"You could almost see the cling-film of Catholic energy": Growing up in 1960s Ireland
A Women of Ireland Project interview participant's account of what Ireland felt like as a Protestant growing up in the 1960s
We often hear how powerful the Catholic Church was in Ireland’s past, how Ireland was more a theocracy than a democracy. Most of the time, the voices we have to describe those times are those who have lived through them as practicing Catholics. We rarely hear the voices of those from the other side of the divide; what was Catholic Ireland like if you were Protestant?
The following is the account of one of the Women of Ireland Project participants. It is a unique window into life for a Protestant child in 1960s Ireland. The themes that are dealt with are challenging but compelling and beautifully told for how June was able to put herself back into the perspective of her child-self; her words come through a child’s eyes and a child’s emotions.
Understanding June’s story is not so much about reading the words but seeing them for the visceral account they represent of what life was like in an Irish Republic where the dominance and power of the Catholic church was palpably omnipresent. It’s about feeling how she, as a child, felt and experienced the long arm of Catholicism and how the clear religious segregation at the time shaped how people viewed one another. June was raised into and socialised by a world where Protestants and Catholics did not mix, education was centred on religious belief, the religious teaching of your church determined how you lived and the behaviours expected of you, and religion both determined the legitimacy of your ‘Irishness’ and what symbols of Irish cultural identity you were allowed to engage with.
Her story reveals a time of societal tension, where Protestant and Catholic communities kept to themselves and where much was left unsaid for fear that things may just ‘blow-up’. A time when parents gave one-word-answers and explained little, seeking to protect a child from the ‘dangerous knowledge’ their querying may bring. A time when becoming adept at tuning into the feeling or the energy of a situation was essential to know what to do and how to behave in a way that didn’t get you into trouble. Everyday life required ‘reading in-between the lines.’
For a child as highly sensitive as June was, and so adept at picking up on energy and feeling, 1960s Ireland was overwhelming. The omnipresence of Catholic symbolism in every corner of society felt stifling. She also picked up on the stress her parents were under and desperately wanted to make them feel better, trying to energetically take their sadness and worry from them. When it all got too much, she cried and cried, struggling to cope with all her emotions. Her Mummy was a strong presence, providing a sense of safety and security to her childhood, but she was not physically affectionate. She didn’t hug or cuddle. She wasn’t emotionally available to help a child regulate her feelings. So, June gave her tears and her emotions to the land. From a young age, she felt a strong connection to the land – the land of Ireland. She went to it for healing and support. It is this connection, to the very earth itself, that she sees as the truth of her Irishness, it overrules any of the religious teaching and shaping of her childhood.
“Ireland, for me, would have been very religious”.
“I was born into, I would have to say, just a simple religious [Methodist] house, but with strict rules”.
“The expectation in the home [was] that we were expected to know the rule of the church, what we picked up from going to church absolutely every Sunday. It was essential that we got to church at midday on Sunday…. Our standard of life was, as we were taught in church, so hence, no cursing, and good behaviour was expected in accordance with the rules of the Bible and what the minister had taught us and what we learned from one another; respectfully, and with consideration for others, for elders of the church, respectfully, and courteously approached. And yet, while it was strict it was still [a] happy kind of place”.
[Ireland at the time] “was very, it was all very Catholic”.
“Even going down to the village [down the road from where I grew up], huh boy, that to me was really very very Catholic, you could almost see the cling-film of Catholic energy that had taken over the place down there. There was definitely no, no Protestant feel down there”.
“First of all, you’d come across this monument, where there’s a statue, a statue in a glass cage, and her hand up blessing everybody. And then… there was another statue, and I think that was of St. Joseph. Now, to my mind [as a small child] I’d look at them and I would feel ‘Why do they put them there?’…... ‘the rest of us don’t want to look at those yokes’. [It was difficult for me to understand] “because my church taught us never to have, what’s the word for it; ‘no other gods but me’, which implied statues…. figurines and stuff like that. So, I had an awful job trying to cope with those two statues going down into [the] village”.
[The omnipresent energy of the Catholic Church] “was wherever I turned really. You'd go into [our local town – the big town], and [there was] a chapel that overpowered the whole town. And they had a bell on their church… and they took up the space in the air…. That's their image, their sound in the air…. You'd go into a hospital and there were crucifixions [sic] actually hanging up all over the show! Literally, everywhere you go, there'd be some sort of a… what [my] Mummy would have called ‘Holy Joes’. An awful lot of ‘Holy Joes’ those times”.
“And they were everywhere and to me I thought it was a little bit lopsided and out of balance. Yeah, in your face, to have these things up in public buildings. Like a hospital should belong to Catholic and Protestant alike and yet they were the ones that took over the walls with their crucifixions [sic], and Sacred Hearts [with their] little lightbulbs”.
“There [was just] too much out there, every time I turned around there was something else to remind me, 'Oh The Catholics have this space'.
“You know the way things would jump out all of a sudden; there's that statue, there's that crucifixion [sic], just in a shop and they'd have all these things for sale. You could just step into a shop and it was the last thing you'd be expecting is a whole go of rosary beads for sale, for example….and they were sold in, like this….. holy material if you like, they were sold more constantly than you would see nowadays. A lot that was out there more than we have now. It's almost like a relief that the intensity of these things sitting around and finding them in extraordinary places, that has deleted quite a bit. It has dissipated, it has watered down, it’s not as powerful. I suppose to have been someone who can feel sensitively about things, it probably affected me more than it would somebody who couldn't care less. And as a child, kind of putting out feelers, ‘where is it safe to be’ and then all of a sudden, ‘bump’, there’s another crucifixion [sic] where there's a body hanging on a cross!”.
[It even felt like that Catholic energy and symbolism was trying to get into every home] “if you went to turn on the television, [those times] it would take a while to warm up and it would start off with a dot, first of all, and then grow big. And then what would be there only the St Bridget's cross; another Catholic thing [a symbol of Catholic Ireland at the time]. And the same again if you were going to turn it off at night, what would happen ya, it would end up with the Bridget's cross and then it would close down. And if you were unfortunate enough to be listening to the television around six o'clock what would happen? All the programs would stop, while there was this boring dull bong of a bell. And this went on for about, oh crumbs, it felt like five minutes to me [as a little girl], but it might only have been on one minute. But it was what's called the Angelus. And for a Protestant house to have an Angelus in it, I felt it was totally out of place. And it was, it actually made me very cross to hear it. There again, you see, the Roman Catholic Church was coming into my Protestant [home] and I resented it. I didn't see why they should have a monopoly of everything. They had a monopoly of the streets, they'd a monopoly of, now, this television that we had”.
“It was hard for me to cope with all that [Catholic] energy…. Yeah, I just felt quite inferior. Everything they did seem[ed] to be profoundly important….it was…. kind of in my face and hard for me to stomach it, if you know what I mean. There was very little Protestant signs, probably on account of not having crosses, not having these figurines, so there wasn’t anything that I could pick up as a Protestant in Ireland to strengthen my path. Whereas the Catholics had their rosary beads in their hands and didn’t mind that you saw them using them”.
“I don’t know what… I don’t know how to explain that feeling but it was something that they had, and I hadn’t. There was no support, I suppose, being a Methodist. There was nothing that I could have in my hand, to help me along the way”.
“I suppose what I've had to deal with and what I've had to work throughout my whole entire life is not to hold resentment to the Catholic Church, for overpowering me so much as a child. There is a saying that [my] Mummy had "Live and let live", and I have to claim that. And just I suppose acknowledge that, yeah they were a little bit much for me, on me own, [as a little girl] to cope with. Just being out there the whole time. with all their bits and bobs. And taking over the airwaves”
“I've been a bit biased I suppose, I don't know what the word is. But anyway, I went with….. what I picked up in the atmosphere. It might not have been intentionally meant that way, that was just what I picked up, growing up in that area”.
[You see, with our] “Catholic [neighbours]; we didn't mix with them. While we knew them, we didn't mix with them. We knew of them. We didn't play with their children. We weren't, we didn't go down to their houses”
“We didn't mix; Catholics and Protestant didn't go into one another’s churches”.
“And some of the Catholics would have felt that they would have died, they would have literally died, if they had gone into a Protestant church. It would have been, they were taken in death for doing that dreadful thing. Can you imagine how strong that would have been those times? People absolutely believed that. And if they believed it well, what actually, what could happen is that maybe a week later they would have dropped dead of something or other, it might not have been the fact that they went into the Protestant Church, but they thought something could happen them and they were going to die”.
[There was a real divide, a real distinction between the two religions] “Absolutely. Absolutely. A very strong, strong, strongly made distinction. Absolutely. And that's why marriages were very discouraged because the pull of the two families; it could never mix”.
[There were even physical distinctions in how we dressed and how we were expected to behave] “they had their earrings, and their crosses around their neck. Their hair was always…... in a different way to ours. Our bodies seemed to be just clear of attachments and jewels. Very simple life, as simple as simple could be, was the way we were attired. And the churches themselves; the difference. My Church felt dark and bare and filled with timber. Simplicity itself. Basic…... Whereas in the one or two times [I was in a] Catholic Church, it seemed to have been brightly decorated, shiny objects”.
[And another thing] “Protestants never hung out their washing on a Sunday. Yeah. You'd never see a washing line with clothes on it and it'd belong to a Protestant [home]. Oh, my goodness me! That was totally unforgivable! You had six other days in the week to do your washing, and you don't do washing on Sunday. No. Not for love nor money!”.
“And yet” [thinking how, as a child, I saw St. Bridget’s crosses as a Catholic symbol coming into my home on the television] “here I am now [as an adult] making them myself. But you see, it had never been explained about St. Bridget. We weren't taught the Irish stories in our [Church of Ireland] school. They were considered Catholic. And we ‘didn't need to know about that’. Songs as well, the Irish ballads, all of that sort of thing, was never taught in our school. They were considered Catholic. ‘They weren't songs for us’”.
[I remember once asking my parents about a traditional Irish song] “I think it might have been something that came up on the television. And it might have been ‘there's that song, I've heard before’ kind of thing, you know? And why do they sing it and we don't? You know, this is like a child asking a parent; ‘Why do those people sing those songs all the time and we don't?’ And then the answer would have been told to me then; ‘Oh, They're not for us, they're not for us’”.
[It was] “like the Catholics owned [Ireland and Irishness] and we didn't”.
“It was, like, we were set aside, reserved Irish. Irish was for the Roman Catholics. And us Protestants had to do with the bit of space that was left around the edges
[It felt] “like…. they were tolerating us in their space”.
“It was such a lot to learn as a little child. Completely different ways”.
“I just went and tried to figure it out myself”.
“My parents would only say one sentence. And its mostly Mummy would say one sentence and then they’d leave you there. I'd never be sat down and given a whole conversation to explain something, I'd just be put off with one sentence and 'That'll do ya' and go off now. So, you had to kind of make up your own story and work around it then after that. And by picking up the vibrations —that's probably why I got good at picking up vibrations in scenarios— because I had to find things out for myself the whole time, the whole time”.
“Yeah. I suppose it [felt] a bit dangerous, there was a lot of danger in the air [of wider society] as well, I have to say it was, it was touch and go. It was almost like toppling teetering. Between the two [religions/communities] …. It could explode. ‘There could be a bit of an explosion around that’, you know, to use [my] Daddy's terminology. Yeah, there could be a bit of an explosion about it. And that could mean a lot of things. Bad feelings, bad relationships between neighbours, all sorts of a can of worms. "It's best left unsaid", you know, that kind of a way; "Let's not talk about that too much now".
[So that was the church and religion. At home then, well] “it is said that children pick up the vibrations around home. There are certain children have a knack of wanting to fix a family and make everything right and nice. I'm going to use the word ‘nice’ because that's my word. And make everybody feel better and happy. Now, it wasn't always like that at home”.
“I could see Daddy walking out [across the yard] with his head up and just staring in front of him….. I knew that he was worried then. He’d be thinking out stuff in his head…. And then I would feel, I would feel that from him then that, oh, he’s very concerned about something…. And then I’d get all concerned. It was like the further away he walked, the more I pulled it out of him because I didn't want him hurting and I thought I could manage it all. But sure look, I was only a little child”.
“And then Mummy, Mummy would have had what I called the indoor stress. She would have had the bother, no, the worry of buying the groceries on tick. You know, she wouldn’t have the money. She’d write it down. She’d put a bill up in [the shop]. She says, only for [that shop] I’d never have made it you know. Only for [them]. She could go in any time, she could get any amount of groceries she needed and put it on the tab….. and then pay it off then when the milk cheque came in. So, Mummy would have had the stress of keeping the books balanced”.
[And so, to try and fix everything and make everyone feel happy, make everything nice] “I would take as much energy out of the place as I could bear, until it got unbearable and with me, when I get filled up to the top all I have to do is just cry for Ireland. Literally that's what I call it, I just cry for Ireland. And I can't stop crying because it's a way of getting rid of all this stuff that I have soaked up into myself”.
“I've been fortunate enough to have always lived on a place that is near a wood and a forest. So, the wood was a good walk away and so that's where I used to go when home got too much, I would take myself away off and go down into the woods and stay in the trees until I felt better”.
“Nature, for me, was my healing space”.
“I would go up to the very very top of the hill. There was a rock up there and I could lie down on the rock, because I felt closest to the earth there and I’d put my tummy down on the rock and wait until I got better. And I've just learned now, in the teaching nowadays, that that's exactly the right thing you should do. You should lie down, and in the Shamanic Trainings [which I’m learning now], one of the rituals is that we have to lie down on our fronts and give the negative energies into the earth because that is what she feeds on, and then she gives us back her energy which is good and light and healing. So as a child, unbeknownst to myself, I was actually doing the right thing”.
“I was actually doing the right thing. I was actually helping the home to be clear of the bad things that were going on. The bad energies, the stress and the anxiety of trying to make money and to keep healthy and take on everybody else’s problems. I don't know, I'd suck them up, bring them to the trees in the woods and then right up to the top and give them back to the rock”.
[So that is what home was like] “when I got too full up, with what I'd gathered up…. I'd start just crying. I'd just sit there and cry and cry. I don't think Mummy and Daddy knew what to do with me. Like Daddy just beat me up. And Mummy sent me to bed. So that was the way they coped with that. And that didn't help at all. So, do you see why I had to get out of that house then? Because that was just ructions, probably the disturbance. Probably because they had their own stuff to cope with. They couldn't cope with mine as well, with my need, so my needs and my feelings were never addressed and never talked over with me”.
[But what did help was that] “Mummy was at home in the kitchen all the time…. when we got back from school, there would be the security of some food and her being in the house. I think that that brought secure, safety to us. Yeah…. while Daddy wasn't around, he was always outside [on the farm] and I knew I wouldn't be able to find him if I needed him. That wasn't safe”.
“I think that's very important that Mummy was there. Yeah, I think that's very important. She brought great security to the place…. she always had our dinner ready for us”.
[Usually, by the time I got home from school] “I was in terrible turmoil in my head and floods of tears” [because I would have had a fight with my sister on the way home].
[And] then the sow at the top of the road [on the way home from school] on a summer's day didn't help either…. you see there was a well that came from one ditch to the other, there was a trough, like a stone trough and it filled up with water and went across the road to the other side…. so it was a fantastic place for a pig to have a little wallow in it…. and when they'd see [my sister] and I coming home [from school] of course they'd come over to say hello to us. But I wouldn't realise it was a ‘hello’. I thought that big snout was coming after me. So, [my sister] would walk past and jeer me for being afraid of the pig and I couldn't get past the pig for a long time”.
[So,] “I think it was the fact that if I was in a heap, at least I could go to somebody to help me, to get past this complete monster of a sister that enjoyed giving me a hard time…. With Mummy being in the kitchen, I knew eventually I could run past [the sow]….. and get up into the kitchen. Yeah, the kitchen was warm and safe”.
[Yet, it wasn’t just that the kitchen was warm or that there was food ready for us] “I think it would be Mummy [herself]. She was a very pleasant woman those times. She was tall, she held herself up straight. She was beautifully dressed. And she'd have a smile on her face, you know. She'd look at you with a wee smile on her face and, while she didn't hug me or console me in any way, she might just fob it off with 'Ah sure they [the pigs] wouldn't touch ya'. But I think it's just that her height seemed to strengthen me, and her presence of standing on the ground, Tall. That would, I would have gained some strength out of her. I suppose out of her aura”.
[She was] “very strong and secure in herself, very strong in her kitchen. She had a presence about her in her kitchen…. There was a confidence about her. It was years of experience, that she knew everything the way her kitchen ran. She was, that was her forte. That was her thing in life that she was best at” [and her self-assuredness made you feel safe, gave you confidence].
[But I remember our neighbour] “on the hillside” [and] “Oh, my goodness, she was everything I wanted a Mummy to be. In that she would hug you. And she'd say 'Ah you little cratur ya', you know that kind of way. 'Sweet, dear little one'”.
“And I would have missed that coming out of my own Mummy”.
“And I think that affected me, I would say, the most. There was something about being brought up in those times that wouldn't allow them to hug their own children. Like I never, I never ever remember my Mummy giving me a hug. Never. And there is lots of times I would've given her an opportunity. I'd go over and give her a hug, especially when I was around the age of about six, five to six. I remember making it my special assignment that I would give Mummy a kiss before going off to school….. and she wouldn't actually hug me. And then I just stopped giving her little kisses before going off to school”.
“I've thought about that [lack of physical affection] many, many, many times”.
“I was wondering was it because her own mother didn't show affection like. It didn't seemingly be done, on the farms anyway, in those olden times. Maybe it was something to do with her father [my grandfather] having, I suppose depression and always sitting back, and then her Mammy, my Granny, having to do so much work on the farm that she just let them run with the herd. And that's a saying Mummy used to say too 'Oh sure, let them run with the herd', it was for all the children to play together and let the children support one another rather than her giving us personal time together, even if that was what we needed”.
“That's what my mother and my mother's mother did. They provided and did their darndest to provide and keep the roof over our heads and a floor under our feet. And that was their, that was their generational purpose…. to tide us over and to feed us. That was their big priority. To feed us would have taken more importance in their minds than to give a hug or to give a bit of love, or TLC”.
[But the women of Ireland today] “I think they’ve got a very good Ireland ahead of them” [especially] “if they keep the focus on to the land that they’re doing at the moment….. and bring things around to the values of women, that is, at the end of the day; nurturing, loving and caring….. they’re not afraid anymore to show it, like [in] the days of my mother, and my mother’s mother”.
[Now, as a woman of Ireland, the most important thing to me is the connection to the land, knowing that] “I truly am a part of the very earth of it”.
“Growing up in Ireland” [I always appreciated the] “beauty of the countryside and the freedom of it”.
[And] It’s nice to know that I belong truly to this earth [of Ireland]. And I’m actually very proud of being Irish”.
[Despite growing up Protestant and feeling that parts of Irish culture were not available to me, when it comes to the land of Ireland] “I could hold Catholicism to one side, and Protestants to the other side…. [so], when it comes to just me —in me— it would be the land of Ireland that I would have always turned to, for restoration and for health, and for completeness, maybe, and courage”.