Remembering rural life in north Kerry in the 1930s

A north Kerry landscape (near Tralee). Photo Pete Millington

 

Thank you to Michael Keane who has contacted us with some wonderful short descriptive articles written by his father and his aunt in the 1930s. Michael wrote:

 

“I am a Coventry-born man of Irish heritage and have an interest in some of the things you have been writing about. I would like to send you over a couple of things written by my dad and aunt, from the 1930s, covering some aspects of rural life in north Kerry. They came to light a little while ago in old school books and they may be something your readership might enjoy.”

 

In the last edition we published a short cinema review which Michael’s father, also named Michael Keane, wrote in one of his school books in the late 1930s. The other two articles which Michael sent are descriptions of rural life in county Kerry.

 

One of the articles, titled A Farmer’s Life, begins:

 

“As Ireland is altogether an agricultural country, the farmer is the principal man in the country. All the land of the nation is very fertile having a great depth of earth based with limestone rock. One of the best crops raised are cattle and this is mainly due to the limestone as it gives great bone to the animals. Irish horses are world famous as most of the horses for export are usually grazing in the ‘golden vale’.

 

During the past four or five years wheat is grown in a very large scale and this is also very, very profitable.

 

A farmer’s life is very healthy as he has always the pure air of the country, which the city man can never enjoy. In the morning he is out very early, his one work summer and winter is to milk the cows and he has to keep the houses clean.

 

Spring is the hardest season of the year for the farmer, he has to plough the land and harrow it and so have it ready to plant the potato crop, the wheat and corn crops.”

 

The second article, Summer (and we don’t know which was authored by the brother or the sister), has very similar themes. Here the author describes the end of summertime in north Kerry:

 

“At this time also the cornfields are a rich green colour just before beginning to ear.  All the young animals are out in the fields grazing during the summer months and running about enjoying themselves under the sun. 

 

Farmers are very busy during this time as the crops, which were sown in spring, must be harvested now. They also cut the turf and save it and when it is dry, draw it home. In July they cut the hay in the meadows until they have the last cut and saved. Then they draw it home and store it in the barn.

 

There is new time from April to October so as to give a chance to those working in shops, in the towns and cities of going to the watering places in the evenings.  Towards the end of summer most people enjoy themselves at the seaside swimming or boating. Others occupy their time by playing games such as hurling, footballing, golfing, but every person has his own pastime.”

 

Whilst both of these articles, written by young Irish people in the late 30s, emphasise the strong agricultural work ethic of the nation’s farmers, there is also a sense of pride and an optimistic celebration of Ireland’s pastoral values with an observation in the final paragraph about the blossoming of new leisure pastimes for working class people across the country.

 

Written two decades after Ireland’s independence in 1922, I wonder if the commentary of Ireland’s newest generation of young people reflected the wider idyllic being promoted by Taoiseach, Eamon de Valera, during the 30s and 40s? In a radio address in 1943, on the 50th anniversary of the foundation of the Gaelic League, de Valera reminded the Irish nation:

 

“The ideal Ireland that we would have, the Ireland that we dreamed of, would be the home of a people who valued material wealth only as a basis for right living, of a people who, satisfied with frugal comfort, devoted their leisure to the things of the spirit – a land whose countryside would be bright with cosy homesteads, whose fields and villages would be joyous with the sounds of industry, with the romping of sturdy children, the contest of athletic youths and the laughter of happy maidens, whose firesides would be forums for the wisdom of serene old age. The home, in short, of a people living the life that God desires that men should live.”  

 

Thank you once again to Michael Keane for sharing the three articles.