Newry News and Irish Fun
I was almost six years old when I started school. I don’t know at what age my aunt proposed sending me but in any case I was spotted by a couple of Walking Nuns from the Convent of Mercy, out doing their Sunday calls, and me just playing harmlessly in the street. They followed me home and upon enquiry, were horrified that I had not started school at my age!
Although I was reared by my aunts, prior to their relocation to Dromalane my parents lived only five minutes walk away and I was a frequent visitor. They had no radio so we made our own entertainment, with regular singalongs in the evenings. My father had a lovely tenor voice and he and mother knew all the old Irish melodies, as well as the songs of the day.
Newry suffered very little over the Second World War years. I remember going with my aunts to be issued with my Mickey Mouse gasmask. I can still smell the rubber from it. Of course we never had to use it in earnest. We were also issued with identity cards and ration books.
My earliest memory is of waking up in the pram and being given a bottle. I also remember being carried downstairs each morning in my pyjamas to get a miniature cooked breakfast with the family.
I recall having measles, with the lights out to keep the room dark and a tilly lamp burning (the same tilly lamp I keep today). I was bundled in a quilt on the armchair and constantly fussed over.
The young ladies pictured here will soon be approaching that dreaded ‘bump’ birthday of forty! Then they were attending St Joseph’s School where the Walking Nuns taught them well.
The 150th Anniversary of the Mercy Nuns coming to Newry is currently being celebrated with an exhibition in the Catherine Street home. Don’t miss it! Also purchase their commemorative book, The Walking Nuns which is on sale there, and will soon be reviewed here (when I get time to browse it!)
How many faces can you put a name to? Answers on Guestbook, please!
Eventually the war was over. Everyone was delighted, with the obvious exception of those who had lost their sons and loved ones (see Newry’s War Dead, reviewed here).
I’ll have to tell you the story of how Joe Aisles came by his unusual name.
One gentleman who entered my life when I was about seven years old was Willie Burns, my mother’s uncle. He lived with his sister Lily at No 82 Chapel Street. Before that time I didn’t even know he existed!
Lily was ‘odd’ in her way and never bothered much with any one. She worked in Dromalane Mill and called regularly at our house. She asked me one day if I would whitewash her yard and I agreed. It was only when I called to her house that I was confronted by her rather stern and gruff brother, who found it hard to communicate with me.
Lonan Teach an Conais, or Tan Open, or