Sea View
Of us 4 sisters 2 of us went to my maternal grandmother up Sea view on alternate days and did small chores for her like fetching water 
from either Killanooran well or from the natural spring down the cliff top, went to get the milk from either Mary Cuddihy or Hannah Doherty’s, from the Lang Wee, we collected fire wood/kindling to start the fire also collected dried cow clap if she was baking soda bread it was put on the fire and when it turned red placed on the lid of the baking oven to help keep the lid hot to help the bread to rise.
Traditional fire
It was my grandmother who got me interested in gardening, she gave me a little patch and I made a couple of raised beds, grew bits from her garden and mainly wild flowers primroses and violets, even today wild primroses are one of my favourite flowers
During the summer months Arch Bishop Sheehan used to walk up Sea View every day reading his prayer book, he always stopped and talked to us children always in gaelic.
The cream coloured house to the left of the An Post was once the home of Cannon Sheehan
He pretended to have a kitten inside his coat/cloak and he me-owed like a cat
to amuse us.
Two brothers Tom and Nicky Keown lived across a couple of fields from my grandmothers in Sea View Tom did the house work, and baked soda bread, as he mixed the flour the oven pot,, a three legged flat bottomed pot /bastile would be hanging on a hook to warm Tom would spit into the pot and if it sizzled it was hot enough for the loaf of bread to put in to bake. Tom always carried a bucket of water from the well on his head, he would turn his flat cap inside out to make a flat base for the bucket, when we, my sister and cousin would see him coming we would tease him calling pogeen Tom, pogeen Tom (kiss Tom) and when he made a move to catch us we legged it, so would any one else seeing Toms and his dribbles
The road to helvick
Scrumpin Apples. My sister Mamie and cousin Patricia used to scrump apples from Mike ( Dwyer)) Tobin my grand uncles orchard , he was Patricia’s grandfather and she lived with her grand parents, the orchard was surrounded by a thick hedge they crawled through a little hole while I was on look out for Mike or Katie, they filled their knickers legs with apples, we then crossed the road into the middle of Garrett Quinn’s meadow and eat the lot.
My Grand uncle was always called Mike Dwyer as he was always singing a song
? Dwyer from the glen, I forget how it went. Mike used to thatch old houses.
The photo which I took here was the last one before the house burned to the ground a few years back. It was owned by david Connors of Clonea
A man from further up Sea View Eddie Mary Eamonn Fitzgerald used to call into my grand mothers house, her son, my uncle Danny used to send her a weekly paper from London, Eddie would borrow her readings glasses to read the news and then would have an argument about politics and the war.
During the war we would see convoys of ships on the horizon, a ship must have sunk at one time and huge baulks of wood came in under the cliffs up Sea view, my father rescued 5 of them other men saved some as well, my father had to buy some rope to fasten them to the rocks so they wouldn’t float back out with the tide, than he had to get one of the fishermen with a boat to tow them into Helvick pier,
Paddy Joe Morrissey the solicitor from Dungarvan bought them off my father for a £100,
my father had to pay the fisher man for the use of the boat and the rope, when Eddie heard this he said that he was entitled to some money as it came in under his land, he didn’t have any land it was Sullivans, my father got annoyed with him and said that if they had come in under his window he wouldn’t get out of bed to save them.
Ballinagoul PierA mine was seen floating one day up Sea View, a lorry load of soldiers was patrolling the road and ordered the people from the three cottages to leave as it was dangerous the mine could exploded on the rocks, my grand parents came down to us, Nagle family went to some relatives and my Grand uncle and his wife Katie went down the village to their daughter’s, but under cover of darkness Mike crawled along the cliff path up through his field and in through a window and said afterwards that no soldiers would keep him out of his own bed. Although the mine detonated on the rocks and pieces were found on the road and Quinns field beyond the cottages no damage was done to any of the cottages.
Patron St.
Church of Saint Nicholas in RingSt. Nicholas was the patron St. of Ring on the 6th of December, we called it the pattern day, weeks before we started to save our pennies and then on pattern day all the small
shops would have a big selection of sweets, biscuits and lemonade stocked , then we had to decide which shop we would go to and feast till our money ran out.
The day started with sung High Mass, also Mass on the 7th & 8thof December, after Mass on the 6th the priest would go over to Helvick and bless the fishing boats, Miss Parkes taught us the Latin Mass which was sung and Gaelic hymns at school , then some weeks leading up to the 6th we had to go to the church after tea time to practice with the piano music, 4 of us sisters, 2 Drohan sisters, 2 Kenneally sisters and 3 of James Tobins girls from our side of Ring the rest of the choir came from Mullinahorna area
Dr. Casey
Our local Dr. a Kerry man was always drunk, the only time you would get him sober was on a Wednesday morning as Mr Dee the relief officer came on that morning and had a room in the Dr. house where he saw some people, but as soon as Mr.Dee had left Dr. Casey was on his bike heading for one of the three pubs, most people kept out of his way if they saw him coming as he took many a tumble off the bike. He didn’t treat many patients at home he sent them straight to hospital.
Garda Moloney was the school guard and was very strict, keeping to the right side of the road and school attendance.
John Daly was our postman for years, he cycled out from Dungarvan every day , he spent many an hour in the co-op stores chatting to the 3 assistance Tom and Mick Drummy and Richie Harty and delivered the letters as customers came into the stores if Liam Meehan the store manager was in the store he didn’t linger there long, he had a little hut over by Helvick pier where he rested and had his lunch till 3 o’clock when he made his way back to Dungarvan collecting mail from the letter boxes or from some people who would pop a letter in their window for him to call for..
A mobile grocery van came to Ring every week from Old Parish Tommy Pottle, it was a wooden covered wagon drawn by a big horse, my mother always bought some grocery from him, my father used to snare rabbits and Tommy used to buy them so my mother would have some ready money to pay for the goods she bought.
Any damaged rabbits went into the pot with bacon bones and made a tasty meal.
Another thing we ate a lot of was cured mackerel, during the summer when shoals of mackerel came into Ballinagoul we would bring lots of them home, my mother would top, tail ,gut and wash them, they were then put in a tub/barrel with layers of coarse salt between and left for a couple of weeks, the salt had turned into brine, they were then placed flat out on the grass to dry in the sun and turned brown, they stored well and made many a dinner with potatoes during the winter.
Ploughing out spuds, the old way
We grew a field of potatoes every year in ridges, we call them raised beds or lazy beds here, when the potatoes started to grow so did the weeds, our father ordered us 4 girls to weed a ridge each day we could please ourselves when we did it either before school or after but we had to do it.
During the month of May my mother cooked Nettles and gave us it to eat with our dinner, it was supposed to clean the blood, we had 3 meals of it during the month..
During the war coal was scarce, men went out on the mountain further up Sea view and cut the top layer with heather in squares took it home to dry and then it made a good fire, it wasn’t the same type of turf/peat that was cut in the midlands of Ireland,
We as children with a friend Margie Walsh used to go over to some fields by the church to collect some fire wood plenty of trees there, some branches fell down or was blown down by the wind, we collected it in Hessians sacks. My father cut down some trees that were growing around the house as well mainly Ash and Elder.
We didn’t go over to upper Helvick to our other grand mother’s( father side) very often, it was quiet a walk, when we did go we took a short cut up a by road going towards Quinns, when we got to a certain place where we could cut across some fields
we stood on the fence and had a good look to see where the bull was, if it was far away we would cross the field and if it was close by we went further along the road and crossed then, I don’t remember doing any chores over there.
Both of my grandmothers wore black shawls as did all the older women at that time, my maternal grandmother wore a long black coat as well as the shawl when she went out, where my paternal grandmother wore long black skirts and flannel petticoats and a small black shawl around her head.
Both my grandmothers smoked a pipe, a proper pipe with a short stem where other women smoked a clay pipe, I think they called them Drudeens.
We called our grand mothers, nannie seaview and nannie the hill, but our grand fathers were called by their names Richie (father side) and Johnny (mothers side)
Nannie the hill my father’s mother couldn’t read, when a letter came from her daughter in
We saved rain water in barrels/butts for washing, it was soft and didn’t need a lot of lux soap flakes to get a lather, I don’t think we had soap powders at that time
.Baths were shared, in a big tin bath in front of the fire, water heated in a pot and topped up every now and then, not very hygienic
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