'...my Grandmother came rushing down the road, dressed as always in her 'Widows Weeds', shouting frantically "Come out of there, the fairies will take you away"'

'...my Grandmother came rushing down the road, dressed as always in her 'Widows Weeds', shouting frantically "Come out of there, the fairies will take you away"'

Harry Browne remembers his mother's family farm and particularly his grandmother and his uncle Tom.

Harry Browne

Trinity College Dublin

1950

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Harry Browne

Childhood and Early Life

Life Story

Hollywood, Co. Wicklow

1950's

The farmland in Corragh is not great and there is a lot of bogland, so turf cutting and saving was a big part of the activity during the summer. In the middle of one piece of bogland was a raised brilliant green field with a single hawthorn tree in the middle. We were playing in the field on one occasion when my Grandmother came rushing down the road, dressed as always in her 'Widows Weeds', shouting frantically 'Come out of there, the fairies will take you away'. She was totally convinced that it was a fairy tree and the fairies were not nice people, unlike nowadays. Back then they were considered capricious and dangerous. We considered Uncle Tom to be somewhat grumpy and Judy used to eat our sweets which we had stored in order to stretch them out until the next Sunday or the next visit of our parents. However considering that Tom was then in his seventies and Judy was somewhat younger they were extremely good to take in and care for a wild tribe of youngsters. Sweets were 'Honey Bees' toffee sweets at twelve per penny, 'Fizz Bags'small sealed bags of sherbet powder. 'Gob Stoppers' large, hard boiled sweet which filled the mouth and lasted forever and others. In Corragh we learned to pick Fraughans, (pronounced Frocken) wild blueberries. These were to our mind unique to us, we knew of nobody else who was aware of their existence. Certainly none of our Dublin acquaintances knew what we were talking about when we described them to a fascinated circle of friends. Years later I came across blueberries for sale in the local Tesco. There was no price on them and the manager, obviously as ignorant of what they were gave them to me free of charge. There was no comparison between the Fraughans and the cultivated blueberries and we still go up the mountains in late July and early August to pick the genuine article. There is also a Fraughan festival in Co Wicklow every year where cultivated blueberries from Poland are sold under the guise of Fraughans.

Irish Research Council for Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences (IRCHSS)

Dr Kathleen McTiernan (Trinity College Dublin)

Dr Deirdre O'Donnell (Trinity College Dublin)