My bones are getting weary now, and my shoulders they are bent,
My once black hair is grey with care and my money is all spent.
Soon Sargent Death will call me home, and he’ll take me by the hand,
Far from Tralee Town, lay my body down, in this God forsaken land.
To all the men who dig it out, adieu my friends, adieu,
To young and old, in search of gold, I raise my glass to you.
Go down that trench Proud Irishman, take the shovel in your hand,
There’s no easy gold only rain and cold, in this God forsaken land.
You are fair of face, dear Kate, now you’re nearing twenty-one,
I hesitate to spoil your dreams, when your life has just begun.
Your father, he is old, a grah, and I am far from strong,
A dowry from John Hogan’s son would help us all along.
Just think of it, my darling Kate, you would own a motor car,
You’d wear fine linen next your skin and travel near and far.
Hogan’s lands stretch far and wide, from Rathea to Drummahead;
He owns sheep and cows and fine fat sows; pyjamas for the bed.
I know he’s tall and skinny, Kate, and his looks are not the best,
But beggars can’t be choosers, love, when you’re feathering your nest!
He’s been to college in the town; his shirts are always new,
What does it matter if he’s old, he’s just the man for you.
I know you love young Paddy Joe, him with the rakish eye,
I’ve seen the way you look at him whenever he goes by.
I will admit he’s handsome, Kate, but he doesn’t own a car,
Sure, he likes to fight and drink all night above in Sheehan’s bar.
Did I ever tell you, Kate a grah... that I was pretty too?
The summer days seemed longer then, and the sky was always blue!
I was only gone nineteen, and your father fifty-three,
But he owned the land on which we stand and he seemed the man for me.
There was a young man lived next door, I loved with all my might,
It was his face that haunted me when your father held me tight;
I longed, dear Kate, down through the years, for the soft touch of his hand.
But young love is no substitute for ten acres of fine land.
You will wear a long white dress and a red rose in your hair,
I will throw confetti, Kate, the whole town will be there;
You will make a promise true, to honour and obey,
I will stand on your right hand, and I’ll sell my love away.
Tears are not for daytime, Kate, but only for the night,
You’ll have a daughter of your own and teach her wrong from right;
Rear her strong and healthy, Kate, pray guidance from above.
Then one fine day when she’s nineteen—she might marry just for love.
THE PERFECT PASSENGER
Mark Bolger
Now for those of us out there in the trenches the idea of the perfect passenger seems more myth than reality. Is there such a thing? Do they exist? Or are they just the wishful thinking of a bored driver trying to tune out whilst stuck in George’s Street, with what seems like an Einstein/Hawkins type paradox of infinite traffic existing on finite streets.
So to unearth this intangible character there are a few things that need to be addressed. So, is the perfect passenger a matter of perception, will my perfect passenger be another drivers nightmare. Now I suppose there is the possibility that there is one single type that would be viewed universally as perfect, that quintessential traveller who would be viewed by all my colleagues as the holy-grail to be sought out and cherished when found. However just like those in question, drivers also come in many shapes and sizes, although it seems from my personal observation that drivers past a certain level of service all seem to assume the same shape, evolution at work or something else? I don’t know, you answer, but the day I look down and have a groove in my stomach that I can neatly slot the steering wheel into is the day that I rethink my career choice.
Having such a range of personalities and cultures driving buses in the city today makes finding the one category of passenger that would appease everyone all the more elusive. Consequently what we need to do is eliminate those that are unanimously disliked. In order to do this particular list justice I would probably need more pages than the editor would allow, accordingly I’ll list the usual suspects, the Top Five most Unwanted if you will. Top of the list for me has to go with those lovely citizens who while standing at the stop, watch Dublin traffic grind to a halt for yet another peak time, even as they watch you achingly make your way to their stop in little five foot increments, and when you finally get to the stop to do your duty as the conscientious professionals we all are, they see fit to start screaming at you about the fact that they have been waiting for over half an hour for a bus. Rather than point out the obvious, I’ve always found that treating them like kids (that they are doing a remarkably good impression of) and apologising and reassuring them that it will be all better tomorrow, normally makes them shut up and leave you alone. Watching them then sit stewing in their own ire is enough to put the smile momentarily back on my face.
A close second is those mothers who know... Before I get into this, don’t hate me because I’m having a go at mothers, I have one myself. Anyway those mothers who know they are getting on a bus and decide to wait until you pull up to the stop before they decide to take their shopping off the pram handles, pull poor little Tommy aggressively out of his seat, then try to watch that he doesn’t step onto the road while trying to fold the pram with about as much success and grace as a chimp doing a Rubik’s cube, all the while glancing daggers at the driver as if he’s the reason that she now feels pressured and flustered. When the colossal task (sarcasm) of having the buggy and shopping in one hand and pushing the child up the steps with the other is finished, she then proceeds to dig her purse out which wouldn’t you know, is at the bottom of her shopping, telling little Tommy to go sit down and then when he independently trots off to do just that yelling at him to come back. And when you think it just could not get any worse the fare proceeds to be counted out in coppers, and you get that silly little “I’m sorry for holding you up” grimace. Four minutes have passed.
A little footnote is that I’m not talking about mothers with new babies; I have some compassion after all.
Next up are the ever-present drunks; no matter what time of day, this particular species of Residentus Dublinis seems to favour public transport. Morning, noon or evening they stagger up the steps of your nice clean bus missing the occasional one, which then gets punctuated by some unintelligible growl that you can only guess is them unsuccessfully cursing at their feet, or wondering why the driver keeps moving the bus back and forth. They then try to root out the appropriate fare. One of these days I’m going to put my hand in one of their pockets, because I could swear they seem about two foot deep, their arms invariably go right in up to the elbow. Maybe all drunks should now be referred to as Dr. Whos, because their trousers are like the Tardis. Then with ninety proof breath they ask you to get the fare, at least I think that’s what they ask because it’s always followed by them sticking a nicotine stained hand full of change under your nose, managing to send one or two of the coins skittering down the bus in the process. So holding your breath just in case you are stopped and breathalysed, his exhalations alone are bound to fail you, you take his fare and then have to listen to a tirade of drunken mumblings peppered with ‘bud’ and ‘brother’. Then he reaches in and slaps you on the shoulder, puts his thumb up and staggers toward a seat in a fog of alcohol fumes, hitting every bar in the bus on the way.
The last second smoker is next. This is the person who on seeing their bus approaching rather than accept fate and throw away the stub, frantically suck and suck, trying to dredge every last bit of kick from their habit. Getting on the b
us might well be the last chance ever of getting a nicotine fix. With lungs filled to bursting with heavenly carcinogens they hold on to it like it’s the last breath they’ll ever take – that is until they ask for their fare and proceed to exhale every bit of that unhealthy cloud right in your face, oblivious to the strange fact that the driver has just turned green.
Last but not least is the person who sticks out their hand and as you get to the stop they realise that they had been a little bit hasty and yours is not the route they want. Rather than wave you on they turn to one side and completely ignore you, even when you do stop and open the doors they stare straight ahead absolutely refusing to make eye contact with you. If you call out and ask them if they want this particular route, they act completely oblivious to the fact that you have just spoken. All you can do is hope that when their bus does come along it will be full, and maybe, just maybe, the driver of the full bus will have a little sadistic streak and slow down until that crucial moment when they get their pass or money out, and then speed up again leaving the ignorer in a cloud of diesel fumes.
To add to those easily categorised five examples, are the people who regardless of the fact that there are signs on every bus cannot seem to remember to ring the bell when they want to get off. The lovely old dears who see fit to tell you where they are going, why they are going there and what particular ailment seems to be troubling them that week. The person who throws money into the money safe and then look at you while you try to do an impression of Uri Geller and psychically guess what they want. And of course the deep sea divers, or shareholders as they seem to love calling themselves, cackling at that, worn, used up joke with a gusto that is more fitting around a cauldron than on the steps of a double-decker bus.
Having dismissed all the obvious runners up in our search it seems to me that there is no one left to bestow the title ‘The Perfect Passenger’ on. Have I missed anyone? Or am I just being a cynic. No, I can’t believe that about myself. ‘Cynic’ is a word coined by optimists to describe realists. That’s what I think I am, a realist.
I wonder if it has always been like this, from that first entrepreneur who realised that letting people ride on his horse and cart for a small fee, to the complex system of transport that all urban areas need just to function today. Have passengers always been the colourful bunch that we deal with daily? After all this cogitation the one thing I can say with conviction is that, for myself, the perfect passenger is, the one who is travelling on any route except my own.
UNKNOWN IRISHMAN CHANGED THE
HISTORY OF THE WORLD
John Cassidy
In 1789 France was in turmoil, the populace seething with discontent, the world of the nobility was about to collapse. The French revolution was about to change the future of France, of Europe and the Western world. On the 14th July, an Irish shoe maker named Seosamh Kavanagh and two companions started a rumour that soldiers of the King were about to attack the citizens of Paris.
He drove around the city in a horse and coach shouting ‘’To the Bastille,’’ “ Capture the Bastille.’’ With the mob behind him he went to the Hotel des Invalides, looted 30,000 muskets and led an assault on the Bastille. After four hours the Bastille, the symbol of all that the general population hated, fell. The French revolution had begun. There were thousands of Irish people and people of Irish descent in Paris and elsewhere in France in the 18th century. It was a natural place for refugees to go because contacts with France and Spain had been strong for generations. A hundred years previously 14,000 troops had to leave the country after the treaty of Limerick. ‘’ Flight of the Wild Geese.’’
All that remained of the old Irish Nobility and the middle classes fled to France, Spain and Austria along with ordinary Irish people, farmers and labourers. On the Continent the Irish joined armies, went into commerce and few were able to return home.
The French revolution influenced the affairs of Ireland. It had a great influence on the United Irishmen in the North of Ireland and contributed to the Rising there in 1798. It was indirectly a factor in the Wexford and Robert Emmett Rising in 1803. It also influenced the political and social life of the Country because of the effect it had on one man; Danial O‘Connell.
The O‘Connell’s as Irish speaking people, had many connections with the Continent, many of the family living there, most educated there. Daniel O’Connell lived in Paris from 1791 until 1793 and was appalled by the terror, by the guillotining of the French nobility and many families with Irish associations.
The terror to which O’Connell reacted had as one of its leaders a man with interesting links to Ireland; Robespierre. Robespierre’s ancestors had been expelled from Kilkenny by Cromwell. In 1649, the entire population of Kilkenny was cleared out of town by decree. The choice given to the Mayor, Robert Router was the usual one; to hell or to Connacht, but he like the merchants of the town and those of Waterford choose France and settled in Carvin near Arras, in north eastern France.
Returning to Ireland O’Connell joined the Yeomanry Guards, founded to counter the Robert Emmet Rising. He turned away from his Gaelic past; he abandoned the Irish language and derided it. He broke all connections with France and led the Irish into settling for home rule that meant the domination of the country by an English speaking Catholic middle class. The reaction of the Ulster Protestants at the time set the scene for years of problems in the North.
Incidentally, one of the French ambassadors to Britain during the early years of the Revolution was an Irishman named Noel O’Neill.
QUADRAGESIMO ANNO
In the Fortieth Year
Michael O ’Brien
Recently, I was just reflecting on the speed with which this year, 1996, was passing and mentally noted some salient features of the months just passed. One important date that flashed through my mind was the day my daughter made her confirmation. I recall the bright happy faces of her and her friends, the joy of parents and grandparents who were happy because the young were happy. This brought me back to my own confirmation day, forty years ago, almost to the month. In the early summer of 1956 I stood trembling before the beady eyes and stern features of the Rev. J.C. McQuaid as he breasted me to ask the Confirmation Question. To my disappointment, he passed me by. I suppose he said to himself “There, but for the grace of God, goes God”. On that same day I managed to achieve the second of my burning ambitions - the acquisition of my first pair of long trousers. My first ambition was to acquire a bicycle of my own. This had been fulfilled at Eastertime that same year due to a benevolent uncle. You could say that these were modest ambitions, at least by the standards of today’s 12 year olds.
The acquiring of your first long pants suggested that you were starting to face towards young manhood or adulthood. The stock question in the hill country when you were seen in your first ‘longers’ was “Who lifted you into them?” One was becoming more mature at that time. I started to realise that, for some people, life would always be a bitch and then they would die. I also noticed that the girls in my school were different in a very positive way.
The year 1956 had other similarities with 1996 in so far as the dreary steeples of Fermanagh and Tyrone, that had so haunted Winston Churchill post World War I, were still haunting us in 1956 and continue to do so in 1996. In our mountain school, an irredentist Fior Gael was rehearsing us in the grace notes of the song ‘ Sean South from Garryown’. In that year I began to realise that the world was not a happy place.
Not all the similarities between ‘56 and ‘96 were full of woe. Both years were successful for Ireland at Olympic Games level -with Ronnie Delaney, a man with Arklow connections, claiming gold in 1956 and Michelle Smith winning 3 gold and 1 bronze in 1996. Wexford hurlers were champions in both years also. I suppose it was because Wicklow were not too successful at All-Ireland level that we had to look elsewhere for our sporting Gods. I certainly said my youthful prayers to Nicky Rackard to help fulfil my third burning ambition. As young lads and lassies we arrived home from school
more or less at the same time that Cunningham’s bread van pulled up at the gate. Not only did he bring the ‘loaves and fishes’, he also brought the Irish Press. I can still recall gloating over the pages of photographs of the All-Ireland Hurling Final of 1956. I looked on my heroes with the same rapture that my young daughter, today, reserves for Boyzone.
I am not at all conscious of the last weeks of 1956 so I suppose that, for me, there was nothing special about them. The following year, 1957, I fulfilled the last of my trilogy of burning ambitions when I managed to get my first pair of football boots (thanks Nicky). I also passed the Primary Cert. and, just to put the year into the honours category, the Yankee relations came on their one and only Grand European experience and they brought over the famous ‘American Parcel’.
MAKE THEM ILLEGAL
John Cassidy
“They make me sick” snorted my perspiring friend who ran into me at the bus station. He paused for a moment to wipe the sweat from his brow, “If the people would only put their foot down they could get them made illegal.” This sounded suspiciously like an all-out attack on the Corporation or the Government and I registered agreement by dropping a few nasty cracks about squandering the taxpayer’s money and income tax pirates. My guess was wide of the mark however. Neither the government or income tax had put a match to my friend’s squib.
The subject of his wrath was the public house clock or, to be more accurate the public house public clock. With childlike faith in one of those benefactors of watchless citizens he had sprinted in alarm for the five thirty express service to Donegal only to find on his arrival at Bus Aras that he had fifteen minutes to spare.
Now the notion of a law against petty annoyance to the citizen will always receive from me a sympathetic ear. It’s the petty worries that first plant the crows feet on our youthful complexions and introduce the “grey lock or two in the brown of our hair,” and I’m all in favour of rushing a bill through the Dail to suppress them. But there are other things which should be included with the go-as-you-please clocks.
It Happens Between Stops Page 4
