The Last of Lusmagh

1959 saw the last of Lusmagh, i.e., the last of the Killeen annual holidays in Lusmagh. 




I did not know, nor, I suppose, did anyone else, that this was, indeed, the last. But already lots had changed. Every year, since 1946/7, the family had stayed in McCormack's in Ballymacoolaghan. James McCormack was an old man who lived alone in this cottage until then. Then, he went to live with his daughter and the cottage became vacant. Packie, until then, was still living in the parental home at Coorclough/ Gortacallow, but Rodie had married and started a family of his own. 

My father, Frank Killeen, negotiated to take over (purchase?) McCormack's. Henceforth, this house was available to the Killeens for their five-week Summer holiday, and Packie resided there for the rest of the year. 

Every year, the three wild boys, Roger, Jerry and Francie, teamed up with Johnny Searson and roamed freely around the fields of Lusmagh. We frequently went down to the callows (flooded in winter, but wonderful meadows of late-mown hay in Summer), where we stripped off and splashed about in the drains. 

When we had done our swimming, we ran around the fields to dry, or lay naked in the sunshine, before we put on our clothes. We had no idea that we were spied on from a distance by the Lusmagh girls, who assembled on the road overlooking the callows and had a good natter and laugh about the wild boys. 

Without any signal or warning, all had changed. Johnny Searson was now considered an adult and was engaged in farm work. Roger was not with us this year, for he had gone off to join the Christian Brothers. Jerry had left school after the Inter and gone into employment. I don't even recall if he was with us this year. I was sixteen years old, and too self-conscious to behave as a wild boy, but this was not possible anyway on my own. Lusmagh had become a place for walking and visiting only. 

Earlier, this year, I had been to the Connemara Gaeltacht with my school colleagues. Under the supervision of the Christian Brothers, there were no girls in this summer college. We danced the céilí dances with male partners, and were not supposed to associate with the local girls. 

The beautiful Nóirín suggested that I and my pals should go swimming off the rocks with the local girls, but we desisted. Rules were rules, and we were only allowed to go swimming in the approved places, all together, under supervision. This made sense and was sufficiently fun-filled for our purposes. 

There were two beaches in Spiddal, Trá na bhFear, in the harbour, and Trá na mBan, overlooked by the public road. The population was well controlled by the clergy, and there was no mixed bathing allowed. This did not suit the wilder local girls, who preferred to swim, unsupervised, off the rocks, but this was out of bounds for the college boys. 

It was different in the other Summer Colleges, where the brothers were not in control. 

Look, I had completed my Inter Cert, undoubtedly with a scholarship, and was beginning to wonder what I should do with the rest of my life. One idea was that I would set out to roam the world, and earn my keep by writing about my travels and observations. Well, if you are going to write about travelling through India or Afghanistan, you better first prove your mettle by writing about places nearer home. So, as I set out on my first holiday away from my parents (except Brú na Midhe when I was 11 or 12), I determined to write an account of my experiences. It began with cycling to Heuston Station, with my baggage strapped on the carrier behind the saddle; meeting the other guys at the station and Pancho (Brother Michael S Flatley); wheeling the bikes to the guards' van; occupying the booked carriage; the whistle blowing and train setting off; card-playing on the journey; flat countryside outside the carriage windows; stone walls when we crossed the Shannon, and so on. 

In our lodgings at Radharc an Choláiste (Éamon Breathnach), I sat down and wrote my long saga in a letter addressed to my poor mother, who had to read all this tripe. Seán Coyle was intrigued as to what I was writing, I was so long at it, he said I must be writing my life-story, which was sort of correct. So he nicknamed me "Birdie," after Birdie O'Hanlon, a character in the Kennedys of Castleross, a lunch-time soap opera on the radio at that time, who was writing her life-story. 

From Spiddal, as well as football and other sporting and cultural activities and local perambulations, we made a trip on a turf-boat to the Aran Islands (Inis Móir).It was a steaming hot day. Pancho (who had got his nickname because of his habit of reading the daily comic-strip of The Lone Ranger, who had a Mexican companion called Pancho, in the Irish Press), showed us how to pour cidona gently down the side of the plastic cup so as not to lose any of the precious gas. 

I recall visiting the site of the Seven Martyrs. These were mysterious martyrs, about whom nothing was known, except that the unremarkable graves dated from the fifth century. It appears that they may have been "Snakes," i.e., Coptic Christians, who were here before St. Patrick, and who were unmercifully slaughtered by Papist Christians resolved on driving the Snakes from Ireland. However, this is only speculation: there is no evidence. 

For the three weeks we were in Spiddal, the sun shone brightly every day. However, when we arrived in Lusmagh, the rain was falling. I glumly watched the rain dribbling down the little cottage window; then I took out my poetry note-book and wrote the following poem:

Droplets dribbling from the roof, 
A wet and dismal day, 
And all the dribbling, dropping brooks 
That play intricate games on the window panes 
Call "Birdie, come away. 

"This is no place for soul of thine, 
No place for poet's ear; 
We know a land of flowing wine, 
A land of mellow cheer. 

"There shall so sweet a song be sung, 
So sad, sweet, music played, 
Your eyes will then with tears be wrung, 
Your heart with music swayed, 

"And you shall say your sad, sweet poem, 
That you yourself have made, 
And you shall bathe mid soft sea foam, 
Then sip cidona in the shade."

When the poem was written, the rain had paused, and I excused myself and went for a ramble down through the village. Proceeding down a narrow lane, I found that the water was dripping melodically from the hedges that almost formed a canopy over the lane - a magical moment. Not so magical was the appearance of the well that had served us in the past, for some farmer had allowed cows to  trip down  this lane, soiling the  well. My father had to revert to another well at a little further distance from the cottage.

What then of this holiday? It was walking the roads with my mother and sisters and sitting by myself reading a book.

One day I was sitting by the little window in Rodie's house, reading my book. (All the windows in these old cottages were little, and set in the middle of the deep stone walls). My mother had gone walking with the younger pair of sisters (Sheila and Margaret), and Mary was outside in Rodie's front yard/ garden, collecting or sorting wild flowers. Father was somewhere else, probably helping out with the hay. A motor-car pulled up at the gate. A man popped his head out of the window, and enquired:

"Is this Killeen's?"

Wherever Rodie had been, he came into the house, went to the back-room and came out with a shot-gun. He went straight over to the car, pointed the gun at the driver and said,

"Get the hell out of here and never show your face here again, or I'll shoot you full of lead."

The car sped off. Rodie came into the house, left the gun where he had got it in the back room, and returned to his farming task in one of the out-houses.

When I recounted the story to my incredulous mother, she asked me what accent the car people spoke. I had heard Australian visitors earlier in the year, and I thought their accent sounded Australian, not English. Fool! I thought an English accent was what you heard on the BBC. I knew nothing about Cockney. Could this have been my London cousins, and was Rody making it clear that he would stand for no heirs of his elder brother ever having a chance to make a claim on the place? Nobody knows.

My father's health was already in decline from his lifelong habit of smoking. He suffered from Varicose Veins and Rheumatism. He recently had Neuralgia in his head, and a treatment prescribed by the police doctor had turned his hair flaming red.

That September, after our Lusmagh holiday, he went down with Pleurisy and Pneumonia. He was still in hospital at Cristmas.

When he recovered from the Pleurisy, he went back to work in the Garda Síochána for a couple of years, (on light duties) before taking early retirement in 1961. He managed to father another child, the most beautiful of the clan, in February 1961. 

His health continued in decline, with arteriosclerosis. He continued to see a Consultant every few months in Fitzwilliam Square. Sometimes he was too feeble to go by himself; my mother was up to her eyes in mothering, cooking and house-work, so I sometimes went with father. His consultant was TJ Ryan, who was also a consultant in Jervis Street hospital, where I heard the nurses referring to him as "The Scarlet Pimpernel," because very often he couldn't be found when they needed him. Mr Ryan was a smoker, like my father, and, in fact, beat him to the grave.

The medical profession did not have any programme for curing Father. Several years later, when my mother had great difficulty getting him ready and marshalling him to Jervis Street hospital for his visits, they admitted to her that they brought him in "Solely for the purpose of observing the progression of the disease."

One day, when he visited his consultant, Mr Ryan advised him that it was time for him to settle his affairs, because he had a limited span of time left in his full mind. So, when he came home, he visited Glasnevin Cemetery and booked his site. I was studying law, so he asked me about making a Will. I bought a printed will form in Eason's and helped him to decide what would go in it.

Mr Ryan, of course, was right. Father gradually developed Vascular Dementia, which is a loss of brain function caused by insufficient blood-flow to the brain. With it came hallucinations and paranoia.

So, indeed, 1959 was the last of Lusmagh.

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