On the ball in Donegal

I went to the local school in Scotstown, Co Monaghan, in 1949. The exact location of the school was called Urbleshanny. There were about 120 pupils and three teachers in the school. I had to travel just 500 yards to the school with my two older brothers and my older sister.

My very earliest memories of the school are hazy but I remember my teacher at the time was Mrs McKenna. Her husband Paid McKenna was the principal of the school, but the third teacher has left my memory. I do remember though when I started, looking up at some of the bigger fellas, my bigger brothers and their friends and thinking they were enormous - they were probably 12-year-olds. I was interested in all the seasonal things that happened in rural Ireland at the time, whether it was playing chestnuts at chestnut time or gathering nuts in the autumn or fishing in the local river.

I was also interested in playing football and playing cowboys and Indians and all the things that kids do at that stage of their lives. Or should I say, the things they used to do then. It's a different Ireland now, I suppose.

When I was near the end of my primary stage in Scotstown, I was sent off to a school in Donegal for six months. In the school in Scotstown there was, and still is, a very high standard of Irish, but I went on to Donegal to put the little bit of extra blas on it, to do the entrance exam for the preparatory colleges for teacher-training. Some of the schools in Donegal specialised in getting you ready for the entrance examination.

I stayed with a bean an ti and went to the local school nearby. It was the usual primary school from Monday to Friday and then you did extra classes on a Saturday morning as preparation for the entrance exam to the preparatory colleges.

It was my first time away from home, but I adapted quite well to it. In fact, I have great memories of living with the bean an ti and playing with the children of the area. There was an exciting new perspective on life for me, going down to the harbour at Bunbeg, going out on the fishing boats and watching the fishermen, fishing mostly for herring.

Life in the small fishing area on the west coast of Donegal was totally different to my way of life in Co Monaghan. It was a good education living among other people and finding out that there were different traditions and different things happening there than happened at home. Like when you went to Mass, it was in Irish in the Seipeil Phobail. But some things are the same everywhere. I can remember playing football with the kids in Gweedore at the weekends, as we would at home.

The preparatory school I was sent to was Colaiste Iosagain in Ballyvourney, west Cork. A few from our locality went there because it was part of an education scheme whereby people with good Irish were prepared for the teacher-training college. It was a long distance so you went at the beginning of term and you got home for the Christmas holidays and again at Easter, and that was it until the summer. The fact that I spent six months away in Donegal meant that it was not as big a trauma as it might have been. But it was so far from home and the only communication you had was writing letters, so there were lonely times.

Not everyone went on to training college after they did their Leaving: some were offered university scholarships so they went off in that direction, but a large number of us did go on to St Pat's. That was a bigger culture shock than going to the boarding school. The rules in Pat's were quite relaxed by the time I got there. You could go into town, or to the films, or wherever you liked. Coming from a fairly regimented regime in Ballyvourney and arriving in Dublin I suppose was akin to letting rabbits out in O'Connell Street - we were everywhere, especially everywhere we shouldn't have been. Like the pendulum that was pushed too far one way, we certainly went the other way when we got the opportunity. I found it difficult to handle the freedom at the start, but I adjusted and I suppose it didn't work out too badly at the end of the day.