John Arnold: The hay-making day when tea was laced with carbolic soap

We were in Thurles in plenty of time on Sunday last. It was a really early start that morning as we had a car boot sale in Rathcormac. I was on the ‘second shift’ from 7am until Bartlemy Mass time at 9.30am.

We weren’t exactly like d’Unbelievables who had ‘the dinner early to get a good run at the day’. Luckily, I wasn’t driving on Sunday as we headed off for the birthplace of the GAA at 10.30am.

It’s just 54 years, 1972, since I attended my first big hurling game in Thurles. That 1972 Munster Final against Clare was a bit one-sided but a shade more competitive than last Sunday. How times have changed!

In 1972, with Pat O’Connor driving and Dave Ryan and Dan Dooley as passengers, we parked near the golf club in Thurles, opened the boot of the car and unwrapped the ham sandwiches – a feast fit for four kings!

I always love the banter and craic in Thurles on big match day. Half a century ago, plenty houses on the streets around the pitch turned into ‘pop-up’ restaurants for the day. For two bob - two shillings in the old money - a hungry fan could get a ‘Plain Tea’ which consisted of copious amounts of tea, bread, and butter.

For an extra one and six (3s 6d), the menu extended to a ‘Meat Tea’ which was tea, bread and butter, and several thick slices of ham.

Everything, including cooking and catering, was self-regulated back then!

On the way out to the match, the Dunne brothers from Cork would be playing and singing and collecting plenty loose change.

Memories of all those times gone by came tumbling down memory lane as we pulled in to park in the Durlas Óg-operated car park last Sunday, just as the Angelus bells rang out.

Just a few cars were there at that early hour. Near us, an Offaly-clad man just got out of his car. We exchanged pleasantries about the weather and the coming heatwave and the outcome of the match. I’m never shy when it comes to conversation - on the basis that if you don’t ask, you’ll never find out anything!

I asked the Faithful County man where he was from and he told me he hailed from Ballingar. Immediately I was interested. Says I: “Is that where there’s a beautiful cemetery laid out on a hillside looking down on the local GAA pitch?” He confirmed what I’d said was indeed correct.

A few years ago, I’d paid a poignant, if long overdue visit to that cemetery to visit the grave of a woman I’d never known or met but had heard so much about.

Some time in the 1950s, during one of my late father’s many hospitalisations, he came into contact somehow with a Fr Nash who used to write a weekly column in The Sunday Press. I’ve never been able to fully find out how or why, but it seems that Fr Nash put my father in contact with Molly Murphy, from Geasehill in Offaly.

Molly was invalided all her life - maybe she was in hospital when Fr Nash met her. One way or another, my father (and later my mother) and Molly became pen-pals. They exchanged letters and Fr Nash was friendly with them both.

I understand my parents used to send little gifts to Molly including tea and other household goods.

My father died in 1961 and Mam kept up the friendship with Molly for several years, but with five children to rear and a farm to run, well, maybe the contact faded.

A few years back, after finding a letter from Fr Nash after my father died, I travelled to Offaly. I met the Quinn family - Molly’s relations - and I was taken to Ballingar. I was stunned to see on her headstone that she died aged 79 in 1995 - just a year before Mam died.

I told all this to the man from Ballingar. He told me that Molly was actually born in Ballingar but lived for many years in Geasehill. He told me that Molly often said, ‘I want to be buried in Ballingar’, but twas pointed out to her that in fact there was no cemetery in Ballingar.

Then, in the late 1970s, land was bought and a new cemetery laid out. Molly Murphy, an inveterate letter-writer, wrote with a request to buy a plot in the new burial ground. The day she got a reply acceding to her request, she died.

So, Molly was the first to be interred in Ballingar cemetery.

The Offaly man I met in Thurles last Sunday is a neighbour of a namesake of mine - John Arnold. Well, isn’t it great always to talk to strangers?

On Tuesday morning, then, we were off on a two-day vacation to beautiful West Cork. The heatwave had started.

Stopping for a break outside Bandon, I was pouring a cup of tea for myself. Next to me was a curly- haired man , a bit younger than myself, I’d say. He was filling a coffee.

“I s’pose ’tis cold drinks we should be having in this heat,” says he, but no, says I: “Do you remember long ago in the long, hot summer days, and we making up hay in the meadow? ’Twas always hot, sweet tay in a sweet gallon was brought out in the field for the thirst.”

We agreed that indeed was the case. I told him of a happening on a cousin’s farm where a meitheal of men and women had gathered for the hay-making.

Well, about 4pm of a sultry evening, the women came from the kitchen with the sweet gallon full of a steaming mixture of tea, milk, and sugar. The work stopped, and the two-prong pikes were stuck in the ground as the refreshments arrived.

Cups and mugs were dipped into the sweet gallon, but most of the drinkers thought the flavour was ‘different’ to say the least! Given half a chance, they emptied their vessels behind the nearest cock of hay.

When the call went out: “Anyone for a second cup?’ heads were shook and a chorus of “No, no, we’re grand, we’ve plenty.”

Well, the woman of the house, seeing she had half a gallon of tay left, went to throw it out on the ground, and lo and behold, what was at the bottom of the sweet gallon only a half-melted block of carbolic soap! It must have fallen into the gallon during the making in the kitchen.

Now the men knew the cause of the unusual flavoured tea that day!

“Well, I’m from Timoleague,” says the man next to me, “there was a big family of us there and the river near us was tidal and there was a bridge with one ‘blind’ arch and there we left the carbolic soap and an inflated tube from an old car tyre.”

He went on to tell me that none of the family could swim so their weekly ‘bath’ consisted of a dip in the river, wearing the inflated tube, to wash off the carbolic soap!

Says I: “What about the salmon in the river - did the carbolic soap do ‘em any harm?”

“Harm?” says he, “yerra, no, they loved it and the churns from the creamery were washed into the river too - back then we had the finest, fattest salmon you’d ever see.”

He went on to tell me that though he worked on trawlers for years, he never did learn to swim!

Well, lads, I’m after having some mighty conversations altogether in the last few days.