Ciaran’s Peculier [sic] Blog

I have just come back from a visit to Fermanagh County Museum in Enniskillen. This truly is a great place with wonderful staff and exhilarating exhibitions. I was particularly interested in the exhibitions of Japanese antiques. The incense burners, vases, netsuke were awe-inspiring. There were also19th-century watercolour prints from the century when the influence of artists like Hokusai was still strong but Japan sat on the brink of calamitous changes, as she was forcefully opened up to western influences in the 1850s and 81860s and the traditional nature of Japanese society was altered.

Among the items from this traditional society on display in Enniskillen are traditional samurai armour. Even more poignant are the samurai swords carried by the samurai, as a mark of their membership of the elite class, but also a constant reminder of the fate that they must embrace were they to encounter shame, such as defeat in battle or personal impropriety. The Japanese practice of seppuku, (known in the west as hara-kiri), literally meant stomach opening.  These samurai swords look so beautiful and yet could be so deadly.

The various exhibits are accompanied by clearly-written and helpful text panels.

A recent edition of BBC’s Countryfile featured the Geopark centred on western Fermanagh and West Cavan. There was an interview with a researche3r from the museum who explained the horrors visited upon this region during the Great Famine. One aspect which she didn’t mention (or which was maybe edited out of the interview) which is fascinating and worthy of note was that not all of the West Fermanagh / West Cavan area was visited by the ravages of the potato blight and the attendant diseases like typhoid or cholera. Towns like Blacklion or Belcoo suffered horrendously, but an upland area like Glangevlin, only a few miles’ away, escaped virtually unscathed. Local folklore repeats that not ma people died here during the Famine, and records how “food refugees” from as far away as Galway came to Glangevlin in search of sustenance.

We stopped off for lunch in the Hungry Hound where we had a delicious meal. Rosie had cod in batter. The batter was crispy and the cod fresh, while I opted for my old favourite of Chicken curry, which was wonderfully hot.

My visit to Enniskillen restored my faith in museums. It is a place that the whole of Co. Fermanagh and its people can be truly proud of, unlike the bloated, conceited white elephant labouring under the title of Cavan County Museum, nestling in its little hide-away in Ballyjamesduff, and staffed by people with ludicrous semi-military titles ending in “officer”.

I saw a reference while at Fermanagh’s county museum to the work of a group called “The Friends of Fermanagh County Museum.” Does such as organisation exist for Co. Cavan? Maybe it does with complimentary membership for those belonging to the Knights of St Columbines, Opus Dei, the Real or Continuity IRA, Nonce’s International, the Irish chapter of the Ku Klux Klan or the Belturbet branch of Fine Gael.

I wish I weren’t disabled. I think back to the days when I could walk for miles or strut my stuff on the dance-floors of smelly, over-heated nightclubs.. I wish I could recognise people’s faces.

But you know I don’t think I’ve done too badly.

Regrets? Sure! I’ve got a few – who hasn’t? I regret having stayed on at university to get a doctorate. I also regret coming back down to Cavan in 1995 and getting in with a bad crowd, though as they were my employers I could hardly help it. But as we haven’t mastered time travel and going back in time, regrets are stupid.

Some may think I’m angry – surely none but a person steeped deeply in anger could write such forceful denunciations of the bandits and thieves who think of themselves as our leaders.

But I’m sorry to disappoint. I’m not angry, certainly not with my disabilities. Who should I be angry with? God? I’ve never been a believer in a vengeful and wrathful deity delivering his displeasure by life-shattering thunderbolts. I see divine intervention in my life as far more benign. God could have made me less imperfect, but the reasons he didn’t have nothing to do with punishment. If anything they are challenges for me to overcome – on my terms, not on someone else’s.

Maybe it’s a cross to bear, but then this makes me feel immensely privileged. Maybe Jesus is giving me the opportunity to carry his cross and share in his sufferings for mankind. I think it was Edith Stein who wrote: “Sufferings endured with the Lord are his sufferings.” But listen – I’m no Jesus freak and I wouldn’t like the powerful holy joes to feel they had competition.

But I’m not the only one who’s privileged here. I have never believed that there is a hierarchy of illness – that I’m sicker than someone else, and therefore deserving more soup and sympathy.

I don’t feel angry or resentful of “able-bodied” people. We’re all members of the human race, Some people are just luckier, that’s all.

I do feel angry – very angry – at the responses of society and government to the disabled. They claim they want disabled people to feel included and to pursue the removal of discrimination. In fact they don’t give a damn – they never have done. What they give (or rather promise) with one hand they take back with blooded claw on the other. I am incandescent at being sidelined, looked down upon and discriminated against by shitty little people leading shitty little lives who think that their proximity to bodily perfection places them in positions of unassailable authority over me and countless others.

I am livid with being expected to blend into the wall-paper of society, and then being ostracised because I have never wanted to be imprisoned in the world of low (or no) expectations. Along with other disabled people I have so much to give to the world, but we have been told by many (including many of the voluntary organizations supposedly pursuing our welfare) that the highest occupations we can aspire to are telephone operators. I dare to say that not everything in the garden of disability (only partially accessible to people in wheelchairs) smells of roses, but that quite a lot stinks of human piss.

Amongst the most craven in our world are those who preen themselves as being friendly to the disabled, who initiate expensive schemes accompanied by lavish publicity, to investigate the needs of the disabled, but which never lead to anything except the short-term enrichment of their organisers.

God gave me a brain, which he expects, nay demands I use. He also gave me the means of expressing my thoughts and I am so thankful to be able still to use them.

I am really, really happy. I live with a beautiful woman, safe and secure in her love, in a beautiful spot. I have so many truly wonderful friends.

Sometimes I wonder what I’ve done to deserve such happiness. At other times I fear that my happiness consists of fibres of a rug which can all too easily be precipitously withdrawn. I know how fragile my happiness is and how it can so easily be destroyed by the bloody-minded actions of others. I have made many enemies among the “powerful” who are just itching to get back at me.

I have my dignity; this is very precious.

But you know life is for loving. I believe in the present and the future. The past can take care of itself.

But I don’t know why I’ve written this. There will be those who’ll understand. Others will just scoff, maybe seeing it as the belly-aching of an arse-hole, as I was once described by a fellow member of an online forum for the partially-sighted.

Like many people I am heartily sickened of hearing the infernal claptrap from our leaders, like big-lips Cowan that we must all pull together for the country’s economic benefit and feel the burn, or the even greater twaddle from fatso Harney that we must be prepared to suffer cutbacks and make tough decisions.

A recent edition of the Cavan Echo has revealed how Cavan Senator Diarmaid Wilson is getting a pay increase, from 72,000 to 74,000 euro. (Unfortunately I don’t think he deserves a place on the L’Oreal ad and say he’s worth it.)

Now how many carers would his salary pay for? Carers are one group who for years have never received sufficient compensation for their work. Far from it, the present minister the Lady Bountiful Hanaffin has hinted that the disabled and infirm should be looked after by their families (for nothing of course) and that she would therefore like to cut carers’ benefits.

But there is one big difference between carers (and any other group who are undervalued) and our rulers. The former deserve more but they won’t get it, but when those who sit at the top want more, well, all they have to do is decide when and how much.

Thank goodness that the Cavan Echo had the courage to cover this outrageous occurrence. But I recall how Senator Wilson’s party colleague Deputy Smith responded to even mild criticism from the Echo during the last General Election campaign. In a fit of pique not worthy of any politician removed all his advertising from the paper and switched it to the far more compliant pages of another journal.

Many years have past since I gave Diarmaid Wilson some copies of the Breifne historical journal. Yet despite numerous entreaties I haven’t got them back. I suppose he’s lost them by now, but given that he is so flush with cash he can afford to buy me replacements. One of the volumes contained an article of mine, so I’m in the embarrassing situation of having to read my own work in the library when I have need. He’d have no problems getting them from the present gang in the Cumann Seannchais Bhreifne – aithnionn ciarog, ciarog eile – an dtuigeann sibh?

Just to introduce some balance it should be pointed out that this pay raise isn’t confined to Senator Wilson or to Fianna Fail senators. It does beg the question what do we need a senate for? There are good people there, such as David Norris and Shane Ross but as for many of thee rest … stop the lights Bunny! And then the way they’re elected to “professional panels” (Industry, Agriculture) – a sop by De Valera to the numerous admirers of Benito Mussolini and Fascist Italy in the Ireland of the time.

And maybe I shouldn’t be too harsh on Diarmaid. “Ah jaysus he’s not the wurst o’ them”. Indeed someone who knows him pretty well once said of him “sure yan fella’s a thunderin’ eedjit.”

John Fitzgerald Kennedy memorably if rhetorically asked: “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.” This should be paraphrased for our ruling class: “Ask not what you can do for your country, but how you can do your country.”

I would like to respond to Cowan, Harney et al and the whole crowd of gangsters and bandits who sit in governance over us, in the words once used by a Fianna Fail councillor (now no longer with us) who said: “D’ yez know what yez can do with it? Yez can shit on it!”

Once more the loyalist corner-boy Sammy Wilson has made a show of himself in Stormont, performing not like a minister but like a Linfield Football supporter.

I’m afraid had I been any of the members of the assembly’s environment committee who were the recipients of his unpardonable guff, I would have walked over the floor and planted my fists deep into his pathetic jowls.

He intends to go ahead with his ban of the advertisement advocating changes in behaviour to combat climate change. I can imagine how this will play out amongst the G&T drinking denizens of the leafy golf clubs of Surrey. “I say, have you heard about this politician in Ireland who won’t show an advertisement against climate change. Well that’s the paddies for you what? What?”

Of course such people are unable to see through their anti-Irish prejudice that the politician in question would rather be beggared by a (Protestant) gorilla than be called Irish; that he is a minister in that part of Ireland which is still a de facto part of the United Kingdom; that he is a die-hard supporter of her Majesty the Queen, but into whose breast he would nevertheless plunge a bayonet were she to ever contemplate becoming a Roman Catholic.

Readers of my most recent Echo of the Past dealing with the tragic fate of poor Mary Prunty will have seen references to the townland of Ballymacarue. While this is the form used in the reports of the Cavan Weekly News I feel certain this must be the townland of  Ballymackinroe.

I hate appearing to be a hyper-critical know-it-all. Some might be surprised and a little disquieted at the way in which I seem to have founded upon the intellectual banality of a fellow Cavan historian. There will be murmurings of “Why don’t you pick on someone your own size Parker?” but the individual who has been the object of my scorn has not been content with inflating himself to the level of my equal, but has sought to portray himself as far superior. I would not have said anything, had not this individual, Dr Brendan Scott, Research Officer of Cavan County Museum, gone out of his way to belittle me. I have never had the “pleasure” of meeting him. Nobody could accuse me of spreading vile comments about him as I know nothing about him. I know he hails from Belturbet where I think his father is a town councillor. He went to St Pats (to which I went for a short period too), He has a PhD from the National University of Ireland in Galway, and I think this is on some aspect of seventeenth-century history but I’m not sure – but that’s the extent of what I know about him. He no doubt knows far more about me, but does he ever ask how much of it is true?

It is as if I don’t exist. He has never contacted me, even though there was a time when I would not have been averse to hearing from him. I heard that he had published a book on the subject. I endeavoured to send him a message asking for a copy that I might review for my Echoes of the Past column, but I never received any reply. No doubt my humble scribblings are too far below the ken of his exalted intellect. I was never been invited to any of the talks he has arranged. I don’t go to those sorts of things much, but it would have been nice to be asked.

But yet to organise a conference on the history of Cavan which included a medieval section and not invite a person who has written numerous articles and who has studied the period for over two decades was a definite snub. And what was Dr Scott’s defence of his actions? There had been trouble between me and the museum, but it was before his time. This rationale wasn’t delivered to me personally of course. I was unworthy of any reason. In the same way as I wasn’t entitled to a reason for the abrupt ending of my employment in the museum twelve years’ ago.  It sounded very much as if he had been listening to every little drop of bilge water spread by the flat earth element of the Cumann Seannchais Bhreifne.

I ask one favour of those who are going to spread lies about me. At least meet me once before doing it. Try to get to know me. Meet me in the flesh; don’t call me late on a Friday night. I’m always puzzled by those who say upon meeting me. “I never realised you were such a nice guy Ciaran” to which I jocularly respond “What exactly did you expect?”

My protests at being snubbed were met by comments from one of Scott’s friends who scoffed at my absurd “attestation” to be an expert on the history of medieval Cavan, while another commentator, who claimed to have expert knowledge of me said that the decision to snub me was my karma for my lack of generosity. (It goes without saying that I don’t believe Scott knew or approved of these comments.) I’ve been writing a column for over two years’ now for the Cavan Echo, in many of which I place my research of anyone who is bothered to read it. I have never claimed copyright protection on it, because it is of little value in Cavan, and I’m accused of being ungenerous? While blogs may be written by crazy people, those who respond to them are crazier.

But the worst response of all was from Cavan County Manager, Jack Keyes, Dr Scott’s boss, to whom I sent a mildly worded letter expressing my disbelief at what had occurred. Mr Keyes in the best spirit of the Irish Public Service never deigned to even reply. No doubt he had been provided with golden opinions of me. I know he has not enjoyed the best of health, but all he needed to do was reply, even with a brief acknowledgement saying something that there was nothing he could do. By his arrogant non-reply he identified himself fully with whatever motivated Scott, and he cannot say that he was on a frolic of his own. Mr Keyes has been quite public in his support of initiatives to help those with disabilities dealing with the County Council, but what prevents me from saying that I was deliberately victimised because I am disabled? But then as a disabled person I should know my place, and keep my mouth shut.

“Oh inti bowld Jools?”
“Sometimes he goes too far. He’ll need Cavan County Council before they’ll need him” – the f£&k he will!

The time I spent working in Cavan County Museum is something I remember with a mix of joy and frustration. He was a decent man having to operate in a shitty situation alongside shitty people. We had many a laugh together, as he was a rich reservoir of Australian slang. I often sensed that if he were a free agent he’d have been off like a shot. The last thing I want to do is contribute to the whispering campaign against him that’s been circulating for years.

Looking back, it often appears to have been a constant struggle against a plethora of hangers-on and relatives of council staff who were saw the museum as a cash cow. The curator asked me to find a job for one girl. As there was often little enough work for me to do I prevaricated, but said I’d find something for her. A week passed and the curator again asked me to find her a job. This time I came up with something that didn’t really need doing, and I was compelled to there and then telephone the girl offering her the work. She did it well and I was grateful, but I got a shock when the issue of payment for her arose in discussion. The curator proposed giving her far more money than I was getting. (Actually, to be fair to him, he didn’t actually know how little I received.) And then I remember the time when the curator, tired of the hectoring of the then county manager, threatened to resign. All of said to him: “If you go, we’re going too.” I told this to a very good friend of mine, and she said: “And do you think he’d do the same for you Ciaran?” Less than six months were to pass before I discovered how prescient my friend was. But I honestly didn’t expect him to.

One of the joys of working for the Museum was working alongside people on the FAS scheme, the form of cheap labour used by local authorities throughout Ireland for such projects. I think it worthwhile to remind people that I wasn’t the person who initially said the FAS people were not to be invited to the opening by President Robinson. If that decision had been gone along with I wouldn’t have been seen dead at the opening. The curator thankfully put his foot down as well. He asked me to draw up a list of people I’d like to invite, but not one person on my list got an invitation, and for all I know it ended up in Brian Johnston’s toilet. On the day of the opening there wasn’t a stone for more than fifty miles from under which some creepy-crawly hadn’t emerged. I say without any fear of contradiction that if it wasn’t for the people on the FAS schemes over the years there would be no museum, but yet for years they’ve been shat upon, whether by the County Council or by FAS itself.

Some might say this is all “Fart-and-tell”, the ultimate touch-stone of the scoundrel. I just want to show people I worked bloody hard in the short period I was there, but it is as if I never was in the place, and whenever my name is mentioned in the context of the museum eyes incline towards the floor as if someone had said “fuck” in earshot of the vicar. I became a “non-person”, airbrushed out of existence; credit for my work was taken by others. This is no doubt what Scott meant when he said there had been “trouble” between me and the museum, but maybe he is genuinely unaware of the work I did. Somehow I doubt it.

A lot of this happened long ago, and a lot of water had passed under my personal bridge. But I was truly distressed to find that, even after more than ten years, there were those in the Museum who still bore me ill-will. It really reopened a lot of sore memories for me.

But why am I still the black sheep? I can stand, hand on heart, and say I have nothing to be ashamed of. I was born with one disability which I attempted to overcome. The good Lord in his wisdom saw fit to saddle me with another, the degenerative disease of Multiple Sclerosis which I have also attempted to deal with, and I think, all things considered, I’ve done fairly well. I’ve never looked for sympathy, but a bit of respect wouldn’t be out of place, but then I know I look in vain for respect from people who don’t respect themselves.

No doubt all this will engender a response. There will be those who will pooh-pooh my “outburst”, but you know I don’t care. I do hope (for his sake) that Dr Scott doesn’t emulate his predecessor in the job in the museum, who once rang me up threatening to sue me and who was verbally abusive to my late mother – God be good to her – and sister. On that occasion I had, that very day in fact, received formal notification that I did indeed have Multiple Sclerosis, so I suppose I could have been forgiven for ignoring such a provocation. I would not be so passive now.

One last thing – after which the rest will be silence. I wish local politicians would stop belly-aching to me about the Museum, how much it is costing and how little it is taking in. It’s got nothing to do with me. It’s not my concern – it’s yours.

St Patrick’s Day is a curious feast. It is celebrated by those “whom God has placed over us”, for whose health and happiness we must pray, by leaving the shores to celebrate the feast in foreign climes. I know that much of the traditional form of celebration indulged in here verges on the naff – those ghastly parades invariably headed by a lone piper in a kilt and the ubiquitous FCA colour party etc. But why indulge in acts of cringing humility and almost comic-book servility like handing over a bowl of shamrock to the US president? It is as if successive Taoisigh have jigged into the oval office, bowl in hand, and touching their forelocks have said: “Begorra an’ top o’ the mornin’ to your worship, now wouldn’t you be a cute lad, being elected President.”
And of course successive US presidents have gone along with the pantomime by wearing a green tie.

But compare this to how proudly other countries celebrate their national day. What would be the reaction if Nicolas and Carla decided to spend Bastille Day outside l’Hexagone?

In my piece for the Cavan Echo this week I try to explode some of the myths about St Patrick, chief among them being that shamrocks are a symbol for the soft drugs to which the saint was addicted. Also, with debate still raging about the saint’s sexual directions I try to answer the question as to whether he was gay and just how friendly he had ever got with the sheep on Slemish.

Now everyone knows I like a laugh. This comes through in my writing, but I’ve recently seen a piece which also appeared in the Echo over a year ago which quite simply had me in hysterics. It was just so …bad.

What particularly tickled me were comments attributed to Brendan Scott of Cavan’s County Museum in Ballyjamesduff. I doubted at first that this was the same Dr Brendan Scott as the piece referred to him throughout as “Mr Scott” – such unspeakable lèse-majesté!

The piece centres on the saint’s visit to Derryrath fort in west Cavan, an event of whose historical certitude Brendan is obviously sure. He says:

“There is a rath at the top of a hill near Ballyconnell in west Cavan called Derryrath, and I reckon that was the original site where Saint Patrick had the battle and destroyed the idol … It is said that St Patrick visited the spot that the stone sunk into the ground at the sound of his voice.”

Said by whom? St Patrick is depicted as acting in a most shameful manner, indeed not unlike a crowd of American pro-lifers outside an abortion clinic. But as far as I know (and who am I to question such an expert as Dr Scott) the visit to Derryrath is not mentioned in either of the two works accepted by scholars as having been written by the saint, namely the Epistola to the soldiers of Coroticux and the Confessio. What’s more it seems as if the account comes from a later life, such as the lives attributed to either bishop Tirechan or the monk Muirchu, written nearly two centuries after the saint was around. Now we all know how inaccurate medieval saints’ lives were, and bear In mind what I’ve said in my piece in the Echo, about an attempt to recast the saint as “Action-man Paddy”.

(Personally, I don’t think Patrick was ever at Derryrath, and if anyone engaged in vandalism there it was St Mogue, a century later.)

Then there seems to be some conflation between the pre-Christian God Crom and the idol that is alleged to have stood there.

“There is no doubt that the Crom Cruach was an important religious and cultural site in its time.”

Crom was one of the most important Gods in the pre-Christian pantheon. Crom cruaich is more likely to mean the deity or godhead of the mound than this fanciful stuff about a bloody crescent.

“I’ve always considered Magh Sleacht as meaning the plain of the slaughter, not “field of adoration.”

But every good joke needs a good punch-line and Brendan doesn’t disappoint.

“There is definitely room there for major research to be done,”

He’s so erudite isn’t he – so butch.

And who better to carry out such “major research” than the Research Officer of Cavan County Museum.
Maybe he could get his boss Mr Keyes to fund such a project, part of which would inevitably be a conference bringing together scholars from every corner of the world and at great expense.

… But given the fact, (and I would say that it is fairly incontrovertible) that the events described never happened, and are accepted by scholars as being the creations of later commentators, what historical research needs to be done? Where are the reliable sources to be examined or re-examined? There are none that would shed any further light on Patrick and his world.

But I’m not finished on this: please see the next

post entitled “A boy doing a man’s job”.

The murders of the two British soldiers at the week-end and of PSNI constable Andrew Carroll can only be described as the cowardly acts of people who have a maniacal dependence on violence and destruction. They are psychopaths who try to cover their deranged actions with appeals to bogus political causes.

Any armed conflict contains such elements. There are those who make the transition to “normal” democratic life and activity fairly easily. Then there are those who have enjoyed a level of power, influence and prestige, often accompanied by financial gain. They are often criminals who clothe their criminality behind the ideals of the organisations they join. Once the armed struggle is over they usually revert to criminality as one (often the only way) to hold on to the lifestyle.

But then there are the sickoes. Sometimes they suffer from apparently mild neuroses with obsessions towards criminal damage and vandalism. Sometimes they achieve a surprising degree of reintegration into society. But then there those who should be in very secure mental facilities. Perhaps they were sick even before the conflict broke out and used their involvement as a means of achieving recognition. Others may well have started out unscathed, but conflicts scar even the sanest. Even at the height of the armed struggle period they are often sidelined by the mainstream who recognise in their psychological volatility threatens the entire outfit. They no doubt have senses of their own importance out of all proportion to reality, and no doubt bear deep resentments towards those of their former colleagues whom they consider to have overlooked their “manifest” abilities. So there can often be a degree of internal score-settling going on.

But leaving aside the pop psychology, the fact is that three people are dead who should still be alive today.

I’m old enough to remember how horrible the North was during the Troubles. True I was on the periphery but those people who lived throughout in a border county were only too well aware of easily the whole thing could have spilled over. How awful it is to remember those days when seated before the TV, a BBC entertainment program would be interrupted with the news of the explosion of a devise in some Northern Irish town, accompanied by a plea to key-holders to check their premises, or how the Six O’Clock news would begin with a shot of a blanket-covered body surrounded by scene-of-crime tape.

The Real IRA, Continuity – whatever they’re called, for me they seem very like a group such as the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) in Uganda, who don’t give a damn about anyone, especially their victims. These dissidents, as racists, would be outraged at being compared to “niggers” and “black bastards”.

For let me reiterate they are racists. I pity the poor Polish delivery man who got shot on Saturday night. The Poles in the North are getting it from all ends. There are those in the “Unionist” camp who hate them, not only as foreigners but as Catholic foreigners. For a small handful on the other side they must be enemies, because they are serving the British. And all British people are enemies. One of the soldiers killed was of Indian origin – all the more reason in the eyes of some on this island for him to die.  

I dare say that some of those behind these murders are probably staunch, not to say bigoted in their religious beliefs. They are probably dead set against abortion – and homosexuals.  But then Joseph Kony, internationally-indicted war criminal, is fighting for the creation of a state based on The Ten Commandments.

I should have kept my mouth closed and not written the above, as sad to say there are probably quite a few resting terrs around here. Still, I have to speak out.
PS. Psychopaths they may be, but I’m not suggesting for one minute that when they are eventually brought to trial they should be able to make use of the M’Naghten test.

Readers of my Echoes of the Past Column in the Cavan Echo will see my article on F.J. Gillen, the founding father of Australian ethnography. I have been anxious to try and find out some more about his Cavan ancestry. My good friend Jonathan Smyth told me about a wonderful website called Failte Romhat, which allows visitors to search various sources such as Griffiths’ Valuations of

F. J. Gillen (1856-1912

the 1850s for names and addresses. I looked for anyone called Gillen in the parish of Drumgoon, of whom Griffiths does not have any record. However, I did find a reference to a Philip Gillan of Mullaghard, Drumgoon, Co. Cavan. I think he may have been Thomas Gillen’s father, and therefore F.J.’s grandfather, as Thomas had a brother Philip who also emigrated to South Australia and who may, as an elder brother, have born the name of his father.

T. P. Ennis

On a visit to Cavan’s library today my good friend Tom Sullivan gave me this photograph of T.P. Ennis. It was taken two years’ ago during Seachtain na Gaeilge. I still can’t believe he’s not around. How I miss him!