Irish Odyssey, Day 5: Pure Nostalgia and Family History

Having once got into hot water over the word “Bog” which was taken as a slur, I was wary about “The Kerry Bog Village – 18^th/19^th Century”, and doubly so when we neared the place, where a coach was disgorging a full load of tourists. Where they went is anybody’s guess, for we had the place practically to ourselves. We didn’t see a café, so I suppose this answers itself.

The “village”, a misnomer, because there are no villages, certainly in this part of Ireland, so the five whitewashed dwellings would not have existed in proximity. They are all relatively small but vary in dimension and contents according to the status of the former occupier, respectively a turf cutter, farrier, farmer, labourer and thatcher:  Jeremiah Mulvihill, Jack Bell O’Sullivan, Phil McGillicuddy, Denny O’Riordan & Paddy Browne. Women, invisible by name, as per usual, do get mentioned in the blurb “they made their own cheese and butter”, “they were active around the farms, as well as carrying out rigorous domestic chores”, and as younger persons were reminded, without any of the appliances now taken for granted.

The cottage of Browne the thatcher was the most “luxurious”, as it once had a ladder, (“now removed for safety purposes”) to an upper storey, from which peeps a tiny window.

Phil the farmer was “successful” but lived in the usual one room which the family shared with livestock, perhaps a cow in calf, or the pig selected for fattening. The animals were held behind a paling and helped to keep the place warm.

Indoor farm craitereen did not come as a particular surprise to me, as this was the custom throughout history, and not quite beyond living memory in England either. My grandfather kept a calf, albeit not indoors, but in a shed in the back garden of his terraced house in Soundwell Road, Kingswood. In a town. Early 20^th century. Grampy Honour had long since ceased to be a farmer with his own land, but habits die hard.  My Mum didn’t recall what happened to the calf.

As for these two chaps, Mum had their twin, or perhaps triplet, only hers was cream and slightly less bashed about; and I’ll tell you what, an enamel pot makes the best cup of tea you’ll ever have. And it keeps the tea hot. Builders’ of course, leaf tea, Co-op Red Label, a strainer and a little milk lad sugar……. Beware drinking from enamel cups though, unless you are a masochist who likes to skin your lips.

The mangle was no stranger either. I often had a turn of the handle of one like this, though ours was a bit smaller. The clothes were fed between the rollers and the water streamed out into a bath below. The novelty wore off pretty quickly. It was not soft work.

McGillicuddy’s house had a fine roof and a paved floor much easier to sweep than the compacted mud floor of the tiny cottage where Denny Riordan, the labourer, lived alone.

Denny Riordan’s House

In another cottage a thin skirl of a flute drew us towards “a rack”, where we dutifully sat and jiggled our feet in time to the music. In front of the small hearth, with a peat fire, one of the most evocative scents on earth, a boy sat so still that at first, we took him for a waxwork. In a choice of YTS jobs, this would not rank the most exciting, and the music was just the one tune, on a loop. I sympathised with the youngster; after a while it would drive anybody crazy.

I tell a lie about the women all being unnamed.

A roofless ruin and an eviction notice, 1849, during the famine years, illustrates the story of Mary Campbell, a poor widow with a string of children. Though Mary lived in Roscommon, such evictions were commonplace. Similar piles of stones dot the Irish countryside, the seemingly picturesque disguising the grotesque.

Gilbert Mahon was an “absentee landlord”, with a local agent, an obvious relative, Bartholomew Mahon, and near the top of a notorious chain of Irish land occupancy. The spiel following Gilbert’s name was designed to put the fear of God into his tenant. Closer examination reveals that he was an officer, but a mere lieutenant, not that much to write home about, though it would have sounded grand to Mary.  As would the succeeding full technicolour pomp “of His Majesty’s Ninety Fourth Regiment of Foot now quartered in the East Indies”, which seems designed to rub it in. “You are a snivelling wretch, far beneath my shiny boot,” it implies. [1]

It would not do to go to a Bog Village and not see a Bog Body.  Iron Age Clonycavan Man, 372-201 BCE, was not found here but in a bog on the West Meath Border and unfortunately for us now resides in the Dublin Museum. We only have the photograph on the information board. He was 5’9” tall, about 25 years old, of slim build, with a stylish coiffeur, a quiff held in place by bark resin gel. Only his top half survives, the rest chopped off by a plough, adding insult to injury, as he was undoubtedly a human sacrifice. A sobering thought.  Never talk to me about “The Good Old Days.”

Clonycavan Man and Bristol Man There must be something in this ancestry business!

Before we left George fed and petted a couple of Kerry Bog Ponies – a native breed now back to healthy numbers after being threatened with extinction.  John Mulvihill, surely a connection of Jeremiah the Turf Cutter, was among those whose determination was responsible for this favourable outcome.

We had stayed in the Bog Village longer than intended and left it late to find somewhere serving lunch. It was nearing three, before we luckily chanced upon the Sala Thai restaurant within the Kells Bay Gardens.

Speaking for myself it was the best meal I had all week, a selection of Thai Veg curries, (the others tucked in too, but they are not so picky as me). The portions were so generous we asked for a doggy bag to take with us and were smilingly obliged.

“Great stuff”, Kevin said with satisfaction, “that’s dinner sorted out too. The next place we’re staying in is self-catering!”

Then, nicely repleted, we were off to an old favourite, Kells Bay.

Ahhhh..…. Kells Bay. Starting in 1973 we spent three happy holidays in Kerry where George’s Aunty Bridey had a farm. We would bundle a mountain of camping stuff and our infantry into the car and off we went to ultima thule, the end of the earth.  George, who everybody still called Norman then, (or “Daddy”) was a young father of three and – er – I was slightly older.

Why did we stop going there? And why three years in a row? Well, in 1976 we discovered Dorset; Seatown first, then Charmouth and with it – fossils.  We are a family of obsessives, who take our interests by the teeth like a dog on a rabbit. And don’t let go. Family holidays from then on meant camping at Charmouth – and – aside from the lockdown and illness, Charmouth has rarely escaped a year without one or other of us showing up for a week or a day or even half a day.

Though we have been to Ireland quite a few times since, never again to Kells Bay. When Kevin said it was the first thing in his life he could remember, it was essential to go back.  Sea, sand, rock pools and Shangri La.

Father and son, 1973 and 2025.

His first encounter, though not his first memory, was on Tuesday, 3rd July 1973. He was two years old:

“Finding a signpost marked ‘Kells Bay’ we drove down a leafy winding track for about three miles and finally came upon a little headland, a fringe of pebbles, a strip of sand and the sea. The tide was out and there were plenty of little rocky pools cut off and teeming with wildlife. Though Celia was more cautious, Caroline, ecstatically threw off her shoes and raced into one of the pools. Equally enraptured, Kevin leapt after the elder of his two sisters, omitting to remove any part of his clothing, least of all his footwear. Not expecting to encounter water, he turned in mid-air for a moment, and with a look of astonishment turned again, tripped and fell flat on his face into the pool. It was only about six inches deep, but it was enough to wet him completely. Norman fished him out and he stood there gasping, small, salty and woebegone as I stripped off his clothes. “Worse than ‘Trapped in a Vest and other horrors’, eh Kevs?” I soothed.

“’Eth,” Kevin said, sadly but bravely, through chattering teeth as I carried him to the car clad in my white thick-knit jumper, which reached down to his feet, his arms and our hair gripped in a fierce wind.”  

(If this is too much “Walton’s” [“Goodnight, John Boy, Goodnight, Gran’paw”] for everybody, I would just like to mention that the saga of this historic holiday, portrayed above, starts with the Baby’s father (!) still at sea, but getting ready to disembark, whispering a risqué joke into the Baby’s mother’s shell – like. Not in front of the children!)

Kells Bay on the day in 2025, and an artist’s impression of the same view – by Celia, who had just turned four in 1973, with the headland and mountains in the background.

Caroline in blue, is next to the artist, who for some unknown reason has a pirate’s eyepatch, and Kevin with yellow hair is in the shallows. Their parents are underwater, with just a couple of heads showing. Not swimming, but drowning?

I picked up a (small) rock before we left. I felt quite sad.

When I was writing this account I came upon Emma Langford singing “The Long Winding Road to Kells Bay”:

Emma’s gentle voice conveys why the place means a lot to us.

We made two more stops, Bahaghs Workhouse and the late Aunty Bridey’s farmhouse, down a winding road, almost off the map, at Killognoveen. Nothing is complete in itself, and life overlaps. I have told of both these places, within the Lindegaard family history, which will appear on this blog in due course.

To accentuate the positive, it is better to say little about the accommodation that night, particularly as Brutus Tours is sensitive to any hint of criticism. The bright unfulfilled promise of “the next place we’re staying at is self-catering” is now in the hands of lawyers. Our lovely leftover curry stayed in our luggage until consigned to a waste bin at Cork Airport a day and a half later.  George and I would have been warmer that night in a bothy. Algernon of Brutus Tours, of course, “slept like a dream”.

As my dear Dad might have said, “Woss mean? Stop thee moanin’. Wuss things ‘appen at sea. Shut up, ‘ut?” [2] Which is the only bit of Bristol I can muster for what is, after all, all a Bristol blog.

[1] I have written fully about the hierarchy of Absentee Landlords, Agents and Tenants, in the Lindegaard Family saga, “The Linden Tree” which I hope will appear online after publication.

[2] This is straight from the Anglo-Saxon songbook. For those who speak only modern English, it translates as: “What do you mean? Please stop complaining.  Worse things happen at sea. Be quiet, will you?”  “UT?” is unique, with an extra vowel to those we know and pronounced somewhere between “uh” & “oot”. It is the shortened form of “Wilt thou?”