The Blacksmith's Daughter- The Memoirs of May Delaney (Mary Kelly)

The Blacksmith's Daughter- The Memoirs of May Delaney (nee Kelly)

May Kelly (Centre) with Friends Maggie Barry and Mary Manning (circa 1924)

May Delaney (nee Kelly) was born in Balrothery in 1914 and moved to Tallaght village with her family shortly after.  Her mother (Mary-Ann Reid) worked in Boardman's Mill in Glenview before marrying the village Blacksmith, John Kelly from Firhouse.  May had six brothers and two sisters, Jude and Jane who were known locally as The Tallaght Twins.  After marrying Bill Delaney from the Liberties in 1949, May moved to Walkinstown. In the late 1990s she still visited Tallaght at least once a week, for the Senior Citizens Club and to play bowling in the Leisureplex, where her back garden once was!

Mary's Sisters- The Tallaght Twins

Tallaght- It's a changed place now!  You wouldn't know where you were.  I can hardly tell one road from another, but I suppose it's a good thing, now that life is easier.   The Tram at that time  (1920s) would go from Terenure to Blessington, stopping at Templeogue, Balrothery, Tallaght, Jobstown and Brittas.  Mrs Doran had the ticket office for the tram and a little waiting room in Balrothery.

An awful lot of people were killed by the tram. I remember Mr. Dennison was killed!  He was a tram driver and was leaning out of it one night and it was flying along. He forgot to pull himself back in and he had his head torn off, the poor man.  Then Mrs Wogan's father was killed by it.  He was coming up from the river-lane in Firhouse to Tallaght, and when he was crossing the tracks he went right under the tram.  Annie Atkinson was only a child when she got killed. As children, the drivers would let us all play on the tram when it was stopped. The tram would stop for about fifteen minutes at the Foxes Covert in the village, but this time, all the children were playing on the tram, and poor Annie Atkinson fell under it while it was stopped, but the driver didn't know she was there and just drove off. God love her, she was only a little child.

10-10-1924 

 

At that time Billy Fox had the pub in the village (Molloy's) and when he died, his wife and her sister, Ms Collins ran it until Martin Molloy came to Tallaght from The Scotch House in the 1930s. The Foxes had two daughters, Angela and Teresa.  Teresa married a young doctor who had been out in the war, Dr Lydon. He had the house on the corner before Dr Riordan came out (to Tallaght).  Angela married Jimmy (Thomas) McGlashon, a big farmer from up in Jobstown.  When Billy Fox had the Foxes Covert, he had a big plaque over the door held up by two stuffed foxes.  It read. “Come in soberly, drink moderately, leave quietly, and call again.  A bird is known by its song, a man by his conversation”.

When Martin Molloy came to Tallaght he was very good to the local people.  I remember there were two vagrants who lived in a derelict house, up Casey's Lane, where Aylesbury is now.  Joe Trilby and Joe Carey were their names. Joe Carey was the gravedigger for Tallaght, but when they died they hadn't the price to bury themselves, so Martin Molloy bought a plot in Tallaght for them, to give them a respectable burial.  Mr. Molloy was very good like that, if he could help you at all he would.

The other pub in the village was The Convent, owned by Mary-Martha and Gerty O'Neill and their mother. The brother, William, had a little shop around the corner from the pub.  I remember when Mrs O'Neill died they waked her in the pub.  One side was the pub and the other side was the living quarters.  I was only very young when they waked Mrs O'Neill, but I remember going in and Mary-Martha was saying  ”Well Ma, now we can do nothing unbeknownst to you, now you're looking down on us”.  

Around the corner from O'Neill's was Ms. Lacey's little white washed cottage.  She was a little Wexford woman, who made the habits for people, when they died.  My mother used to say “If you hear of a death put your curlers in girls”, because you knew there would be a wake that night!

There was very little else in Tallaght village at that time. The Courthouse was there until 1922, when it was burnt down one morning during the troubles.  It was where the County Council yard is now on the Greenhills road, beside The Court Cottages. That's how they got their name.  My Aunt Kennedy, from down in Greenhills was coming up to Tallaght for a quarter past six mass, and they discovered the Courthouse on fire. There was no real need for a courthouse in Tallaght at that time because all you would be summoned for, was for having no light on your bike when you were going to a dance, and sure then you would give a wrong name!

Everyone was in the IRA then, you didn't know who was and who wasn't.  Sergeant Downey and his men would come around at night and pull everyone out onto the street and search the houses.  I remember the British soldiers came around one night and pulled Tom Watkins and John Watkins out onto the street and marched them.  I was only a child, but I was lifted up over the bedroom window to see them, running up and down the street, and all they had on them was their trousers.  They were made to march up and down the village bare foot and with no shirt on their backs.

Jim Rice was captain of 'Thomas Davis'  (GAA Club) at the time and when the soldiers searched his sister’s house in the village they came across the Davis' jerseys in a bag.  Sergeant Downey shouted at Jim Rice, “What organisation to these belong to?” and Jim Rice turned to him and said, `They Sir, belong to the best fifteen men in Ireland!'  During the British time, Sergeant Burke and Sergeant Driscoll were based in Tallaght.  Burke lived in one of the court cottages beside Sally Lloyd, and Sergeant Driscoll lived in the house behind where the wallpaper shop is now (1998) in the village.
Sally Lloyd God love her! I remember as a child coming home from school, we used to visit Sally Lloyd, because we were told to visit all the old people then.  She was a very old woman who we used to visit every day on the way home from school.

You would be sitting there and the mice would be running all over the dresser and dipping their heads into the jug of milk.  As kids we would be nudging each other, but Ms. Lloyd would say, “Ah sure don't mind them.  They're my little friends for when nobody else is around”.

Behind Sally Lloyd’s cottage, down a little slip road, lived the wheelwrights, the Cunninghams: Thomas. John, Mick and Margaret.  Thomas was a great melodeon player and during the summer he would come out onto the bridge, where the ESSO garage is now (1998), and play the melodeon and all the people from the village would come out and dance on the bridge. There were some great musicians around Tallaght then.

Myself, Nora O'Neill and Des Carty used to go over to Knocklyon, to get violin lessons off Jubilee Smith, but myself and Nora gave it up when Jubilee stopped teaching.  But Des continued on with it and ended up teaching it himself. Sean Dempsey, the Great Irish Piper lived in Airton Lodge at that time, just off the Greenhills road.  Himself and Pegg lived there for years. So there was always plenty of music in Tallaght in the early days.

At Christmas time or on Halloween or 'Stephen's day there would always be a bit of a sing-sing in the village.  On Halloween all the grown-ups would get dressed-up and go around from house to house with a melodeon or concertina.  They would just come into your house and whoever was sitting around would be pulled up to dance.  If they got a few bob for it all the better!  They would use the money to put a bit of a party on for the children of the village, when they had finished dancing themselves.  

Nurse Preston, God rest her: she was the maternity nurse for Tallaght and lived on the Greenhills road before they got a house in Colbert's Fort.  She would always organise a Christmas party for the children of the district.  For years she was the mainstay when it came to organising anything.  All the mothers would help out by giving her something for the party.  We used to have great times up in Mrs Preston’s house.  On St. Stephen's day the wren-boys would come around singing:

The Wren, the wren, the king of all birds

On St. Stephen's day he was caught in the furze

‘Though he was small, his family was great

Get up misses- so-and-so

And give us a treat

If you haven’t a penny

A ha’penny will do

If you haven’t a ha’penny

God Bless You

When I was a child, they use to say “All to one side lived the town of Tallaght”, because it was the only village that had houses on only one side of it.  On the other side was the Dominican College. Fr. Tom Burke from the Claddagh in Galway founded the Dominican Order in Tallaght and The Missionaries used to go out around Tallaght to get the local people to attend the missions on there.  Now one time, there was a fella living up on the New Lane (Belgard road), and when the missionaries tried to get him to come down to Tallaght for the mission that was on, he sent them packing.  He told them “sure when I want a priest I'll send for one. I don't want you coming near me, unless I send for you”.  So a couple of years later, didn't the poor man take bad and the neighbours sent for a priest for him.  A man arrived at the priory looking for a priest, and he was waiting at the door for ages without an answer.  But next of all, doesn't the window over the hall door open, and a voice came out of it, it said “There's no priest here, go away, there's no priest here”.  Now a few days later, there was an inquiry to see who had answered the call, and no one had.  It was The Man Himself, who had answered, you know, God!  Years later, Fr Tom Burke travelled all over America preaching that story, and after didn't people start arriving from all over the world, to see the Dominican Priory where it had happened! They would all come in their droves out to Tallaght on the tram, to see the window that God had spoken through!



May Delaney (nee Kelly) passed away on the 6th March 2012.  R.I.P

Albert Perris

(Memoirs (Edited) as set down in recorded audio interviews with Albert Perris in the home of May Delaney, Walkinstown, Dublin in 1998.  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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