26-10-2002
Joe O'Neill's literary Legacy to Mountmellick
The sight of her middle-aged Uncle Joe O'Neill writing in school exercise books intrigued young Denise Kenny during her visits to her grandmothers house, Ivy Cottage in Irishtown, Mountmellick.
"Will you let me read your books?" Denise would ask. He would reply: "I could not let you read them. They are too much incriminating evidence. But when I die you can have the books and you can get them published".
Joe O'Neill, who had a serious heart condition, died in 1997 at the age of 64. After his funeral, Denise went back to Ivy Cottage and retrieved the exercise books, 98 in all. She thus ensured the preservation of a unique and important literary and social legacy.
Joe O'Neill, it may transpire, was to late 20th century Mountmellick what Samuel Pepys was to 17th century England and James Boswell was to Samual Johnson. A self-taught and gifted writer, Joe recorded local life with humour, intelligence, insight and tolerance.
He was frank, disconcertingly so at times, especially about himself. He tells us, for example, about his alcoholism and the break-up of his marriage. And when he deals with his mother's early life and the County Home (now St. Vincent's Hospital, Mountmellick), his work pulls at the heartstrings.
Using the pseudonym "The Robin," Joe embarked upon his literary voyage in 1960 and finally dropped anchor in the mid-1990s. His style is revealing, grammatical and lucid when he is off the bottle, and, unsurprisingly, less so when he is on it.
He constantly refers to Mountmellick as "Our Once Fair Town." He is perhaps, trying to convey a message. Local people are, he claims, inclined to say: "I'm Irish by birth and a Mountmellick man by the grace of God."
He muses upon a heady mixture: religion, politics, drink, sex, celibacy, and much more. His immortalisation of the nicknames bestowed upon a large proportion of Mountmellick's population is highly entertaining, He also lists the names of the towns lanes.
Joe O'Neill was a son of Jim O'Neill, a native of Mountmellick, and Sarah O'Neill (nee Kenny). Before her marriage, she had had a son, Jack Kenny (Denise's father).
Jim O'Neill was a widower and the father of son and daughter when he married Sarah by whom he went on to have three children Joe, Jim Jnr and Sally Jim Jnr remained a bachelor and Sally lost contact with her family after she married a Northern Ireland man.
In 1954, Jim Snr died, aged 75. Sarah Snr, known as Bennie Neill, died in 1983, aged 81.
Joe O'Neill's first job was with Mrs T M Sheils, as a houseboy. His wages were 10 Shillings a week and he had the prospect of eventually rising to the position of bread van driver.
In 1947, at the age of 13and a half, he sailed for England, where he remained for what he described as "five long years." While working in Maynooth College, he met Flor O'Sullivan whom he married in 1954. They had two children. After the failure of their marriage, he returned to Ivy Cottage in Mountmellick.
Pub Performers
A poem written by Joe O'Neill in September 1969
We rallied and ranted
Against the stated and the greedy
politicians,
If fury canted
About the Church and celibate ethicians
There was no charity,
We said, in the selfish lives of the
Christian masses,
And foul disparity
Between the upper and the lower
Classes.
Then we drowned our ire
In a dozen frothy pints in the crowed
Snug,
And our noble fire
Was extinguished slowly in a Toby jug.
Outside the door
The ill clad tinker children begged and
Played
Just as before.
The call to end the injustice had been
made by
Teddy, Whack, Des and Joe.
Condemned to The County Home
Joe O'Neill writes about the intolerant days in Ireland - intolerance of which his mother Sarah (Sally) was a victim.
"I was born in a labourer's cottage opposite the County Home (now St Vincent's Hospital)," he tells us. "The County Home was an institution for the old and for bastards. It was run by the sisters of Charity, the ones with the butterfly bonnets. Some of them were saints, whilst some were old cows."
"When I was young, if unmarried mothers could not cope with there children-the child and sometimes the mother were often sent into institutional care, the institution in Mountmellick being The County Home."
Joe continues: "My mother was one of those mothers. Sally Kenny. She was a wealthy farmer's daughter from a little village in Co Laois. She was thrown out of her home in the middle of the night with her Iron Trunk, which held her belongings."
"She was 27-years-old. She had to make her own way to Mountmellick Poor House where she had her child, my brother John Kenny."
Joe says children were kept in the home until they were three or four years old. At that stage they were boarded out to local farms where, he states, they did all the dirty work while the farmer's children went to school.
He goes on: "my mother stayed on in the County home, scrubbing the floor and washing the clothes until the sisters could get her a job with some farmer or some local publican as a skivvy. You see once you were put up the pole in those days, you would never be allowed back to your own home again. You also lost all right to your dowry."
"All my mother's sisters disowned her and two of them were Presentation nuns (teachers) in Sydney, Australia. My mum eventually got a job in a local pub in Mountmellick."
"The County Home also housed old men and deformed dummies. Mostly they were paupers but they were some very respectable men there too. As a child I knew them well by name. John Talbot, Peter Kane, Mick Brophy, Mick Loughman and Johnny Ryan who used to get drunk on one leg. The women: among the best known were Nancy Gallon, my mother Beannie O'Neil and Betty O'Neil."
"It (County Home) also housed a leather factory which employed a fair share of Mountmellick girls. It was managed by a Mister Taylor, Irishtown. It also had a piggery and a dead house and it's own undertaker, Mr Pat Dowling. His was a horse-drawn hearse. The dead were buried in mass graves, their bodies in wooden boxes."
"The nuns lived in luxury in the part we knew as the convent. I often got a lovely slice of cake from the matron if by chance I had reason to bring her up a message. I also often robbed their lovely orchid on the way out. The nuns I have fondest memories of are Sr Teresa, Sr Mary, Sr Josephine and Sr Louise, The one who reared most of the bastards, as the children were called in those days."
Joe concludes: "the French Sisters of Charity have now departed St Vincent's Hospital. And, we the people of Mountmellick, are all the worse for their going."
Ennoblement Mountmellick style
No nickname? Then no Mountmellick man are you. Joe O'Neill, in his journal, recalls his father Jim O'Neill, making such a pronouncement.
"Mountmellick has always been a nickname town," Joe writes. "Now my friends, every one of those individual's talents were all described in their nicknames."
"What happens is a flash of another Mountmellick man's, an intuitive burst, using his right brain. And those are the kind of hunches, made quickly and often without a large impact of data, that set individuals apart from the crowd."
Joe adds: "Indeed, Mountmellick overflowed with examples of people whose nicknames described their talents. I knew all those men and women who lived and worked in Our Fair Town of Mountmellick, or Mount Misery or, if you like its nickname, The Valley."
In the journal is a three-page list of nicknames. Examples: Bacci Dempsey, Titch Flanagan, Juggy McAuley, Soup Head O'Neill, Mouse Lalor, Lilly the Pink Quigley, The Kremlin, Square Moss, The Crane Goodwin, Broken Wing Walse, Nun Collins, Billy the Wig, The Loaf Dunne.
And more: Leaf of the Pat Dunne, Doctor Dunne, Wooden Man Dunne, Birdie Dunne, Chicken Dunne, The Gudgeon Dunne, My Willie, Whistling Rufus Byrne, The Minister Byrne, The Magic Dunne, The Whack Whelan, The Big Wheel O'Neill, Jack The Black, Cheetah Fennelly, Crust Fennely, Key Hole Kate, Pissmire Hibbits, The Thatcher Westman, Daddy Man Lalor, The Animal Conroy, The Monk Goodwin, Feck Cahill, Spike McCormack, The Count McCormack, The Hacker Phelan, Kid Goat Payne, The Gig Payne, The Whack Dunne.
Still more: Porky Lalor, The Robin O'Neill, Mag The Basket, Liza Weapon, Pee Wee Bennett, Sheriff Breen, Mickey Dogshit, Duck Egg Fennelly, Pin Head Dunne, Kruger Conroy, Galloping Rag Woman, Casker Foran, Ghost Forn, Mickey Kec Kec, Slinger Furlong, the Nipper Dempsey, The Swallow Dempsey, Cousin Dunne, The Horse Laffey, The Gong Ryan, Gandy Dowling, The Bim Carroll, The Punch Conroy, Gorman The Two Legged Fox, Umbrella Sullivan, Bolshie Ruschitzko, Slapper Payne, What Harm Goodwin, the Spoons Quigley, Charmer Quigley, The Kaiser Lynch, The Pedler Palmer, Romeo Dowling, The BowReddin, The Indian Reddin, Bunch Comerford, Hardy Lalor.
The list goes on: Dear Brother Byrne, Greasy Belly Fitz, The Little Dash Of Dublin, Chappie Mack, Fag Sullivan, Step a side Dempsey, Lollypop Dempsey, Hop a long Cassidy, Baby Cunningham, Paddy cap Conroy, Nudger Dunne, Austin Stack Dunne, Twin Man Hibbits, The Clapper Doyle.
No money stories aplenty
Joe O'Neill was "a really, really funny man," recalls his niece Denise O'Driscoll (nee Kenny). "And he never had any money" she adds, laughing.
"I used to love going down to Mountmellick," She says, remembering her visits to Ivy Cottage in Irishtown, where lived her Grandmother Sarah (Beannie) O'Neill and her Uncles Joe O'Neill and Jim O'Neill.
Before her marriage, Sarah (Maiden name Kenny) gave birth to Jack Kenny Denise's father. A member of the Army and a fluent Irish speaker, he married a Durrow woman Bernie Ryan. The set up in Dublin and had 10 children he died in 1997.
Denise O'Driscoll, who resides in Finglas, Co Dublin, with her husband Rory and their three children, is so to speak Joe O'Neill's literary executor. After his death, she took charge of the 98 exercise books in which for over three decades he recorded hi observations and thoughts.
Recently after reading an article in the National Newspaper, she loaned the books to Nuala Hayes, this year's Laois artist-in-residence. An actor by profession, she is unearthing folklore in the county and is promoting the art of storytelling at which she herself is adapt.
According to Denise, Joe indicated to her that he would like to have the books published. Perhaps a sponsor, or sponsors will be forth coming to ensure that this will be done.
A night of storytelling and music in the Mellick Inn, Mountmellick takes place on Wednesday, October 30 at 8 pm as part of the Laois Arts Festival programme. Featuring the stories from the Mountmellick Diaries of Joe O'Neill (The Robin) it will be presented by Laois County Council, Artist-In-Residence, Nuala Hayes.
With guest storyteller Liz Weir from Co. Antrim, extracts from the Joe O'Neill's will be performed by local Shay Flannery, accompanied on piano accordion by Katherine Hyland from Ballinakill. Local musicians Julianne Culiton, Mairead Furlong and Ray Murphy will also take part. Tickets €5.
MPS prepare for annual exhibition
The Mountmellick Photography Society are busy preparing for their annual exhibition, this year to take place in Mountmellick Community School on Saturday and Sunday, November 23 and 24.
The event has become well known as one of major photographic events held in the midlands with many visiting photographic societies enjoying the exhibition.
"This year's exhibition promises to supersede any previous shows with a host of new ideas being brought into play." Explained MPS Chairperson Veronica Carroll.
Membership for the new season is by application only. A limited number of new positions are available due to vacancies left by leaving members who are wished well by the club for the future.
The MPS are to hold a table quiz tonight, Wednesday, October 23 in the Mellick Inn, Mountmellick at 9:30 pm. The annual draw will also take place.
Maverick's Motorcycle Club
The above are holding their annual charity run in aid of St Vincent's Hospital. This year the event is Poker Run starting at the Hospital at 10:30 am on Sunday, October 27.
Donations €10 per bike. Prizes and refreshments at the clubhouse in Horan's bar. All bikers are welcome.
