...

Through Rose-Tinted Specs
Memories of Balbriggan in the 50's
Copyright 2005
By Roger Turner

Part 10: Sing as we go...

Have you ever poked around in your mind when you are trying to remember some long forgotten name or face?
Not easy is it?
Well I have the same problem, but this time it's not a name that eludes me. I have been trying to gain access to my earliest memories of Balbriggan and get fleeting glimpses of this long winding road and us all singing: One man went to mow, went to mow a meadow.
Yes, that's the one. But I bet you'll not know which road we were all on?
Well, will you wait a minute, while I tell you.
I have spoken about my family and of Aunty Eileen's family, but not Uncle Raymond's family.
Well, now, I seem to think that Raymond had 2 brothers, Henry and er... oh here we go again... Got it, Ben, and a sister called Emily. Poor Emily was disabled and lived with Granny and Grandpa McKenna at their smallholding at Stamullen.

Anyway, at least a couple of times during our stay in Balbriggan, we made the trip to see them. Now this is where my earliest memories come in, for we would catch the Drogheda Bus outside the post office and ride to Gormanston, then had to walk up this long and winding road... sounds like a cue for a tune on me mouth organ doesn't it?
Now I don't suppose it really was such a long way, but in the very early fifties, and I was only just able to walk, then it seemed like a marathon.
'Are we nearly there yet?' I would ask after a few yards. Then when the answer came back, 'No!' I would start snivelling. 'Can you carry me our Pat?' It was always worth asking, but in reality I only had two chances. Fat chance and no chance. Mother was not able to carry me for long due to her health, and on top of that, Rory and Rita would also have wanted to be carried so it meant we all walked.
But we sang as we walked...'One man went to mow, went to mow a meadow...' and 'Ten green bottles hanging on a wall...'Then there were always nursery songs to sing and we sang the chants as we skipped like; Jelly on plate. I bet there are quite a lot that you remember?
In those days the road to Stamullan carried very little traffic and we were able to wander from side to side unhindered.
In fact, most roads in the 50's were deserted.
Anyway, we sang as we walked and when we had run out of kids' songs, Mother and Aunty Eileen would sing a few songs for us. You know, when you sing as you go it does speed the journey up.

Eventually we would arrive and Granny McKenna would welcome us with customary whet of tea and some home made cake. I love tea but our Pat, miserable sod, she hates it.
If our arrival coincided with the plums being ready for picking, then it was all hands to the pump. And guess who the first was up into the trees? That's right, little Roger Turner.
And I didn't need a ladder either, for I could climb trees in my sleep. (One for them and one for me.) I seem to remember that all the plums went to Harleys to make jam, but that might just be some tale they told us kids. Granny McKenna always had a pot of her own jam to take back for tea and she was always baking something or other. That cottage always smelt of fresh bread and tasted of sugary jam being boiled upon the range. Do you know I haven't had plum jam for years? Mind you, mothers don't make jam any more do they?
But I digress, for I should tell you about the house, or should I say cottage. It had no electric, no gas and no running water. Water had to be carried from the pump across the road. The front garden was up a few steps from the road and the garden was always a picture, with a big monkey puzzle tree dominating it.
Another memory of Grandpa McKenna's smallholding was that across the road and fields was a trout stream, and Grandpa McKenna taking me down and showing me how to tickle a couple of trout for tea. What an education I had back then.
Emily, who I never really got to know well, kept chickens, turkeys, and geese, and the geese had the run of the orchard. Now one year when Nan and Steve Calow were over they came to Stamullan with us. Nan went into the orchard to get some plums but these geese had other ideas and made a beeline for Nan. Now before this, I had never known Nan to be scared of anything, but them geese terrified her until Emily came to the rescue and shooed them off by waving her apron at them. She then laughed at Nan, who soon saw the funny side and joined in.

When it was time to go back for the bus they loaded us with local produce and bade us farewell until next time. The walk seemed even longer going back, but again the songs came in handy to while the time way.
As I got bigger and acquired my first mouth organ I would try to play along, but walking and playing isn't easy you know.
It would have been the first time that we got to the crossroad just in time to see the back of the bus speeding away from us. That meant a very long walk all the way back to Balbriggan. But it also meant that we would have to walk past Corcoran's, which was impossible to do, so mother would have no option than to take us in for an ice cream soda to refresh our weary throats from all that singing.
Singing has always played an important part in my life. I suppose that as you grow up, your surroundings do play an important part in your development and the fact that in Balbriggan we were always happy, then singing was my way of outwardly showing that happiness. In fact, even now people know when I am sad or happy, for I burst into song at the drop of a hat when happy. Some days I wake up in pain and don't feel like singing, then the pain eases and off I go. Mind you, it's a wee bit embarrassing in the middle of Tesco when the mood suddenly changes.
I think I have told you that for years I worked in the retail food trade and would get strange looks from my customers when I started singing to them. But if more people sung then the world would be a happier place, so when the mood takes you, let rip at full voice, I do. You will feel better for it, although I can't say the same for those who have to listen to you.
I have told you about my mouth organ, but have said nothing else about any other instruments, now have I? Well, my mother insisted that I learned to play the piano, but in today's language, it wasn't cool to admit to that in the late fifties and early sixties, so I tried other forms of making music. I once tried to play the penny (Tin) whistle but apart from getting the odd cat excited, made no impression on it. The fiddle was not for me, so when I was about eleven I bought a guitar.
Now with the guitar, once you have mastered a few basic chords, you can sing along and accompany yourself. As I became a teenager, I became quite proficient on that old guitar and would sometimes bring it to Balbriggan with me. Now I should tell you that I love the old Irish songs and always have done, so it was no hardship to me that by the time I reached my mid teens, I would join in with Rory and Rita and their friends and we would all arrive on someone's doorstep with a bottle of Bushmills, my guitar, and we would all have a good old singsong. True, I no longer came over for the full summer by the mid sixties, and I came over on my own later on, but the bonds that had developed in my childhood for Balbriggan still pulled me back as a teenager and into my twenties.
I loved playing my guitar but did find it hard to play and sing at the same time in public. But as I could hold a tune and remember song lyrics I developed the ability to strum along with most songs. I could read music, and write down the dots too, for in the sixties I wrote several songs... But we'll not go down that road, for they were mostly pure rubbish and best forgotten.

I learnt to drive in the mid sixties, and started to fly over from Manchester to Dublin, then hire a car to take me round. This went down great with Rita and her girl friends for wherever I went I had a collection of fine Irish girls crammed into the car all singing. Me being too drunk to sing I had to drive.
On one occasion sometime in the mid 60s Rita persuaded me to drive her to Howth where the Dubliners, who were just about to become really big, were playing in a pub. We stood outside in a queue for what seemed an age only to be told that the venue was full, but were directed to another pub where another good group was playing. So we left the car and walked up the hill to, er... I've forgotten the name of the pub but it was near the top of the hill on the left. You know the place I mean? Anyway we went in to see to what this group was going to be like. Well, believe me, they were wonderful and called the Clancy Brothers with Tommy Makam. They too were becoming big.

A few months later I had the pleasure of seeing them again in Sheffield, and also the Dubliners came twice in the following years. The first time their management had booked the City Hall, a concert venue holding a couple of thousand people and as soon as the tickets came on sale I was down to buy one. But the turnout at the concert was only a hundred or so folk enthusiasts. Even so they put on a fabulous show and told us that they would be back in the New-Year and would pack the place out, so to book early. A few weeks later the shot up the Hit Parade with Seven Drunken Nights and when they came back the venue had to put on 2 shows on in one night to meet demand.
Sheffield, being a city, has always enjoyed some big name concerts and in the 60s we had very many great stars who came to the City Hall, but we also had another venue that opened in the late 60s called The Fiesta Club. This was an eating and drinking place that charged the earth but did get some top groups, comedians and singers and was packed out every night. I will not attempt to list all the acts we saw, but most weeks we went and always had a good night out. I can recall name like Count Basey and his orchestra, Roy Orbison, and many more, but somehow, these top acts did not compare with the Irish Show Bands and some of the traditional groups like the Dubliners.
I still love the Dubliners, and have some old-fashioned records which I still play on St Patrick's Day.

Do you know, I have never been to Ireland on St Patrick's Day? Sad, isn't it. But as a kid, I always wore the shamrock with pride, for Aunty Eileen would send us a small box of Shamrock each year to share around the family. And in the evening we would sing a few of the old Irish songs and me Dad and Stevie Calow would have a bottle of the Black Stuff, or two, or more...
But once again I have gone off at a tangent, for I should be telling you about calling on people and singing the night away.
The Scots do it, the Welsh do it and the Irish do it, but we English are a wee bit too reserved to call unannounced and uninvited on someone and start a singsong that lasted well into the night and sometimes until first light. But I really enjoyed those singsongs for not only did they whet my appetite for Irish music, but gave me a taste for the Bushmills. Age didn't come into it back then, for even at 15 or 16 we could sup and sing all night long without effect... well.. not too much effect. If we fell over then we were taken outside to sober up before being taken home.
But those songs I learnt I still sing today, in a fashion. Yes I know that quite a lot of the songs were about getting the English out of Ireland, but that didn't worry me, for I always felt part Irish and would sing along with the best of em.
Not content with the singsongs, we would go to the cinema to see musicals and would come out singing. And it wasn't just musicals on film either, for one year, maybe the early 70s Rita and I went to a theatre in Dublin to see Joseph and his Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. And what an experience that was. Again we came out singing. I can't remember the theatre but it was quite big and I think very wide, but I may have been drunk at the time.
Rita and I went all over the place that summer, and I'm sure that both families though us a couple, but it was never to be. I went my way and she hers. But that's another story.
Singing in pubs was not an option for us teenagers for then the pubs were full of old men. Then I remember that down on the harbour an old building was converted into a pub and we youngsters took it as ours. Loud music, booze and lovely leggy girls. Mind you, the local lads were not at all impressed with a skinny English lad chatting their girls up.
So you see, music has played quite an important part in my development. It started with singing on the road to Stamullan and ended, well, I hope it is nowhere near ending, for whilst I am writing this rubbish, I am listening to the Pouges on Ireland forever via Launch Radio on the internet. That's something I couldn't do when I started writing my memories a few months ago. But that is the way of life, for we are always learning new tricks, discovering new things and remembering things we thought were long forgotten.
Now I hope you will forgive me, but I haven't had a play on my mouth organ all day and I feel a tune coming on.
Feel free to sing along...
To be continued...