"To me the lake is tranquility. Plainly and simply - I love the lake. I was born in Barrack Street with it at my back door, so near that if you had a breeze behind you, standing in our yard you'd nearly cast a fly onto the water. I was born in 1938, the year the club was formed. As a child I played on its shore. All my family and those before me were involved with the lake. It is part of our history, it was even a means of our livelihood."
The lake in question is the one in east Galway beside which the town of Loughrea grew up, and the words are those of Pat Barrett, taken from his recently published memoir, The Revival of Irish, the Ten Commandments and a Kick in the Arse.
As Pat points out, from a group of 60 schoolchildren in 1951 about eight remain in Loughrea today. The title of the book comes from the response Tommie Fergus gave when asked where he was educated: "Listen Sonnie, when I was going to school it was: The revival of Irish . . ."
Litany of boats
"I started fishing when I was about five years old," Pat writes. "Most of our fishing was done in the Chapel grounds, at McLoughlin's bridge, at the back of Maggie Hannon's and under the `mitching tree' in the chapel grounds, the best spot of all. Bill Joynt, Sonnie Barrett and Michael Beatty kept their boats there also. Later Fr Naughton had a boat at the glass house, and they say Mattie Coyne kept his boat at Finley's Bridge. Mrs Smyth had a boat at Maggie Hannon's and Jack Daly had a boat at Flaggy Meadow. Shield's boat was beside Banana's Bay and later at Sonnie Devine's. Tom Skelly and Mullins' boat was at the back of Skelly's, and then at the Brothers river, Graces and Kellers. Further down over on the shore Pakin Maddin, also Joe Cunniffe who had his own boathouse and that's a rough count of the boats in the early days."
You wouldn't think a list of where people kept their boats in the 1940s would hold much appeal - particularly to the outsider - but in Pat's voice it rings with a simple humanity that borders on poetry.
And that's the trick Pat has pulled off with this quiet gem. It's just Pat, telling stories, but his love of the place and its people is pervasive. The time and community he evokes is so authentic that, for those who were there, the fond memories flood back, and those who weren't there are drawn into that milieu in the same way a reader is transported by the intensity of a fine novel.
Good trout
"I remember when I was a server in the Cathedral around 1947, and when going to serve, I'd go up the back way by the river and just between Hannon's and Kilboy's garden there was a pool which always held a good trout. I was watching him for weeks. Before I'd go into the sacristy, I'd set the rod in the river and all during Mass I'd be thinking of that trout. Also that time my best, best friend was my dog Grouse, and he knew exactly what I was doing setting the rod. I think he knew that trout better than I did. Indeed, Grouse and myself were inseparable, everyday he waited outside the school for me, and would carry my bag home. When I was serving, he was waiting outside the church. Wherever Grouse was, I was. And wherever I was, Grouse was.
"Now getting back to that trout, when Mass was over I nearly ran in off the altar, off with my soutane, surplus and shoes and out the sacristy door like a flash. Grouse was waiting, and before I was down the steps of the sacristy he was half way down to the river where the rod was set. When I got down to the spot, he was there looking through the reeds at the river. I lifted the rod, and one morning - guess what, I had the trout hooked. He came to the top of the water and jumped and splashed and then, with all the commotion, Grouse got so excited he jumped into the river on top of the fish, and you know the rest. But that's fishing, and I still loved Grouse."
Huck Finn with a Galway accent.
Like most of his generation, Pat left school early and went to work in his uncle's stone yard, Regan's Monumental Works. It was hard work, and Pat goes into fascinating detail about both the tools and the tricks of a trade which is nearly a museum piece itself.
Pat's chronicles of the life of a town will ring true to anyone from a similar background, with the dances, the market day, the handball alley, the pantomimes, the choirs, the country walks, the local chancers, the teachers who inspired and those about whom the less said the better. It's an Ireland that has disappeared before our eyes and yet is already almost unimaginable. No electricity? You must be joking.
Of course, there's no easier way to incur the wrath of 95 per cent of your neighbours than by flying their dirty linen, so Pat, cleverly, has steered well clear of all the backbiting, politics, rivalry, grudges and jealousies which are no more and no less a part of life in Loughrea than they are in any tight community. It's all soft focus, which is why Pat can still live in Loughrea.
Extra copies
Pat sat down to record his tale earlier this year and then published the book himself. The initial print run of 700 hardbacks sold out in three days, so, with the help of a backer, another 1,000 paperback copies were published last week. It's available in News N Choose in the town, or you can visit www.loughrea.org.
You might also manage to pick up a copy if you're in town next weekend, October 27th-29th, for the annual BAFFLE poetry festival. The bawdy bards and bardesses of this august band of reprobates, scoundrels and fugitives have chosen "Anything is Possible" (inspired, loosely, as is their wont, by St Brendan) as this year's theme. The carousing begins on Friday evening with a reading by Pat McCabe who, I suspect, hasn't a clue what he's let himself in for.