Walking the Road to Murlog School
At the age of four after a breakfast of porridge and with my lunch – two thick slices of my mother’s homemade scone bread (wrapped in the Evening Press newspaper) my father had read the night before in my schoolbag I was packed off, rain, hail or snow, to walk the mile with my brothers and sisters from our home in Ballindrait to St Patrick’s National School Murlog.
We’d start out early enough with our mother’s instructions not to ‘dander’ along the road and not to be late following us out the gate. Like good obedient children, we’d walk at a fair pace past Maggie Anne Gallagher’s whitewashed thatched cottage (our father’s relative) holding our brothers and sisters hands until we were past Throne’s lane at the turn in the road and out of sight of our house and our mother.
Thrones were local farmers; two brothers and a sister who lived in a big house with an avenue and a lane leading up to it. My sister Gertie, billy can in hand, went there in the early evening to get fresh milk for Ginny Greg and some of the other villagers.
Miss Throne, a kind, gentle soul was very generous to the children of the village. You never left her back door without a freshly buttered scone.
We knew every turn in the lane with its overhanging birch trees bordered the green fields that became our playground as soon as school was over.
The avenue was of far greater interest to us children. Flanked by heavy hedges and a canopy of bushes, its entrance was guarded by a sturdy ornamental iron gate. A festoon of shiny green and gold laurel bushes led up from the gate to the front door of the two-storey, ivy covered farm house. To us it was forbidden and mysterious – a place to explore if only we could get the chance.
We always stopped and gawked through the little gate before we quickened our step and furtively scuttled past my best friend Anne Gallagher’s house at Ballabreen.
Her mother and our mother were good friends. If Mrs G spotted us she’d note the time and we’d be in trouble.
Our next place to stop was the ‘Hurley Spout’ a gurgling stream of water that rushed from Paddy Mc Crory’s upper fields and cascaded into the drain at the side of the road as if it was in a hurry to go somewhere. Oblivious to the water splashing over our clean socks, straddling a foot on either side of the spluttering pipe, we’d cup our hands and drink the ice cold water.
Then, sensing we had overstayed our time, my sister Gertie would grab my hand and we’d race along the road until we reached Mc Dougal’s farm and Devine’s’ cottage.
Like blood hounds we’d stand for a moment and sniff the air hoping we’d catch the aroma of Mrs Devine’s baking her bread on the round black bellied pot that hung from a crook above the open hearth. Satisfied it was baking day we’d start off for school again knowing we would call on the way home for a cut off the still warm crusty bread.
Some morning by the time we reached the top of small hill before Reverend Bewglass’s Manse, just before the school, we would hear the insistent clanging of a heavy iron bell and know that school was about to start and we were going to be late!
Gemma C Hill ©
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