerry Ethnography, and re-typed The Portland Stories and several of Helen’s poems. All of the originals were in rough condition—often printed on reused paper on a dot-matrix printer over 25 years ago. Jana skillfully deciphered the dot-matrix print and Helen’s handwritten edits and produced a clean text that served as the basis for this edition.

Special thanks are due to my McKinley cousins who provided many of the illustrations in this volume and who helped clarify points of family history: Patricia McKinley, David McKinley, and especially Maria McKinley, who scanned many of the photographs. Thanks are also due to David for his poignant photograph of the front window of the O’Sullivan ancestral home in Muingaphuca, which appears on the cover of this volume Finally, I want to thank Helen’s sister, my aunt, Patricia Curtin Lawler, and her husband, Thomas M.C. Lawler, for the love and encouragement they gave to Helen over the many years that she worked so hard to become a writer and family historian. It was their copy of the Kerry Ethnography manuscript that served as the basis for this published version, and I am grateful to them for making it available to me.

— Stephen T. Moskey Washington, D.C., November 11, 2019

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