Touching Memories of Old

I HAVE in my possession an ancient Vere Foster school exercise book with a faded pink cover and brown rusty marks around the steel staples which bind that back to the lined pages within. It is in good condition.

It is over 80 years old. Back in 1925 in a totally different Ireland it was the English exercise book of one Denis J. McInerney of Fourth Class in Fortane rural primary school in East Clare. It is possible that Denis is still alive, though I cannot easily check that out this minute.

If he is still with us, and was in Fourth Class in 1925, he is now about 90 years old and, I hope, hale and hearty, a good life well lived and still being savored.

One thing I do know about him for sure, though. He had a fine clear hand, every letter clearly formed and running without blots along the exercise book lines. And he had a good command of both spelling and composition. The teacher must have been delighted with him.

By 1925 we should remember that the scars of the Troubles and the Great War in Europe were still fresh in this land. Times were hard in the emerging Ireland, relations not good with our powerful neighbor, a population which had suffered so much still so heavily dependent on farming.

And I know that Denis J. McInerney came from the land. Before school he would have had his chores and afterwards too, and I'm certain there would have been schooldays missed when he was helping to drive stock to fairs or working with his daddy in the bog or in the meadows.

And he almost certainly sometimes went barefoot to school in the better weather and, in winter, like all the other children, brought a sod of turf to class every morning for the school fire. For that was the way it was. And that was the way it was for decades after 1925 as well.

But the glimpses of life back then inside Denis's little English exercise book are powerfully poignant and telling small windows into that past, seen through the eyes of a child. And the beautiful period language of the curriculum of that era heavily tinted by the floridity of empire.

The pieces are all dated. The very first page is October 27, 1925 for example, and is the transposition of a poem heavy with archaic wordage. But still lovely:

"The alien shore may have gems and gold, Shadows may never have gloomed it, But the heart will sigh for the absent land, Where the love light first illumed it."

Shades of the reality of an emigrant's life in there. And another mighty couplet was written by Denis on the third of November:

"To every soul there opens up a high way and a low, And the high soul climbs the high way, And the low soul gropes below."

On that same day - a lot of English homework! - he writes: "Winter is the severest part of the year . I never like the snow . it is so very cold . the road and haggards (backyards) are all wet and muddy and everyone is anxious to stay at a good fire in the long winter nights."

And on the 25th of the month he lists his topography: "Telegraph poles, crossroads, trees, bushes, forts, fields, meadows, briars, tillage, pasture, heifers, bullocks, shop, cottages, dwelling houses, rushes, mangolds, turnips, hedges, ditches, streams, bridges, pheasants, plovers." Magnificent that, an environment caught in one long sentence!

Christmas comes closer, December arrives in Denis's writings. On December 4 he dreams a little: "If I had the luck to have riches I would be very happy. I would have all kinds of houses and also fine fruit, a bicycle and motor cars. I would give honest money to my workmen and special good food for them. Sometimes I would give them a drive in my carriage with the coachman and in my farmyard I would have a fowl house."

But three days later he is writing about his real life near O'Callaghan Mills: "On Saturday I work. I help my mother. I bring water and turf in to her. I bring the cows in the morning and evening. I drive them also and I look after the other cattle. Some part of the day I help my father.

"On Sunday I go to Mass. When I come home I go playing and after that I go reading and spelling my book and sometimes the newspaper."

On the next page, on December 9, obviously after some error in class, he has written down eight times: "There is no place like home!"

And with Christmas only nine days away, on December 16, he wrote: "Christmas is now very near and everyone will be very busy cleaning up their houses, whitewashing and decorating them with holly, and those that cannot get holly will use ivy.

"On Christmas Eve the people light Christmas candles and place them on the window. Some leave them lighting all night and others put them out at 12 o'clock. In the towns and cities they have Midnight Mass. The rich people in the cities will have turkey for dinner and the country people will have geese for dinner."

And are there not nuances there?

And the final pages, touchingly, are covered with a Christmas letter to his parents (a formula often used in the rural schools for essays). Denis writes: "My Dear Parents, I am glad to be able to tell you that I am going to buy you a nice present for Christmas as I spared my pennies for the last two months. With the money I have left over I will buy a hurley and a ball for myself and after the holidays I will bring it to school and we will have great fun in the fine days.

"I remain dear parents, Your Affectionate Son, Denis."

I can't write any words after that.