By John Fitzgerald
(Part One)
There was a time when every town, village, and stretch of road in Ireland had a character that enlivened the district around him or her. Billy Boland of Glenmore was one such individual. He was known and loved across the length and breadth of South Kilkenny, and in neighbouring counties too, for his story telling.
In the autumn of his years, you’d be sure to find him at a fireside, or in the local Glen Bar, or at any one of his favourite local haunts…spinning yarns and recalling days of yore from his vast repertoire of stories and golden reminiscences.
He was in constant demand at parties and get-togethers for his ability to weave webs of verbal intrigue and rustic magic to crowds big and small. “Well, there was a fellow once in these parts…” he might begin…and his audience would be hooked straightaway by his tale of wonder and yesteryear.
Local radio got to hear of Billy’s talent. It featured spellbinding interviews with him, each one of which drew scores of rave reviews from delighted listeners. Billy had a way of tapping into the hidden reservoirs of memory and salvaging the little gems that all too often are lost to future generations.
There was something for everybody in what he had to say or relate of times past and gone. When he opened up the forgotten, labyrinthine corridors of time to reveal joys, woes, and quirky happenings, he touched a chord with anyone who heard him.
Speaking on radio in 1987, Billy offered a revealing insight into life in the hard times of his youth and early manhood.
Born in 1913, he lost both his parents when he was very young. He had to fend for himself. He recalled sleeping at the age of nine on a sheet of corrugated iron, with a few empty flour or meal bags serving as blankets. He told the radio interviewer that when he awoke next morning, he had tracks on him “that you wouldn’t see on a zebra.”
When he was old enough to work, he toiled on farms in the parishes of Glenmore and Tullaroan. In the majority of cases, the farmers never even hinted at money. You worked for your keep or the nourishing meals you got at the tables of those rough and ready farmsteads. Billy accepted the lifestyle of the time because it was all he knew.
But he was upset at the treatment of servant girls in the 1920s. He saw them being verbally savaged and humiliated in front of guests in fine mansions by elegant lords and ladies. For so little pay, they had to endure a work regime that people nowadays would find offensive in the extreme.
And he was on the receiving end of some harsh treatment himself. One farmer who offered to employ him for a week took the precaution of locking Billy into a barn at night. “There was a huge lock on the door”, he recalled, “It was as if he was afraid I’d scurry off in the middle of the night and kill sheep, like an old stray dog.”
Thinning turnips or mangolds in fields that seemed to stretch to infinity was another part of Billy’s farm labouring routine. In freezing weather, he found himself on his knees thinning while bemused livestock looked on. There were days when he arose…struggling to his feet…after hours of crawling along the wintry ground, and stood in front of a ditch to warm his hands against the steaming breaths of cattle.
A job he rather liked was standing on wynds of hay and trampling it as labourers forked it up. What he didn’t like about it was occasionally having to pull the butts of the hay wynds. “My hands used to get ripped to pieces by briars and thistles”, he recalled with discomfort.
Billy had a memorable showdown with a wayward donkey another day when he set out to help a neighbour convey his milk to the creamery. When he arrived at the house, the farmer in question was ill in bed, so Billy reckoned he would have to yoke one of the asses all by himself to pull the cart containing the milk churns.
Unfortunately, he picked an “unbroken” ass that happened to be the wildest and most unmanageable donkey in Glenmore parish.
He had just climbed into the cart with the two twelve gallon churns when the ass leapt on its hind legs and ran like hell down the road with the startled youngster aboard. At great speed (for a donkey) the ass and cart rounded a sharp bend in the windy road.
Desperately, Billy tried to halt the runaway donkey. Milk was spilling and splashing in all directions. On ran the donkey for what seemed like hours, though Billy confirmed on radio that it probably happened rather quickly.
(To be continued)
Extract from my book Kilkenny-A Blast from the Past
