Throwback Thursday: My mother’s treasure trove of memories stored in an old teapot...

We had a lot of reaction to Patsy Hunter’s wonderful memories from which we published excerpts last week in Throwback Thursday.

In particular, his account of being a small boy watching wonderingly from the gallery of the church as his mother knelt meekly to be ‘churched’ and to be received condescendingly back into the Christian rites, evoked some very strong responses.

“You know, that was outrageous, it really was,” exploded Jean, a strong-minded friend, of that now abandoned practice.

“Do you realise that appalling rule was only abolished in 1968? I had my own first baby in 1975, just seven years later.

“What would I have done if they had tried to force that on me? I certainly wouldn’t have accepted it. But what choice did the poor women have? They would have been ostracised, virtually excommunicated if they didn’t obey.”

Katie O’Brien was equally angry, recalling her own memories of just such a similar occasion.

“I can’t have been more than four but I remember standing nervously in a pew and watching while my mother knelt at a small side altar at the back of the church and this priest swaggered – that’s the only word for it – down the aisle to shake holy water over her and ‘forgive’ her for her sin of giving birth to my younger sister,” recalled Katie.

“When I realised what he was doing, I was so angry I wanted to attack him. How dared he think he had the right to do that? It’s a mistake to say children don’t understand. They do understand and they have a very strong sense of what is wrong.”

We did ask Patsy Hunter for more of his memories if he had any to spare, and he obliged most generously with recollections of strolling around his native village of Doneraile in recent times, seeking the houses and the shops that had been so much a part of his childhood.

“My grandparents were Paddy and Katie Hunter,” said Patsy. “They had a small dairy and as a youngster I often delivered the milk to homes around the town - real milk, no pasteurising then.

“This was long before the birds learned to puncture milk bottle tops.

“Across the road was Lysaght’s bakery where my younger brother Jimmy worked as a baker for many years.

“I remember Comber’s shop where I used to buy an ounce of snuff and a gateaux cake for our gentle neighbour in New Road, Mrs Katie Mahony - what a beautiful silver-haired lady she was. The French pronunciation was a struggle for her!”

Patsy continued his stroll down memory lane: “Onward past Bill Sheehan’s paper shop and across the generously wide street was Mr Mitchell’s grocery store where he obliged people by running a book account which was paid off at the end of the week, or possibly whenever one could.

“I remember too Arthur Henry Jones’ chemist shop, dimly lit and mysterious, with bottles of magic potions in glass cases safely out of reach behind high dark wooden counters.

“Incidentally, John B. Keane, the famous Kerry playwright, worked there as a chemist’s assistant for a few years.

“My favourite shop was definitely Mr Tidridge’s. Every Friday we collected our comics there, the Tiger, Hotspur, Lion, Beano and Dandy for the boys. I’m certain that the girls were well catered for too.

“Immediately next door was the lovely old drapery shop owned and run by Pat Corcoran, his tailor’s measuring tape always at the ready.

“If one could afford to be well dressed at that time in Doneraile, then you were well catered for. There were at least two drapery shops and possibly four tailors. The Monster House, a lady’s outfitters, catered for the well-dressed ladies.”

Not satisfied with just remembering incidents from his own childhood, Patsy also took thought for the memories stored in faded newspaper cuttings kept by his mother in an old teapot. How many households have those repositories of the past, priceless records of times long gone? In a canister, in a chocolate box, up on the dresser tucked behind the picture of the Pope or the Infant of Prague?

Perhaps your grandmother kept such a trove, and they all got thrown away as ‘rubbish’ when she passed on? Patsy Hunter was one of the rare few who valued those scraps of history:

“The old china teapot never held tea leaves, so its entrails couldn’t foretell the future, but it certainly kept a lid firmly on the past.

“Like many of her generation, my mother was an inveterate hoarder of newspaper clippings that reflected favourably on her family. These she collected at random and casually stored in that old teapot perched high on a shelf, which was well out of reach of our probing fingers.

“Not everything in her little trove told of happier times of course. Sadness and loss found a home there too.

“I’m lucky enough to have some of those clippings and I’ll attempt a narrative to each one in the interest of leaving a few more breadcrumbs of family history for our grandchildren. If I don’t explain them now, then who will? After all, I was there.

“I was there with my younger brother Jimmy when he won the Avondhu Autumn Stroke competition in 1969 at Doneraile Golf Club, of which we were both members.

“Perceived to be an elitist sport, ‘a good walk spoiled’, thankfully times had changed and the golf course was open to all to become members.

“Biased I may be, but Doneraile Golf Club must be one of the nicest nine-hole parkland courses in the country, it’s a clone of the nearby Doneraile Court Park.

“I will admit that I wasn’t with Jimmy for all of the 18 holes. From far away, love’s siren was calling and I willingly answered. I abandoned him, he won, and he forgave me. If he had lost…?”

Patsy continued: “Making mention of Doneraile Court Estate, half yearly, in common with the people of Doneraile and further afield, we paid ground rent to the estate.

“I note from the old receipts in that same teapot that for the period ending March 25, 1963, the amount due to Lord Viscount Doneraile was £1/2s/9d.

“Lord Doneraile died in 1956, aged 87. Hugh St Leger, Viscount Doneraile, had been a sheep farmer in New Zealand. He and his wife Mary arrived in Ireland from New Zealand in 1946, I believe. They did not have children.

“For the period ending September 29, 1969 the same amount as before was due to Viscountess Mary Doneraile, a really lovely lady. She oversaw the sale of the property to the Land Commission, beginning the process of preserving Doneraile Estate for the nation.

“On December 1942, the Irish Land Commission took possession of close to 400 acres of land from the estate. Lady Doneraile left Doneraile Court and became our near neighbour at New Road, when she came to live at Knockacur Cottage, a beautiful enclosed old house which had previously been lived in by a gentle elderly lady named Mrs Lloyd.

“As a youngster I had a few ‘jobs’ for which I was paid, and one of those was for Mrs Lloyd. Every Saturday, I brought timber and turf from a nearby storehouse to a little shed, much closer and more accessible to the main house. I also reduced some of the blocks of timber to kindling which would be used to light the fires each morning.

“My stack of kindling was intricate, a joy to behold, I am proud to say. I have a scar on my left index finger though, left by a careless stroke of the little hatchet which I used!”

Patsy mentioned another snippet in his mother’s trove of newspaper clippings.

“I was obviously there when the Intermediate Certificate Examination results of 1960, for Doneraile Christian Brothers, were published on the Cork Examiner. How proud must my mother have been to see my name with an ‘H’ after it, denoting an honours result! She kept the cutting.

“She was widowed in 1955, when I, her eldest, was just 11 years old. This is not the place to speak of the sacrifices she made, nor to attempt to explain how hard she worked to rear us, and in particular to keep me in secondary education, when the easy option would have been for me to get a job and to earn some much-needed money.

“The story of my mother’s struggle is actually one that I will never share. Like chapters in a book, firmly closed, those memories are too readily available to me and mostly I don’t go there. Sometimes a gentle breeze, a zephyr, will rustle a leaf, open a page or disturb a memory and it all comes back.

“Sadly, I wonder now at times if I helped her at all. I find it difficult to believe in an after-life, but I am certain that my mother’s indomitable spirit and her zest for life could never be extinguished, they are always there for me.

“Around the house I have many photos of her. I love those younger ones when she was Margaret O’Connell, with her life ahead of her. And of course, I realise that there were many happy times. She loved my father, she loved us, and she loved life.

“Each day, in passing, I speak to one or other of those photos, touch the frame, and ask her to look after our grandchildren. Are we never reared?”

Patsy continued: “My honours in the Inter Cert, of which she kept the proof so proudly, were in Irish, English and Latin, but believe me those teachers had to work hard with me.

“However, my reputation, or to be precise, my behaviour as a hurler, has followed me down through the years, perpetuated and possibly exaggerated by friend and foe.

“Armed with a hurley, I became a different person from whom no-one was safe, I even put myself in danger of retaliation!

“I metamorphosed from being a bookish rather solitary youngster who loved reading, films and listening to BBC light programmes on radio, into a wholly different person. And she kept the rare newspaper cuttings from those days too.

“Because he died so young, far too young, my father, Jim Hunter, was a man that I hardly knew, more’s the pity. But here is an odd story. I’m a firm believer in telepathy, and my belief was further reinforced when, at precisely 8.36pm the other evening, our son Alan messaged his mother.

“Knowing nothing of my sad thoughts about dad, he asked her if my father had been left-handed. Surely that’s beyond pure coincidence?

“I don’t as yet know why he asked, but I’ve just been upstairs to check a fine photo of my father, and yes, he was left-handed. He’s in a bar, right elbow on the counter, smiling and confidently holding a pint glass of Guinness in his left hand. He was in London, I believe.

“Somebody somewhere was pulling the strings of memory that night, no mistake!”

Patsy, you’re a treasure. Your grandchildren and your great grandchildren will thank you for taking the time and effort and, yes, pain, to set down your memories for them.

Sometimes, it is distressing to look back, sometimes it is a happy emotion – but we should all do it. If we don’t, then those memories are gone forever.

Send us your own recollections of childhood days! Email jokerrigan1@gmail.com or leave a comment on our Facebook page: www.facebook.com/echolivecork.