Dawson Deverell - a life in Laois

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  Portlaoise, County Laoighis, Ireland
Wednesday, August 25, 1999

I always enjoyed talking to my grandfather by an open fire in his home in Coolbanagher, Co Laois. One night I decided to record our conversation and I sent it to the local newspaper, The Leinster Express. They published it and my grandfather, Dawson, was the talk of the village. It gives a good idea of Laois around 1920 and it remains one of my favourite memories of my travels in Ireland.

When I was a baby I spent my first year in a drawer with a hot water bottle for company. This was during the winter of 1973 in Coolbanagher, Laois. My grandfather has spent most his life in the "Old Rectory" next to Coolbanagher church and my father also called Coolbanagher home before he emigrated to Australia.
 
I travelled from Melbourne in 1997 and returned to Ireland for the first time in 24 years

Checking the cows at Emo Court

. On a particularly wet February afternoon with nothing much to do - winter is a miserable time in the Midlands - I asked my grandfather, Dawson Deverell, to tell me about his life growing up in Laois. As we sat by an open fire I took down what he said:  
 
"The Deverell's, they've been in Ireland, don't ask me how long, a couple of hundred years anyway. I sometimes think they came from France, but I suppose there was such a lot of movement around that time, they may have come over with an army from somewhere, you wouldn't know.
 
My father was born at the Rock of Dunamese.  Now his father died when he was only a baby and his mother died when he was only 9.  He had two sisters and they were older.
 
My dad's two sisters had a man who ran the farm until my dad was quite an age, when he was into his 20's anyway. The man who ran the farm when my father was a boy, this man was well into his 40's or 50's, but before that he was one of 13, the youngest of 13.  Naturally he had to go off and look for a job, and he got one in a shop.  One day this woman came in and wanted some baking soda and they were out of it, and he said he'd order it for her. 
"When will it be in?"
"Ah, it'll be a good week, but I won't be here."
"Where are you going, are you giving up your job?"
"I'm going home," he says, "to die from TB". 
Now TB (tuberculosis) was an awful scourge at that time.   He was the youngest of 13 and the other 12 had all died of TB.  
So she says, "If you do what I tell you, you won't die of TB". 
"And what's that?" he asked.  
"When you go home get two goats that are milking well and drink the milk every way you can, only don't drink any other milk only the goat's milk".  
Now don't ask me whether he did it for two or three years, but he was the only one of the family of 13 who didn't get TB.  Can you believe that now?  It was the goat's milk.
 
My mother was born in this parish a mile down from Coolbanagher.  It was easy for my father and her to meet because they were only a few miles away.
 
I was born in Raheen (property beneath the Rock of Dunamese), all seven of us Deverells were.  Three boys and four girls. We went to school at Coolbanagher, it was the nearest Church of Ireland school.  We drove a donkey there.  About four of us in a trap. I never thought I'd be living in the house next door, isn't that a fact.
 
I drove the donkey when it was my turn.  School went from ten in the morning till three in the afternoon so you were home before the dark.  But if it was raining hard you had to put up with it.
 
I had one great donkey I used to follow the hunt on. Bareback, you didn't put a saddle on a donkey.  She was a good jumper, and I was light and knew the country around about fairly well and I could get where horses couldn't. I turned up at a hunt and when one man, John Onions, saw me he thought himself a little above me, and a lot more, when he saw me and the donkey.   And we started off at the Rock and finished at the Heath which is three or four miles away, after the hounds.  
 
At the Heath there was only himself and two huntsmen after 30 starting and me with the donkey.  He said, "How did you get here with that donkey?"  Oh, I made little of those horses. I could take short cuts and I could see what way the hounds were going.  And if the donkey wasn't to go over a jump I'd put the reigns under her and crawl under, and she'd crawl after me.
 
I went to the Technical school after national school.  My parents couldn't afford anything else, we ran into bad times on the farm.  The economic war with Britain started and they refused to pay. So I'm afraid instead of going to secondary school I had to do a bit of work on the farm.  You didn't complain, you just did it.  Everyone did.
 
On the farm we had to plant potatoes, and when they were finished growing we had to pick them out of the clay.  We had to thin turnips and sugarbeet and weed them.  We had to do them all by hand, there were no spray then.  We had to pick all the weeds up by hand.  It had to be done, what do you do but only do them.
 
It was all horses at that time.  I mean there were no tractors then.  There were a few coming in, but a good pair of horses were as strong as tractors.   My father never had a tractor.  The horses did all the tilling.  Then you had threshing.  You harvested with the binder and you got them in with a horse.  Threshing was a big day and like it took about 17 or 18 men to keep the thing going between everything, and naturally you had to depend on the neighbours and so if you came threshing, I had to go to yours.   It went on till near beyond August.  Now it's all tractors ... I often say that the changes in my life time, in everything, is more than from the Bible's times to my father's time.   I can't believe it, all the changes.
 
 
 
I worked for six days, you might say seven days a week.  On Saturday nights we used to have parties from one house to another.  We used to have plays and concerts.  That was great, rehearsing them. The local Parish was the audience, and when we had the play learnt off we'd have it in a private house and there'd be maybe thirty or forty watching us and we'd be doing the play.
 
We went around with one play to seven or eight towns.   It was very popular.  Kids wouldn't do it these days.  It's a pity, but ah sure, people wouldn't bother going these days with television and all these things. You'd be surprised the crowds that would turn up to it.  But there again there was no radio at this time and there was no television.  Sure I remember the silent pictures. And then they thought they were wonderful when they were moving.  And then the next thing they were talking!   I suppose I was in my mid-twenties before they came around to Portlaoise. 
 
We went to the local dances. The local dances were in Portlaoise, Mountmellick, Portarlington. I used to go to them on a bicycle until I got a car.  I was lucky to get a job with Denny's and got a car in my mid 20s.  Sure I was the first in the Parish to have a car. We'd have five or six in the car going to the dances.  You see there wasn't many at the Rock, so I could take them all. There was waltzing, that was my favourite, and you'd meet the girls there.  You'd dance with everyone.  There was no alcohol there, a few would have a few drinks before they came in, but you wouldn't drink on the premises.  You daren't.   There was the odd argument over girls.
 
These were Church of Ireland dances now.  We weren't let go to Roman Catholic dances ... I suppose it was terribly wrong. You see back in that time if I was to marry a RC, for arguments sake, years ago before my time, if the boy was a Protestant and if the girl was RC then the children would have to be RC.   They'd be raised RC.  You see, we couldn't be friendly with any RC for that reason.  That went on for quite a while.  Now they don't bother.  If you want to bring your child up a Catholic or Protestant you'll do it and you're not going to listen to the church.  About right to.  I think it is anyway, maybe I'm wrong.
 
My car was an old Austin.  It had a soft hood and on a hot day you could turn it back.  It was second-hand naturally.  The man in Portlaoise that sold it, he owned a garage, and he took it back off your man who bought it new and sold him a new one. I bought the Austin, gave £40 for it and it was an awful lot of money.  He was telling me a story about the Austin when your other man had it.
 
He came up to him after doing his business in the town this day and he wanted petrol. He had parked in one of the streets before, you see, and there weren't many cars on the road.   Anyway, he said "Fill her up, she's fairly empty".  And your man saw that it wasn't his car he was in.  See, you needn't have a key for a car, no locks, nothing, it was a self starter, and if she didn't start you'd have to get out and swing the handle.
 
Anyway, he saw he had the wrong car and he looked in and saw a lady's fur coat and he says to your man, "I see you gave the wife a great present for Christmas".
 
"What are you talking about?  Would you hurry up, I'm in a hurry to get home".
And then your man looks around and sure enough a fur coat in the back of the car!  And he had to turn around and go back and leave it back where he had got it and go on.  His car was further down the town!  And a fur coat in the back of that car with no lock on it or nothing!  You could write a book on it. 
 
The car was great, there's no getting away from it, especially if you were going to the dances, better than pushing a bike.
 
I was still living on the farm, in Raheen, when I first worked for Denny's. You'd start off in the morning at 9 o'clock and you'd go off and buy whatever I was going to buy in Abbeyleix and Mountmellick.   I'd get home at five in the evening and milk the cows and help out with a few of the jobs.
 
There was a lot of pubs in every town back then.  There was twenty in Portlaoise then, terrible.   Too many pubs altogether.  I used to have a drink but wasn't fond of drink and I saw too much, those who were fond of it, the hash they made of their lives.  I'd rather be spending the money on going to dances or something.  Terrible, spending it all on drink.
 
Now I remember one fellow, and he spent all his money in a pub in Portlaoise.  Every day he'd be buying pints.  And then one day his little girl came into the pub and she stole, back then they made sandwiches, and she must have been hungry and she stole a sandwich.   And the publican's wife, who was making the sandwiches, she caught the girl and gave her a good slap.
 
Now the girl's father who saw his little girl get slapped, he went up to the woman and said, "I buy pints here every day.  You take all money.  But you wouldn't even let my daughter have half a sandwich!" And he poured his pint of stout over your woman's head!   And he never drank again.  Do you see?  She was happy taking his money but wouldn't let half a sandwich go.
 
Nancy (Dawson's wife, who died in 1996) was working in Dublin in the Civil Service, she was originally from Waterford.  She had a secondary education, which I hadn't.   Now she had a relative who was from the Rock, a cousin of her father's.  And she used to come down odd weekends, because coming down to Waterford from Dublin was almost impossible, do you know what I mean?   So it was nice and handy to come to Portlaoise and then out to the Rock of Dunamese.  Then I used to meet her at the church and then that's how I got to know her. I had known her for three years before we married.  Of course she wasn't the only girl I went with! I was 29 when I was married. 
 
Nancy and I lived in Laois our whole married life. A lot of my friends went to England, I always had a wish to go to Canada.  I had relatives who lived there and I thought about it but never got there.  Was never in America either. Nancy had a wish to go to Africa but she never did.  We were in England and Scotland a couple of times.  The first real holiday we ever had was in 1960 in Rome at the Olympic Games.
 
Sure listen people didn't travel around like they do now.  Let us alone, the grandchildren, you're away in different countries like I would be in Cork.   You couldn't believe it though, sure people didn't travel hardly into the town. 
 
Nancy and myself went, about 40 years ago, went down to Kerry and we were coming back to Portlaoise. We were going to come to this town you see, and I wondered if I was on the right road.  So the next thing I saw a man putting cows out in a field and I asked him if I was on the right road for so-and-so.
"Oh you are," says the farmer.
"And is it far?" 
"Oh, about six miles," he says. 
"That's not too bad," I says.  
"Well, would you believe it," he says, "I'm here all me life and I was never in it yet." 
Could you believe it?  Six miles!
 
Ah now, all the changes."
 
 

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