The eleven o clock Mass last Sunday in Dunderry was an anniversary Mass for Clement Daly of TULLAGHANSTOWN ,who is deceased a good while but whose memory obviously lives on in the minds and thoughts of his descendants.
On the way into the Church I was called aside by Paddy Conway of Halltown who said to a fierce sprightly old gentleman that he would surely have known my mother Peggy Mc Cormack ,who I must clarify is long since dead having lived on this earth for 80 years odd.
Paddy himself is no spring chicken either.
The gent said that he knew all the Mc Cormacks having gone to school with them in Tullaghanstown or TULLAGHANSTOWN ACAMEDY OF EDUCATION as my uncles used call it in jest.
The school is long since gone and is commemorated nowadays in a plaque in the wall of the school in Dunderry..
I had to ask the man who he was and say to him that he was a fierce fresh man to have gone to school with my mother and her siblings .
He is Peter Daly the last survivor of that generation of Dalys and is the freshest man of 90 years I have ever seen.
His memory is crystal clear and he could recall to this day the differing sounds of the axles and wheels of the horse and ass drawn drays and the identities of the owners thereof which enabled himself and his siblings to know who was heading to the bog to cut turf without looking out the window of their house in School or Daly's Lane,where they lived over 80 years ago.
This remarkable man has lived in Monghan for over 70 years and has a slight touch of a Monghan accent and looks certain to draw the centenary bounty from the President and passionately loves his native shore.
He cast doubt on the story my uncles often recounted concerning the floods that flooded the bog cross in 1947 to a depth of 3 feet ,when a tramp travelling from Athboy to Navan mischievously enquired from a local man if this was a Port Town and was advised to ask the local man's bolo....,saying that never a curse word was spoken in Tullaghanstown in those days.
Yeah right.
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