Breda Sheehan: Halloween Games, Childhood Games, Family

Breda Sheehan: Halloween Games, Childhood Games, Family

Life History:

Breda (born circa 1950) grew up in Spring Lane, Blackpool. As a child she used to play in The Glen, which was then in the countryside. The neighbourhood houses were small, with an outside toilet, so that every Saturday the children were washed in a tin tub and treated for head lice. She talks about the childhood games she and her friends played, dangerous antics like running over railway tracks or playing at deep water tanks. She remembers Christmas time and keeping her eyes shut in case she saw Santa Claus and she might be given nothing. She describes Halloween games and the different elements placed in the barm brack and what they signified, and she says that you were not supposed to go out on All Saint’s Night in case you met a spirit. She talks about the game of Picky (hopscotch), Release, and ‘stones’, and how they were played. As a child, money could be earned selling a bucket of blackberries, or delivering food waste to a pig farmer. She describes her household chores and responsibilities. She used to get ‘messages’ for a neighbour, a woman who never married but who knew the secrets of everybody in the area. This neighbour told her the story of an older woman who married a younger man, whose parents locked him in his bedroom on the wedding day to prevent the union. She comments that she left school at 14, but had to attend a One Day Week school when she began working. She notes that she was both a child and an adult. She comments about praying to Saint Anthony to resolve small life issues. She describes what happened at dances and how boys and girls interacted and dated. She talks about changes to Blackpool over the years. She lists a number of the lanes which were demolished in the 1960s and the occupants housed in Farranree. She comments on how shopping was done, in small amounts, daily; and she explains that milk was bought from a farmer’s churn and taken home in a jug. She talks fondly about her grandmother and her relationship with her. Her grandmother had a hard life: both her parents died when she was young and she and her siblings hid from orphanage officials who had come to collect them; she raised her siblings, Breda tells a story about her grandmother begging her sister for some money, a sister who died many years later leaving a mattress full of money, unclaimed.

22 July 2010

CFP_SR00388_sheehan_2010

Cork, Ireland, 1950s-2010s

Cork Folklore Project Audio Archive

Cork Folklore Project

English

Sound

1 .wav File

60min 29sec

Blackpool, 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: Christmas was always very important in our house, you know, even though, like my father was in the army and my mother wouldn’t have worked, because we would have been all young, so money was tight, but then again it was the same for everybody at that time. But Christmas we always got toys. And we always got --I remember one time, as a child, she bringing me into Robert Day’s inside in town, and going around the store with me, and asking me what I would like Santa to bring me. And I remember seeing this three-wheeled tricycle, and I was drawn to that, but then I saw a china tea set. And then I told her I wanted… first I wanted the tricycle, we were halfway down the stairs, and I changed my mind, I wanted the china set. But we always, you know, seemed to have got what we wanted at Christmas. But sure, I regretted the china set, like. Because I wasn’t allowed put any water into the cups or the teapots, in case I’d make a mess. So maybe I used the china set in my make-believe shop. It’s possible I was probably bringing people in and, you know, giving them cups of tea and putting sugar in it and pouring milk into the tea, and stuff like that. But we didn’t seem to get toys at any other time of the year, only Christmas, so what you got at Christmas, really, had to do you for the year. But as I said now we always seemed to have got what we wanted. I remember another time, my sister, I woke up on Christmas morning and there was a pram in the room and a go-car, what we’d call a buggy now today, but it was one of these real strong go-cars. But the go-car was for me, and the pram was for my sister, she was two years younger. And I grabbed the pram, and I wouldn’t leave go. And there was murder on the Christmas morning because none of us wanted this buggy, we wanted the pram, and we had each got a doll as well like, you know. Easter then, she’d always make sure we had Easter eggs on Easter. Era we survived grand.