Glens People & the Sea

My grandmother’s mother worked to that family and that’s how she met Roger Casement. Do you know what somebody told me that I was like Roger Casement with the dark eyes and all. They had seen a photo of him. I remember his funeral and me saying to my father about him watching. Says I, “What are you watching that for sure it’s only a lot of bones.” They took Roger Casement from where he was buried in England somewhere and he’s now buried in Dublin. They gave him a military funeral I think. And another thing my husband and me happened to run across when we were down in Ballycastle, we were walking through and we come on the empty grave. Roger Casement wanted buried in Ballycastle. Aye, Murlough Bay. That’s where he wanted to be buried. My mother was called Annie Casement, although she wasn’t married. Like a nickname, like to show who her father was. On her birth certificate it’s Annie Casement. Goodness I could have had that name! (A. Reid)

Identity

This is Glencloy but I think you would go to Glenariffe before you would get people who really think of themselves as Glens people. I don’t know why that is. Glenarm, Carnlough and Glencloy don’t incline to think of themselves as members of the Glens the same. I would, but then that’s because I think I’m a country person, and the Glens mean an awful lot to me. I love the Glens and I think that you would find with a lot of Carnlough people if you asked them if they were Glens people some of them just wouldn’t think about it. I’d say from Carnlough right enough. There is definitely a change when you come round Garron Point. Glens people are so kindly and far more laid back I think. (Anna May Wharry)
The Sea

In one of those houses near the tennis courts there lived a family, there were a number of families there of course as you can see, but there was one particular family and at the same time there was a man who was the son of the Rector of the Church of Ireland of the Parish of Ramoan now he was engaged in smuggling. He smuggled, I suppose anything … wines and all that sort of thing and there was an old song that I heard my father singing it. I don’t know it all but it says, “I left New York and sailed for Cork”. That family, the man he tipped off the Customs and they had a Customs cutter on the other side of the island waiting and that was the end of that. The antagonism towards the family was so great that they left the, they cleared from the locality. (James Clarke)

My youngest brother David was lost on the ‘Princess Victoria’. He was working over in Scotland and he was coming home to see my brother who was going to Canada that day. (Anna May Wharry)
I heard my father talking about the cut and run, that the boats come in up at Torr and all these clothes came off them. Aye. I heard tell of that. I heard that right, remind me now, the boats came in at Torr and all this big clothes you know. A big lot was stole off it. (Johnny Adair)

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