Mícheál Ó Geallabháin: Family, Community, Social Class, Sport, Music, Emigration.

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Title

Mícheál Ó Geallabháin: Family, Community, Social Class, Sport, Music, Emigration.

Subject

Life History: Social Class, Emigration, Education, Music

Description

An in-depth, evocative interview about growing up in The Middle Parish highlighting poverty and the power of education in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Mícheál Ó Geallabháin gives intimate and warm detail about family life, community spirit, class, sport, music and emigration.

Mícheál was born on 15th of October, 1945 in the South Terrace but grew up in Kyrl Street in The Middle Parish. He was the eldest of a family of seven. He has four brothers and two sisters. They moved out to Ballyphehane in the late 1950s. His father worked for Beamish Brewery.
Note; This interview was conducted as part of the Cork 2005 Project
Interview duration: 55m 34s

Date

20 October 2004

Identifier

CFP_SR00343_ogeallabhain_2004

Coverage

Cork; Ireland; 1950s-2000s;

Source

Cork Folklore Project Audio Archive

Language

English

Type

Sound

Format

1.wav File

Interviewer

Duration

55m 34s

Location

Cork City, Ireland.

Original Format

MiniDisc

Bit Rate/Frequency

16bit / 44.1kHz

Transcription

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

M.O'G: and I remember when I was going to Sullivan’s Quay school like you know and some boy was asked, “Murphy, where’s your book?” you know, “Sir, eh eh we’re all going to England, in a couple of weeks time, so Mam and Dad said there’s no point in getting books because we won’t be here”. And like the whole family, mother and parents and all the children, just everybody out. And I could see no end to it, this was going to go on forever, people were going to be emigrating forever, things would never get better, you know and everybody was coming back from England, and during the summer holidays you know you had gone over there to work they all had nice suits on, and they were able to buy the Examiner every day, and God there was really money and you know and that sense of what you did not have, was almost as important as what you did have going for you, you know.

J.M: Yeah you became acutely aware of it basically!

M.O'G: Absolutely I remember being down then at the Inisfallen, the Inisfallen used to go out three times a week – Monday, Wednesday and Friday – and there were people throwing pennies onto the, and of course as kids you would be rushing to pick them up, you know, but there was something very sad about it, the young people all going away, and I remember being walking down Anglesea Street with my father one day, and I was about six or seven or eight and I said Dad why doesn’t the government do something about this and he said there’s nothing they can do. There was no hope, things were never going to get better, there was a sort of, I think TK Whitaker, who the man who got the Whitaker Plan going in the late 58, 59, or something he said on television that they were soul numbing days. Yeah that’s exactly the way it was, soul numbing, there was just no way out, things were never going to get better, there was no point even trying, because nothing was ever going to work. Thanks be to God, I was wrong, but like you know that’s the way it was.

Interview Format

Audio

Collection

Citation

Cork Folklore Project , “Mícheál Ó Geallabháin: Family, Community, Social Class, Sport, Music, Emigration.,” accessed March 28, 2024, https://corkfolklore.org/archivecatalolgue/document/54.