If You Eer Make Me Walk Up the Laneway Again Letterkenny

Two white butterflies fluttered their way down the old lane in front of me, equally if to guide me down the road to the past.

It was merely then that I knew I was in the correct place, in both location and time.

Walking along this old laneway, and seeing houses dotted along the skyline reminds me that the years have passed, just the only sound here today is that of a fast passing bumblebee, of birds singing in the rushes or forth the ditch.

The sun is called-for my arms and I could be easily 7 or 8 years former once again on a babyhood journey, the simply affair I'm missing is the old buttermilk can!

This was the final part of the journeying that I walk through yesterday evening to retrace a journey that I did as a child on summer days like these.

Earlier this calendar week I stood at a wooden pole sunk diagonally across the path on the Glencar side where the old footbridge once stood. It also marks the very edge of the town on the other side of the stream where time has stood still. Nothing has inverse here in years.

Through the hedge somewhere backside me, I tin hear the rattle of a Husqvarna cutting the grass on someones' front lawn in the rows of new houses. Merely the view of the flat field on the other side of the stream holds the key to the by. Summertime days oasis't changed here, the sound of the stream is withal the same. There is an repeat in hither when all the trees become all their leaves at this time of year, Birch, Hazel Hawthorn to name a few, all in affluence downwardly here nigh the riverbank.

The erstwhile Mass Rock all the same in the place at Rodger's Burn. Photograph Brian McDaid

Missing Mass

No school and no mass, imagine that? A wish come up true for many a immature lad like me growing upwards years ago. The downside of that was missing out on a "Holy Day Breakfast" equally we chosen it.

I wasn't the greatest fan of going to mass at the best of times growing up. On holy days off school, our Auntie B would accept breakfast ready for us if nosotros called downwardly to her business firm after we went to mass, about days nosotros only went downwardly for the breakfast and winged the mass.

Four of usa got our story right at the top of the Back Road earlier we faced the music, BAD thought, bad, bad idea! You could easily put a 'L' on to the end of my Auntie B'due south name equally in Barrister of Law on the days that we try to sell this alpine tail.

Auntie B would wait at her kitchen door for us to announced downwards the back road and would know by the sheepish look that outweighed the wait of hunger for the breakfast. She knew long earlier we lifted the latch of the dorsum gate that we never darken the door of St. Eunan'due south Cathedral. Merely she would say her bit and that would exist that.

A young Brian heading for buttermilk as a child from Glencar to Kirkstown.

Gamble

From missing mass to adventures on my summertime holidays as a child, my father sent me for buttermilk over to Kirkstown from Glencar over the fields.

It'southward funny when we were growing up we weren't allowed down to Rodgers Burn or to be more precise we weren't allowed downwardly to "The Carry'. Letterkenny's first swimming pool, too many stories came back to Wolfe Tone Place from the older generation of wanes in Glencar that went downwards to The Carry.

At present here'south me crossing Rodgers Burn on official duty going for buttermilk and it was okay. Me with an old sweetie gallon tin that my father located somewhere in his travels. Over the gate, the belatedly Leo Cullen's house took you down forth the dorsum gardens into a big field, a field that e'er had a crop of some sort in information technology, from spuds to barley to just grass for hay, there the country only dropped into the valley until you lot arrived at Rodgers Burn down.

In that location is something very special about this field you lot ended up on the Kirkstown when you crossed the Burn, and so near to the boondocks and nevertheless then far abroad. It was a historic field with a mass rock where mass was celebrated in secret in penal times You mind does a lot of thinking in places similar that.

On the left-paw side of the east-facing change, a path is cut into the banking which takes y'all upwards to a higher level to a field on the Kirkstown side of the burn.

A butterfly leading the way up the lane yesterday evening welcoming me on a journey down memory lane. Photo Brian McDaid.

I often wondered if it was on this side of the river that the kickoff of the sentry were on await-out which could receive a indicate from the highest office at the top of College Farm Road downwardly to what is locally known as Scout Hill beside the girls school to go along a lookout for the soldiers that would come out from Letterkenny to the terminate the illegal celebration of the Catholic Mass at that time.

Moving on the Long Lane would take you out onto the Kirkstown and so caput upwardly the hill until yous find the left turn onto Mullen's Lane. Parts of the one-time wooden churn would be all washed down and sitting on the window sill drying and Lizzie would be there waiting for your arrival, she would take my can and remove the chapeau and stick her nose in to make sure it was washed out well before she would fill it with a gallon of buttermilk.

Transaction

50p was the arranged price for buttermilk but Lizzie would always look at the money and say, "you have far besides much at that place son" and so she would requite me alter and would always say at that place y'all are, and there something for yourself to go something when you lot get back into the town.

Nosotros were ever told that if someone gave you money to turn down it once by saying 'Ah no thanks' then pause and so say 'Cheers' and to never look at the amount they gave yous in their presence.

On the fashion home out the laneway and out of sight on the farmhouse yous would accept a await to encounter how much modify you got. It was always the same amount dorsum, 25p change and it was always ii 10p coins and a 5p coin in new money which was five shillings in old money.
And so a Gallon of buttermilk from Mullens cost 25p, plus a lot of goodwill.

The walk home was over the old lane and a terminate in the mass rock was always enjoyable even though the milk seemed to get heavier the longer the journey took, going through the chapel field I was happy to take a wee break from the journey and curiosity of what information technology would have wait similar with loads of people in for mass.

A view into the Mass Stone Field with Rodgers fire in foreground. Photo Brian McDaid

People who were told they couldn't go to mass and not like the states who were told to become to mass and wouldn't! After the mass rock a care for on honor solar day was to strength open the lid with one of the coins and enjoying a wee drink of fresh buttermilk in the middle of the field not forgetting to wipe away the tell-tale white moustache after.

The milk had to be home in time for my father's arrival from work and the old cream Stanley range fired up to make scone breadstuff. That erstwhile buttermilk tasted a lot different to the buttermilk of today and whatsoever that was left over from baking was always lovely with poundies and butter.

In this lockdown fourth dimension, I retraced my journey to Kirkstown that I made a half a century ago. The one-time homestead is even so in that location every bit it was in my babyhood fifty-fifty the old trees at the bottom of the lane that I turn over to head for Rodgers Fire are still blowing in the wind, trees as a kid that gave me a feeling that I had travelled this road earlier, of saying one of the few prayers that I know at the mass rock and thinking nigh the words on the style home.

Requite united states of america this mean solar day
Our daily bread
And forgive those
Who trespass confronting us.

The old laneway hasn't changed merely the skyline of Glencar now looks different in the distance. Photograph Brian McDaid.

Lizzie never said much all them years agone, but I always had that Deja Vu feeling walking those lanes. In after years I only put two and two together that Lizzie's mother Sissie and my granny Bridget were sisters, and my journey out to the land from a completely different direction from Glencar had the same destination of those generations of my family earlier me had made, up to Mullen's farm to visit and to get eggs milk and butter.

Lizzy had two brothers, Charlie and Paddy, who worked with horses ploughing the state before the arrival of motorised tractors.

Lizzy lived in the Church Lane and went out to the family farm to carry on the tradition of making butter. Even as a child I thought that seeing butter being made and carting buttermilk home across fields would shortly come to the end of an era.

Lizzie Mullen with my aunt B, at the dorsum with Neil Mullen, front are iii sister, Annie Murray, Sissie Mullen and Bridget Coyle (My Granny) pictured at the store at the foot of the Back Rd.

Looking back you could look at the fourth dimension as being idyllic merely it was far from that.

Things were hard and times were unlike as my childhood photo painfully reminds me merely kind and holy people like Lizzie and Auntie B but made things that bit better.

Happy motoring folks

DD Motoring: A road less travelled… was last modified: May 7th, 2020 by Brian McDaid

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Source: https://www.donegaldaily.com/2020/05/07/dd-motoring-a-road-less-travelled/

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