by Joanne Hamilton, Documentation Officer (Irish Folklife), National Museum of Ireland

Copyright © 2023 Joanne Hamilton

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While doing work on the geographical thesaurus in the NMI collections management system earlier this year I was drawn to an address recorded as Owneykeevan, Easky, Co. Sligo. This seemed to relate to a group of folklife objects collected during the 1950s. Having lived in the county during my childhood, I was curious to find out more about the acquisition and donor.

There were a number of files related to Oweenkeevy in the archive of the Irish Folklife Division. The donor/maker of the objects was a Mr. Patrick Cleary and the files indicated that he had sourced and made a variety of objects for the folklore collection. These include ropes from straw, horsehair fishing lines, St. Brigid’s crosses, rushlights, an otter board and other agricultural and domestic items.

In a 2013 article, Mr. Albert Siggins describes Cleary as a “tradition bearer” that worked along with “the interested web of informants around the country” to rescue and preserve “items from a rich vein of the rural landscape”. Cleary had been prompted by Dr A.T. Lucas and other rural informants such as his mentor, Mr. Patrick Tohall.

Reading through the archival files, the notion of Cleary as a tradition bearer certainly rings true. He corresponded regularly with the Director of the NMI at the time (A.T. Lucas) regarding the sourcing and making many of the objects that are now in the collection. The two men seemed to have shared a warm cordial, mutually respectful relationship based on a passion for traditional Irish crafts. Not only that, but the letters are peppered with additional details, like the one containing instructions on how to make boxty, that accompanied Cleary’s donation of a potato grater.

He writes:

“Get 4 or 5 big .... potatoes washed clean and keep rubbing them on the face of the grater until you have them all wore out and when you have them all wore out into a basin stream off the water….add a small teaspoon full of salt and dry it up with flower [sic] to a stiff paste and make it into a cake about ½ inch and put it in to a graised[sic] pan and bake it for ¼ of an ower [sic]”

The grater is on display in the exhibition galleries of the National Museum of Ireland – Country Life.

In another letter Cleary, in response to a query from Mr. Lucas, makes reference to the use of animal blood as an agent for setting mortar which was a little know or documented practice at the time.

“I saw blood put through the lime and sand for to make a morther [sic] floor in a dwelling house as there was no sument [sic]….the blood would help the morther [sic] mortar set and it would make a red floor”

A Heather besom

One object that I found of particular interest was a heather besom (F:1952.139) that Cleary made and donated. Despite it now being some 70 years old, organic in nature and very fragile, it remains well preserved in our stores.

What is a besom

A besom is a broom type object made from materials such as bent, heather, straw, grass, rush and other organic materials. In her book “Straw, Hay and Rush”, Dr Anne O’Dowd (2015) describes this type of object as being “used to sweep kitchen floors, the hearth, the barn, the byre, the stalls, the footpath and the threashing floor” (O’Dowd, p. 456) in other words it was a precursor to the modern day broom.

Cleary’s example had no such evidence of being used in a domestic capacity and appears to have been specifically made for the Museum collection, like many of his donations. Today it remains in pristine condition carefully stored in our reserve collection.

Legacy

Patrick Cleary represents one of those individuals who was fundamental to the preservation of traditional Irish skills and crafts in the Irish Folklife Collection. He wasn’t an academic or a scholar, he was an ordinary man of the times who worked hard on the land in and around Easky, Co. Sligo. He had an intimate knowledge of the everyday objects people used and the skills needed to make them. Through his correspondence with Lucas, these skills have been recorded and are represented within the exhibits at the National Museum of Ireland – Country Life for future generations.

Bibliography

O’Dowd, A. (2015) Straw, Hay and Rushes in Irish Folk Tradition. Kildare: Irish Academic Press.

Siggins, Albert, (2013) ‘Patrick Cleary of Owenykeevan, Easkey, a Tradition Bearer’ in Timoney, M. (ed.), Thirty Four Essays on Sligo’s Past. Mayo: KPS Printers.

Acknowledgement

Thanks to Albert Siggins for permission to use the phrase “tradition bearer” a phrase he first used in relation to Mr. Cleary in his article referenced above and supply of portrait image.