the snares, take the rabbit out if I’d caught one, club it, and carry it home. Sometimes of an evening I’d take the dogs up with me to chase rabbits out of the hedges. I’d send in the little terrier, he’d flush the rabbits out into the open, and the greyhound would race over and pick them up. My father would skin the rabbit (we didn’t sell the fur) and gut it and clean it up and my mother would put it in the pan with a few vegetables and boil the whole lot, and that was a lovely dinner.
To get vegetables I would sometimes raid farmers’ fields. Of course the farmers would warn us never to steal from them, but I had found a way to take what we needed without being caught. I’d go into the centre of the field where the farmer wouldn’t notice anything missing, rather than at the edges where it was obvious, and I’d lift out a few vegetables – just enough for the pot that night. When I brought whatever I’d collected home, no one said to me, ‘Where did you get them from?’ So as long as it wasn’t necessary, then no questions would be asked.
I was very proud of helping to feed my family, and I brought my first rabbit back when I was only 7. The dogs helped me; we had three, all called Jack. We had Auld Jack, who was the boss. When he was 16 we had to get him put down because a weasel blinded him. Then we had young Jack, his son; he was half bulldog, half terrier, and we had him for ten years, until he was killed by a car. We had greyhound Jack and then later on we had a little Jack Russell. All the dogs were there for hunting rabbits and hares. Hare hunting was something I never liked. I don’t really know why; whether it was because it involved a lot of running about, or because of the stories we were told round the fire when I was little. I never liked the tales that had me laying awake in bed. One was about some boys who were chasing a hare with their dog, only for the hare to turn into a banshee and kill their dog. Or there was the story where the boys were following a hare and it went out of their sight and turned into an old woman. That one also reminded me of the tale we were told of the little girls who were turned into swans by their stepmother. Some of those stories had a purpose. For instance, we were told never to throw stones at swans – ducks we could chuck stones at, and if we were lucky enough to hit and kill one we could take it home to eat – but never a swan, because of the law.
It was an essential part of a travelling man’s life to have a dog and I liked our three – Auld Jack, young Jack and Greyhound Jack – very much. They worked as a team and my father had them together for over twelve years; he always kept dogs rather than bitches, because he wasn’t into the hassle of breeding from them. They were pets to us children but their purpose first and foremost was to hunt – they were as essential to our hunting as a fishing rod is to a fisherman. (Talking of fishing, eel rolled in pastry and fried was my favourite dish of all.) The dogs weren’t allowed inside the tent, where we slept. They were rough and ready dogs, and had to fend for themselves outside.
When the older boys and the men went out hare coursing I’d try to hang back. It just never seemed to interest me, so I didn’t even try to get to like it. The greyhounds were essential for this, because they were the only ones with the speed. They were used for pheasants as well, although we always had to be careful not to take the farmers’ birds.
We were careful always not to upset the farmers, because without their help things could be very tough for us. When we left a site we would always clear up properly, because if we didn’t, then we’d never be welcome there again. We’d go round the site and bag up any rubbish so there was no sign that we’d been there. It wasn’t in our interests to leave it untidy at all, because we’d probably come back that way in four or five months’ time and want to feel the farmer was friendly towards us. There would be times when we’d arrive at a site and find it left dirty by someone else – usually someone who’d come from outside our area to use it and so not likely to have to return there. Then we’d end up clearing away their mess.
Whenever a site had been left in a mess, I would feel some prejudice towards us when we arrived. Sometimes when we turned up the farmer – or even the police – would come along and say to us, don’t stay there tonight. We knew that if we ignored that advice the likelihood was that a few bricks would be hurled our way later on, that the van windows would be broken. Obviously the family that had stayed there before us had caused trouble, and that hadn’t been forgotten. It made no difference if we said we’d not take anything we weren’t offered and clear up after ourselves: we were classed the same as the troublemakers. We would have to move on down the road a little bit. Luckily, other farmers would be on the side of the road, and accept us with open arms. They’d give us milk and water, they’d give out straw for the tent, they’d give us all a bit of farm work. It seemed to me that if we behaved like my mother and father – and the older generation – and treated the farmers and their workers with respect, we would probably be given it in return. But because of the behaviour of a few that didn’t show them respect, at times we were all treated as one and no longer welcomed where we’d been able to stop before.
Eventually we stopped travelling in a wagon. In 1971 my father bought a caravan to pull on the back of the van. Having the caravan was a big thing for us; we were on the move as my father hunted work, and all went where he had to go. But now we had moved from a tent to a caravan at the side of the road, it was all so different. Like moving from a one-bedroom apartment into a penthouse. We even had a gas cooker in there. My father and mother had the caravan for themselves and the girls. Paddy, me and my younger brother Dave had a bed made for us on a mattress in the back of the van. We’d happily sleep in the back of the van; for us it was like going camping, and it felt like a break from what we’d been used to.
Everything we did in our spare time, we had to provide ourselves, whereas nowadays kids all have video games and things like that. We’d be out all day picking spuds from 6 a.m. until about four in the afternoon. Then straight away we’d have something to eat at home before running outside to play games: football, handball, kick the can – you name it. Even though we’d been working all day, we never felt too tired to play.
A couple of years later another change came that was even more exciting – we moved into a place in Mullingar, where I can remember my mother coming home from the hospital with my sister Maggie. It was a rough area, so bad that much of it has been demolished now, but we were there for a year or so before we moved south to Dublin, where we lived for a short while in Coolock, in the north-east of the city. We never stayed anywhere long enough for me to make friends or even to get to know anyone really.
Nineteen seventy-six was a blistering summer and we stayed right next to the beach for the entire summer. I spent the whole time outdoors, all day in that heat, swimming whenever we could. We had great times there. As well as my family, Chappy was there with all his kids, so we played every kind of game we could out on the beach. We stayed there right through till it was time to move on to start the potato-picking season in County Meath.
Family life was very good. My mother and father were very good to us; they were never too strict and always tried to give us whatever they could afford. They had no education, and so for us those early years were about survival. If my parents could afford a pair of Wellingtons or a pair of shoes or other clothing for us, they’d get them for us. Like every other travelling woman in Ireland in the 1970s, my mother went from door to door knocking for handouts and old clothes, and a lot of those clothes ended up on my back and on the backs of others in the family. That was true for 99 per cent of travelling families throughout Ireland in those years. But even though things were so bad, as a child I wasn’t aware of it. As long as we had food I didn’t mind how we lived.
From when I was 9 or 10 we were out doing a lot of farm work all over County Dublin, County Louth and County Westmeath. We’d pick potatoes, sprouts, sugar beet – anything the farmers had planted we’d be there to help harvest. I don’t remember liking the work but I certainly didn’t hate it. Working hard was something that we were just brought up to believe in doing, just as we believed God is God. Work wasn’t something that we had to be taught; we knew it almost from our very first breath. We believed that it had to be done, and everyone pitched in to make it easier for the family. For example, my mother didn’t just look after all of us, but worked too, selling things at a flea market, the Hill Market in Dublin, on a Saturday.
The time came when my father started thinking how much easier he’d found it to get work in England