Our Street Fifty Years Ago...

Mr Moriarty called this afternoon...he was carrying an empty bag of Beef Finisher and a plastic dustpan. Stumped up the yard to where I was leaning over the half-door of my shed...wiping his brow and breathing heavily. He's very plump is Mr Moriarty.

After we'd exchanged greetings and remarks about the glorious weather...promised good for the rest of the week according to him...he said he'd come for a bit of lime to clean his cattle's drinking trough out. Apparently he'd left a bag of lime behind for Himself to use on the grass in our little field and had said he'd be calling for a couple of scoops...

I told him about the lime kiln on the edge of Kitty's field...defunct now of course...he can remember his Da telling him about how every townland had at least one lime kiln in use...

These little knots of cottages with a muddy street in front and hay fields at the back must have been such busy places...there were two forges here...one at the side of the road and the other in Hubert's field...the Pound of course up by the crossroads...the lime kiln and all the wells for the drinking water, with the river for the washing and bathing...

There must have been a constant flow of traffic...donkeys and carts mostly, with the occasional bicycle, and the rather grand horses with their titled riders from the Big house...dispensing largesse to the common peasants I expect.

People bringing wagon wheels to be re-enforced...ponies to be shod...pokers made for the fires...perhaps a new handle on the cooking pot.

This time of the year must have surely been more busy than usual with the turf being cut and then saved...children rarely went to school in the summer...there were too many jobs to be done on the farms. Even after the passing of the Education Act when all children were obliged to attend school, nothing was said about those in the country areas who stayed away for weeks while the hay was cut and turned...the vegetable garden tended...calves taken to the weekly mart...turf to be turned and saved and carted home.

The girls didn't escape...they reared the latest baby and minded the young ones...learned to patch and mend and spin...dug the potatoes and weeded the cabbages...fed the pig in his sty and emptied the piss pots onto the muck heap...washed the clothes in the river and put them to dry on the bushes behind the cottages...

A street like ours, and there are so many just like ours...must have been a hive of activity from dawn until dusk...

I like to imagine the women standing outside, while their hens pecked around their feet, exchanging gossip with the neighbour...the postie arriving on his bicycle with a longed for letter from Americay...a parcel perhaps, with some lengths of pretty cottons to make summer frocks...maybe a length of ribbon to tie up the hair of a loved and much missed sister...

How stilted those letters were...written in a careful hand. 'Dear Mother and Father...I am well as I am hoping you are'...but they'd be read and re-read...folded neatly and put into the pocket of a frock or an apron...taken out every now and then to be shown to a relative or a friend.

Perhaps they'd have to wait patiently for when the priest came to visit...to ask him would he ever be as kind as to read the words...and please would he write a reply.

The spirits linger around those stone walls and down by the river, where there are mossy steps to the fast flowing water...they are in our little stone built potting shed where the farm donkey spent the night...the horse-shoe for his tether still in place. They were in the old milking parlour at Wendy's place...spaces for four cows with a ring for each one embedded in the wall...the trough for the urine.

In our pig sty...the little open fire is still there...to keep the bonhams warm the neighbours say...I can hear the clucking of the hens sometimes when I venture into the old hen house...the roof still has the beams cut from the hedges...neat spaces in the outside wall for the hens to lay.

To live in such a place is magical to me.