People in Aclare were innovators – and had to be as they had no money
drink. Then they would come back and look at the land. If there was good land, they would be keen to marry the woman. But if you had few acres of bog, I suppose you would be lucky enough just to get a shake-hands. “The older the woman and the more impediments she had, the more dosh was required.
“I remember a man marrying a woman who had a short leg. Some neighbours were asking him why. ‘Ah, it isn’t for running or jumping that I want her’, he said.
“But often the woman would marry the man, usually an elderly man, and of course you know they did not get divorced or anything. But I would say myself that it was not something that was made in heaven and love was seldom mentioned.
“There was one woman who gave birth to a baby while she was picking potatoes in a field and she carried the baby in the bucket into the house “And the handle of the bucket stuck in the baby’s nose and he had the mark for life.
“But there will never be a race of people like them again. They were innovators and had to be as they had no money, and the women were often treated very badly.
“Today they would die with the hunger if they do not get to Tesco to buy a can of beans.”
FUNERALS and their customs are deeply rooted in the Irish psyche and Andy paints a vivid picture of a ceremony that combined dignity, respect, bean chaointe and the inevitable uisce beatha.
He said: “Funerals are now a business in this country, which I don’t like myself. Years ago no stranger got their hands on that body.
“Today the stranger comes in and takes away the body.
“There would be clochar an bháis – the death rattle before the person died. “When someone died in my youth, two women in the village would wash and clean the body.
“Two men would go to town and get the coffin, which was from Finnegan in Aclare.
“The coffin would come out and the dead body would be laid on the end of two chairs and it would be put beside a window.
“And they would borrow, if they didn’t have it, a white lace curtain and put a black bow on it and they would light a wax candle in the window. “That was standard practice, and the neighbours would come in and they would say a prayer and there was a lot of drink too.
“But the body was never left alone. “It was a great communal thing and the neighbours decided, let’s not abandon the corpse in its last hours. “When a person died, they stopped the clock at exactly the time the person died, and they would open the window to let the spirit out.
“And at the wake there would be neighbours who would stay awake all night.
“At that time, they had a side car and people sat back-to-back. There was a piece of timber in the centre and the coffin would be put up on that, and that was how they got to the church. “There used to be women in my time called bean chaointe, women who were paid to lament the dead person.
“They would sit up on either side of the side car. I can see them yet. I knew one of them very well. They wore long black calico dresses on them down to their shoes.
“Every now and then as they were going along the road nice and steady they would howl out ‘A Mháire Mháire, Páidín is gone and what will we do?’.
“The other one would join in then and they would maybe get two shillings for this.
“They were known as bean chaointe or crying women.”
“Something that often puzzled me was that when the grave was filled in, the women would walk across the grave three times, one foot in front of the other.
“After the funeral them two chairs would be put outside with anything that had to do with the corpse – bedclothes or anything. They would not be touched or washed for seven days. “After seven days the chairs would be brought in and the bedclothes washed and that was how it was.” Andy said he also believes in fairies. He said:“There used to be stories of men going out and meeting lovely red-haired women and they danced all night, for music is the food of love for the wee folk too.
“The lone whitethorn tree was an omen for the fairy fort.
“People used to get what was called ‘lifted’ and they would lose their way as they went along. They were not able to get out of a field and kept going around in circles.
“They said if you took off your jacket and turned it inside out, it was supposed to lift the spell.
“A lot of musicians reckon that they got tunes from fairies coming from a wedding. And I still believe in fairies.” Closer to home, Andy recalls some sad farewells from his native village and becomes emotional as he recalls the American wake.
He said: “I have written a good bit about American wakes in poems.
“There would be an average of six to eight kids in every family. About 240 people emigrated from the village of Aclare in the 1920s and 1930s.
“The side of the hill near my home was known as the Crying Hill and every day there was someone going away, and they would not be long out of school until they would pack the bag and be gone, often for good.
“It would be England, America or Australia and they would be vowing that they would be back, and the old people would be crying and shaking hands.
“And then the taxi man took them away and they would wave the handkerchief and then they were gone. “Every week there were two or three going. Houses fell in and the forestry came in and planted trees where there were once happy homes.
“It was a sad thing for those of us who knew it but those who did not live through it did not know what it was like.
“It was an awful heartbreak for people with six or eight kids and suddenly they were all gone.”
“Then we had the American wake because all of the neighbours came in and the person who was going to emigrate would be the centre of attention. “There would be fiddles and flutes going and half sets and stacks of barley and they would be knocking sparks out of the old flag floor with their hobnailed shoes or clogs.
“But as the night wore on it got sadder as people were saying goodbye to the emigrant and they would always give them something like 10 shillings. “Then the dawn would come in and the hackney car was on the street and there was a very changed tune – to see the mother hugging the daughter and her crying.”
“I saw a lot of it,” Andy said with a catch in his voice.”
ANDY WAS also forced to emigrate at the young age of 15. He said: “There was eight in our family and we were living on the side of a hill and there was an old wet field below the house and all I had was a few rags and me going. “I could have left them after me as they were of no value.
“I was going away from home down through the field when my father was shouting, ‘come back!’
“I thought he did not want me to go, and said to myself I will go back up the hill. But when I turned my father said ‘no, not you, the dog was following you’.”
Andy had £3 in his pocket. He got the Dublin bus at O’Hara’s in Swinford and he went on a cattle boat bound for Liverpool.
He said: “We got off and we went through customs and they would open your bag and put a chalk mark on it. “I remember him looking into my bag and saying oh, holiday clothes. “All I had was a pair of pants and an old pair of shoes.
“I went out on the street and I did not know where I was going and then an Irish man about 30 came up. He must have known that I was lost, and he took me to the Salvation Army. “I stayed with the Sally Army for a week. You would get a mug of tea, toast and a spoon of beans and they were good.
“I used to hang about and I mopped the hall and that and I got the dinner. “But there was a woman there who was asking me if I wanted to get married. Sure I was only 15 and I thought, I better get out of here. And I went to a place called Accrington which was also in Lancashire.
“I was hired by a little farmer called Harold Hatkin. I was sleeping out in an old barn and I was hay making and we worked from 6am to 12 at night.
“We used to go into the house and sliced bread was coming out and the English would spread tripe or cow’s udder on it. I could not eat it so they gave me a banana instead and I ate it skin and all – I did not know that you had to peel it.”
Andy worked there for six weeks, and one day nearly accidentally killed himself.
He said: “They had an electric machine for pulping turnips, and it
“Dawn would come in and the hackney car was on the street and there was a very changed tune – the mother hugging the daughter and her crying”
was plugged into the wall. I put my finger in and the electricity hit me and stuck me to the far wall.
“But I was glad to have a job.
“I went to Lincolnshire and picked potatoes and beet. Then it would be Christmas time and time to go home. “We were treated like animals at times. This was the early 1950s and tough times.”
“Women from Ireland went to work in munitions factories, but you could only work for six months or you would have to join the army.”
Andy spent seven years in Lincoln. He said: “England had gone through the War and lean times and people were as fit as a fiddle.
“There weren’t as many nationalities there then as there are now. “That old England has gone forever.”
Andy began a much more lucrative career in steel erecting in England, a career he later continued successfully in the US, to which he emigrated in 1956 when he was 22.
Andy had his own American wake on the side of the mountain.
He said: “My first view of America was that if I could have stayed in England I would have.
“I worked in Chicago and Indianapolis and worked for an uncle who had been born in the US.
“I worked for another uncle, Pat Howley in Florida, and then headed for New York and was a doorman at the Dixie Hotel on 42nd Street.”
Andy then went back to steel erecting, putting up skyscrapers in Chicago. He said: “It was great money, and you were up about 40 or 50 storeys and there were men who were killed as it was dangerous work.”
It was while in Chicago that he met his wife.
Andy said: “I met Anna Mae Duffy from Balla, Mayo, at a dance in the West Inn ballroom in Chicago one night in 1958.
“I had been going out with a girl called Sue Walsh. Her and Anna Mae were the best of friends.
“It happened. We were two years together and then we got married in Chicago.”
When asked how he knew that his future wife was the one, he said he did not know.
HE SAID: “I was not too much involved with ladies. I think I was fonder of Schlitz beer. “I was earning good money, but we decided to come home in 1968 as there was a lot of trouble in America. “John F Kennedy got shot, the Vietnam War broke out and Martin Luther King got shot too.
“The coloured people were discriminated against.
“We were doing some steel erecting in Chicago when a coloured man came looking for a job.
“He said the office had asked him to come out for work as he was an iron worker.
“Then the foreman said to him, did that man in the office see the colour of your face?”
“That was terrible.
“America is the land of opportunity and I went contracting and steel erecting and made a good living.”
When asked how he felt when JF Kennedy was elected President, he said he was happy, but America was very divided over it as Kennedy was the first Catholic to make the White House.
And Andy said he will never forget the day he was told that John
F Kennedy had been assassinated. He said: “I will never forget it. We were on 63rd Street in Chicago, welding a beam on the street.
“A coloured man tapped me on the shoulder and I looked at him and he was crying. He said, ‘man, they just shot JFK in Dallas’.”
In the mid-1960s Andy built a fine home for his family and things were good and he was good with handling men.
He said: “You will never solve a problem by arguing.
“When I had men working for me, I would not say to any of them ‘go over and bring that beam over here’. “I would say, ‘would you ever think you would be able to bring that beam over here?’ A little modesty goes a long way.”
“I would always do as much work when the boss was away as when he was on site.”
Andy has been over and back working in the US over the years and still visits whenever he can.”
But he is not overly impressed with the current Irish government. He said: “They talk about all our great tourism and that is not so.
“The tourists that they are referring to are visitors, somebody that emigrated, and they are coming back to see relatives.
“A tourist is somebody that has no connection with the country.
“The bigger the emigration the more visitors you get coming back and I was one of them, but I was not a tourist. “American is good for young people and a lot of work is on merit – not like here in Ireland. There is a great can-do attitude over there. “When you come from the bowel of the earth it can be hard to get on, but in America the only question is if you are able to do the job.”
Andy was clearly always able to do the job.
And he was always able to express himself in memorable poetry and prose.
There is lightness to him, a joy in telling stories with all the timing of the born seanchaí – a man with history, legend and lore in his heart. A Sligo local legend and treasure. And somebody should publish his fine collection of great poetry.
From the boy from the side of the mountain, who talked the talk and walked the walk with the captains and the kings.
And, in his own words: “America did not adopt me. I chose to come to America, they did no choose to send for me. “And any place I went to and when I look at my hands, I know that they fought for every crumb that I ever ate.”
THAT’S ANDY – poetry and pragmatism and a man who will never forget where he is from. He has been home in Sligo since 1968, and now lives on a verdant farm in Lavalla outside Ballymote since he and Anna Mae came back with their childen Margaret, Anne, Andrew and Jamie.
They must be very proud of their unique father.