The Memoirs of Patty Lee of Glenasmole

Ms Patty Lee, 1999  (Photo: Mr. Louis Fagan)

Patty Lee was born in Glenasmole in March 1914.  Her mother was a Douglas from Oldbawn and her father was from Glenasmole.  She had three sisters and two brothers and although she never married, she raised seven children after two of her sisters both died young.  One of her brothers John Lee, was the poet of Bohernabreena.  Patty moved down to Firhouse at fifty years of age and took a job with Telectron in Tallaght, where she worked until she retired at 65.  Patty passed away in 2003, but is remembered fondly in Firhouse, Tallaght and Glenasmole.

“I started school in Bohernabreena when I was six and a half, and left after my Confirmation when I was twelve.  There were sixteen pupils and two teachers, Miss Quinn and Mrs Carney.  They were sisters and lived in Rathfarnham, near where Sarah Curran*, Robert Emmet’s girlfriend was tortured (*perhaps, Anne Devlin, Emmet's housekeeper).

My father’s family was generations in Glenasmole and had gone to a hedge school.   They used to speak a lot of lrish up there, but it was beaten out of them. When I started school you still weren’t allowed to speak Irish.

We had a lot of the English up there between 1916 and 1921.  They were always searching the houses in case someone was storing ammunition or hiding an IRA man.  Even though the English lived locally and were based up there, we would he terrified of them.  They would be very rough. There was often shooting up there between the IRA and the English and the Valley would get it.  They would tell us first that there might be a bit of trouble, then the shooting would start up.  The English built the Featherbed Road up there, the only good thing they ever did, because they were based around there.

It was mostly very young and very old people up there in that time, because all the men went off to the 1914 War and very few of them ever came back.  Because of that, there was a whole generation missing in Glenasmole.  You can still miss that generation today, because there was very few children born after the men went away to the war. The school up there was nearly empty for ten years after. They were only ignorant young lads going off to get the shillings- a whole generation lost!

It was very hard for the women at that time because with all the men gone, the work on the land was left to them.  A cousin of mine went out to France and never came back.  Eighteen years of age is all he was, killed in the war. It was up to the women then, to feed the calves, fowl and pigs; pick the potatoes; milk the cows. Everything was left to the women.

Then came the Civil War. You didn't know who was who. In Glenasmole you kept yourself to yourself. As children, if someone came into the house, we would be sent out to play and would he delighted for it.  The adults would talk away and we wouldn't hear any business.  A lot was hidden from us at that time.  Some people did very well out of the Civil War!

Christmas was a great time when I was a child.  Every house would give gifts to each other.  There was no such thing as Christmas trees then.  That's only a new idea.  We would have paper chains hanging up to decorate the house. The first Christmas present I ever got was a box of handkerchiefs and I thought that was great. As children we always went to the pantomime in town at Christmas and then to Woolworth's to get a sixpenny doll. We would get our shoes or clothes of Santa Claus because we were told 'that's all he can carry'.  Then when we went back to school we would hear that such-and-such got a bike, and so-and-so got something else, and we were told he couldn't carry them!  We only got what we needed from Santa Claus, and maybe a few sweets and a few new pennies.   At Christmas you would have to lock all your geese and turkeys up in the kitchen because terrible gangs would come up from Firhouse and pinch them all.  A gang from Killakee were terrible rogues for that- always pinching somebody's fowl.

In my time, there was only five houses in St Anne's where I lived, and another four or five over in Castlekelly.  Our house stood out on a hill, all on its own.   In the winter we would often have a dance in our house one week and in someone else’s the next.  Everyone would come from around and pay half a crown or five shillings and the men would buy a quarter barrel of beer for a pound.  There were great players around there at that time. The music would be playing until the early hours. In the summer there would be dances at the crossroads. You would be only after getting a new pair of shoes and they would be worn out in a night!  We had a great life without ever leaving the place.

Before we got a paraffin lamp we had a candle. Even after we got the lamp, it was off half the time because you couldn't get the oil for it during the war. Then the candles were rationed too, so you would only have one.  We had one candle in the middle of the table at night- A great big table it was because there was a crowd of us.  Then, when that wasted, we had to do with the light of the fire.  We would sit around the fire telling ghost stories.  We would be afraid to go asleep then.  People loved to talk and they would make the stories up as they went along.

Everything was rationed during the last war, but it didn't matter to us that much because we had all our own food and fuel. We would give our butter coupons to people in town, because we made our own.  We might swap them for tea or soap coupons. We didn't need clothes coupons, because we rarely bought clothes anyway.  You forget what terrible poverty there was in Dublin City at that time! They had to buy everything: meat, vegetables, milk, everything.  We never thought anything of them, because they were all free.  The only things we bought were tea and sugar, because we kept our own cattle, sheep, pigs and poultry and grew our own vegetables.

During the summer we cut our own turf from the bog and that would keep us going all through the winter. I used to cut turf on the bog with Guard Logan and Guard Flanagan. Before I met Logan, I thought a Guard was someone who would kill you. He was a big tall man, nearly stooped over.

Turf Cutting- Glenasmole 1935

During the war I was able to get a bit of Black-Market tea, so Logan and Flanagan would come to me to get a cup of tea when they were cutting turf. Guard Logan would say "Patty, do you know anything about the Black Market?", and of course my face would light up!  They were great men; lived up beside the barracks, where Fanagan’s Funeral Parlour is now (in Tallaght village).

You were never short of meat because you would just kill a pig, and that would do you for months. We never had a fridge, so we would hang the pig in the kitchen and that was it!  There was no such thing as food poisoning in my day.   If you saw a doctor, you knew someone was dying.  You would see a doctor first and a priest behind him.

Dr Swan was the only doctor for this area.  His wife was an inspector in the schools, and Fr. Doyle and Fr. Toohey were the local priests.  Fr. Doyle use to go around on horseback, and if he seen a fella and a girl walking together, he would run them!  He would always be watching the bus stop to see who was coming and going and the people you would meet on the road would give you the nod to tell you ‘the priest is up ahead’.  At night a Guard might cycle up behind you on the road, but you would see him coming around the corner, because of the light on his bike.

Fr. Doyle was 23 years in Bohernabreena Church. That church was a hundred years old in 1968 and was built by all the local man, and none of them got paid a penny for it!  They did it for God and the Church. I went to the sodality there for years because if you didn't, you would have the priest down on you!  My family always got half-eight mass there, every Sunday. You couldn't miss Mass then, and you wouldn't want to because everyone got Mass at that time. People came up from Tallaght to Bohernabreena to get Mass, because the Priory was only a small place then and it was private. Then, when they built it up and opened it to everyone, nobody went!  Our Church was only a Church of Ease, so we had to go to Rathfarnham to make our confirmation, because that was the first parish church. Then when Bohernabreena was made a parish, Tallaght people had to go up there to be confirmed.

People loved Sundays then, because there was no television or radio, no nothing, so Mass was a great place to get the gossip. Everyone would want to know 'who was selling what?', or 'Who isn't at Mass?' If someone missed mass, there would be a great rush to find out why.  You would have to find that out before the week was over.   We weren’t allowed to work on a Sunday. If you had a ladder in your stocking you couldn't sew it. Or you couldn't hang your washing out because the priest might see it. You would only be allowed to look after the animals and that was all.

Malachi Horan used to get Mass with us in Bohernabreena, all dressed up in his leggings and boots and tight green jacket that came out at the bottom and white britches. He was well known around here.  Mass was always in Latin in those days.  I never got used to this English Mass they have now.

My mother was a very Holy woman.  We would say the rosary every night for an hour and a half before going to bed.  I was only very young, a teenager, when she died of pneumonia at 48 years of age.  After Mass on a Sunday during the summer everyone would go for a picnic at the weir in Firhouse, behind Morton's pub.  After cars became popular people from all over the place would arrive out there on a Sunday.  A crowd from the city would get the first bus out in the morning and spend the day picking blackberries and then get the half-seven bus back to town and sell the berries in the evening. That was a great place for blackberry picking.  Any way those people could make a few shillings, they would.  The same people would come out during the winter and pick mushrooms.

During the summer the men would be sitting up on the hill reading the papers while the women would be cooking on a fire.  The children would be in tears playing with the lambs. They would try and catch a lamb and no sooner would they get near it, when the lamb would jump up and knock the child over as it ran away. People would have a picnic there, if there was no excursion on.

The Big Excursion was a great day out. At that time during the summer every group organised an excursion, a day out to Glendalough or Galway or even Portstewart. There was the Pioneer Excursion, the Football Excursion and the Sodality Excursion. Every weekend there was a different one.

Sunday was the only break you would get during the summer.  You wouldn't get a minute during the rest of the week. You had to milk and feed the calves, feed the pigs and fowl and carry water to the house; cut and collect the turf for the fire.  You would only he finished weeding the potatoes when the bog was on.  Then you would cut the turf and while you waited for that to dry, you thinned the turnips, than footed the turf. No sooner was that done and it would be time for haymaking. The harvest would be in by then.

We would he delighted to see a stranger coming to the door looking for work at harvest time because we had so much land.  All a man would want for a day’s work was a bed for the night and the price of an ounce of tobacco.  All the men smoked in those days.  We would hire men for three or four days to get the harvest in and they would sleep on the straw in the barn.  I remember my father would always say to them "You can leave your matches with me before you go to bed".  There was no such thing as fear in my time.  You would think nothing of taking a stranger in for the night and giving them a bed.

There was as much work during the winters. 1947 was the year of The Big Snow. There was over ten-foot of it, a lot more than in the snow of ’33, so there was plenty of work for all the men with the Corporation. You didn't need an education to hold a shovel!  No sooner had they cleared one part of the road, when another big drift would come along and cover it again.  That was a very tough time for the farmers.  All the livestock either smothered or froze to death in the snow.

At that time, Paddy Byrne was just coming in as a T.D., and he said he could get all the farmers a loan of one hundred pounds, to be paid back over ten years without interest.  That was a lot of money then. But not one farmer took it, because they were afraid that another big snow would come the following year and they would lose the land if they couldn't keep up the repayments.  As it turned out they would have been alright, because there was ten great years after that.  But how could they have known?"

Mr. John Lee, "The Poet of Bohernabreena", and brother of Patty.  John died in 1982.

Albert Perris

(Memoirs (Edited) as set down in recorded audio interview over several days, with Albert Perris in Glenview Lodge Day Care Centre, Glenview, Tallaght, Co. Dublin in 1999.  First published by Tallaght Welfare Society in “Since Adam was a Boy- An Oral Folk History of Tallaght (Perris, A., TWS, 1999).

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