By John Fitzgerald
(Part two)
In 2000 a marathon reunion was held at Kilmoganny’s School on the Hill. Past pupils had mixed memories of school days. Part One can be read on the Observer website.
Lil Corcoran (O’Gorman) began her education at the school in 1919. She remembered the weekly visit of Canon O’ Keeffe, who tested the class on religion, and the inspector who came to assess pupils on the “three Rs.” She was thrilled on First Communion Day, because it meant getting a new dress.
She and other pupils taunted the Black and Tans in Kilmoganny with rebel songs. The irate soldiers chased them through the streets of the village. Lil enjoyed her school experience but was sad that so many of her friends had passed on. Eighty five year old Lil and her eldest sister were all that remained of the family.
Ena Godley, who taught at the school from 1958 to 1961, returned from her native Kerry for the reunion. She had been welcomed with open arms in Kilmoganny from the day she arrived there.
On the morning she drove into the village, she was greeted by Canon O’ Keeffe, an elderly man who liked his pinch of snuff. She had fond recollections of her stint with a local drama group.
The education system had changed drastically since her teaching days. Most of the changes had been for the better, she agreed, but not all of them. Computers were a great asset, but very few pupils could now master the skill of “mental arithmetic”, which she described as “exercise for the brain.”
There was a lot of praise for Con Harrington. He seemed to have been the popular teacher in the school. Maura Moore joked that she was lucky because Mr. Harrington felt sorry for her. “In later years”, she recalled, “He told me I looked so frightened all the time he didn’t have the heart to chastise me.”
Dick Cody’s outstanding memory of Mr. Harrington was his sideline business of dairy farming. Pupils could get a break from schoolwork if they volunteered to push ten-gallon churns of separated milk up the steep hill in wheelbarrows. “I’ll never forget the timber barrow with the iron wheel”, he said, “It was tough work, but a welcome departure from the classroom.”
John O’ Leary was a victim of circumstances when a schoolmate picked up a spider off the floor of the classroom and placed it on a girl’s desk. There was pandemonium, with ink flying all over the room and loud screeches from the girls.
John was blamed for the prank and took his unjust punishment in silence. The real culprit was at the reunion, and STILL showed no remorse for the incident!
Eighty-four year old Jim “The Builder” Walsh recalled a day in the 1920s when he and a group of classmates caught sight of a rainbow. “We had never seen one before and it fascinated us”, he told me, “so we decided to investigate.
“This amazing band of colour seemed to be somewhere in the direction of Rogerstown. During the lunch break, we set off walking towards it. Then it faded and we had to turn back. The ten of us got six slaps apiece. And I don’t think the master believed our story.”
Anne Flemming had to haul buckets of water up the hill to the school and pull yellow weeds in the evenings. She was also a dab hand at finding Panlans, wild potatoes that grew in the Kilmoganny area. Even now, her mouth waters when she thinks how they tasted with knobs of butter on them. She brought milk to school in H.P. sauce bottles.
Patsy Hawe remembered a teacher called Mr. Hayden who was a harsh disciplinarian but years ahead of his time. “He talked about splitting the atom decades before it happened”, Patsy claimed. He allowed no pauses when a pupil was called upon to read aloud from a schoolbook, and he had a “curio diary” to record observations on difficult or eccentric pupils.
When Peggy Daniels went to school, there were no uniforms and in many cases no shoes either. But a Miss Loftus who taught there would sometimes buy a pair of shoes for a child at First Communion time if the family couldn’t afford them.
Paddy Reade still dreams about his teacher, a Miss Millea from Kerry. “She became known by different names as my vocabulary got better”, he revealed.
“I sat in a classroom that was overlooked by a big statue of St. Joseph, though you could hardly see it with all the wild flowers around it. The prayers seemed to last an eternity, and the teacher call on every saint in Heaven to intercede on our behalf”.
There was a roared fire in the classroom, which was fed by sticks and furze bushes collected by the pupils. Paddy could never figure out how Miss Millea could stand so close to the fire without getting burned.
Seamous Kelly and Ned Kirwin of the Millennium Committee were delighted with the success of the reunion.
Ned rounded off the occasion by quoting some lines by Kilmoganny poet, Vincent F. O’ Brien:
“… How many times with heavy hearts we scholars climbed the hill,
To start our daily labours, our mental powers to drill.
At nine o’ clock each morning, the master called the roll;
Response was quite magnificent, well answered on the whole;
And then those horrid lessons, a little more each day;
And then it came to half past twelve, and it was time to play…”
