An Irishman's Diary

He was one of our last heroes. In character and stature he towered above us. Even when we grew to adulthood there was always in his company a sense of being the small boy again. It was that way still in latter years, when age and sickness began to take a toll. Such was the rooted strength of the man.

Mattie Towey would have been 82 last Thursday, but he died at Halloween. More than he died that day. An era passed away. From the perspective of the Celtic Tiger 1990s he was extraordinary. Born in Ballaghaderreen on December 18th, 1916, he was married there in 1943, and his funeral Mass was in the same church where he had been baptised and married. A life lived so close to the roots could indicate a small man, but Mattie was never small. His was a great soul.

He loved those things James Joyce flew from. Family, nationality, and religion made up the very element which gave him life and hope and purpose. He was a pre-modern man, such as is no longer natural in such a post-modern age as this. He spent himself without thinking, without hypocrisy or piety, because he believed that was the way it should be.

Hard times

That outlook was what gave him and his wife Annie the strength to raise nine in hard times. He sold pigs at fairs while she served meals and ran the shop on Main Street. Through all those fairs he became one of the best known men in the West and Cavan. Signs was on him. His was one of the biggest funerals ever seen in the town. They came from all over.

Growing up, we youngsters didn't know much about Mattie the character at fairs or appreciate what was involved in raising a big family in tough times. But we knew Mattie of the gruff "Yes, young man . . . yes, all the way". We knew the Mattie who was always up before everyone else, even when you had to serve early Mass. And we knew Mattie of the hat, waistcoat, and braces with the thumbs hitched under the oxter.

Above all there was Mattie of the football. It was the great passion of his life and one he passed on to many of us. Memories of summer Sundays on Main Street, Ballaghaderreen, are hardly complete without hearing the voice of Micheal O'Hehir echoing down the town as Mattie, neighbours, and some of us sat on a form against his shop window listening to the radio as more than likely some foreign county like Kerry beat the living daylights out of Roscommon or Galway or his very own sweet Mayo.

He loved Mayo above and beyond reason. At least that is how it seemed to Roscommon people like me. Especially as Ballaghaderreen is in Roscommon. But before 1898 it was in Mayo. And when it moved to Roscommon that year, with the redrawing of local authority boundaries, the football club stayed in Mayo. It remains there.

Roscommon colours

So did Mattie. He loved Mayo as only an exile could. Its flag was greener, its sunsets (and flag too) redder. But his Maxol petrol pumps were blue and yellow, the Roscommon colours. It must have been a trial for such a man to have to look at them every day. They are also the Progressive Democrat colours. Not easy for someone who believed in Dev's party.

He could make young fellas take heed without trying. So he was able to calm me when I was bitten by a bulldog. He kept his head, and mine, while all about us lost theirs. Mattie and my father were having a pint next door. My roars brought the two of them running. Mattie took charge as my father demanded a gun to shoot the bulldog, its owner, and anyone else who got in the way. Mattie was among the few men who can cool my father when he is like that.

They were great friends. It was to Mattie's kitchen my father retreated for healing those mornings after the night before and, in less liquid times, it was there too he would be found early in the day as the two of them commented on the world and its mother passing by. There was frequent speculation as to who might be the world's father.

I disappointed Mattie at least once. It was the early 1970s and we young bloods started a youth club. One of our aspirations was to do something for the travellers camped outside the town. I did a survey of their conditions and published it in the Roscommon Herald. Few were impressed.

Shortly beforehand it was announced that a German film factory, which had been coming to the town for most of our young lives, was not coming at all. But worst of all the town football team fell by the wayside disastrously in the Mayo county championship. It was all too much for Mattie. He was heard to say "The football's gone. The factory's gone. And McGarry (me) brings the tinkers."

Funeral mass

Yet no man was kinder to or as well thought of by the Travellers in the town as Mattie. There were many of them at his funeral. "From judges to tinkers, they were all there," a local man said afterwards. The same man told a story of how a calf was sold at the back of the church during Mattie's funeral Mass. The price was agreed "in honour of the man in that coffin up there" he said, quoting the seller. He thought it was only right, too. But you couldn't believe the Lord's Prayer from the same man.

I met Mattie a few weeks before he died. He knew he was dying and he knew that I knew it too. We talked about football and the performance of the town's under-16 side, which had lost a match in Charlestown earlier that evening. Mattie had sponsored the team jerseys. We parted less heartily than usual.

But it pleases me that before he died he realised a dream. He saw the Sam Maguire cup in Ballaghaderreen once more. And it was brought there by his son-in-law, John O'Mahony, manager of this year's All-Ireland champions, Galway. On the September Tuesday following the all-Ireland final Johnno brought Sam up to Mattie in his bed. By all accounts it was a very happy and a very sad occasion. It was also an almost perfect ending to a good life well lived. Perfection would have been had Sam gone to Mayo, with Johnno as manager. It might have happened too.