In the Spring of 2015, near the end of one of our trips to Ireland, we went rambling through the Duhallow area on the Cork/Kerry border, and we ran into - well, I'll let this extract from our day's travel notes tell the story....
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We loop down to the Blackwater River for a while, to take in the exquisite countryside that abounds here on the Cork-Kerry border, then on up to the Cullen area, to see if we can track down the old Hickey blacksmiths that we can see on the 1840 Ordnance map, in the nearby townlands of Knockduff and Lisnaboy.
Knockduff first, and there we come across the wreck of a building that looks blacksmithy, but it’s in the yard of haulage firm, and hard to get any sure angle on the front without blatantly trespassing. So, no matter, there’s another one said to be down at Lisnaboy, at the crossroads in the heart of the “old” Hickey area – “old” as in the original tribal area of the O’Hickey clan here in Munster, according to our research.
We drive past and yep, sure enough, there it is, looking badly derelict, with bits of farm equipment and junk all round and some sort of an annex attached, but clearly has the air of an old roadside smithy about it.
Jess opts to stay in the car so I walk back to get some footage for posterity, start to wander about the place, and suddenly realise there’s a bloke coming out of the open doorway, on his mobile, but watching me at the same time! I oh-so casually point the camera elsewhere and shut off and wait as he comes over. Right, don’t panic, the Irish are a friendly lot. Other than the ones that shoot you and stick you in the bog but that’s only in Ulster back in the 1970s. Mostly.
I open with a “G’day, I’m just doing a bit of – um - family history research on my wife’s Hickey forebears from the area and as I understand it this is an old blacksmithy of the Hickeys...” all in one breath and by now he has a little smile going. He’s about 45-50, grimy overalls, average height, but well built, and has hands like legs of meat. An Irish farmer that does his own repairs I reckon, as I take in the tractor-mounted mower in parts amid the general upheaval.
And we quickly hit it off, as we start talking in the same sort of engineering language, capped off with my comment that - “Geez, my dad woulda loved this!” – as I look through the door, and then it’s like we’ve been mates forever.
With obvious pride, he takes me inside and yes, certainly it’s okay to video (because I just have to get this classic on tape), and amazed to see the total chaos. But hey, it’s his everyday farmer workshop, crap everywhere, dirt floor, junk hanging from every wall. And to cap it off, from under a heap of junk he digs out the old original forge to show me. Bit of ancient masterpiece.
Then I realise that his “annex” is actually – I kid you not - the back end of a once big articulated furniture removal van, that’s been shoved up to the end of the building, a large space cut out of the wall, and sealed off. Sort of. He tells me he keeps all his spare parts in there, which suggests he also does work for others, emphasised by showing me his new hydraulic fittings kit, then the stripped gears of his mower (current project), and together we stand there and speculate at length on the vagaries of modern machinery.
He’s convinced that I must be at least part Irish, but no, none I’m afraid, would like to be but I’m descended from 100% old West Country English farmers, a “total Sassenach!” and that gets a good laugh together going. Then I admit that my Dad was an old-time engineer but was so organised, a real Englishman, and he would’ve had a nervous breakdown if he saw this lot! And it’s time for another big laugh together.
He asks me about Jess’s Hickeys, and I tell how her great-grandfather was a John Hickey born about 1840 and that his father was an Andrew Hickey from the Kiskeam area up the road we think, and he has a look on his face that sort of says “Yes, he would be one of ours...”, and tells me he’s Liam Hickey, and not only is this the old Hickey smithy, but his brother is John, and their father (a blacksmith) was Andrew, and his father (also a blacksmith) was Andrew as well!!
He goes on to say that yes, this is the oldest townland of “our” (I love that!) O’Hickeys, meaning here at Lisnaboy (pronounced Lisnabee) rather than Eaglaun, on the other side of the road! I love the sense of ageless “home” that we in Aus just don’t feel. But when I press a bit more, the old reality bites, that his ancestral memory goes back only to his grandfather, who he knew well (the old boy died in 1960 aged 90) but how he never asked about his ancestors – “...people just didn’t worry about all that...”, he explains.
But finally it’s time to go, and he gives me his phone number and invites us to come back for tea one night soon, and I thank him but say that we’re off home tomorrow, and we shake hands, and there’s that indefinable tug again. This country just gets into your bones.
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