Scenes from the Border country

They made the best of a life 'ruled' by the Border - aided by good, strong knickers for smuggling. Now a group of older people shares laughter and heartbreak by telling the story in drama, Rosita Boland writes

Tea on the bog. First day at school. Eccentric rural neighbours. The coming of electricity. Dancehalls. These are some of the subjects woven into the drama Men to the Right, Women to the Left: Stories of the Drumlins.

The topics sound simple; familiar touchstones of many people's experience of rural Ireland a generation ago. They are. However, there is nothing tired about the way in which these stories of life in Cavan and Monaghan are told. They add up to create a very powerful and moving piece of drama.

Men to the Right, Women to the Left: Stories of the Drumlins is the result of collaboration between members of Cavan's Positive Age organisation, the Abbey's Outreach programme, and writer Dermot Healy. The play's title comes from the custom of the division of men and women to different sides of the dancehalls; a custom which also applied in churches, and even at the first cinema in Cavan town.

For the last three years, a core group of some 13 senior citizens of Cavan and Monaghan has been meeting regularly to tell their stories. Drama facilitator Joanna Parkes was commissioned by the Abbey to work with the group, as part of its Outreach programme. Over time, people wrote the stories of their lives, focusing on different topics over the months, among them, school, childhood, marriage, and farmwork. They then discussed their memories within the context of the group, and also improvised scenes from their stories.

When a large amount of material had been gathered, writer Dermot Healy was asked in to work with the group to pull the stories together and weave the stories into one piece of drama.

"Dermot caught a feeling of the area and the people who lived in it," they say, as one voice. Healy asked them to retell their stories as spoken dialogue. He then took away the resulting sheaves of paper, and put quite a remarkable, cohesive shape on them. Three characters, two women and a man, play several parts, and their lines are an amalgamation of the dialogue written by the entire group.

"It's like a patchwork quilt now," explains Parkes. "He hasn't touched any of their words, but it's the way he's put everything together and the structure he created that makes it into a piece of drama."

We're making for Clones, driving through the distinctive undulating landscape of Cavan-Monaghan, with its drumlins and lakes that reflect huge broody skies. The small dark-stoned churches seem to stand up straighter here, and place has that distinctive, yet elusive aura of border country, where you know more than just a view lies beyond the next drumlin. At several points, the road we're on weaves in and out through the border.

In a hall on the outskirts of Clones, 11 members of the group are gathered together. The majority are in their seventh decade, although some are in their 80s and the only man, Tommy Sherritt, is 91.

This will be one of their last meetings before Stories of the Drumlins is performed on Friday by actors Mick Lally, Eileen Colgan, and Helen Norton.

"If we had been told three years ago that Miley would be up on a stage saying our words, we'd never have believed it," Gretta Tighe says. This sense of wonder at making an important emotional journey is evident in the way they all speak about the experience of writing their stories.

"It gave me an insight into my past life I didn't have before," says Olive Byrne.

"Some memories were sad, though, you'd love to live life over again," muses Mary Connolly.

Some of the stories are very sad, and all the more poignant for knowing that they are true: the young man who grew up without his own family was invited in by a family for supper one evening and stayed on for years to work as a labourer, even returning to live in the house after he was married; the child new to school who was forced by a nun to pull briars and nettles with her bare hands as punishment for getting things wrong.

There is also the story of the brother who left home and disappeared, then wrote from England to say he was coming home for his honeymoon. "We got our finery ready," says a woman character. He never arrived. His parents never saw him again. The male character says: "Years later the father died calling out his name".

But, like the landscape, there is as much light as there is darkness in Stories from the Drumlins. When an announcement is made of someone marrying again, the response is: "I hope she is not as mean as the last one, she'd not open the door wide in case she'd wear away the hinges."

There is the very Irish story of the Cavan publican who opened a travel agency and who arranged for all his pub customers to go to Dublin to take a flight over the town one Sunday afternoon - the remaining citizens of the town turned out to watch and clap as the plane flew over.

The drama is punctuated throughout with the sound of trains. "Clones was a major junction until 1957," explains Olive Byrne. "The border rules our life and always has."

"Clones is where the Great Northern Railway and Great Southern Railway lines met," says Beezie O'Hanlon

Smuggling was a way of life, and the trains were the way to do it. One character says: "For smuggling on the train what did you need? Let me see. For smuggling you needed a pair of interlock knickers with good elastic in the legs . . . You needed the newspaper to pretend to read and cover yourself as best you could. Because you didn't smuggle one item you smuggled a dozen."

The play will be performed as part of the seventh national Bealtaine festival, which celebrates creativity in our older people. As senior citizens, do they feel that Irish society values them?

"Since I got auld, I never had it so good," declares Tommy Sherrit, a line which appears in the play.

"We are making ourselves heard," Byrne says firmly. "The economy has improved and we can get out and about and make people listen to us."

"Society realises that older people have something to offer," says Peggy Curran, and the others nod in proud agreement.

Stories from the Drumlins will have a rehearsed reading at 3 p.m. and 7 p.m. on Friday April 26th, in St Felim's Complex, Cavan town. A discussion of the play with members of the audience follows the 3 p.m. performance. Tel: 049-4360437 for details. The play will be broadcast on RTÉ Radio 1 on May 26th at 9 p.m. For a full listing of Bealtaine events nationwide, contact 01-8057709 or see the programme on www.olderinireland.ie