Ellen’s Memories: ‘God rest you, Fr McGee, I will never forget you’

Ellen Horgan was born in Derry, in the year 1923 and by the age of four she had moved to live with her paternal grandparents at Ivy Cottage, Kilconny, Belturbet. Grandfather Jerry Horgan’s homestead was in the Staghall area of Kilconny and Ellen’s daughter Regina added that, ‘apart from a short stay at a house in the Pound Hill’ her mother had ‘lived at Ivy Cottage till she was twenty-eight.’

Ellen loved Belturbet. She enjoyed the fact that they lived near the town and the shops with their wares, and then at the other side of the house the family could revel in what she called, ‘the pleasure of country life.’ The gentle green fields offered them the best of both worlds. But a trace of sadness can be detected when she pointed out that her grandparents died while she was still young. Going up the garden to tend to Grandad Jerry’s bees, at five years of age, she was accompanied by him placing a hat with a veil on her head. The buzzing bees and the honey-laden hives fascinated the child.

While memories of her grandmother are of the times, she was brought on visits to the neighbours. People like Mrs Neil who had a daughter called Mrs Netherfield whose home, they say, was once a protestant schoolhouse. Ellen pointed to a ‘niche between the top windows’ where the school clock had perched until the new owners had it removed and cemented over in the 1950s.

Fr McGee

Every week eggs had to be collected at the Staghall Parochial House where Fr McGee kept hens. Ellen’s older sister Mary originally had the job of going to the priest’s house to collect and pay for them until the time she got work in Reilly’s corner shop. A new candidate was needed to call up to the priest’s and Ellen as the second eldest, got the job. All she knew was that the priest was an invalid and until then she had never been to the house, let alone set eyes on him. Said Ellen, ‘I expected to be greeted by his housekeeper, Miss Mary Smith, otherwise known by the nickname, Mary the priest’s.’ To the locals, Mary was ‘reputed’ to come across as ‘bossy’, but Ellen who got to know her well, remembered that she was much more warm-natured. Every Christmas, Mary brought the Horgans a seasonal box of chocolates.

When the day came for young Miss Ellen to go up to the Parochial House, it turned out that the housekeeper was not there. Ellen knocked and went into the house. There seated by the ‘warm kitchen range’ was a ‘white haired old man’, comfortably placed in a well-worn armchair. Ellen’s description of him wearing a ‘beretta’ on his head and draped in a ‘long black cloak’, clung around his shoulders, covering a ‘white collarless shirt’, painted an otherworldly scene. The elderly priest beckoned her forth, ‘come in child, here are the eggs’ and he pointed to the crock on the table. Seeming to sound reassuring, he asked, ‘how is your father? Has he plenty of hay?’ but before she could answer, he became agitated and cried out in a very unsettled ‘high voice’: ‘Child, I am dying. Run to town and get Fr Dolan!’ The frightened child looked on. ‘For the love of Jesus Christ!’ he begged, as he removed the beretta from his head, and placing it beside him, again called out, ‘Do this I am dying!’

Ellen was rooted to the spot, petrified. She explained, ‘I was only 10 years old’ at the time. Thankfully, the housekeeper Miss Smith returned and on entering the room her presence reassured the priest and he became calm once more. Having counted the eggs and placed them carefully in the wicker basket, Ellen paid and quickly departed. When she got home, she told her mother all that happened. Mrs Horgan reassured her daughter: ‘Fr McGee is a saint, but his nerves are bad.’

Ellen’s visits to Fr McGee became weekly and when she would pay for the eggs, Fr McGee would instruct Miss Smith to give the child something extra to take home. This often could be a large bag of pears, and he would tell Miss Smith to ‘give the child some sugar lumps.’

‘We never had sugar lumps,’ said Ellen, ‘so they were almost like sweets.’ When Fr McGee died, the young girl felt she had indeed lost a dear friend and confessed to having shed a few tears. Sometime afterwards, she discovered what had affected the priests peace of mind.

She wrote: ‘Later, I learned that, as a young priest, he had been a very athletic, fine horseman. His breakdown was caused during the Troubles (in the early 1920s) when he saw a teacher of Irish shot as he tried with his out-stretched arms to protect him.’ Ellen concluded, ‘God rest you, Fr McGee, I will never forget you.’ Recently, I asked Regina Fatorrini some further questions about her mother (Ellen) and she told me: ‘Ellen worked from the age of fourteen at the Irish Shoe Supplies factory in Belturbet (first located on Barrack Hill, then later on the Cavan Road) and she met my father, Michael Joseph Igoe (born 1921 in Castlerea, Roscommon) when he came to Belturbet. At one time he worked in Barnum’s Mill there.

‘They were married at Staghall Church, Belturbet in 1951, honeymooned in Dublin, then emigrated to England, living in Coventry where they had three children, Geraldine (now living in Bedworth, near Coventry), myself, Regina (living in New Brighton, Wirral) and Michael (who lives in Denver, Colorado).’ And, reflecting on her parents, Regina adds that ‘in 1989 my parents bought a house near mine in Wirral’ and added, ‘Ellen Horgan Igoe died in 1998 at the age of 75 and Michael in 2009 at the age of 88.’

Finally, thank you again, to Regina and her family for allowing their mother’s treasured memories to be featured in Times Past.

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