Seán Lane: Blarney Street, Butchers, Bowling,

Seán Lane: Blarney Street, Butchers, Bowling,

Life History:

Seán Lane was born in 1942. His parents were both from Blarney Street, where he was raised. His father was a bacon butcher.

He talks about his childhood. Children were always on the lookout for any opportunity to make a penny, such as cow-herding or picking fruit. There was a great community spirit. People made do with allotments and bird-catching, they kept pigs, hens or cows. Some traders collected household waste as pig-feed. Children played in the streets but once television came in the 1960s, they stayed indoors.

He tells a funny story about leading a horse through a pub. He describes playing bowls, learning to dance in the dance halls in the late 1950s. He remembers some of the street characters from his childhood.

Seán’s father later had a shop and he pickled meat there; poor people ate offal bones, which had quite a lot of meat still on them. He recalls the various slaughterhouses around Blarney Street.

5 August 2010

CFP_SR00396_lane_2010

Cork, Ireland, 1940s-2000s

Cork Folklore Project Audio Archive

Cork Folklore Project

Eanglish

Sound

1 .wav File

58min 59sec

Dublin Hill, Cork.

.wav

24bit / 48kHz

The following is a short extract from the interview transcript, copyright of the Cork Folklore Project. If you wish to access further archival material for this interview or other interviews please contact CFP, folklorearchive@gmail.com

B S: Sean, when you were standing at your front door, could you describe to me your street, you know what was opposite you, what was maybe your view?

S L: I certainly can, I certainly can. Outside my door eh of one-eight-five was the blank wall with the background of Mount Saint Joseph’s eh brothers college. It was the mother house of the Presentation Brothers of the world so to speak and that was truly the mother house which is today -- in, in today’s terms is used as Share accommodation. Eh the Brothers are out of it as such but eh there were dozens of brothers there and you’d see them marching in and there was a lovely big driveway and majestic-looking steps going up into that beautiful building off Blarney Street. It’s eh -- the the steps are done away with, the driveway is still there. Some local people are actually working up there with the, the older folks there now that are accommodated above there and em the -- I’d say it’s lovely inside there because it was a beautiful building. But right across the road from me was the eh derelict site so to speak. There were ten or twelve houses there for the last I’d say about ten years right across the road at this point now so that side was totally occupied at this point but em. When we’d lose a ball playing outside our doors now so to speak -- because there was very little traffic in the forties right up long the whole lot of the fifties. We’d have steering cars out in the middle of the road. There wouldn’t be a car on the road and we’d oil em up in such a way like -- who was going to be the fastest coming down to the Brothers’ gate you know and em all of that and we spent hours oiling them up and the old ball bearings from the garages we, we’d go to a garage and say, ‘Have you any old ball bearings?’ and we’d get a set, they’d be delighted to give them. And eh then we’re out the country then, to make another bob then -- was eh picking the blackberries and bringing them in to the market or bringing them down to Ogilvie and Moore’s and we’d actually pick bucket-loads of them but you’d have to get the down before the day’s end because if you left them over for the next day there was a kind of a fur, they weren’t as fresh looking as the day before, and you’re going to lose money by saying -- ah they’re yesterday’s fruit. But they’d still take them but if you can get down there and run yourself back down into the city and get, get them sold you get a nice couple of bob then and we’d do that for days, for as long as the season would last and em they were all little bits and then we, we’d have our little bits gamble then with our bowl playing and whatever. And all of the friends and the friends that were there that time are my friends today. S- Anywhere in town or going out the road, you’re friends forever with them. And they’d be literally hundreds and hundreds of people of at those bowl-playing scores at the time. My dad was very involved as well on the -- for the -- bringing senior players on the Clogheen Road and we’d play out then to the, the laneway running down to the Curraghk-- Curraghkippane em graveyard which is two or three miles I’d say in length in the score. ‘Twould take hours to get there. Trying to push out the amount of people at the time but they were -- you’d never think of home you know or food or anything you’d just be out there. You’re part and parcel of the scene that was in it. ‘Twas a lovely social scene you know. I think the kids today you know eh -- there’s a different direction today but the minute the television came there in -- what? ’60, '61, '2 whatever time around that -- when you were renting a television at the, at the time and it just sucked the children in off of the streets literally overnight, and ‘twas never the same after.