WATCH: Weaving a great tale

Buckets, bags and barrels are full of St Brigid’s crosses at Patricia Cooney's Kildallan home and her hands hardly stop while we chat at her kitchen table.

Starting back in 1983 she has been making and selling crosses every year since, with the money raised going to charity. With 800 crosses already made by the time we sat down to chat, at that stage there were no plans to stop until February 1 had come and gone. Even then, there’s no guarantee that she’ll stop.

“When I get the chance to do them. I mean when you’ve your other work to do... I’ll put it this way, there’s not much work done in the house this week, hoovering or anything. But that’ll be alright. Nobody’s going to get up and do it for me anyway.

“Seán [her son] said to me ‘you’ll be at it til the end of March’. I’ll stick with it as long as people want them. It’ll be next weekend probably.”

Close to her heart

It was her family’s experience of sight loss that prompted Patricia to start fundraising for Sightsavers. Her son Micheál lost his sight in one eye after a run in with a dog as a child, prompting her to donate all monies raised to the charity.

“My son, when he was six or seven, he lost the sight in his eye. Thank God it didn’t hold him back. He’s a crane driver in London now.

“It was back in the 80s when I started. I used to make them for the neighbours and I said ‘God, if I made 100 wouldn’t it be great to raise £100!’ I started making them first for the neighbours way back when Sister Mary Finbar taught us in national school. I never let Brigid’s Day go by without making them.”

It’s grown well from the small start, with tens of thousands raised for charity since. Last year, even in the heights of the Covid lockdown with churches closed, she managed to raise €2,500, with all going to charity.

“There was one year I made five thousand in money. That was the highest. From that it’s been up and down, maybe two, three [thousand] and on from there.

“For the sake of a few pennies you can help to save a child’s sight. Or even adults. I’m sure there are adults too. In Africa, you really feel so sorry for them. They have no money.”

A helping hand

To someone simply sitting and listening to her talk about her life and her fundraising efforts of the last four decades, they might feel she has a tremendous sense of duty, or is simply willing to play her part in making the world a better place. While that is the case, Patricia says she simply wants to help.

“I feel guilty watching the television. When you see those poor wee divils that have nothing. And they’re depending on a few pence to save their sight.

“When you think of what’s going on. In Ukraine now, there are little babies and children who are dying of cold and starvation. It’d break your heart. It would really break your heart, it’s awful. I wish we had a magic touch so that everything would go and be alright.

“It’s not right. The world’s not right, it’s upside down. When you think of it, when half of the world is burning and half is drowning, there’s something wrong. There’s definitely something wrong. We’re so lucky in this country that we have everything.”

It can be an intense few weeks in the run up to St Brigid’s Day, with hours spent making the crosses and sending them to churches and shops in the area. She’s a one woman conveyor system taking rushes from a bucket, carefully but quickly making a cross, carefully catching any cut-offs in an old Lakeland Dairies fertiliser bag and placing the completed crosses in a sizeable pile on the kitchen table.

All in all, the process takes hardly a minute. The constant barrage of interview questions hardly stalls the process.

“I have been going non-stop since January 19; my birthday. You have to when you’ve no help. Saying that, I have a great team that sells them for me. There’s no point making them if I have no one to sell them. Really people are very good.”

While Patricia is instrumental in the fundraising effort, the local community - friends, relatives and neighbours - all play their part. It’s a good team. A well oiled machine that knows the tricks of the trade.

“People are great now. I have two organised for Saturday night in Ballyconnell, Carmel Finnegan, she works in the Credit Union, she said she’d get someone to stand with her because you really need two because there’s two doors. They get a lot at mass.

“When people see them getting blessed, they buy them quicker. It’s supposed to keep sickness and everything out of the house.”

Her daughters Caroline and Tina and the Flood family in Staghall also get a special mention from Patricia for their parts in the enterprise, either through walking the fields to gather rushes or by delivering the completed crosses.

One shape, all sizes

The operation has branched out too, with crosses of various sizes also available.

“I do the small ones now for the car. They’re very popular in Kildallan anyway. There’s a woman who rang me looking for five of the car ones and three big ones.”

For Patricia, it’s as much about keeping a dying tradition alive as it is about fundraising. Where in the past making St Brigid’s crosses was almost a national school right of passage, she says that’s something that now seems to have fallen by the wayside.

“A lot of young people used to learn it in school but they don’t bother now.

There’s too much going on. We had nothing to do so we were happy to be doing something. I think it was fifth and sixth class we learned from Sister Mary Finbar in the Convent School in Belturbet.

“I’d love to see someone taking over from me. It would be nice to see someone take over. I don’t suppose they’d go to the bother of making 800 or selling them for Sightsavers but, if they did it for some charity, it would be great.”

Recognition

Patricia’s work and mammoth efforts over the decades hasn’t gone unnoticed, with regular praise and thanks from Sightsavers and a reception with President Michael D Higgins in Áras an Úachtaráin a number of years ago.

“That was good. Caroline came up with me and we had a good aul day. You know when they told me I said ‘what would I be doing going up there for you know?’ and then someone said to me after ‘you know it’ll be good for your sales’ and I had never thought of that,” she laughs.