"All I remember....

...is dreading September & school"...words from a Mick Hanly song but I have to say, looking back I didn't particularly hate school - I endured it. I have some fond memories. I was just thinking of some of the teachers lately.

"The Horse" was the name of a teacher back in the day, in the Christian Brother's School, Green Street, Wexford. "The Horse's" real name if I recall was Brother Hogan, he had just finished teaching when I arrived there in September 1976, but that didn't stop him from keeping a bit of order in the schoolyard with his walking cane, he was the recipient of at least one stroke which I understand hastened his retirement - why the name "the Horse"? I don’t know but I guess it had something to do with his long face.


Another Brother that was there when I arrived there was "Huggy Bear". "Huggy" was a bear of a man and had a bear of a temper. He had a bombastic hatred of all things British but so over bearing was his personality, it gave one a sympathetic view of all things British. It was a guerilla war between him & his tormentors who would draw a union jack on the step into the first year prefab or on a blackboard, Huggy would not enter the room until it was cleared away. To some of us the Union Jack was the garlic that kept the vampire away as he was wont to lose the head with a youngster who would stutter an answer particularly so if the youngster had an English accent or was of a different faith. He was soon to be retired.


We had some good brothers also, Brother Casey had a quick-fire temper but was an excellent math’s teacher and genuinely cared about the student. Casey set up many initiatives on his own and also with the principle -Brother Shreenan. Youth music groups, computer labs, a fledgling sports set up which included a Championship winning football team and a cross country team. He also started the Friday night Ceili where many a youngster met their future spouse. I heard he had "gotten out"of the Brothers & had married, only to die some years ago at the relatively early age of 53. It knocked me back when I heard of his demise. It was a very sad day indeed for me as he had made a great impact on my life and I had a lot to be thankful to him for.

Brother Shreenan was the principle I remember most. He was a very deep, thoughtful person not scared of giving us discipline should we merit it neither was he afraid of confronting a teacher who he felt was bullying a student or even worse was generally ignoring the student over some personal foible, imagined or otherwise. He had this way of gliding along the floor, (the brothers in those days wore soutains), We called him usually "the boss" though I heard "Vader", "Darth" or "Lord Darth" - I called him "the ghost who walks' in deference to the Phantom Comics that were abroad at the time in the papers.

People are quick to slag off the religious these days, particularly those involved in schooling but where would be without them. They made huge personal sacrifices, giving up promising careers to educate a largely truculent, ungrateful bunch. Some indeed were forced into these orders by pious, sanctimonious parents who felt giving up a child would ease their way into their own Catholic heaven. You cannot force someone to do your will or to subjugate their own existence in deference to yours, there is only one ending in such cases - a bad one. Undoubtedly this is what happened to a lot of these people who we encountered during our school years. My wife's stories of her teachers in the Catholic schools of Cincinnati are almost a mirror image of my own. Some great, some good, some bad plus a host of sad, poignant tales scattered among them.

I look back on the remaining teachers I had and I have to say I am glad to have had them in my life. They were good decent, people who made a difference even if that difference is only coming to fruition now.

"Quack" as the man was known fondly to the CBS or Seamus Quirke was s singularly great teacher. He got the message through to our thick skulls and had a tremendous way of meeting you at your level

"Big John" MicNicholas & his wife Mena, John in particular was a tremendous teacher, in time his youngfella & my brother became great pals as his daughter Niamh & my sister Avril became great friends.

Tom Connon & his wife Angela were wonderful teachers too. Tom was an outstanding Sports teacher and a sympathetic ear. His wife Angela gave a lot of us a good grounding in the basics of French, which helped me when I moved into a "Wagon's" class for the last two years of my time there, as "the wagon" had no interest in teaching those of another's class. Years later I was coaching their kids and fine footballers they were too.


Miko McInerney was a great friend of my family and was a great Irish teacher but in those days I had as much interest in my native language as Joe Stalin had in "Noddy goes to Toyland". This was due to an intemperate w**nker who I had for two years in primary school that literally beat a lifelong resentment of the language into his students. Luckily "Miko" encouraged me to go to his native Connemara on a summer school scholarship where I discovered another side to my psyche and a lifelong love of Gaelic & her lore was rekindled.

"Buzzer" was our Chemistry teacher. I understood he got the name from his droning voice and the ability to put the most insomniac of insomniacs to sleep. "Take this down" he would drone as he entered the room and proceed to make us copy vast steppes nay rolling tundra of text-books, teaching us naught but what it must have been like to have been a scribe in a medieval monastery - poor buggers!

History was my favourite subject & so I read voraciously on the subject. Growing up in the house that I did, it was not a stretch for me to do so and I am glad I had two teachers Maura Coleman & Mick Waddle to encourage me or rather gently prod in certain directions. Basically to take away the blinkers and look at the bigger picture, this was particularly so in the case of Mick Waddle of whom I was poles apart politically but I learned to respect in the years afterwards.

On reflection, we were lucky enough to have some tremendous teachers, most were unpatronizing to us and dealt with us in a fair & open matter. they were mentors who gave us great encouragement for the years ahead.

It is a vocation - teaching, of that I have no doubt and a profession of incredible importance - I think of that old maxim, "the hand that rocks the cradle" when I think of these people. We were lucky enough to have some sound counsel at the most important time of our lives. I thank all of them from the bottom of my heart.

St. Mullins, Graigue & the Barrow Valley.

About 40 minutes from Wexford Town is the Barrow valley and it's hidden jewels, such as Graiguenamanagh & St. Mullins, two idyllic spots set in two counties. A favourite drive of mine on a summer's evening.

St. Mullins is a little village just up the Barrow River from New Ross. A cousin of my dad - Trudy Morrell, lived on the Kilkenny or "the Graigue side" high up on the inclines of Brandon Hill looking down upon this scene which you have to concur is a most agreeable sight. Trudy had to move eventually into nearby New Ross, a case of the practical over the romantic as she did not have a car & had to rely on a bus to get to shopping etc.

Driving from Trudy's home, you arrive in the village of Graiguenamanagh or the Graigue as it's known to the locals, a gorgeous riverside village known for it's abbey and it's cut glass _"Duiske glass". Once you cross the bridge, you're in County Carlow, another picture postcard hamlet that looks pretty driving through but probably is a place that you can't wait to scat from if you're a young local. Here you can hire a boat or a barge and navigate the river up to the canal system or down to Waterford estuary, heading into the Atlantic.

Heading up from Graigue, you drive along a beautiful winding road which has some amazing vistas, very much hidden Ireland. We're in the foothills of the Blackstairs Mountains, rolling up to the wexford border. That is the beauty about The south east of Ireland, a region I consider to be the most beautiful in the country. Having Wexford as it's core stretching across to Waterford's eastern shores, west to the Barrow valley featured here and north to the garden of Ireland - Wicklow.

St. Mullins though takes the biscuit! There is a wonderful serenity to the place that you have to simply experience to believe. It has an impressive ecclesiastical history. The locality takes its name from St. Moling, a 7th century cleric, prince, poet, artist and artisan who built a monastery here with the help of "Gobban Saor", the legendary Irish builder.

In the 8th century manuscript, known as “The Book of Mulling”, there is a plan of the monastery, the earliest known plan of an Irish monastery which shows four crosses inside and eight crosses outside the circular monastic wall. It is said that St. Moling dug a mile-long watercourse with his own hands to power his mill – a task that took seven years! He became Bishop of Ferns, died in 697 and is buried at St. Mullin’s.

The St. Moling watercourse is still there, but the original monastery was plundered by the Vikings in 951 and was again burned in 1138. An abbey was built on the site later, in the Middle Ages.

A 9th century High Cross, depicting the Crucifixion and the Celtic spiral pattern, stands outside the remains of the abbey and there are also some domestic medieval buildings, including one that has an unusual diamond-shaped window. St. Moling's Mill and Well are a short distance away. Another notable monument in the packed little churchyard is a penal altar, used in the days when the anti-Catholic penal laws were in force.

A Norman motte, once topped by a wooden castle, stands outside the churchyard, and when Mass was being said at the altar some of the congregation would climb the motte to act as lookouts. Being a Catholic in penal times in Ireland was an offence punishable by death, depending on what mood the travelling magistrate was in. You could not own a horse, own property and as a result vote. No rights basically whatsoever.

The MacMurrough Kavanaghs, former Kings of Leinster, together with other Celtic Kings, are buried in the neighbourhood of the monastery. A famous "healing priest"Fr. Daniel Kavanagh, is also buried here. People still claim that to cure toothache you should take a pinch of earth from outside the churchyard and exchange it for a pinch of clay from F. Kavanagh's grave. Then say a brief prayer, pop the clay into your mouth and walk down the hill to wash it out with water from St. Molings Well.

The site includes a medieval church ruin, the base of a round tower and the former Church of Ireland church, built in 1811. Protestants and Catholics lie side by side in the churchyard, and a story is told in the village of the days when, because there were only a handful of Protestants in the neighbourhood, the local Church of Ireland Bishop was thinking of closing down the church. The distraught vicar had a word with the Catholic priest, who had a word with his flock, and on the day of the Bishop’s visit Catholic families filled the Protestant church, joining in the responses and lustily singing Protestant hymns. The Bishop went home delighted and the church remained open. I understand they used this story in "The Quiet Man" although it's said that this story is a common one in the South though not in the North - I wonder why.

That's about it for this reminisce of a Barrow Valley drive, Hope you liked the photos.