Throwback Thursday: Songs and pints in Cork's iconic Coal Quay

REGULAR Throwback Thursday correspondent Tim Morley was very interested in last week’s stirring tale of how the Buckley sisters of the Coal Quay picked the winner in the Grand National.

It reminded him of an incident when he was a student in an English laboratory.

“Our electrician was a man from Kilkenny, Tom Brennan,” recalled Tim “Father from Ireland, mother from Italy, perfect genetics for singing, and his arias could be heard along the corridors, inspiring Francis Crick (the greatest scientist of the age) to some of his brilliant ideas!

“Tom often told how he himself got his own greatest idea. He had been working on the construction of a pier in the south of England, where of course divers would also be at work, and at the Derby a few days later, Pear Diver was running.

“It had to be a bet on this horse, and Tom risked the major sum of £50. Well, it turned out to be a sure bet, and got him the biggest win of his life! (He said he could even buy a present for his mother.)

“Are any of your readers still not believing in superstition?” enquires Tim.

He also got thinking about Daniel Corkery, writer, cultural philosopher, and literary critic, whom we mentioned a couple of weeks back in connection with St Patrick’s school and his one-time pupil, Michael O’Donovan (later to become the writer Frank O’Connor). Incidentally, Seamus Murphy, the famous Cork sculptor, was also a pupil of his.

“I think there might be some dispute about where Daniel Corkery lived - Southside or North - and when,” recalls Tim.

Well, we know he was born on Gardiner’s Hill, just off St Luke’s, and very close to the school where he was later to teach.

According to Tim, he later resided on the southside, and, according to tradition, in a slate-fronted house looking out on the Lough towards the west.

Is that house still there? Maybe somebody could go round and knock on the door and ask? It would be nice to know.

Tim doesn’t live in Cork any more, hence his query, but anyone interested might chase up this suggestion. If you do, be sure to let us know how you get on.

Next up - Pat Kelly, who has provided so much wonderful factual detail on our city and its secrets, has achieved a lifetime’s ambition and actually got the exciting tale of his grandfather (‘The man that Hitler could not kill’) written down.

We picked him up the other day at his home in Marian Park (where he has lived since childhood) and brought him out to De Echo’s offices in Blackpool. Here, amid the splendid views from the rooftop, he ceremoniously handed over his magnum opus to John Dolan, the Echo’s Features Editor, so that it could be considered for this year’s Holly Bough.

It contains stirring facts about a shipwreck, surviving a blitz, and more. And before you ask, yes of course they are working on next winter’s issue already.

Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without the Holly Bough, would it? So if you’re intending to put pen to paper and send something in, now is the time to be thinking about it!

We have had a great response to Willie O’Sullivan’s account of his grandmother and six hard-working daughters who dealt in the second-hand clothes trade on Kyle Street, back when garments were more valued than they are today, and good quality was always in demand, whether previously worn by someone else or not. Far from this modern habit of wear-it-once-and-dump-it that has our greenhouse gases in overdrive!

After their long and exhausting morning (which started very early), Nana Buckley and the girls would repair to The Social Bar to regain their energy over a peaceful pint in the snug.

Ah, who can remember those wonderful snugs? This writer can certainly recall one on the Coal Quay where you slipped in through a discreet side door and rapped on a wooden hatch to order your drink.

It was usually occupied by two or three shawl-wrapped women who, as they received their perfectly-pulled pints through the little hatch, would retrieve newspaper packages from under their cloaks, and unwrap them to reveal slices of dry bread. These were slowly consumed as the pints went down, presumably to soak up the excess liquid and keep the stomach in balance.

Are there any snugs left? Once women were (very reluctantly at first) allowed into the main bar, and were even allowed to order full pints there, the importance of the snug faded, but it would be nice to think that there are one or two tucked away in secret corners of our city. If you know of one, please do tell us!

But back to The Social Bar and Willie’s memories. “As most characters in the northside drank there, those people will certainly have good memories of The Social. The name of the bar was actually Portrays, and it was five or six doors up from Kilgrews.

“What kind of place was it? Well, really it was an institution rather than a pub. The owners were a family from Kerry, Paddy and May Healy, daughters Majella and Patsy, and son Michael who continued to run the bar for decades after their mam and dad had passed on. 

Let’s hear it from the regulars of the past!

“But, you might ask, what have the Buckley girls trading on Kyle Street got to do with this bar? Well, you see, the vital asset it possessed was a side lane with a store at the end which was big enough to store the kegs of beer and the crates of bottles, but, more importantly, the girls’ packs of clothes too.

“This would save them hauling them home each day, and allow them to go looking for their next batch of garments early the following morning with empty prams to bring back their haul.”

Above that store, explains Willie, lived John and Kathleen Long. “John’s job was to change the barrels, rotate the new bottles, and prepare the empties for collection, which at that time was every morning because of the large flow of customers into the bar (not many pubs could boast of that these days!)

“Then you had Mick the Brave (Mick Considine). Nobody ever seemed to know where the nickname came from. Surely some reader out there must know? Mick was best friends with the owners of the bar, Paddy and May Healy. He was odd-job man, which included everything you could think of that was necessary in running a bar. And that’s quite a lot!”

Willie adds: “When you have a side laneway to any bar, it allows for an early entry for the nicest pint of the day (the prohibited one).

“Mick the Brave would have the pub set up for the official opening at 10.30am, with the coal fire blazing since early on. This cosy atmosphere was also appreciated by the early visitors, maybe 7.30am or so.

“There were early morning pubs around the city (mostly near the quaysides, for the dockers), but this was the best one (probably because we weren’t supposed to be there!) “

“Back to the girls and their connection with Paddy Healy’s pub,” continues Willie. “Each day when they finished their trading (about 12.30 or thereabouts), they would all load their prams with their packs, march up Kyle Street, and turn right into North Main Street, heading towards the pub’s store in the laneway.

Once there, all the clothes would be unloaded and the prams parked up in the lane. When this part of their hard-working day was done, they would go into the snug by the side door, and sit down with a sigh of relief (another day, another dollar would be the mutterings).

“At this point, whoever was serving, either Paddy, May, or The Brave, the table would soon be covered with their preferred tipples, or what my mam would refer to as her ‘smothan’.

“It didn’t matter what type of drink it was, it was always called her ‘smothan’. (If somebody can explain this, I would be obliged because, being a child, I never queried it.)

“When I look back,” Willie states, “I never remember any of them having to request their drink as each one of them would be served their own usual smothan without any query.

“No money would be exchanged until they started leaving one by one, when each calculated how much she owed. That amount would be left on the snug counter.

“This probably looked very regimental, but it wasn’t, it was a very personal service between friends.”

But that, stresses Willie, wasn’t the end of the girls’ working day by any means.

“They would then return home, do the housework, and prepare the meals for the children. That done, they would start the endless ironing on the batch of clothes for the next morning.

Now I know every mother works hard and puts in her very best efforts, but as I said before, the Buckley girls were the hardest-working women I have ever known. Maybe I’m biased, or maybe it’s because I was there, watching them do it!

When the weekend came round, the husbands and oldest members of the family would meet up in the Social.

“The one thing you were guaranteed on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights was the good old sing-song.

“A couple of things stick in my mind about those weekend nights. My dad always volunteered himself to be MC for the night, whether we liked it or not. He fancied himself as a bit of an Al Jolson (anybody remember him?) He always had a hat and cane at hand for his party piece.”

Willie recalls: “Nobody ever refused to sing a song. In fact, most couldn’t wait for their turn. As a result, the sing-song went on until the early hours of the morning (curtains and blinds pulled, of course).

“In all my years being a customer of the Social Bar, I never remember a knock on the door from a member of the Garda, either before opening or after closing time.

“This was probably because the gardaí knew it was just a group of friends having a friendly and social time together. I like to think that’s why it was called The Social Bar.

“And that was my version of a good pub in the ’60s and ’70s. I know there must have been others, and I would love to hear about them from the rest of you.”

Well, so would we, Willie. Always a delight to read your recollections.

And that mention of the sing-songs and nobody ever refusing to participate, reminds us of something else that has almost disappeared.

Remember when you had a party piece which you obligingly trotted out at gatherings? We all did, from childhood onwards. Whether at the end of term in baby school, or later in life at parties, weddings, social occasions, it was expected that you would play your part and contribute to the entertainment.

No thought then of hiring in some complete stranger at extra cost to amuse the gang - all the fun was homegrown. And so what if you’d heard Uncle Dan’s rendering of The Bould Fenian Men or The Foggy Dew a hundred times before? You liked it that way!

Did you have a party piece? Can you remember the old sing-songs? Tell us about it! Email jokerrigan1@gmail.com. Or leave a comment on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/echolivecork.