The Rooster is all wise, a sharp operator and winner
He had no English when he landed, but quickly learned it from his married sister, with whom he lodged for the first year there, whilst swinging the pick and wielding the shovel.
Later he worked in the States, and in France on a motorway project, and even on the faraway Falkland Islands.
By this time he was a highly-skilled JCB operator. He raised an English family and, when he retired, a widower, he returned home to Connemara.
I met him there last week for the first time in years. He is 86 years old and looks 20 years younger.
Sharp as a tack. He is one of the wisest men I’ve encountered in my life. and he is great craic to boot.
I enjoyed an hour in his company in a seaside nursing home. We sat in a conservatory overlooking Galway Bay, the sea glittering before us, Black Head sharply etched across the water and, in that most startling of optical illusions, the three Aran Islands appearing to be floating a foot above the water.
View them yourself some morning at this time of year and you will discover once again that MacConnell is speaking the purest of truths.
The Galway Races were still running in Ballybrit and The Rooster told me he had backed two winners and no losers. He has a Kildare friend who knows horses and races and had phoned him with good tips.
That friend, he told me, had also alleged to him that there was always a race during the week which was called a jockeys’ benefit, and where the winner would be a good price. He was awaiting that call from Kildare as we spoke.
A sharp operator indeed, is The Rooster.
Anyway, he is a unique folklorist in his own way. He has the kind of wisdoms about folk and their societies and cultures that he has picked up during his globetrotting.
I think they are the kind of wisdoms we don’t normally hear about at all and for that reason doubly fascinating.
I cannot vouch for the total truth of all of them but, to my ear, they rang true.
As we chatted, for example, there came news on the radio of a coastal drowning.
The Rooster spoke about losing a younger brother to the sea before he emigrated.
He nodded at the long briny reaches of Galway Bay and he said, “The sad truth is that the currach never loses the man. It is the man that loses the currach”.
Figure that one out for yourselves.
The Rooster says that the man who goes out early on May Day morning and strips naked to roll in the May morning dew may feel like a fool for the first few Mays, and will be terrified that somebody might see him mother naked rolling in the grass, but that man will never ever suffer from any kind of skin disease in his life, and is also likely to live to close to the hundred years.
He still annually follows this old pishogue, and is a good advertisement for its effectiveness.
He will be drawing a cheque from the president yet, for sure.
The Rooster told me that if you see any man (and you do see them often) with a huge bunch of keys hanging from a chain at his waist, then it is almost certain, 99% of the time, that man does not outright own even one of the properties to which the keys give access.
On the other hand, he claims, men who own several properties, often many properties, never ever display even one key about their person, even car keys, and, he says, they always wear grey suits, red ties, and white shirts. I would not have known that myself. Intriguingly, since our chat, I met a major property owner and, believe it or not, this individual was clad in grey and his tie was red.
The Rooster says one should be on one’s guard, anywhere in the world, against any stranger with a range of tatoos on their arms and especially on their hands. These can often be highly respectable and reputable individuals, he says, but on balance, one would be better perhaps not to do any kind of financial transaction with them if possible. He says one needs to be extra careful if in close quarters with any stranger whose knuckles are tattood with the words “love” and “hate”.
He told me that in his experience across the world over many years, that it was the fist marked “love” which was almost certain to deal the first blow in any row that developed, and such fists are absolutely lethal.
According to the learned Rooster, the best wives in Ireland hail from Co Roscommon, the best stonemasons from Galway, the best fishermen from Killybegs, the best plasterers and carpenters from Co Cavan, the best motor mechanics from West Cork, the top tailors from inner Dublin, the outstanding sailors from Wexford, the smoothest liars from Longford and Westmeath, the most honourable Christians from North Kerry, the most unreliable colleagues from Louth and Meath, and there is nothing good at all to be said for men like myself who hail from Co Fermanagh. Avoid them, he said with a wink, like the plague.
Finally, on the GAA front, The Rooster has studied the primary colours of the county jersies which have brought home Sam Maguire and Liam McCarthy down the decades. There were many seasons, he said, when the colour green was associated with football success, but this is not one of those seasons. His nursing home double bet has already been placed on the blood red jerseys of Cork to triumph in the hurling final and the blue-clad Dubs to end all their sporting blues and capture Sam Maguire next month.
Remember, ye read it here first.
