Mo Laethanta Saoire: On The One Road, by Cónal Creedon
Cónal Creedon outside his old school, the North Mon.
“We’re On The One Road” by the Wolfe Tones crackled from the car radio.
Funny how a song can dig deep into the crevasses of the cranium to unearth a long forgotten past. Like wildfire, the rumours had spread around the schoolyard, and that’s what prompted Jojo Duggan to raise his hand and ask a simple and straightforward question.
“Are we going on a school tour, Brother?” Brother Hennessy hesitated and looked out across the sea of faces, from desk to desk, past row after row of expectant eyes twinkling beneath fringe-cut bowl-cuts.
“Let me think about it,” he said.
Sometimes the answer to a simple and straightforward question is neither simple nor straightforward. For this 12-year-old schoolboy, Ireland was a sepia-toned, wax-cloth map hanging in the classroom. We’d gather around it and rattle off the Irish national industrial centres.
“Carpets in Navan. Sugar in Mallow. Electricity in Ardnacrusha.” Like some aberration of a John Hinde postcard, this New Ireland as envisioned by Seán Lemass presented a semi-state hybrid of an industrialised future firmly rooted in our pastoral past.
Of course, there was that day Brother Hennessy asked, "Right, Creedon – Name the minerals found in Ireland?"
"Fanta, 7UP and Tanora, Brother" … 1970s Ireland was a rising tide – and Cork was on the crest of a wave. The Motown of Fords and Dunlops was the powerhouse of the city – pumping steam. It was the era of the job for life, where a workplace was handed down from generation to generation, and we would be next in line to take our place on the assembly line.
Brother Hennessey had heard the whispering around the staff room. Two of the fee-paying colleges in the city were planning school tours. One had their sights set on Switzerland, the other on Paris. Two schools whose primary focus was educating the next generation of Captains of Industry, Merchant Princes and sons of the professional classes. By comparison, my alma mater, The North Monastery boasted an alumni from the vast blue-collared heartland on the Northside of the city.
Celebrated in song and in story, The North Monastery was a nursery for hurlers and heroes - past pupils had made their mark as poets and politicians, with pride of place dedicated to our two martyred Republican Lord Mayors, MacCurtain and MacSwiney. Brother Hennessy instinctively understood that working-class values came hand in hand with working-class wages. Therein lay the kernel of the conundrum, the expense of a school tour to Europe would be far beyond the financial reach of his flock.
That weekend Br. Hennessey set to work calling in favours. He secured a bus from Cronin’s Coaches, a batch of Dolly Mixtures from Linehan’s sweet factory and Punches pledged a box of Tayto and a crate of Tanora. By Monday morning a plan was in place.
“Right, says he. – We are going on a school tour.” A tsunami of excitement swept the classroom.
“Paris? Switzerland, Brother?”
“No!” says he. “Not Paris or Switzerland. We are going to Rosmuc!”
“Rosmuc, Brother?” Brother Hennessey nipped any hint of disappointment in the bud saying, “Rosmuc was good enough for Patrick Pearse – It’s good enough for us.” He went on to say, “Life is a bus journey. So, let the journey be our reward!”
And so, on the appointed day, fifty-two wild boys and a Christian Brother piled onto a bus and trundled out of Cork, on the rocky road to Patrick Pearse’s cottage in Galway. And yes, motion sickness induced a few cases of projectile vomiting, but it’s fair to say that by the time we reached Limerick, communal supping from bottles of Tanora with a froth of Tayto flakes floating on top had established a collective antimicrobial immunity against measles, chickenpox, smallpox, leprosy and every known schoolboy infection.
Brother Hennessy mapped out a circuitous route tracing the footsteps of O’Sullivan Beare. At every crossroads and village he identified holy wells, burial grounds and ancient battlefields strung out like beads on a rosary along the blood-drenched road of Irish history – from Cork to Rosmuc.
Pearse’s cottage, set in splendid isolation on the shores of Loch Oiriúlach, framed by the towering Twelve Bens and the majestic Maumturk Mountains, is a place of breathtaking beauty. This landscape inspired the Patriot, who in turn inspired the birth of our nation. Brother Hennessy impressed on us the significance of this magical place, with extracts from Eoghainín na nÉan and Íosagán – finishing in an impassioned flourish with the prophetic words from Pearse’s oration at the grave of O’Donovan Rossa. “The fools the fools they have left us our Fenian dead.”
The cottage was small and spartan, and with access limited to five individuals, Brother Hennessy organised us in batches. We were led in hushed tones from the sparse kitchen to the austerity of the bedroom – the only apparent furniture a small iron-framed bed. When our guide announced that the Fenian, Joseph Mary Plunkett’s brother, had stayed here with Pearse, it prompted Jojo Duggan to ask,“In the same bed, Brother?”
“A Christ no, man! They took it in shifts.”
But stunning scenery and the serenity of solitude offers little by way of entertainment to a busload of schoolboys – so, we entertained ourselves with a game of Brits & Patriots – a new take on the old standard Cowboys & Indians. And maybe Dagenham Dave, the leader of the Brits, ended up in the lake as a reprisal for the Burning of Cork – but what happens on school tour stays on school tour.
Maybe it was the sheer enthusiasm of Brother Hennessy, but something about that day spent in the wilds of Connemara was profoundly inspirational. Every mountain, bog and outcrop seemed to present a narrative and a profound understanding of what it meant to be Irish. Ireland was no longer just a jaded abstract map hanging in the classroom. For the first time in this boy’s life, Brother Hennessey had succeeded in imparting a deep and meaningful interpretation of Ireland as a constantly evolving work in progress – an ancient land shaped by the people and a people shaped by the land.
And so with the darkness of evening setting in, it was time for us to strike the long road home again; one final stop at Salthill for sausages and chips and an opportunity to empty our pocket money into the slot machines of the amusement arcades along the waterfront. A quick headcount and we were back on the rocky road to Cork.
Brother Hennessy shortened our journey with a sing-song – the full Republican repertoire from 'Boolavogue' to 'Sean South of Garryowen'. But something about the rousing culturally inclusive lyrics of 'We’re On The One Road' just seemed to capture the spirit of that day. We sang it over and over again – from Salthill, County Galway all the way to the Burren in County Clare.
Half a century has passed, and yet the names and faces of each and every one those boys on the bus that day is indelibly etched in my memory. Red-faced and carefree, singing at the top of our lungs, living in the moment – blissfully unaware that within a decade, Ireland would be battered by a gale-force recession and Cork would be in the eye of the storm.
By 1985, the Motown of Fords and Dunlop had shut down the assembly lines and padlocked the factory gates. With half the town unemployed and the other half redundant, the only career opportunity open to me and my classmates was to take the next Slattery’s Bus heading for London – and onwards to Brixton, Berlin, Boston or the Bronx. The day of the job for life was over.
And if life is a bus journey, as Brother Hennessy said, it’s odd that me and the class of 1972 got on the same bus but by the twists and turns of life, we all ended up in totally different places.
But sometimes, when faced with the challenges of life, I like to think that maybe in some other alternative reality – that old Cronin’s Coach is still trundling along some back road between Rosmuc and Cork. Brother Hennessey is still driving on the sing-song. And a busload of schoolboys, high on Tayto and Tanora, singing as one, over and over again.
- Art Imitating Life Imitating Death, by Cónal Creedon, was a winner of the Gold Award Non-Fiction IP Book Awards USA 2023. Creedon will be reading at West Cork Literary Festival on Sunday, July 9; and Mallow Arts Festival on July 28
