Memory of The First Trip to Rineanna

Our Trip to Rineanna

I’m Irish and I appreciate the use of an occasional Irish word.  Some of these words and phrases I have heard in Abbey: words like ‘ciotóg’, ‘amadán’, ‘liúdramán’, ‘maith go leor’ and of course ‘ar cuairt’.  If you did not go ‘ar cuairt’ regularly you were an odd man out.  This applied to men, and mainly referred to night visitation; womenfolk were more into daytime visits.  As Eamonn Kelly used to say, ‘in my father’s time’, more correctly, in my grandfather’s time in my case, a man from Tomany used to go ‘ar cuairt’ to a house in Lower Abbey.  He used to say that the day would come when horses and carts would fly through the air like birds.  True or false?

A delegation from Abbey would eventually travel to Rineanna to check out the veracity of such a prophecy.  At worst, it would be a day out for full-time farmers who had not yet crossed the Shannon.  A priest, native to the area, Fr Pat Abberton, volunteered to provide the required means of transport.  This was 1945 just after WW2.  The five of us, to include Jack, Jacko and Tommie, quietly headed for Rineanna in a Ford Prefect.  No cars on the road, only a priest or doctor had the required coupons for buying petrol and most cars were locked up in their garages.  In truth, we did not expect to see horses and carts, we had those at home.  We knew the difference between metaphorical and literal meaning.

The journey from Abbey to Shannon

I am reminded here, of the story of the two mothers, who went to see their children in the school presentation of Julius Caesar.  When Anthony addressed his audience with, ‘Friends, Romans and Countrymen, lend me your ears’ one mother suggested that Anthony must be Mary Murphy’s  boy as she was known to be always borrowing something.

To get back to my main story, the Rineanna visit was an all-round success.  We viewed the huge U S carriers, the Irish planes, bearing the names of some of our Irish saints, looked insignificant beside them. The accents of the returning Irish were way beyond what Colm Gannon or Oliver Callon might attempt to copy.  Our visit to the hotel pushed us to the limit: White tablecloths, cloth serviettes, a chef and waitresses and, if we were staying for the night there, we could have our shoes polished.  Nobody prophesied that.