Dia is mhuire diobh go leir a cairde and welcome to my weekly Report.
Welcome to the month of August. With a wing and a prayer the summer might still come. Up till now the weather has lived up to all the predictions of climate change and judging by things abroad, we’re not getting the worst. So whatever about the wing we’d better keep up with the prayer.
Memories, how they play tricks on the mind. Especially when you get older. The very mention of something from the distant past can send you into a phase of your life which had remained hidden away for decades. There is an item on the website at the moment where somebody is asking if anybody can remember the Davis Family who lived in Millstreet away back and had connections in Ballyvouskil. It must be 80 years or more since I sat in class with Hanna Mary Davis at the Presentation Convent school here in Millstreet, I can still see her as plain as if it were now. Her light thick brown hair cut in a bob, her calm gentle ways, quiet spoken. Right away I could recall that she had an older sister who was a nun. But other details failed me until I got the help of Nora (Broker) Kelleher and Kitty Cronin, both ladies who are blessed with outstanding memories and perhaps mixed in different circles than I. Between us we figured out that there were three girls in the Davis family. Hanna Mary, Sheila and Barbara who became a nun. Davis was not a Millstreet name. Their Dad came to work in the brush making factory in the Drishane Estate. They lived at the Tanyard as many of those working in Drishane did. Another name which came into the area to work for the French Order of Sisters was Sexton. Two brothers Jehr. and ?, were employed as ploughmen there. They came from the Skibbereen area of the county. In time Jerh Sexton married into the house in Church Street which was a very popular public house and the name Sexton went over the door of a business place in Millstreet for the first time. The place has changed ownership many times over the years and always retained it’s popular acclaim as it does to this day, as Pomeroy’s Clara Inn. Hanna Mary left school at sixth class and like so many more of her equals disappeared into the big world which took them away from the everyday/years of closeness at school. We all followed the paths that Life had in store for us and it’s only when we hear the name mentioned again that it all comes flooding back.
[read more …] “Eily’s Report – 1st August”
