Archive (334 life histories found)
'The lovely fountain pen I got from Uncle Ben in Egypt'
School in St. Louis is mostly good memories. In Ballymena. Singing in the front hall with Sr. Marie Gertrude, playing around the huge rhododendron bushes which could become any place you wanted to imagine. My tenth birthday and the retreat. The…
'My father and his brothers all lived in close proximity to their mother, who was a sort of Matriarch'
My father and his brothers all lived in close proximity to their mother, who was a sort of Matriarch. It was in effect a 'compound' - they shared a lot in common. When I was younger the phone - Cloughmills 246 - was in granny's - the papers were…
Tags: Cousin, family, grandmother, matriarch, village
'I am back as a little girl peeping out through the curtains, looking at the men staggering under the enormous drums, battering them until their wrists bled'
I suppose Cloughmills was a special place in that in the Northern Irish context, for most of the time, there were harmonious relations between the people. Our parish of Dunloy and Cloughmills had three centres of population. At one end was Dunloy,…
Tags: Catholic, community, drum, Marches, Orange march, Protestant
'There was not anything particularly Gaelic about the curriculum in the school when I was there, though we did sing some Irish songs'
I started school in Cloughmills Public Elementary School on my fourth birthday. I always felt my mother had taken her first legal opportunity to get me out of the way but she assures me that she felt like the mother in this poem, which was one that…
Tags: Education, Gaelic, Gaeltacht, Irish Language, school
'I remember going there as a child because my family had use of the farm buildings and expecting to see Rumplestilskin or Rapunzel at any minute'
I was born in Ballymena, the county town of Antrim, and spent the first 12 years of my life in a village about 10 miles out of the town, half way to Ballymoney, called Cloughmills. We were situated right in the middle of what was the ancient region…
'I love the song that I learned as a child about County Antrim'
People of Antrim love their county and have written songs in its praise. The story goes that a man from Glendun was thinking of emigrating and he wrote a song in which he imagined what it would be like to be away. He made himself so sad that he…
'… sitting by the fire in a dimly lit house up the street, listening to the two ancient little Dooey sisters tell all sorts of scary tales of ghosts and mysterious happenings'
We had a song about Cloughmillss Fair. Delia Murphy sang it. I must confess it was not one of her better known renditions but we thought it was great to have her singing about Ballylig and the fair on the 9 June. It wasn't much of a fair, but we got…
Tags: fair, journal, Song, storytelling
'I still get a thrill as I come over the hill on the way to Ballycastle, look down to Fairhead and over to Rathlin'
I don't think, as a child, I would have been too surprised to 'meet a lochrey man' such as the one mentioned in Seosamh 0 Cathmhoill's song which was a favorite My father and mother were Irish And I am Irish too. I bought a wee fidil for…
'I belonged to other all-Ireland networks, and I was affected by them'
Oft in the stilly night ere slumbers chain has bound me Fond memories bring the light of other days around me Oft in the Stilly Night is an appropriate song to start with, because in thinking about my childhood I have become conscious of many fond…
'Nobody knew whose child she was of the family'
While growing up neighbours played a huge part of our life. We had moved the area the normal miscellany of eccentrics or oddballs. Mr. F next door kept his wife confined life a prisoner. He never gave us a hint of a smile. We always had a huge…