ATHENRY THEN AND NOW – PART 2

Source: Contact Magazine, December 1979

Author: Aggie Qualter

‘Often I think of this dear old town,

and with joy that is almost pain,

I go back to the past, and wonder there,

With the friends and the dreams of years that were,

I live my lost youth again.’

As I glance across the “Bridge of Time” I see my young years in Athenry as exceedingly happy, but they can also be accurately described as “Lean Times”. Everyone was in the same boat.

Living standards had steadily worsened – the farmers and workers alike were on their knees. There was no hope for the young people but the “Emigrant Ship”. They left in large numbers to begin a new life in America, and their going from a close-knit community caused great sadness. It was ‘Good Bye’ for ever – they never returned. To this day I have shattering memories of the American Wakes and the aftermath of loneliness, heartbreak and frustration.

At the approach of the ‘twenties! things began to happen, grave unrest was evident. The peelers were on full alert, all the signs were ominous. At Athenry feelings boiled over, enough was enough. The people could take no more. It started at Moorpark with the Assassination of Shaw-Taylor the big landowner. His death caused a great sensation and hit the headlines with widespread condemnation on the British Press, but as I listened to the ‘grown – ups’ I learned there was little sympathy for the Shaw-Taylors or their class. Everyone realized that it took desperate action to break down the diabolically corrupt and unjust laws, which held our people in bondage. The Shaw-Taylor evictions in the early century inflicted terrible sufferings and hardships in innocent parish families. Happily, the Crown failed in the prosecution, soon the country was gripped in the all out War for National Independence (The rest is history)

Not with-standing the war my ‘growing up’ years in Athenry were happy, adventurous and care-free. I attended the Presentation Schools where the ‘crack’ was great. The girls were fantastic, and the nuns wonderful. The late Mother Ignatius stands out as one of the best teachers in Ireland.

“Rounders” “Skipping” and “Hunting” were the popular games and pastimes. We tramped and ran miles – cross-country to the Moneen, Graig Abbey and Knockbrack. We needed no slim-down, P.E. or keep-fit classes, we used our own limbs as nature intended. We hadn’t a ‘dime’ but life was worth three life-spans.

The streets were completely free of traffic – a bicycle was a status symbol – so we could romp and play as we pleased. The Kitchen Hoolies with the Big-horn Gramaphone, card games and story telling around the big turf fires were the winter-night pastimes.

In those years doctors were seldom called to any house-never for everyday common ailments, whooping cough, measles and mumps were the natural child diseases. “They” said a child was never right until he had caught all those infections. People were very clean, but the present day emphasis on hygiene and germs was just ‘not on’. We had no dread of flies- like the fleas they were there in plenty – a bad wound was bared so that the flies would rest on it- as a result the wound healed quickly. The old people believed that one breed of germ killed another, and so “Nature’s Balance’ was maintained. Antibiotics, Pep-Ups, Tranquillisers of modern medicines were not then discovered, but we all survived – and in our health D.G. People relied on home cures for almost everything, and they worked. A few come to mind , Heated coarse salt in a woolen stocking for throat ailments, Cobwebs for bleeding. Green water for skin-diseases. Baked pig manure poultice for poison or inflammation.

Three feeds of boiled young nettles in Spring for the blood; poultices and herbal plasters for ‘this and that’ the ‘Dogs-lick’ for sores that would not heal was a great one. I was treated with all of those and twenty others in my time. They all worked miracles I AM STILL ALIVE.

In the past as always we had our favourite priests. I remember the late Canon Farragher as the grand simplistic Flaithiulacht Man. Time and again we had the ‘Holy Terror’ with his big stick hunting the courting couples; the foolish priest who would not allow the girls play Camogie, but to crown it all we had the silly foolish people who heeded them. Times have changed thank God. A ‘Strong Faith’ was always the binding force of the Parish Community. The great demonstration of Marian Devotion was ever witnessed at ‘Lady’s Well’. As a child I stood spell bound watching the people make the stations on their knees. This is a Holy place made sacred by the prayers of former generations, sanctified by the Spirit of their great faith. The pilgrimage to ‘Tobar Muire” goes back hundreds of years. Tradition tells us that De Birmingham prayed there for Victory before the “Battle of Athenry! in 1316.

What do people of my generation miss most in the Athenry of today? My answer is “Friendliness” – the most important essential for living – the Humility, Simplicity and Sincerity that was.

Looking on from the side line, I believe the middle generation failed to some extent, and unknowingly lost some of the real values of life on the road to material progress. What of the Youth? Young people are rapidly developing the qualities which enrich the Irish Heart. I see it all around me. Without piety or craw-thumping hypocrisy they reach out in search of true fulfilling meaningful christianity. Given the proper leadership from the Church and State youth will make dreams come true for Athenry, and the Ireland of the future.

The birth of the nation in 1922 brought many birth-pangs. The framework of the New Ireland was laid – an Ireland that was built from “Scratch and Scrape”. Progress was slow and difficult Athenry like the rest of the Country had to wait more than a decade to reap the rewards of National Independence.

Aggie Qualter (Senior Citizen)