TWO BUSY SHOEMAKERS

THE TWO busy shoemakers back in time in a Donegal well-used workshop tirelessly tapped away with hammers and cut away with lethal-sharp knives coaxing the leather into the shoe-shapes they wanted to create.

The smell of fresh-cut sheets of leather waiting their turn to be honed into shoes or boots or even crafted leather purses wafted through the dusty workplace.

Finished footwear stacked on shelves waited to be collected and who knows where the feet who will wear them will carry them – maybe just around the locality or across oceans to far distanced lands.

The work would be regularly interrupted with customers calling and even children with broken shoes and bag straps would wander in and the repairs would be carried out on the spot with no money usually taken or offered.

It was fascinating to watch these gifted craftsmen with deft surgical fingers ply their trade and mould the leather to a customer’s foot and the shoe or boot was usually fit-perfect when finished.

With final finishing touches the footwear was ready for the roads and byways of the locality.

The shoemakers were favoured by local farmers and with the roaming cattle dealers always on the lookout for a deal. These men were conspicuous by their hats, trailing long coats, their stick of course and their well-made shoemaker’s brown ankle high boots which were their trademark.

Their dress fashion was like an unofficial uniform. The cattle dealers were particularly noticeable on fair days in the town of Carndonagh, known for its fairs when serious cattle wheeling and dealing went on and a lot of hand slapping until the deal was done.

THE SHOEMAKER or cobbler was a highly respected member of the local community giving an essential service to his neighbours and people from even a distance. The craftsmen in our article often did repairs as the customer waited as at that time many people only had one pair of shoes.

The master greasaí or shoemaker was the quiet-spoken Phillip ‘Fintan’ Doherty. Fintan was the nickname for his family usually a relative down the family line. This discerned what Doherty family he belonged to as there were numerous Doherty clans in the area.

At the front of the work premises local man Phillip had a well-stocked shoe and boot shop, and as his customers came through the door, he would down tools and look after their needs in his unhurried way advising the purchaser what might suit them best.

It was in that shop that this writer was shod from time to time, and it was there that he bought his first pair of Dundalk-made Blackthorn football boots and shiny new leather football. They made their debut in ‘the wee field’ with a friend Rory now deceased who happened to be the son of the shoemaker with cardigans as goalposts. The grass was almost hay tall as it was not a regular sports field. It was there we had visions of playing before cheering crowds.

PHILLIP’S COBBLER work colleague, not a native of the area, but still within the confines of Donegal had a name straight out of a Western movie whom you would expect to see come riding into town and tie up his horse at the only saloon bar. His name was Dan McGrew. A gentle smile always seemed to play on his lips as he tap tapped away the day at his well-hacked and worn workbench.

He wasn’t anything like the character ‘Dangerous’ Dan McGrew, a prospector during the Gold Rush days who met his end when he was gunned down in a Yukon territory saloon.

Both artisans have now passed on and the shoemaker workshop lies silent holding its memories. The shoe shop survived as Christy a son of Phillip inherited it and he ran it successfully down the years until his recent retirement. The shop still survives however and mothers and fathers can still bring their excited young sons and today their daughters to buy their first pair of football boots.

To end with a verse from

“The Little Shoemaker”, a big hit for singing star Petula Clark almost seventy years ago: ‘In the shoemaker’s shop, this refrain would never stop, as he tapped away working all day. At his bench there was he just as busy as a bee, little time to lose with the boots and shoes’.