of the stories we all heard when growing up was about the Christmastime when my father went out, with two of his older sisters, to see if they could get him some shoes. He was only 3½ years old. ‘I was walking out with nothing on my bare feet, in the snow,’ he’d say, and we’d all try to imagine how cold that must have been. His childhood had gone quickly and by the age of 11 he was in the fields with his family picking spuds from August through to the winter. ‘The first day’s wages I ever got,’ he’d tell us as we sat by the crackling fire, ‘was a half a crown for walking with a plough over at Carnaross, County Meath, and that’s back in the 1950s.’ He would describe his battle with the heavy plough and the thick, heavy soil. With his wages he bought a beer but he’d always make sure we knew that he’d ‘given my mother a shilling’.
The family would eat what they could find, and share what they had with whoever was around them. My father loved to tell us about the time he and his brother Buck went out and gathered some spuds and carrots from the field, which they gave to their mother to put in her large pot (as children we all feared the witches’ pot, as we called it). Then they went out and caught a couple of rabbits and a hare, and then managed to catch a duck in a local pond, and – and this was the risky thing – a pheasant too. All of these went into the pot with whatever else my granny could find and their family, and the five families around them, feasted on that for dinner. As children we couldn’t understand how anyone could eat all of those things at one time, but I suppose if you’re very hungry, as they all were, you wouldn’t care. Certainly my father remembered the entire pot being emptied that night.
Just as we were told how good and kind the farmers and their families were in those days, we’d also be reminded of what could happen if we weren’t respectful of them in return. When my father was young, his uncle was out in Galway somewhere and had a confrontation with the farmer beside whose land he was staying. The farmer accused him of raiding the hedges for timber to keep his fire going and my father’s uncle denied this, saying he’d scavenged the timber from where it had fallen on the side of the road. He stood up to talk to the farmer, and the farmer claimed he saw him pulling out an iron bar and thought he was going to hit him, so he produced a gun and blew my dad’s uncle’s head off. Killed him like that, over his own fire by the side of the road. The farmer was taken to court about it but he claimed he’d shot him in self-defence and no one disagreed with him. So we were told always to mind what the farmer told us and not to think we could do as we liked. That story was often repeated to us to remind us that the law didn’t always look too favourably on travellers and so we should be careful not to come into contact with the police if we could help it.
There were times when we relied on the Guards – what travellers called the Garda, the Irish Police. In my father’s young days no traveller had a telephone – just as we didn’t when I was young, of course – so if there was a death, or another reason to need to meet up with another family, then it was the Guards who would pass on a message. A traveller would go into the local Garda office and ask them to pass on a message to the Quinn McDonaghs up in Meath. The Garda would then ring some local stations and ask if we were known to be in the area, and if so, could an officer go out and find the family and carry a message to them? Usually the Guards would know who was in their area and roughly where they were, so it wouldn’t take them long to find whoever they were looking for.
The story we liked best was the one about my father meeting my mother for the first time, in 1963. He was back in Ireland, home from work in England. In the 1950s and the early 1960s many travelling men left Ireland and went to Manchester. They had heard there was work to be had there; on the side of the roads there was work in the Irish construction companies. Names like McGinley, McAlpine, you name it, my father worked for them all. Back home on holiday, he was on a bike, heading down to the water pump, when he happened upon this girl on her way to fetch some milk. At this point in the story my mother would interrupt. There was no accident about it, she’d declare; he knew where she’d be and he’d ridden down there to the pump deliberately, in the hope of seeing her. That she was related to him made the meeting easier, as there wasn’t much mixing with other clans when they travelled. People mostly stuck to themselves. It was usually only at arranged events, like the horse fairs, that boys and girls would get a chance to see each other and talk. That, and family get-togethers such as weddings.
I was born on a Tuesday in hospital and christened the following Sunday, 23 July, in the Cathedral of Christ the King in Mullingar, County Westmeath. (Years later I was married there.) My father was by then in prison in England – there was a stabbing incident in a pub and he was put inside for three years – and I was brought up by my mother and my grandfather. My mother told me many years later that she found it hard going, raising the three of us boys without her husband there. She’d go door to door looking for hand-me-downs, trying to make the money she had been given last a week. The relieving officer would give her money or sometimes a voucher to exchange for food. His title was shortened to ‘leaving officer’ and the one I can remember my mother mentioning was called Mr Scally. He was nice to us and if we were out on the road he’d come past in his car, pull over, and come out with the money or the voucher for us. No more than four or five pounds, it wasn’t much, but it helped.
Eventually my father was released and he came straight over to see us. Well, not exactly straight; he went to meet my mother’s brother to find where we were and the two of them – drinking companions from their young days – went out to celebrate his release that night. This is what travelling men do, so I suppose it’s no surprise that the following morning they did it all over again, and it wasn’t until much later that day that my father finally laid eyes on the son he’d not yet seen.
‘What do you remember about seeing me for the first time, Daddy?’ I asked my father once. He thought for a moment or two. ‘You was in bed, and you were a big lump of a boy,’ he said, which wasn’t exactly the touching memory I’d hoped to hear.
The very next morning my father saddled up the horses, which up until then my mother had looked after, and we set off, leaving Auld Daddy behind. There was no time to waste. Having no one he could turn to for help, my father needed to earn some money as quickly as he could. For the next few years we lived on the side of the road, although when my father first came back we moved about a fair bit. Maybe he was restless after being locked up in England, I don’t know, but every three weeks or so we would dismantle the tent, harness the horse up, and get out on the road looking for somewhere new where we might get some work. We would only go ten or fifteen miles down the road, because that distance was enough for the horse pulling a wagon. It was a big thing for my father too, because he’d have to rebuild the tent as well. Having the horse was all very well, but my father couldn’t do much with it. Besides, he’d seen what other travelling men could do with their trucks in England, so, soon after returning home, he bought a van for his work. He’d haul scrap in it, or put it to any use he could, to earn some money.
When we stopped for the night, the first thing my father would do was make the tent, one that would last us as long as we needed to stay put. My brother Paddy and I would be running alongside him, helping to carry the wood. The first job was to cut down the poles that would form the frame, and here hazel wood was the best as it was the easiest to get into place. A long pole would be trimmed of its bark and stuck into a bank. That would hold one end firmly while we watched my father bend the other end over and force it into the ground, making the main stay of the frame – and somewhere to hang things off the floor. This was called the rigging pole. He’d then strip smaller poles until there were enough to start weaving the wattles, as we called them, to form the canopy. Knowing there was now someone living there, the farmer might come by and give us some straw to put inside to make us more comfortable. To finish off the tent, my father would dig a trench around the sides to take away the rainwater. A tent like this could last all winter if it was properly made.
When I was a little older, Paddy and I would have our duties. I would have to get the sticks for the fire in the mornings, and Paddy had to get the water to drink and cook with. The following day I would fetch the water, while Paddy would have to go root in the farmers’ hedges for wood for the fire. Doing this meant we learned the layout of the land and all the little places where we could catch our food. My favourite was snaring rabbits. I’d be happy spending time getting my snares ready, waiting to catch