The Snow Child

The only place I have ever really known is Mountmellick and the surrounding land along the Owenass River where I caught Trout for Tea on the way home from the convent school when I was a little boy. The small town is huddled against the foothills of the Slieve Bloom Mountains to the West and the Boglands to the North where we had a family plot to cut our Turf for heating in the open fire and cooking on the old black range. A patchwork of farms and small holdings unfurled like a long tail along the river’s edge to the west and vast fields of Sugar Beet to the North & East ultimately destined for the Sugar Refineries of Carlow and Mallow and then on to England and beyond.

Along the banks of the railway line and about a wolfs howl to the station was always a resplendent display of golden daffodils swaying in the gentle spring breese the scent of which always lingered on the air into the late spring evening.

My brothers Michael and Peter and I plus my 6 sisters Joan, Elizabeth, Mary, Josaphine, Winnifred & Bernadette were all born at the small gatekeeper’s house that came with the Railway Crossings. We were born down ladder in the main bedroom where we remained until about two years old or stopped bedwetting whichever came sooner. We then graduated up the ladder to a loft area with two big beds one for the girls and one for the boys. The house had been inherited by my mother Annie from her family who had been Gatekeepers for the railway since the late 1800.

Our small railway house and farm were nothing special. Including the house and barns, the potato field, outhouses, Chicken Coup, hen run and gravel drive it was about 4 acres. The railway line itself passed within 10ft of our front door. In my dreams to this day I can still hear the steam trains shunting past the bedroom window its lights casting flickering figures on the bedroom wall with the acrid smell of smoke in my nostrils.

We produced our own Potatoes, Lettuce, Cabbage, Onions, rosy sweet apples plus Milk & Churned Butter some of which we sold over the dry-stone wall.

My Dad kept Bees, aided by Michael, inherited from Mums Dad Joseph. The lovely runny honey was delicious.

Our world fell apart in the late 1950’s when it was decided that the railway line to our little town would close. This was brought about by the demise of the Sugar Beet industry as England imported from its colonies the much cheaper sugar extracted from sugar cane. By the time the summer of 1962 had dawned the trains had stopped, the crossings were gone and a new chapter in our lives had begun in Salford Northwest England.

SMD 11/03/2026