This is where I grew up. It is at the southern end of the parish. It runs down the verge of the ”Moan Rua”. In generations gone by, several families must have farmed the farm in which I grew up. The names on the field would indicate this. Some of the field names include ”Frawley’s Field”, ”Hedigans Haggard”, ”Parc na Lucha”, ”The Winter Field” and ”Foughy’s Well”.The ”Clampar” is called after the Clamper Dalaigh.
There was also a Mass rock in the garden field. This has been moved and placed on a nearby fence. ” Pol na mBo ”was a source of water near the Moan Rua. In the farm itself there is a well of over eighty feet in depth but the water supply was not great. There are very dry fields on this farm. There was also a mass path. It was a right of way to Churchtown. This went on to Ballyadam where there was a rock called ”Carrigeen na gCat”. This was the way we went to school long ago.
My grandfather came from the Bawnmore area of Kanturk. He had a great sing-ing voice. He had many very old songs such as ”The Lily of the West”, ”The Mother’s Daily Labour” and ”Molly Flynn” and many more as well. He used to sing these without any music. There was an old man called Tom Bowler who worked at Cowhey’s. I watched him doing the crows dance and I learned it. I gave a demonstration at school one day. The late Dick Donavan was very well able to do it as well.
In contrast to today this area was very thickly populated. Down the Siul there was four houses opposite Mary Anne Twomey’s house down at the verge of the Moan Rua. There were six more houses at the bottom of the fort field owned by Cowleys then. At the back of Mary Anne’s house was Allen’s well. Johnny Bry-nes lived around the area. He had a Sedan motorcar – it was a two seater.
When coming back from Churchtown one night with an extra drink, his car went into the bridge below Mary Twomey’s house and his car was unbalanced, hang-ing on the edge of the bridge. When he put down the boot with the back wheels off the ground, he was groaning ”Go on Bessie, Go on Mary” and of course the car would not move.
His late wife lived in Churchtown after he died. But she used to cycle up this di-rection with her ‘High Nellie’ bike singing ”There’s a room for two, for me and you, and Johnny Byrnes motorcar”. She was a very happy woman.
Above at the triangle near the postbox, there was a piece of land, which was par-ish property once. There were twelve or thirteen mud houses here long ago. It was hard to imagine that there were a total of twenty-two houses around this area and surely there would have been a total of more than one hundred living around this area.
Nellie Guiney
I was born in this area. My grandparents would have come from Ballinguile area. I was very interested in history at school. Mrs. Wall taught me and she was a great teacher.
