Billy McCarthy: Quaker Road, Public Baths, Childhood

Billy McCarthy: Quaker Road, Public Baths, Childhood

Life History;

Billy was born in 1941. His mother, Mary Ann Cronin, was from Mayfield; her father, William Cronin served with the British army during the First World War, and later became a postman. His father’s family came from Dunmanway, West Cork. His father, Patrick McCarthy, served with the IRA between 1919 and 1921, and later came to Cork to work as a conductor on the trams. He was reared on Irish nationalist history and recites a poem he wrote in his twenties, The Glorious Hour, about Michael Collins and Tom Barry.
Billy grew up at Quaker Road. The house had a large garden, and his father raised pigs; on the way to Murphy's Bacon Factory on Evergreen St, they were taken through the house itself. He comments on watching the pigs being slaughtered in the factory.
Billy remembers Scannell and Finnegan’s shop, which sold oils, and scrap pictures for scrapbooks. Teenage treats could be got at Kiely’s Chip Shop Maylor St, which he believes was one of the first in the city, and at Harrington’s milk and cake shop.
He tells a story about playing street hurling and being caught and fined by the police. Swimming could be done at the indoor Eglantine Street Baths and outdoor Lee baths at the Straight Road. In Summer these were always overcrowded, and he learnt to swim in the River Lee instead.
Billy talks briefly about fishing for tadpoles, roach and trout. As a kind of initiation, young boys would lie beside the railway tracks as a train passed. He recalls “the snotty bridge”, an old limestone bridge that had developed stalactites underneath it over time.
He sings a song called The Leprechaun.

Billy recalls the polio epidemic of 1957 and the fact that Cork people were not welcome in other counties as a result.
He briefly recalls the Marian year of 1954. He sings a song called “By Degrees”.

Note: this interview makes references to an interview with Sheila Ronayne Murphy [CFP_SR00182_murphy_1998]

03 July 1998

CFP_SR00220_mccarthy_1998

Ireland; Cork; 20th Century

Published Material:
Hunter, Stephen (1999), Life Journeys: Living Folklore in Ireland Today, Cork: The Northside Folklore Project

Cork Folklore Project Audio Archive

Cork Folklore Project

English

Sound

.wav

65min 12ses

NCE Ltd, Sunbeam Industrial Estate, Mallow Road, Cork

Cassette

V.C: Tell me a little bit about the street games of the forties and fifties,


B.McC: Our favourite street game was hurling, we used to play in East View Terrace, off Quaker Road where we lived. There would be little or no traffic on East View Terrace. There was just a row of houses, just sixteen houses on one side, on the left, and on the right you had the wall of Quaker graveyard, a blank wall. East View Terrace was the place to play ball to our mind! But some of the residents didn’t like it. We often held a full-scale hurling match there, on a Sunday afternoon. I remember one particular incident, one of the lads who used to play there with us, one age with myself, he and I and another chap, Michael Maverly (God Rest him) who was a few years older than us, and we were playing ball, at lunchtime in East View Terrace, and old guard Halloran coming on his bike, from Barrack Street Station to his home in Ballinlough at lunchtime just swung casually into the terrace and caught us playing ball. So he took our names and one of the lads who was with us there, his grandmother lived as he did, in East View Terrace, his grandmother came down and spoke to the guard and said “this lad wasn’t with them at all, this is Pat, my grandson, catching him by the hand and attempting to take him away. So Guard O’Halloran in his wisdom said, “ One moment Mam, that lad was playing with them when I came along. And incidentally, he said, “aren’t you the woman who came into the station to report these lads. The three of us were fined for playing ball there, three and sixpence (three shillings and sixpence)


V.C: An innocent offence,

B.McC: Three shillings and sixpence each, for playing ball,

V.C: That was a lot of money then,

B.McC: And very coincidentally when Guard O’Halloran called after the court hearing to collect the fine, it turned out that he went to school with my mother.

V.C: He still took the three and sixpence though! Haha!

B.McC: He still took the fine.