It Occurs To Me: Files, paper clips and sally rods

The late Michael Hartnett was a dear friend. I first met him at Listowel Writers Week in 1979 when he was one of the judges of the Sean McCarthy ballad contest. 

I had written a ballad commemorating our legendary fiddler John Doherty and I won first prize. I was shocked and delighted, particularly when Michael said the lyrics had swung it for him. “Pure poetry”, he said on stage. 

We became friends and kept in touch. He was a superbly compassionate poet and human being, very empathetic and encouraging. I thought of him over the Christmas and his blunt assessment of the state of Ireland: 

“We queued up for the Castle in 1922 with smiles on our lips,

And entered the Irish paradise of files and paper clips.” 

He added: “What we did is we built a State without ever asking what kind of state institutions we needed.” 

Why I was reminded of this a few weeks ago was eventually getting around to watching Leathered: Violence in Irish Schools in its totality…originally shown on RTÉ One on October 31, 2024. I just wasn’t in the form to watch it at the time and those of you who have bad memories of the cane or strap will understand why. A friend sent me a copy of an interview on Ocean FM of the reaction from a listener in Glencolmcille who had not only been traumatised by constant batterings at National School, but for whom the programme brought back harrowing memories. 

My friend has a family member in his mid-70s who had said nothing for over 60 years about the abuse he had received, but like the caller to Ocean FM, all the pain has now  returned. 

One of those interviewed on the Leathered programme was renowned Cork poet Theo Dorgan, a good friend for over three decades. He recalled  his time in school as a “predator and prey” situation, saying  that if you simply looked at your teacher the “wrong way” you would get hit. For all my years knowing him, corporal punishment was something we never discussed, so I immediately contacted him to express my belated solidarity.

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In a previous interview, Theo had said: “You’re talking about the ’50s and ’60s. You never knew when you were going to get hit. A 6ft man hitting an eight-year-old child was wrong. I’m sick of people I was at school with, saying “it never did me any harm”. Of course it did. I saw fellows being beaten simply because they didn’t understand something.” He said he was “constantly” beaten at school. “It gave me a fear of violence. It made me very aware of situations that might turn violent.” It also made him “unable to trust authority” because of the injustices he witnessed.

“I learned very early on to question authority. I became a rebel, day one. I remember going into secondary school and a brother said to me: “You have a bold spirit and I’ll break it before you leave this school.” I’m looking at this guy thinking, ‘No you won’t’. But it was going to be rough.”

                                        Painful memories

I’m in my 25th year writing this column, and probably the best reaction I ever received was twenty years ago, when St Eunan’s College was celebrating its centenary. ‘Celebrating’ was the order of the day, and my hackles were raised. I had come from Gortnabrade NS in Carrigart where my memories of the principal, Joe Gallagher, were positive ones. However, because I was never slapped, I was totally unprepared for secondary school, and meeting up with my old class at our reunion in September 2024 brought everything back. 

Here is my original article:

My objection to the sanitised history of St Eunan’s College is that it is a typical metaphor for the ‘head in the sand’ malaise that has so infected this country for generations, and has resulted in the suppression of the real truth in many facets of our lives and the resultant pain and agony has been well documented. The experience of ‘dayboys’ was very different to that of ‘boarders’ and admittedly, the class of 1966-1971 was among the last to suffer from the excesses of the strap, but for many of us, fear was the chief motivator from dawn to dusk.

I recall, as a 12-year old in first year, giddy with anticipation the night before our Christmas holiday, getting my bits and pieces together in cubicle No. 12, when the voice boomed: “Any boy out of his bed will stay exactly where he is!” Fine, I thought, I’m not doing anything wrong, so I stayed on my feet. “Ah, Galligan, one honest boy,” was the response. I pleaded that I had not been up to any devilment but to no avail. I was told that “no exceptions can be made” and was asked to bend over in my pyjamas and received my first strapping.

I can still feel the cold surface of the stand on which the wash hand basin stood and which I held on to for dear life as I counted down to the finish. At that moment there was no God, no Santa Claus, no escape, and decidedly no further advantage in being a ‘good boy’. I had escaped the strap until this moment but that was no consolation – somewhere inside a 12-year old mind, the first stirrings of a lifelong hatred of injustice stirred. I can at least thank St. Eunan’s for that.

I didn’t sleep that night, but for the first time in months, I didn’t cry either. What do I remember overwhelmingly from September to December 1966? Abject loneliness. The sounds of the cubicles were very mixed indeed – from the bravado of those who always tempted fate by acting the eejit to the muted sobs of many who were overwhelmed by the experience of being away from home for the first time.

Those Christmas holidays were to end in tragedy with the death of my brother Tom in Carrigart on January 4, 1967. Within a week, I was back in college and for the most part, the next few months are a blur except for the fact that I spent quite a while off sick – diagnosed with sinus and other ailments. In retrospect, probably manifestations of grief – not helped by the following incident. When I returned to one particular class, I recall pleading with the teacher that I had been off and wasn’t up to speed with the answer to one particular question. It was déjà vu. “We can’t make exceptions, Galligan,” and the strap emerged again.

Fear. It permeated the walls, the classrooms and study hall. I can remember the legion of boys who attended one class and in anticipation of what was to come, padded their trousers with towels or jotters. If the padding was discovered, the punishment was doubly brutal. I can still hear the swish of the cassock as one notorious teacher – about whom a letter writer to the Irish Times alluded some years ago – went right back to the rear of the class so as he could make a run at the trembling boy bent over in front of the class. I witnessed the same individual – having forgotten his weapon – beating one pupil with his fists, and when the brave lad tried to defend himself, he was pummelled into a heap.

In March 1971, my first cousin, 12-year old Christy Byrne and two friends were killed coming from a Finn Harps match at the Frosses junction. With some trepidation, I approached one of the aforementioned and asked for permission to attend his funeral. “No!” he thundered. I asked him again. “You heard me the first time….No!” That was a few months before the Leaving and the day I finally said – “A plague on your big house!” When I should have been doing the economics exam a few months later, I was guzzling a bottle of Harp with a girlfriend in Georgie Dunleavy’s in Mountcharles. Freedom! That is my happiest memory of five years in St Eunan’s College! So thanks for the memories, centenarians, but I think it’s time to re-package the bullshit.

Sure, many of us weren’t angels but some of what I witnessed was unbridled savagery. I could take up two or three pages of the Democrat today with such stories but that wasn’t the motivation behind this article. If I and others have learned to forgive (we’ve not forgotten) then a proper acknowledgment of the many positive aspects of 100 years of my Alma Mater should have included a few ‘warts-and-all’ memories.