ANDY DOOEY, DUNLOY 1939:-
Every townland has its ceilidh house — ours had at least four or five — in most instances the home of some lone man or woman or old couple where there would be no family. These houses also served as hostels where the “hikers” (we called them ‘tramps’) of those days found shelter and a nights’ repose. Many of the more regular guests were really guests, not just tolerated like the poor relation and were accorded a right hearty cead mile failte, because of their bulging budgets of news gathered from near and far, and also on account of the yarns they’d spin for us wide-mouthed listeners, of wonderful experiences and adventures on the road.
AT HUGHY’S
Such was Hughy’s, at one time one of the most popular ceilidh houses in our parish. We used to look forward to the coming of one of these wayfarers — they came at regular intervals of a month or so — much as the cinema fans of to-day watch for the appearance of their favourite filmstar. Here as at the parsonage in Goldsmith’s Auburn:
“The broken soldier, kindly bade to stay,
Sat by the fire and talked the night away.”
One such I remember among the regular guests at Hughy’s, war-worn veteran named O’Neill. Charlie, we called him familiarly. He had seen service in many lands, and like Ben Battle had left some of his limbs in Badajoz beaches. He was full of tales of hair-breadth ‘scapes by flood and field and was the star turn while he remained with us.
One of his yarns I recall that would seem apropos at present when so many people are grousing about black-out orders. Here it is:
Once while doing sentry duty some place in Dear-knows- where, he became very hungry for a “draw o’ the pipe.” Having filled up, spread his great-coat on the snow and kneeling on it with one knee, his back to the wind, he proceeded to get a spark from his flint and tinder. He was about to apply the fizzing match-paper to the tobacco when a bullet zizzed between his sheltering hands and his nose, shattering to “smidereens the oul’ dhudeen!”
Then there was Dickey’s at the road-side. Dickey lived all alone in a one-roomed cabin, the bigger half of which was occupied by the bed and a small table. The other furniture consisted solely of a large stone on which was laid a bag half filled with straw. On this Dickey sat and presided over our discussions and deliberations. The wags always referred to this stone as the woolsack. Dickey to them, was Lord Chancellor.
The cabin was lighted by a one-paned window. At the gable was the peat fire from which the smoke preferred to glide out through the opening that was called the door rather than through the hole in the roof intended for its emittance. The ‘kailyers’ sat, some upon one heel while others squatted on the floor or leaned against the table or bed. Weather permitting, the overflow listened to the discussions from outside. When the smoke from the peat-fire would subside, that from a dozen clay pipes would fill the vacuum. Yet nobody ever complained of discomfort. Indeed, to some of the assembly who had bivouacked in the Australian bush or learned to chew tobacco, curse and spit by the campfire on the American prairie, the conditions were less or more congenial, nor did such conditions prevent the host from attaining the ripe old age of four score and ten with all his faculties unimpaired.
I was the last ‘kailyer’ with him on his last night on earth. About midnight he inquired the hour; “Just after twelve” I told him. “Well, my son,” he said, “go home to bed, I’m not afeared: Draw the door after you: Come back in the morning and I will be gone.” And so it was Go deanaidh Dia throcaire air a anam!
“THE DOCTOR’S LIBRARY”
The “Doctor’s” up on the hill was more of a literary club than ceilidh-house, yet the affairs of the parish and the nation would come up for discussion now and then, and on such occasions the display of wit and logic would excel, at least in liveliness, anything staged in the Dail or Stormont. Of course, as all other ‘kailyers’, we gave attention to markets, farming problems, local litigation etc., and the horse was always the favourite theme.
Just think of it! ye listeners-in to the nightly drivel that chimes to you over the ether. Just think of it! a school of clouternly, country joskings sitting round a hearth-fire in a farm kitchen listening with pleasure and profit to readings from the works of such intellectual giants as Bacon and Shakespeare. Dante, Plato, St. Augustine, Bums, Ingersoll and Fr. Lambert.
Our Doctor had not the advantage of even a primary education worth speaking of, but he had travelled much, and, having a literary bent and possessed of a prodigious memory, he succeeded, on his wanderings, in amassing an astonishing amount of literary and scientific knowledge. He had the good fortune to find employment for some years in a university in California — I don’t know in what capacity — and he made the most of his opportunities during these years to improve his mind. Ah well! The school is dispersed to the four winds many years ago. The Doctor himself is no more:
“Alas the very spot
Where once he triumphed, is forgot.”
COUNTRY DANCES
When satiated with the literary fare at the Doctor’s, or if you felt your brains and energies located in your heels rather than in your head, you could cross the rock to Nealy’s where, to the screed of Nealy’s fiddle, you could enjoy such terpsichorean delights as “Petticoat-wattle,” and “The Pins”, reels, jigs and hornpipes and listen to the best, “come-al-ye” singers of the parish.
And what joy we used to get out of that same “Pins.” What boisterous merriment! What delightful abandon! How the ‘bean-a-ti’, God rest her, used to rock in her chair with laughter at the discomfiture of some poor fellow who would get left in the scramble for partners. We had, of course, other country dances, such as “The Lady of the Lake, The Siege of Carrick” and many others, but such clean and graceful dances have gone out of fashion with the passing of the ‘kailying’ custom and the introduction of Jazz. Like the Kerry dances, they have “gone alas! too soon.”
With the passing of the old custom of ‘kailying’ we seem to have lost the art of making-merry. And what have we got in its stead? Here, in Dunloy, we have three dance- halls within a mile radius, “talkie” pictures, and the radio blaring forth in almost every home!
DILLON’S FIRE-SIDE
Then there was “Dillon’s Fireside” where Ned and his wife Annie kept an open door for all the neighbours who dropped in for a seanachus: The boys, for a bit of fun and the beggars and tramps from God knows where with all the news of the nation.
Debating, spinning yarns and stringing rhymes were some of our favourite dissipations in those days and Dillon’s Fireside did not want for its poet to sing its praises.
“Oh! dearie me o!” What do the listeners-in, whist-drivers and jazzers in the hall yonder know of the delights of these real ceilidhthe of SO years ago?
Printed with the permission of Mrs. Peggy Denvir, Strangford:-