Barefoot in Mullyneeny: A Boy’s Journey Towards Belonging. Bryan Gallagher

walked up a cobbled green lane and in through the half-door into the kitchen. There was no ceiling and I looked up at the smoke-blackened rafters supporting the scraws of turf which carried the thatch, with the pointed ends of the hazel scollops sticking through them, holding the thatch as a hairpin holds a woman’s hair.

      I sat at the oilcloth-covered table. She busied herself unpacking the shopping while he took a round black pot and carved off, yes, carved off a chunk of solid porridge, put it in a bowl with some milk and ate it. He saw me looking at him.

      ‘Do you want some?’ he asked. I hated porridge and never ate it at home.

      ‘Yes,’ I said.

      He handed me another bowl and spoon. I ate every bit and scraped the bowl with the spoon as I had seen him do.

      ‘Would you like to go outside and look around?’ they said.

      I knew they wanted to talk privately and I obeyed. The hens came around me expecting to be fed, and one of them stood between my feet, and a calf nudged me gently in the back. A black and white collie sat on the ground at my knee. In the distance, there were two islands, close together with a passage in between them. In that light they seemed to float above the horizon and I knew that the passage led to Tir-na-nOg.

      There is a line in Tennyson’s ‘Ulysses’ which says:

      …All experience is an arch wherethro’

      Gleams that untravelled world whose margin fades

      For ever and for ever when I move…

      When I read that for the first time I thought of the passage between those two islands with a glimpse of the lake beyond, seeming to go on and on for ever. It was so quiet that when a fish jumped in the water, I jumped too. I wanted the day never to end.

      When we got back to the mainland, he lifted me out.

      ‘You’re a toppin’ wee lad,’ he said. ‘We’ll make a lough man of you yet.’

      That night in bed my mind was full of images of what I had seen, and I fell asleep dreaming of water lapping at the bow of the boat, and water hens with their quick jerky movements among reeds bending in the breeze, and tall herons standing so still you could hardly see them, and supercilious swans gliding disdainfully out of the way of the boat, and the road disappearing under the green water leading to some mysterious underwater kingdom, and the passage between the islands that led to fairyland.

      Nobody lives now on the island of the people. Just one sad ivy-covered gable remains of the house where myself and the big man ate the porridge. Tommy the boatman lies under six feet of clay in Knockninny graveyard and I regret that I never told him—I never once told him of the wondrous, magical day that he gave a young boy half a long century ago.

      Yes, I have a boat of my own now, fibreglass, with a big engine on the back, but I have never been able to bring myself to visit that island ever again.

       Goodbye Dolly Gray

      All our class successfully negotiated our way through our first confession and communion, and next day, in the odour of sanctity, we were allowed to have a school concert. There was a prize of sixpence for the best singer. One girl sang ‘The Old Bog Road’, a sad song about an emigrant thinking of his homeland. Another sang ‘Teddy O’Neill’, about a girl lamenting the departure of her boyfriend. I thought, in view of the day that was in it, I would sing something lively, so I launched into ‘Goodbye Dolly Gray’.

       Goodbye Dolly I must leave you, though it breaks my heart to go.

       Something tells me I am needed, at the front to fight the foe.

       See the soldier boys are marching, and I can no longer stay,

       Hark, I hear the bugle calling, Goodbye Dolly Gray.

      I had heard my mother singing it to herself and I had no trouble picking it up. I gave a spirited rendition, and when I saw the other children tapping their feet in time to the music, I figured that the sixpence was as good as mine. I finished, and flushed with success, I sat down in triumph. Alas, pride goes before a fall. The teacher looked at me witheringly.

      ‘A most unsuitable song,’ she said. ‘That is a British army marching song, next child to sing please,’ and added in an undertone to the big girls, ‘what else would you expect from a policeman’s son?’

      When I told my mother, she laughed and said, ‘She’s right. It is a British army marching song. Next time you better sing “Wrap the Green Flag Round Me Boys”.’

      And the remarkable thing is that I could have done so easily, because in our house, when I was growing up, we were ‘exposed to a wide range of musical experience’, as the teaching manuals have it. My mother had what seemed a limitless repertoire, ranging from Irish traditional music to Victorian music hall and Moore’s Melodies, and from hit tunes of the Forties to light opera, and the singing of Tauber, Gigli and above all, John McCormack, who was revered by my parents as a musical deity.

      Music was almost a way of life. One of my earliest memories is of my mother, playing the piano and singing in her fine round voice, ‘I Dreamt that I Dwelt in Marble Halls’.

      Once a week, a lady used to arrive at our house on a bicycle to teach us the piano. The sole purpose of this seemed to be to pass music exams, and enjoyment did not enter into it. Studies, scales major and minor, in similar or contrary motion, sight-reading and ear tests were the order of the day. I cordially hated these lessons, and instead of practising, spent my time picking out tunes by ear, much to the teacher’s displeasure. One day, as I came into the room for my lesson, she said, ‘Don’t look over. What chord is this?’

      She played a chord on the piano. ‘A flat,’ I replied

      ‘What note is this?’ she asked, and played a note near the top of the piano.

      ‘F sharp,’ I replied without hesitation.

      ‘You have perfect pitch,’ she said. ‘You should be doing far better.’

      Full of pride, I told the boys in school, but I would have been better not to, because one of them told the teacher that I had used bad language and said she was a ‘perfect bitch’, and I was put standing out on the floor for the rest of the day.

      However, my musical interest increased, and I dug out every songbook in the house and learned the words as well as the notes. One that sticks in my mind was ‘The Bridle Hanging on the Wall’, about a man whose favourite horse had died.

       There’s a bridle hanging on the wallThere’s a saddle in the empty stallNo more he’ll answer to my callThere’s a bridle hanging on the wall.

      I must have been a soppy kind of child, because I used to have tears in my eyes when I sang this and just wallowed in the sentimentality. Looking back, the only excuse I can have for this mawkish behaviour is that I myself had known and ridden a neighbour’s beautiful white horse which had died under tragic circumstances.

      I remember about this time making my stage debut, singing at a parochial concert. During the holy season of Lent, no dancing was permitted by the Church, and the principal entertainments were the parish concerts. The parish priest had a simple plan of action for these affairs. He would come out on to the stage, look down at the audience, and call somebody up to perform. Refusing was not an option. ‘Paddy Gunn, come up and play the accordion,’ he would say. ‘John McManus, come up and play the fiddle.’

      One night he called out, ‘Janey Maguire for a song.’ And Janey, from a well-known musical family, came up and sang ‘By Killarney’s Lakes and Fells’, and received warm applause. After a few more items, the priest called out, ‘Ownie Maguire for a song.’ Ownie was Janey’s brother, and he sang ‘By Killarney’s Lakes and Fells’, and received slightly more tepid applause.