When I recently visited Mulhuddard Cemetery for the Blessing of the graves I met Liam Byrne a former next door neighbour from Tolka View and a nephew of the aforesaid Sean and enquired after his health.Liam informed me that Sean had recently gone into a nursing home and at the venerable age of 95 years was still striking terror into the bookies of Blanchardstown with his forays into the horse betting markets.Nothing new there.
Well I got a message last Tuesday evening that Sean had died in his sleep and that his funeral Mass would be the next morning at 10.00 a.m. in Blanchardstown Church .I made it but only just having found a parking place difficult to find .I must say that I find the profiteering from funeral attendees by whoever is getting the parking money is a vile practise and condemn it outright.Seemingly nothing is sacred around Blanch. Church any more.
Anyway when I got to the Church it was filled to capacity and I couldn't get in so I sat on a ledge outside the back door.The fullness of the Church is testimony in itself to the esteem in which Sean is held around Blanch .and further afield.
I think that Sean was the oldest true Blanchie alive at the time of his death.He was steeped in Blanch .lore and his pedigree is truly impressive.
His granny was an O Driscoll whose family farmed at market gardening in what was later to become the Phoenix Park Racecourse,which they had to abandon to make way for the racecourse.
His mother was Annie Doyle who founded Doyles Shop at the junction of Main Street with Church Avenue ,which thousands of Blanchies will remember with fondness and which kept hundreds of families supplied with food and other life necessities on tick for generations .
Sean and his siblings were born into a house which stood where Tim Ryan's Garage now stands ,later moved down to Duckie O Brien's Blanchardstown Mills at the end of Mill Lane and thence to the top of Tolka View ,where they lived until 1958 when they moved to the house in Main Street ,where he lived at the time of his death.
It strikes me that his people lived through the Famine of 1845 to 1847 and all the crop failures of that damnable Century.Perhaps the market gardening was the secret of their survival.
Maybe a half century ago I used inspect the headstones at Cavein graveyard near Dunsink and nearly cry at the huge numbers of the same families buried there who died from the hunger in that period.
Sean's siblings were ;-
Maureen ,who ran Doyles shop.
Una Mrs FAGAN ...who live beside Sean on Main Street.
Patty Mrs Carr who lived on the graveyard Road from Mulhuddart village.
Dessie ,who lived next door to us in Tolka View.
Benny ,who lived opposite the Wren's Nest in the Strawberry Beds and Carmel who lived with Sean in Main Street.
I grew up in Blanch.Nine kids were reared in our House in Tolka View.Ten,I think , were reared in Byrnes next door,4 Fagans were reared nearby on the Main Street and 5 Mulhuddard Carrs spent most of their childhood around our neighbourhood.A further 5 Mac Donalds lived in Tolka View.
This was our core play group and we played together,fought with each other ,palled around with each other,some more than others,chased women with each other.learned to smoke and drink with each other ,and although never living in each others pockets kept up healthy and respectful relationships with each other.
Joe Mullery .a next door neighbour to Sean's on Main Street,was plumb in the centre of our area and spent most of his working life in Africa..His house was empty for months on end each year.
After he retired he returned home and I got to know him fairly well.
He often marvelled at the fact that his house was never broken into nor damaged by any of the kids during all those years.
This ,of course is down to the values inculcated in us by our parents and Sean and his family ,who were made of the right stuff.I like to think that we too are similarly constituted.
Now I was born in1951 and can remember Sean having BIG SHED on Tolka View within which I never stood but in which was manufactured go carts which we could never equal and greatly envied.
Sean was the master of this shed as long as they owned it and it was a hive of manufacturing activity for the Byrne,Carr and Fagan clan and gave them mechanical superiority over us and the Mc Donalds.
Sean never gloated but was content with the output of his factory of endeavour.
I must say that I never heard Sean Byrne say a bad word to any of us kids nor our parents in all my years living there.
The space where the shed rested was sold to Martin Henry I think and he was just as nice as Sean Byrne,lucky for us kids.
In those innocent times the Gardai used try and summons us kids for kicking football on the lane outside our house and one neighbour in particular used keep any footballs which crossed into their premises.These were not nice people by any stretch of the imagination and I must say that the Gardai were worse for doing what they did.
Neither Sean nor Dessie nor any of the Byrnes were like this and they like our own parents had a good tolerance of all us kids and our lives were the finest given the times that were in it.
Dessie lived next door to us with his wife Betty and he was a hardworking plumber with one of the Hospitals I think.He was a non smoker and a non drinker and a great man with the kids,his only leisure I remember being playing music with the Blanchardstown Brass and Reid Band.
It was rumoured that he used help his wife bathe the kids every Saturday night and my mother used tease our Dad on account of this when he would return from the Pub every Saturday night full of the cheer of that week's nickser.He wasn't for turning and didn't.
Dessie always travelled on a Honda 50 with a superb toolbox built into the back.It was brought inside every night I think.
Our family was GAA inclined and while PAT and Kevin CARR and Liam and Desmond Byrne played a bit of GAELIC Football with Brigids the Fagans and the other Carrs were more soccer inclined.
Of course we used leather the shite out of each other at casual soccer in Cleary's field behind the Greyhound and at a patch of ground in front of Duckie O Brien's in Mill Lane.
Sean always kept Jack Russell terriers for hunting and was big into fishing and we all had a go at these pursuits.I m fairly sure he worked d in a fishing tackle and supply store at Mary's Abbey for many years so the aids to fishing and hunting were readily available.
Sean fished trout from the Tolka like us all,Pepper's pool at the bottom of Moy Mel and a willow tree at the bottom of our garden being fruitful spots for fish.
It is hard to believe now but I remember shoals of trout feeding at the bridge that spanned the Tolka at the entrance to the Hospital from Mill Lane.
The Byrnes were well into Blanch Brass and Reid Band ,Dessie being a stalwart and Sean---Foxy Fagan and maybe Bernard too being enthusiastic members.Don't think that Sean was a member but I may be wrong.
Certainly Sean and Rory Mooney and many others of that circle used go off the sweets for Lent and save them up as prizes for the Grand National Races run at Easter on the impromptu racecourse erected by us all each year in the field behind Byrnes and Fagans and all those houses.There used even be water jumps and the competition was ferocious.
Sean ,Carmel and Little Mo,their great friend were big into the Concerts staged in Brigid's Old School in the sixties and I well remember Brendan Hilliard,no chicken either and still to the good,singing there and a phrase from a homemade ditty "We have a fine doctor (Cooney) and Chemist (Hughes) here too,to make up the pills and the medicines too "being belted out by Carmel and Little Mo in the Hall to rave applause.
Sean didn't marry and it was rumoured that there was no shortage of admirers and in truth the Fagans,Dessie Byrnes and the Carrs were as much his kids as their parents.
He did take a drink but never to excess as far as I recall.
It is a tribute to him that all his nephews,nieces and the whole of Old Blanch was at his funeral.
I met Foxy,Tony.Bernard and Pau,er Fagan and the latter's fragrant wife Anne ,who I hadn't seen in decades and Pat,Johnnie ,Jem .Brendan Kevin and Mary Carr and Betty,Jem's wife who hasn't changed a bit in 40 years,She confirmed to me that their son returned recently from Singapore to christen his child in Berkely Road Church where herself and Jem were married.
Mary is the most reluctant culchie I ever met.
And I met Mary,Dolores,Liam ,Dermot and Brenda Byrne but missed the rest in the crush and I met PAT , BARRY and Finnoula mc Donald too.Pat was the last man to see my father alive and I hadn't seen BARRY in 40 years.
I also bumbed into Patrick o Reilly ,former landlord of my brother Robert's offices and a man who was the essence of decency to him during his long illness.I won't forget.
It must have been hard on Sean Byrne,Old Sean's nephew .who is in Australia and is a friend of mine to miss this funeral and we cannot forget either Lizzie Byrne nor my brother Robert who too knew Sean well but were called ashore well before their time.
Sean was a nice guy,a fine neighbour full of good humour and brimming with decency.
Ar Dheis De go raibh A Hanam Dilis.
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