Archive News
Odd cigarette and G&T may be secret to Irene’s longevity
Date Published: {J}
By Denise McNamara
Irene Lynch, one of the daughters of the original Bodkin tribe of Galway, recently celebrated the milestone of reaching a centenary with her family in their Nuns Island home.
The secret to her longevity remains a mystery, as she has defied all the medical advice by enjoying a smoke and the very odd G&T.
She loves nothing more than to be wheeled out by staff in the long-term residential unit at Merlin Park Hospital for a puff in the garden.
Her only niece Mary O’Connor recalled how it had been foreseen that she was likely to follow in the footsteps of her brother, Michael Bodkin, who had died in his early 20s.
He was James Joyce’s Nora Barnacle’s first boyfriend and was the Michael Furey featured in Joyce’s novel, The Dead. In the book Michael Furey died after serenading his lover in the cold.
“Her grandmother used to say she wouldn’t make old bones. It was felt she was very fragile and not able for hard life. But she was out swimming in the sea in Salthill every day during the summer until well into her 80s,” she stated.
Irene was born in 1911 to Mary Elizabeth Francis and Leo Bodkin. She had one sister Violet.
After her parents moved to America, she was sent to live with her grandmother in Nuns Island and was educated in the Presentation primary school before becoming a boarder in Taylors Hill. She studied English in UCG and became an English teacher in secondary schools.
She married another teacher, Val Lynch, a native of Tuam and the couple spent most of their married lives working in schools in Belfast. They had one son, Patrick Lynch, who worked as a solicitor in Galway City before his retirement.
The family moved back to Galway in the 70s and lived in a house in the Fairlands in Newcastle. Her husband died around 30 years ago.
Mary, who now lives in the Nuns Island home with her own family, routinely brings Irene out from Merlin Park to spend the day with them. She has lived in Unit 5 for the last five years.
“They had a cake for her and would have had a big party for her there but she didn’t want it – they’re very good to her there,” mused Mary.
“She loves being in the garden. She absolutely loves animals and children. She’s an avid reader, she’d have two or three books on the go all the time. She liked Penny Apples by Bill Cullen and all the Maeve Binchys.
“Her mind is great, she’s in a wheelchair, she can’t hear too well but she can see everything. She’ll tell me my hair isn’t done properly.”
Her family gathered to celebrate her 100th birthday on April 27. One of the guests was the pup, Bear, who had travelled all the way from Dublin to mark the occasion.
People’s living conditions less than 100 years ago were frightening. We have come a long way. We talk about water charges today, but back then the local District Councils were erecting pumps for local communities and the lovely town of Mountbellew, according to Council minutes, had open sewers,” says Galway County Council archivist Patria McWalter.
Patria believes we “need to take pride in our history, and we should take the same pride in our historical records as we do in our built heritage”. When you see the wealth of material in her care, this belief makes sense.
She is in charge of caring for the rich collection of administrative records owned by Galway County Council and says “these records are as much part of our history as the Rock of Cashel is. They document our lives and our ancestors’ lives. And nobody can plan for the future unless you learn from the past, what worked and what didn’t”.
Archivists and librarians are often unfairly regarded as being dry, academic types, but that’s certainly not true of Patria. Her enthusiasm is infectious as she turns the pages of several minute books from Galway’s Rural District Councils, all of them at least 100 years old.
Part of her role involved cataloguing all the records of the Councils – Ballinasloe, Clifden, Galway, Gort, Loughrea, Mountbellew, Portumna and Tuam. These records mostly consisted of minutes of various meetings.
When she was cataloguing them she realised their worth to local historians and researchers, so she decided to compile a guide to their content. The result is For the Record: The Archives of Galway’s Rural District Councils, which will be a valuable asset to anybody with an interest in history.
Many representatives on these Councils were local personalities and several were arrested during the political upheaval of the era, she explains.
And, ushering in a new era in history, women were allowed to sit on these Rural District Councils – at the time they were not allowed to sit on County Councils.
All of this information is included in Patria’s introductory essay to the attractively produced A4 size guide, which gives a glimpse into how these Rural Councils operated and the way political thinking changed in Ireland during a short 26-year period. In the early 1900s, these Councils supported Home Rule, but by 1920, they were calling for full independence and refusing to recognise the British administration.
“I love the tone,” says Patria of the minutes from meetings. “The language was very emotive.”
That was certainly true of the Gort Rural District Council. At a meeting in 1907, following riots in Dublin at the premiere of JM Synge’s play, The Playboy of the Western World the councillors’ response was vehement. They recorded their decision to “protest most emphatically against the libellous comedy, The Playboy of the Western World, that was belched forth during the past week in the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, under the fostering care of Lady Gregory and Mr Yeats. We congratulate the good people of Dublin in howling down the gross buffoonery and immoral suggestions that are scattered throughout this scandalous performance.
For more from the archives see this week’s Tribunes here
Date Published: 23-Jan-2013
SLIGO 0-9
GALWAY 1-4
FRANK FARRAGHER IN ENNISCRONE
GALWAY’S first serious examination of the 2013 season rather disturbingly ended with a rating well below the 40% pass mark at the idyllic, if rather Siberian, seaside setting of Enniscrone on Sunday last.
The defeat cost Galway a place in the FBD League Final against Leitrim and also put a fair dent on their confidence shield for the bigger tests that lie ahead in February.
There was no fluke element in this success by an understrength Sligo side and by the time Leitrim referee, Frank Flynn, sounded the final whistle, there wasn’t a perished soul in the crowd of about 500 who could question the justice of the outcome.
It is only pre-season and last Sunday’s blast of dry polar winds did remind everyone that this is far from summer football, but make no mistake about it, the match did lay down some very worrying markers for Galway following a couple of victories over below par third level college teams.
Galway did start the game quite positively, leading by four points at the end of a first quarter when they missed as much more, but when Sligo stepped up the tempo of the game in the 10 minutes before half-time, the maroon resistance crumbled with frightening rapidity.
Some of the statistics of the match make for grim perusal. Over the course of the hour, Galway only scored two points from play and they went through a 52 minute period of the match, without raising a white flag – admittedly a late rally did bring them close to a draw but that would have been very rough justice on Sligo.
Sligo were backable at 9/4 coming into this match, the odds being stretched with the ‘missing list’ on Kevin Walsh’s team sheet – Adrian Marren, Stephen Coen, Tony Taylor, Ross Donovan, David Kelly, David Maye, Johnny Davey and Eamon O’Hara, were all marked absent for a variety of reasons.
Walsh has his Sligo side well schooled in the high intensity, close quarters type of football, and the harder Galway tried to go through the short game channels, the more the home side bottled them up.
Galway badly needed to find some variety in their attacking strategy and maybe there is a lot to be said for the traditional Meath style of giving long, quick ball to a full forward line with a big target man on the edge of the square – given Paul Conroy’s prowess close to goal last season, maybe it is time to ‘settle’ on a few basics.
Defensively, Galway were reasonably solid with Gary Sice at centre back probably their best player – he was one of the few men in maroon to deliver decent long ball deep into the attacking zone – while Finian Hanley, Conor Costello and Gary O’Donnell also kept things tight.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Date Published: 23-Jan-2013
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