I was born in 1933 at Swangate, Athenry, in what was known as the ‘Burnt Houses’. My father’s name was William Waldron from Mulpit and my mother’s name was Eileen Cavanagh from Duncormick, CountyWexford. I had four sisters: Mary and Rose who were older than me and Nora and Anne who were younger than me. 

Where I was born at Swan Gate there were six houses with families in them. Starting at Brodys, you had Hoades and McHughes. Next was Mom Nolan who always wore a little plaid shawl on her shoulders. She used to bring me in, give me dip bread in milk and then dip it in sugar. I suppose that’s where I got my ‘sweet tooth’. The next house was Ryans, Pat and Molly, who had four children, Pakie, Mattie, Kathleen and Thomas. Pat used to drive the horse-drawn bread van for Richard Nolan. 

We were the next house. My father worked for Sean Broderick, the Fine Gael TD at the time. He built those houses at Prospect for Tom Curran. They were known as Curran’s houses. The next family was the Cunniffes, Michael and May. May’s father, Ned, lived with them. His nickname was ‘Old Ned”. They had a large family: Eddie Jackie, Mickie, Kitty, Tomsie, Gertie, Pauline. Paddy Nel, Francis were born in Park in the end house. 

There was another house next to Cunniffes but it was empty. A man named ‘Nigger’ Brogan lived in it. Next was a garage owned by a bank manager called Tighe. One day he went into it, locked the door and started the car and killed himself. When the new houses were built we were all shifted. Hoades went to Raheen and Ryans went to Ballydavid. Ourselves and Cunniffes went to Park. We got the third house and Cunniffes got the end one. Our former homes were condemned. 

When we went to live in Park we had a two storey house with three rooms, a kitchen and outside toilet. There was a turf shed and over an acre of a garden. My mother had two apple trees that she grew from seed. She brought the trees from Swangate and sowed them out in front of the house. However, there were never right apples from them. I cut down the last one before Nora left. I have pieces of it out in the shed. I might get something made of them sometime. I remember that all the gates going into the houses had a different sound when they were opened and closed. We knew the sound of each one of them. The house was a big change from Swangate as we were out in the country with green fields around us. T

here were no houses in Hill Sixteen or Ard Aoibhinn. The New Line had only four houses. The first was Kellys: the father was the Garda Superintendent in Athenry. The next was Doctor Foley’s and after that was ‘Napper’ Finnerty’s who owned the pub at the Arch. The last one was owned by the Fitzsimons’ who had it rented to a detective named Sullivan.

Mother and Father.

As far as I know they met while he was in the army. He got a job for her in McCoys who used to live in the house in Wilmount where Tony Murphy, the cattle buyer, used to be. I don’t how long she worked there until she got married. When they did marry they lived with Mrs. Duffy in Caheroyan. I can’t remember a lot about her as I was only seven years of age when she died. I do remember her getting me ready for Holy Communion and on the way home from the church of getting a packet of white lozenges in Mammy Quintan’s shop. Mammy had a little shop where Fordes is beside Loughnanes. I had to wait until I got home and had a drink of water before I could start eating the sweets.

I remember her in hospital and going with my father to visit her. She had a lovely head of long hair. She used to brush it at night and then make a bun of it at the back of her head. When she came home from hospital it was all cut short. She was not long at home when she got a relapse of the pneumonia. I remember Dr. Foley coming and Granny coming to mind her. Ann was born on Christmas night. She was not supposed to live but Granny and Nurse Crisham kept her alive. After my mother died Granny brought Ann home to Mulpit with her.

Earliest Memories

My earliest memories are about Swangate. I remember my uncle, Patrick Waldron, came in one night and gave me an apple and orange in a paper bag together with a sixpence coin. When I had the fruit eaten I had the coin in the bag. I left it down and one of my sisters, Mary or Rose, threw it into the big blazing fire. I ran over and put my two hands into the fire and they ended up badly burned. My mother was making a cake. My father caught me up and trust my hands into the flour. My hands were bandaged for a long time. I had to wear a pair of white mittens.

I also remember my father was training the hares for the Coursing Club. Something happened to one of the hares and he brought it home. He kept him in a barrel for a while and as time went by he got tame. He used to let him out around the house. The hare used to sit up on his lap and eat a carrot out of his hand. Mary and Rose used to hold a twig across and he’d jump over it.

I remember the night we left Swangate in Broderick’s pony and car. Nora was only a baby and she was wrapped up in a white shawl. Park was a different place as the houses were newly built. There were no fences between the gardens and no roadside walls. Mick Higgins was digging the holes for the fence stakes. Mick Walsh had a gang building the road walls.

The first house was occupied by Mickie and Mary Collins, who used to wear a shawl. Mickie was a carpenter. There was Annie and Miley. Paddy Joe used to repair clocks and watches. Frank, Martha Raphael he brought me to school the first day. In the next house was the Burke family. Jimmy used to drive a lorry for Corbetts. I can’t think of his wife’s name. She had a lame step. Their children were Joan, Christy, Angela and Mary. Mary married Johnny Delaney. Angela died when she was only a child. Burkes leff and went up to Caheroyan where Delaneys are now across from the Vocational School. We were the next house and then Collins’, John and his wife. John was in the Royal Artillery in the First World War. He used to tell us great stories about ‘Bloody Auld Big Guns’ getting stuck in the mud and a lad with a team of mules trying to pull them out.

School in the Convent

I started school in 1938 in the PresentationConventNationalSchool. We used to go home for lunch. The first teacher I had in ‘baby’ infants was Miss O’Malley. She got married to a Cluskey man who worked in the farmyard, now MellowsCollege. She only lived for a year after getting married. The next teacher that I had was Miss Shields. When I moved up to first class Sister Baptist taught us while Sister Ignatius taught second class. I made my First Holy Communion when I went into second class. Not long after that my mother died.

A Tough ‘Nut’

After completing second class I changed to the Boys’ NationalSchool in Old Church Street where Mrs. Woods was my teacher. She also taught third class. She was a tough ‘nut’. She’d pull her ring over her knuckle and give you a thump on the side of the head. We used to steal her slapping canes and shove them in behind a big press.

‘Facing the Music’

Sean King taught fourth class. He decided to keep bees one time but whatever he was doing the bees turned on him and stung him. You’d want to see the state of him as you couldn’t see an eye in his head. He had to go home and when he was gone the ‘Ruaille Buaile’ started. Mr. Walsh, the headmaster, came in and divided the class up-half went into Mrs. Woods’ room and the rest into his own room. I was in the bunch that went with him and there wasn’t much room because the fifth, sixth and seventh classes were already in the room. He put us standing around by the wall. It was about two o’clock. He looked down at us and said ‘I think I’ll let ye out for a run’. Myself, Mike Nolan and Frank Touhy brought out our school bags and hopped over the wall into the ‘Back Lawn’, now Kenny Park. Then we said that we’d hop into Leonard’s garden and get a few apples. But someone ‘spilled the beans’ on us. Suddenly, we heard Mr. Walsh shouting for us to come back in. Nolan and Touhy went back but I took off across the Back Lawn. I remember that I jumped from the top of the old town wall and landed in Glynn’s field and went off across Gort na hAbhann. Brendan Higgins had a big field of furze. I went into the middle of it and lay down but I started thinking and said to myself that I’d be as well to go back and ‘face the music’. I’d have to face it in the morning anyway. So I came out of the furze and went back. When I went in the two boys were standing, one in each corner. I looked at Touhy and we started laughing and we got ‘stick’ from the teacher. When he was finished I happened to look at Touhy again and we started laughing and he repeated the dose. Mr. Walsh used to travel in a bus to his home in Galway and he kept us in the school room until the bus arrived. After that episode he called me ‘the boy that ran away’. 

I was changed out the next year. Mr. Walsh was a hard man. He cycled to school every day from Galway. Willie Farrell, who had a bicycle repair shop down by Abbey Row, was always doing his best to keep Mr. Walsh’s bike on the road. He didn’t like the pupils using fountain pens on their headline copies. We read books in Irish: M’Asal Beag Dubh, Selig Imeasc na hAlp, Flea na Filiochta. Raftery was a great favourite of his. P. H. Pearse was another. The ‘Wayfarer’, the Oration at O’Donovan Rossa’s grave, Declaration of Independence on Easter Monday. Bron ar an mBas and Donnacha Ban were among his favourites. In English we read Treasure Island and Forty Tales of Other Lands. We did parsing and analysis and the same in Irish. Compositions were two and a half pages in English and Irish. We also studied Algebra, Geometry, and Shakespeare on Friday evenings.

The Primary Certificate

I still remember the primary certificate examination. I had not been in school for a month before as my school bag had fallen into the river. Bill Tully, the Lord be good to him, was with me at that time. I salvaged a few books and had them tied with a string. I can still see the look on his face when I walked in the door. He left the glasses down on his nose and said “where do you think you are going?”, and I said “I am going to do the primary” and he said “I suppose it is just as well for you”.

Sums were the first paper in the examination. There were 5 or 6 sums and you had to do any 3 of them. You got so long to do them and there were 20 mental sums too. The supervisor was patrolling up and down. He just whispered to us to do all the easy ones first as you will get the same marks for them as for the hard ones. You had two compositions to write, one in Irish and the other in English. There were history or geography questions also. I can’t recall algebra but I can remember two geometry questions: one was to get the area of a triangle and the other how to make a square. For the first you would use the formula, half the base multiplied by the perpendicular height and the other was the sum of the squares of both sides equals the square on the long side.

Childhood Games

When playing we used to get an old wheel and a piece of wood and have ‘Bowley’. A crowd of us could take off and go ‘bowleying’ full belt down to Castle Ellen gate house and back again. When it got dark we played ‘Fox’ out in Duffy’s field where ‘Hill 16’ is now. One lad would be the ‘Fox’ and there was a spot for the ‘den’. The ‘Fox’ would take off and a minute later the ‘hounds’ raced after him. He’d try to get back to the ‘den’ without being caught. When Duffy’s cows were in the field you had to be careful crawling along on your belly or you’d end up with cow dung all aver your clothes. I don’t think the ‘Fox’ ever got back to the den without being caught.

We used to be hurling but we never had proper ‘hurls’. We’d head down to the wood in Park and get a stick with a bit of a turn in it. Very seldom we had a ball. Instead we’d get a tin box and go out on to the road and start ‘belting’ it and it wouldn’t be long before it was a tin ball. The smaller it got the more dangerous it was. You kept it moving the whole time by pulling on it. On a Sunday if we didn’t go hunting we’d head for the ball alley or the ‘Back Lawn’ or Kenny Park as it’s known today. If there was a good crowd we’d have a collection for a ball and go up to Joe Sweeney. We’d knock on the door and ask if he had any hurling balls. When he said he had we’d ask him the price. He’d ask us how much we had and after telling him he always gave us a ball even if we were short the price.

Confirmation and Putting the Archbishop in his ‘box’

The Confirmation was the next big event. We got plenty of ‘stick’ from the teacher. You had the long and the short catechism notes. You had to learn about a whole pile of saints: where they were born, what they had done, where they founded monasteries. We also had the prayer ‘The Enego’. Archbishop Walsh examined us in the church on Confirmation day. His face was all covered with plasters as he had crashed his car in an accident some days before. Some lads were examined down in the church body but I was one of the unfortunates that had to go up to the altar rails to be tested.

The church was full to the door. I was lucky in that I knew what I was asked. But there were three or four lads that were different to the rest of us. The Archbishop asked them questions out of the Bible and the poor devils never learned them. He ran them down from the altar and made a show of them before the whole church. When our teacher heard the questions the lads were asked, he went up to the archbishop and he ‘read the riot act’ to him. He put the archbishop in his ‘box’. The lads went up again to be examined by him.

Best Friends

If I want to be honest I’d say my best friends were dogs. We always kept them. My mother thought that the sun was shining out of me. I was the favourite with my father as I was his only son. He brought me with him when he’d be setting snares for rabbits. He’d show me how to set them. I had good friends in Josie Coyne and Timmy Mulkerins. We spent a lot of time together most Sundays hunting with the dogs. You’d get a shilling or one shilling and sixpence for a rabbit at that time. You could buy five woodbine cigarettes for two and a half pence. We had our own customers for them so we were never without a smoke.

Leaving school at 14

I didn’t go to school much after that. I left before I was 14. I worked for Paddy Doherty looking after sheep and yearlings at street fairs. We washed the footpaths afterwards.  Peter Connolly, the local chemist, had cows down Park road and I worked at cleaning out byres after the cows were herded down to his land. I spent time cutting timber in Castle Ellen woods for J. Hughes. I caught rabbits using ferrets and sold them to Jackie Hession. He sent them to England during the Second World War. After the war ended a man’s wages were only 30 shillings or 2 pounds a week. On a good day catching rabbits you could make a pound or 30 shillings at 2 shillings and 6 pence a brace. I went out to my uncle in Mulpit and worked on the farm. It was hard manual work; all of it done with horses.

Your idol when you were young

Sean Duggan who played in goal for Liam Mellows and for Galway was my idol. Galway had a few great games against Wexford when they too had a wonderful team. Galway beat them in the League Final. Duggan saved a 21 yard fee from Nicky Rackard that day. We went into the Sports Grounds in Galway where Galway and Limerick were playing. The great Mick Mackey was playing for Limerick and he was marked by Martin Burke from Clarinbridge/. Burke was well able for him and anytime he beat Burke he failed to beat Sean Duggan.

Sean always caught the ball in his hand and there could be many players around him and yet he’d come charging out through them and clear the ball 80 yards down the field. At that time a forward could charge a goalkeeper. Duggan was also a wonderful out-field player. Once down in the field where Byrne-Mech factory is now, Mellows played Cashel. He came out of the goals and played in the forwards where he scored two goals and won the match for Mellows.

The Missions  

Things have changed a lot in the Catholic Church since I was a young lad. At the mission the boys were put sitting up on the steps of the altar. The farthest back I can remember is the Redemptorists Fathers doing the mission. A Father Megeen and a Father Brosnan were wonderful singers but when they went up into the pulpit to preach you could almost see the ‘fire’ coming out of their nostrils. People said that their sermons were based on what they heard in confession. The ‘Inquisition’ then would give them the names of the lads who were not going to Mass and they were after them to ‘put horns on them’.

The War of Independence

I was born after the War of Independence. All I know are some of the stories I heard like the night they went to burn the Moyvilla R.I.C. Barracks.  My father was there and a lad from Cork who was on the run.  The local lads decided against it. They were afraid of reprisals against the locals by the Tans. A day or two later the R.I.C. were withdrawn to Athenry. Some of the old barracks can still be seen on the left hand side just as you go out on to the main road at the Green Briar.

Burning the Cricket Pavilion

The pavilion was in the field now occupied by the houses of the Dun Ri estate. The fire was supposed to draw the Tans down and ambush them. This is as was told by my father. Himself and his brother, Patrick, were there. They were on the run at the time. The petrol came by rail. It came in steel cans with secured tops in artillery wagons. The wagons were parked out the siding near the Dublin railway line bridge. The boys broke into the wagons and stole cans of petrol and hid them. When the night came to burn the pavilion, there was a man to come from Galway to do the burning. They were all set. They had hay ropes with paraffin oil on them to set the petrol alight. The boys were all in position but there was no sign of the Galway man.

So Bill Freaney from Derrydonnell said that he would do it. He went in with a couple of cans and spilt them around. He brought in a hay rope, laid it out along the floor and outside and lit it. It burned its way inside but nothing happened. He went in again and did the same thing and still nothing happened. He kept doing it until all the hay ropes were used up. He went in again with another can and shook it around and lit a match and it exploded and he was burned to death. There was only a little bit of his body left as the roof fell in on top of him. Bill was buried in Teampall Geal cemetery.

The father’s story was that someone took the petrol out of the cans and filled them with water. The first cans were of water and there was only one with petrol in it.  The Tans never came down until 12 noon the next day. The guns and ammo was shifted to Monivea that night. That’s my father’s story. I’m sure you’ll hear other versions of it if you enquire around.

Larry Lardner was high up in the I.R.A. in Galway.  He spent a lot of his time on the run. Himself and Bill Howley were called up to Dublin for a meeting. They went by train and when they arrived in Broadstone, Howley got out on the platform and Lardner got out on the track on the other side.  Howley was shot but Lardner got out on the track and got away. So the nickname he had after that was ‘Larry Lie Low’.

The Black and Tans

When the Black and Tans raided our house in Mulpit, Patrick, Jack and my father were there. Jim was a small lad with a few pence in his trouser’s pocket. He hopped out of bed to get it and he got a slap from one of the Tans. The three lads were told to say goodbye to their father and mother and were brought outside the back door. Patrick gave my father a wink and the two of them made a dash for freedom. They ran in opposite directions and the Tans opened fire on them. A bullet went through Patrick’s thigh but he kept going. He laid low in a field of corn belonging to the Finns. My father went across what was known as the Sally Garden and out on to the road and into Larry’s field. From there he ran across the Middle field and into the Far field. He often showed me where he was going into MountRoo and the bullet cut the hazel branch beside his ear. Anyway, the two of them escaped.

The Tans left Jack for dead after they had beaten him with the butts of revolvers. He nearly died from the loss of blood. He was drinking cow’s milk for months afterwards to try and put some blood back in his body. Patrick was able to look after himself because of the training he got in the army during the First World War. However Jack brought his marks to the grave. You could see all of the marks when he was laid out. Patrick and my father were on the run until the Treaty was signed.

Athenry Men from World War 1

My uncle Patrick Waldron, John Collins, Padraic McDonagh and Robert Kennedy all served in the War. Robert, who came from North Gate Street just inside the Arch, was killed in Flanders. Sean Courtney and my uncle Patrick were in the Irish Guards while John Collins was in the Royal Artillery. Padraic McDonagh was lucky to survive the war. A bullet went through his mouth and out the back of his neck. You could see the mark it left. Robert Kennedy was an uncle of Pat and Derek Kennedy. Sadly, Padraic MacDonagh committed suicide down the Park boreen. Mattie Ryan and Paddy Mulkerns found his body.

Athenry Men from 1916

Nearly every able-bodied man from around Athenry took part in the Rising. Liam Mellows was the Commander in Athenry. He was a teacher down in Shanvalard. He had everything organized for Easter Monday. They took over the Farm Yard, now known as MellowsCollege. But they were told that if an English warship sailed into GalwayBay it could drop shells on them. So they left the Farm Yard and went to Moyode. My grandfather and father were sowing potatoes down at the back of the house and they could see the men going up the Mulpit road. My father, who was 16 at the time, stuck the spade into the ground and said, ‘it’s as well for me to be off with them. What business have we here when they’re all gone’. His father told him to stay there and continue to sow the potatoes. You see his brother Patrick was in France and his other brother Jack was gone with the rebels, so he was the only one left at home.

The rebels spent a while in Moyode and that was their downfall. Burton Persesse was the owner of Moyode at the time and his housekeeper identified nearly all of them when they were arrested. They went from Moyode to Limepark down near Gort. Father Tom Fahy came to Limepark with the news that the rebels in Dublin had surrendered and that only a few places in the country had came out for the Rising due to the countermanding of the order for the Rising. He said that it would be better for them to disband, go home and hide their weapons for another day. Frank Hynes went with Liam Mellows into the ClareMountains. Frank finally got to America disguised as a nun.

All the rest were imprisoned in England and Wales and that was where the I.R.A. was born. And when the lads came home from the War in Europe they made a big difference as they had a lot of ‘know-how’ about fighting. I remember when I was a young lad the old I.R.A. used to parade around the town every Easter Monday, but like the song says, ‘year after year they got fewer and now there’s none left at all’.

The Civil War

Our family was lucky. My two uncles, Patrick and Jack, joined the Free State Army. They were all on the one side. Other families were split with brother fighting brother and that to me was something that should never have happened. The three lads were split up with Patrick been sent to Kerry. I’m not sure but I think Jack was in Craughwell. My father was sent to Headford and down into Mayo. He was in the bank the night it was attacked. It was a very rough night.

One night I heard himself and Hussey talking about it. The Husseys, who were from Knocknacorageen down below Cnoc Mayo, were out and out Republicans. Hussey was a saddler in Corbetts, North Gate Street. From what I could gather from their talk it seems one of them was being interrogated in Headford. He didn’t have a smoke and my father gave him a packet of cigarettes. Later on my father got nabbed by the I.R.A. and when he was being questioned he heard this lad coming into the room. He heard him say ‘let him go as he’s all right, he gave me a smoke when they had me captured’.

Nothing major happened in Athenry during that time. There was a man named Treacy shot during a curfew. One Fair Day the bank was robbed. The government was after bringing in the death penalty for bank robbery and it was said that a priest put a curse on robbers. No one could understand how the robbers were caught so handy. A local man, Jack Cunniffe, who was doing a line with a girl working in a shop opposite the bank, went to her to tell her that he and his car had been hired for such a time. She said that she had been watching some lads knocking around the bank all morning and she warned him to have nothing to do with them. That was the first bit of misfortune that happened to the bank robbers. When they came out of the bank there was no car outside. They ran to Newford and along by the river bank. Christy and Noel O’Grady’s grandfather was fishing out there at the time and he saw them running past. My uncle Michael Waldron and Paddy Flannery, who were young lads at that time, were on their way home from school out the Boreen Ard and across the railway that was an old Mass path. There were styles all the way out along the river bank out to the MulpitBridge. When they got up on to the road at the bridge those lads were in what was known as the Cow Fields. They were in a bit of ground between the wall and the river and they were breaking sticks. That was where they were arrested when Frank Curreen caught them. They were armed and had the money with them. A bag of silver money was left just inside the bridge. It was there for two days. They were brought to Tuam and executed. I went down to Tuam where all the babies are buried. On the way in there is a big erect flagstone with all the names of those who were executed there during the Civil War.

Old sayings in Irish

Mar an capall agus geobhfaidh tu fear.

Is maith an tanlann an tocrais.

Ni he la na gaoithe la na scolb.

Is trom an rud cearc I bhfad.

Mol an oige agus tiocfaidh said.

Nil aon tintean mar do thintean fein.

An te ach bhfuil laidir ni folair do bheith glic.

Nach maith an gloine arsa an caileach is si ag glanadh an friochtan le earball an chait.

Briseann an duchais tri shuile an chait.

Na fag an sionnach ag buachailleacht na gcearc.

Ta dha la san earrach comh maith le deich la san fhomhair.

Thig se gan iarracht mar thig a do-aimsir.

Is i bhfad ona bhaile a dheanann an pilbin miog.

Eist le glor na habhann agus geobhaidh tu breac.