BY JOHN FITZGERALD
(Part four)
In Callan, LDF volunteer Seamus O Brien and his friend Sean Holden thought they’d done well, leaving the candles made from animal fat in the farmyard, to set…forgetting the sheepdogs that patrolled outside.
They were in the farmhouse with their feet up on the table, drinking lemonade the kindly housewife had given them, when they heard an unmerciful racket in the farmyard.
They ran outside to be confronted with the sight of the four dogs savaging the lengths of candle. They were too late to save the candles. The dogs seemed to have devoured the lot, including the string that was to serve as wicks. This had got entwined in their intestines and the vet had to be called in next day to remove it.
But Sean noticed one of the dogs still munching a piece of candle. Availing of his LDF special physical training, he bounded towards the beast, and a wrestling contest ensued between him and the sheepdog.
The combatants rolled around the haggard, sending petrified hens and a cock fluttering in all directions. Seamus and the woman of the house looked on, stupefied, as the struggle continued.
Sean had the candle in his grasp, pulling hard to release it from the determined grip of his opponent. Pebbles, chicken feed, and tufts of grass flew in the air.
Seamus’s heart raced. He worried for his friend’s safety as he watched him grapple with the dog the way he had seen Tarzan, King of the Jungle, fight a lion on Egan’s cinema screen.
At one point, Sean had rescued the candle, but the dog ravenously snatched it back, escaping from his human competitor and leaping over a nearby wall into a field.
Sean arose from the ground, his face covered in dust and clay, holding about three inches of candle sadly in front of him. The housewife consoled him, soothing: “You did your best. God you’re a marvellous fighter, Sean, and a brave one too”.
Sean tearfully handed the remaining piece of battered fat to the farmer. He admitted to him that it was his idea to take the candles into the farmyard, but the farmer forgave the young apprentice on the grounds that the lad had a far greater responsibility weighing on his shoulders: The defence of Ireland, and especially his beloved home town, against foreign aggression, whether British or German, and the wheedling of international conspirators.
He tossed Sean’s head of bushy red hair, commended his honesty, and sent him away with a good-humoured caution.
Years later, a speaker recounted this incident at a function where Sean was honoured for his service to Callan Credit Union.
After reciting the classic tale of courage, the MC intoned with a flourish, and to a warm round of applause: “You can’t hold a candle to Sean Holden!”
Callan Smokers defy warmongers
The initial scarcity of tobacco, cigarettes and snuff occasioned by the fall-off in imports from U-boat besieged Britain set the smart boys in Callan thinking. They quickly got around the problem and soon American brands like Gold Flake, Woodbine and Sweet Afton were finding their way unto grocery shelves.
The only tipped cigarette available in Callan at that time was “Craven A”, but men shunned this as it was deemed a “ladies brand”. Any man seen smoking it risked having his masculinity questioned in the pubs, or by his wife or girlfriend. The rationing of matches proved another challenge, one that locals met with their habitual resourcefulness.
The type of match in vogue was not the so-called safety match, but the “Friendly” brand that had the advantage of being easy to ignite. If you didn’t have the box, you could strike it against any hard surface, the seat of one’s pants being among the special favourites.
In pubs, men shared their precious matches in the true spirit of wartime camaraderie: Seamus witnessed a common “Emergency Ritual” in Somers pub and Katy Mansfield’s whereby each match was divided with surgical skill into three parts with a razor blade.
A tiny piece of phosphorus was attached to each stick…just enough to ensure ignition. Even this ingenious approach wasn’t always enough to ensure a ready supply of matches, so another method was devised to get around the problem.
The smoker placed a rag steeped in saltpetre and bluestone in a small tin or box. He then repeatedly struck a lump of flint with a hammer or steel object until this action produced a spark to ignite the rag. The resulting flame would endure for only a second or two, enough for him to light his cigarette.
The hitch was that this method couldn’t be used too easily in a pub, though according to Seamus a few fellows, desperate for a smoke, tried it and were cautioned by the publicans to put away their fire-raising apparatuses.
A third way to light up depended on strong sunlight and didn’t work indoors at all. You held a magnifying glass to the top of the cigarette until that much-sought little flicker of light appeared.
In the summer months, men assembled at street corners and the town cross to avail of this time-honoured practise, little wisps of blue smoke fluttering over the huddled groups as the sun did the job better than any “friendly match”.
The scarcity of tobacco caused anxiety among pipe smokers too. But they got around it in style, if at the cost of considerable discomfort to non-smokers and even some hardened smokers who couldn’t bear the fumes from the ragwort and beet root that replaced real tobacco in their trusty pipes.
Snuff users, on the other hand, either had to forego their pleasure or buy it on the black market. Very few obtained it illegally, Seamus recalled, a testament, he believed, to the law-abiding natures of the inoffensive and unassuming folk who partook of the habit.
(Extract from my book Are We Invaded Yet?
