A voice for the rural way of life

Cavanman's Diary

In his poem ‘The Ballad of the White Horse’, GK Chesterton wrote the immortal and often misquoted lines: “The great Gaels of Ireland are the men that God made mad, For all their wars are merry, and all their songs are sad.”

Peter Brady recounted those words at the graveside of Charlie Gallagher, 34 years ago this month. Peter added the line “and all their heroes are dead”, which may have been a misquote or, knowing the man, could have come from another source entirely.

Now, Peter’s sad song is sung too as he has gone to his eternal reward. From 2010 to 2015, he wrote a column on these pages called A Rural View. A tremendous enthusiast for the Irish language, he wrote under the by-line Peadar Ó Brádaigh.

I didn’t know Peter very well but when I was researching a book on the 1947 All-Ireland final 10 years ago, he was the very first person I spoke to. If you were looking, as I was, for a dash of colour and anecdotes to illustrate the character of those who played in that era, Peter was the man to talk to. He was encyclopaedic in his recall and, as a raconteur, he was gifted.

I met him on a Friday morning in an empty pub in Kilnaleck and spent two enthralling hours in his company as he recounted tales and talked me through the personalities involved. What struck me was his ability to speak knowledgeably on so many subjects, yet without feeling the need to show it off.

For example, when the name of Eunan Tiernan from Templeport, a member of that Cavan panel, came up, he casually gave me a rundown of the origins of his surname and its prevalence in west Cavan and Leitrim, referencing the old Irish. He had that very rare facility for drawing on this sort of deep-seated learning at will. His mind was a treasure chest of information, which he opened to chronicle life in a certain part of a certain place at a certain time.

At that point, he was writing A Rural View, a brilliant weekly feature, which he would deliver hand-written to our offices. The opening lines of the first column he penned summed up his style.

“A primary school teacher, trying to instil the basics of arithmetic into a junior class, put the following question to Murphy at the back of the room...” he began.

“‘Tell me, Murphy,’ he said, “‘if there were 40 sheep in a field and two got out, how many would be left?

“‘None, sir,’ replied Murphy.

“‘I’m afraid, Murphy,’ said the teacher, ‘you don’t know much about arithmetic.’

“‘Aye and you don’t know much about sheep, sir,’ came the response.

“This anecdote came to mind as I glanced at, viewed and listened to our media as they got into their stride in their approach to the visit of Pope Benedict to Britain.”

Like a good teacher, in a few sentences, he grabbed your attention with a snappy story before relating it to a contemporary subject and segueing seamlessly. It was stylish writing.

Above all, I viewed him as a great storyteller. I once heard him tell one at a function in the Copper Kettle in Kilnaleck about a nervous and slightly gormless young man at an entrance interview for the Gardaí. Age, height, hair colour and so on were ticked off before the question, which scuppered his nascent policing career.

“Sex?”

“Eh…” the man stammered, “twice, in Granard.”

It brought the house down that night and his column was full of such gems, things he had picked up in company, at meetings – he was chairman of the county GAA board, heavily involved in fisheries, drama, local radio and music among many other pursuits – and in bars.

He was very friendly with the late Mick Higgins and once accompanied him to a funeral of a footballer in Kerry, writing later of the esteem in which the Kerrymen held Higgins.

He once relayed a story in his column of a man called Neddie Donohoe. In 1918, he was walking to Finea and came to a T junction known, then and now, as Brackley Cross.

By coincidence, a horse and trap coming from Mullahoran locked wheels with a pony and spring-van coming from Ballymachugh. An argument ensued over who was at fault and the case ended up at the Petty Sessions court in Finea that September.

The solicitor in charge was a Louis Smith from Cavan and Neddie was summoned as an independent witness. Being friendly with both parties, however, he had no interest in being there and his answers were “evasive in the extreme”.

“He was lighting his pipe, he was watching a trout rising in the nearby lake, there was a dog barking,” were among the excuses he gave.

“Finally, Mr Smith, in exasperation, banged the table and shouted ‘Mr Donohoe, do you not agree that if the man coming from Ballymachugh had to stop, there would be no accident?’

“‘But,’ replied Neddie, ‘sure if everybody had to stop there would be nobody in Finea!’”

Peter’s copy was full of such colour but he generally had a point to make. His column covered a world of varying topics, from the history of group water schemes to the “frenzy of destruction”, which led to the dismantling of train lines in our region.

As far back as 2014, he highlighted the pay of RTÉ “talent”, which “would keep a frugal Cavan family in clover for quite a long stretch”. Among the examples he gave were Ryan Tubridy’s €495,000 salary, which had been cut at the time from €723,000. Probably.

His was, in many ways, the voice of the ordinary person in a Border county, which he felt was not heard often or loudly enough in the national media.

He railed against what he saw as the marginalisation and faint disdain for those in rural areas and regularly took on what he felt were prevailing narratives on national radio and in the print media – and was intelligent and articulate enough to do so authoritatively, sometimes witheringly, but always with charm.

When he began to write the column, the country was in the teeth of the recession.

“In rural pubs, community centres, cattle marts, GAA games and other places of congregation for country folk, voices of concern about the perceived consequences over the spending spree were raised from about 2006,” he wrote.

“It is difficult to find anything from that time in the national media that would cause alarm.”

He fiercely defended the Church; not so much the institution, which had been rocked by scandal, but the way of life. In a McGahernesque critique, he opined that “the people are the Church”.

His opinions sometimes drew the ire of readers, who made their feelings known.

“Shame on you Peadar Ó Bradaigh, hurler on the ditch and revisionist” ended one letter. I’m not sure how he took that sort of criticism but I’d imagine it probably amused him; certainly, I couldn’t imagine it knocking him off his stride.

His native townland was Lavagh, meaning ‘the place of the elms’. He was a product of his upbringing. He described the house he grew up in, close to Lough Sheelin, as a Céilí house and his world view was formed as a child listening to the callers each night debate everything from international relations to local rows - whether Cavan would win the Ulster final, for example.

The “gentlemen around Brady’s fire in the parish of Ballymachugh were all individuals”, he wrote, “meaning they didn’t imitate priest, minister, big farmer, doctor or dentist – their personalities were sacrosanct.”

That was a path he chose, too; a singular man who made an extraordinary impact.

May he rest in peace.