We've mentioned "Bob, the Protestant Horse" by Michael McDonald.
Once I started to read it, I couldn't but it down. It is a humourous,
whimsical and very true description of Irish rural life in the 1950s.
Loved his dry Irish humour. I can vouch that what the author says is
true, every word! I suspect that it is a real account of his early life
experences 'down on the farm'.
The memories it brought back to me. My paternal ancestors came from
Blackwater country near Dungannon, and on the maternal side, from
Portadown, although my parents were born and bred in Belfast. Like our
wee Michael in the book, I too was not born in Ireland, but in England,
and when we returned to Belfast during the war, I was always referred to
as the foreigner. My story is so much a mirror of wee Michael's I could
have almost written it. I recall the "brown" of Belfast - clothing,
decor, everything seemed to be brown!!! Even the black & white,
hand-coloured photos of our family taken at the time are with brown
clothes! The memories kept swarming back: the wet cobble stones and
square-sets of the roads, the draught-horses slipping on the ice, the
smell and noise of the city, the Saturday night tin bath in front of the
fire - coal in Belfast.
Living with my grandparents until we emigrated to Australia, I recall
G'dad's taciturn nature. He adored my younger sister, but had little
time for an over-active 6 yo.
Then spending summer holidays on Robbo's farm (the Robinsons had a farm
at Hillsborough, Co. Down) helping with the harvest, early morning
chores like milk, eggs, water from the pump in the yard - no running
water, earthen floor. I can't recall wearing anythig but wellies, except
in summer when we went barefoot. Rationing on all things except chewing
gum and ice-cream, making butter in the churn, coal fire in Belfast,
peat in Hillsborough, the new Ferguson tractor (father's business was
making agricultural machinery and selling tractors), oh the awful
butter-milk which, like wee Michael, I just couldn't stomach. Then the
religious divide - so real and so unnesessary. I think that that was one
reason my parents chose to emigrate. But perhaps the most striking
feature of the story, written in conversational style, is the
phraseology. It is so like our family conversations. The words, the
expressions, the dropped letters, the way the sentences are structured -
I can hear, now, my aunt, mother and gran in the kitchen, all talking
simultaneously to each other and yet each following the other's
conversation perfectly. A lovely story, thanks for mentioning it.
Gordon
BTW, when we arrived in Australia in '48 my sister and I spent several
summers with an aunt and uncle in rural Victoria. Although the most
densely populated state, that town wasn't connected to the grid until
1968, so we were already accustomed to the oil lamps and wood-fired stove.
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