AFTER OUR PARENTS’ MARRIAGE, the family lived for a time at number 15 The Bowling Green, where Brian was born on the 5th of October 1911. He was the third son – a year and a half younger than I and three years younger than Gearóid.

In 1912 my father was transferred to Glasgow. There we lived in Athol Gardens, Sheepburn Road, Uddingston, which is a suburb of Glasgow. The family remained in Scotland for a few years but returned to Ireland before 1916.

Back in Ireland we settled in a terrace of four houses called ‘St Michael’s’ on Sarsfield Road, Inchicore, where a branch of the road (St Laurence’s Road) leads down to Chapelizod. The Revenue Commissioners owned this terrace and nobody lived there except Customs & Excise officers. Our father worked in the distillery in Chapelizod.

The terrace of houses in Inchicore is still there but the change in the surrounding countryside is indescribable. In our time there were green fields behind the houses with trees and a stream at the bottom of the fields – it was open country. Now it is covered in concrete with the buildings of Ballyfermot reaching out to the farthest horizon.

Our neighbours in the adjoining houses of the Inchicore terrace were Mangan, O’Donovan and Morris. We had little contact with the Mangans but were on friendly terms with the other two families. Dermot Morris was about my own age and the four of us – Brian, Gearóid, Dermot and I – used to play together. In later years Dermot became a prominent lawyer and won international recognition as a rugby player at fullback for Ireland.

Brian, Gearóid and I used to play in the fields at the back of the house or occasionally in the front garden. At other times we would simply watch the world go by at the wall overlooking the main road. Once while playing in the fields we found a small bottle half filled with some light-coloured liquid. Brian drank it. On returning home one or other of us mentioned the ‘find’ to our father, who immediately set about preparing some kind of emetic which he made Brian drink.

Occasionally we would be taken for a walk by the maid – wheeling a pram occupied by the latest addition to the family We were never without a maid and at one time, I remember, when the family was very big, we had need of two maids. On our walks we would go as far as Kilmainham Gaol or for a couple of miles along the country roads that stretched up to Ballyfermot.

We visited the city often enough – I remember a day when my father took us to see a film in the Sackville Cinema in Lower O’Connell Street. The cinema was almost opposite Daniel O’Connell’s statue, on the Post Office side of the street. I remember little about the film except that it was a ‘Western’ with people shooting one another every few minutes.

Another early memory remains firm – the night my father decided to teach us how to read. He cut a piece of cardboard into little squares and wrote a letter of the alphabet on each one. Then he put them together to form words.

During our time in Inchicore there was some danger after dark on the road from Chapelizod. Father took a heavy stick with him every day, and once. I heard him tell my mother that he had had to walk on top of the wall, part of the way, the previous night! I never discovered what the danger was but I imagine it may have been wild animals.

A visitor who came to our house from time to time and who was always given a great welcome was our Uncle Gearóid. He was about forty years old at that time. He did not arrive as most people did, on foot, but in a car! He must have been one of the first people in Ireland to have a car, if you exclude the real pioneers. Cars were not common in Ireland until 1908 – the year Ford introduced the famous Model T to the market. Indeed it was a Ford that my uncle had but I do not remember much about it except its brass radiator.

Besides having a car, Father Gearóid used to bring a breath of adventure into the house. He was different – he smoked cigarettes, indeed he was a chain-smoker. Our father did not smoke so it was unusual and in some respects pleasant to get the smell of tobacco around the house. Playing tricks with cards was another of his specialities. He had a strange accent on his Irish and on the odd English word, too – ‘Bhfuil sibh alright?’ (Are you alright?), as we packed ourselves into his car. Down to Maynooth we would go, but not usually to St Patrick’s College, though we were there a couple of times. More often than not we went to the Convent of Mercy, where he was on friendly terms with some of the nuns.

When left to our own devices, we spent a lot of time looking over the wall at the end of the garden. There was very little traffic on the roads at that time but you would see the odd interesting thing if you stayed there long enough. A ragged tramp came by now and then. He was a fairly young man with a black beard. ‘Blackbird Soup’ was the nickname the local boys had for him, a jeering reference to the kind of diet he was supposed to have lived on. They used to call the name after him when he had gone about fifty yards past them. He would chase them, yelling like a madman and they screaming, half terrified he would catch them. In time, instead of chasing them he took to throwing stones.

Another time, when the three of us were at the wall we saw a spectacular sight which made a deep impression on me. It must have been before the Rising that we witnessed this event – a group of boys marching from the direction of Inchicore. They were a group of Irish Volunteers wearing hats and full uniform. There were about sixteen of them and they marched in two columns. They played pipes as they marched past but they had no drum. The spectacle excited me enormously. I could hardly have known who they were but instinctively I sensed that they stood for Ireland and represented bravery and glory. They marched up towards Ballyfermot and were soon out of sight.

I never thought of asking Brian if he remembered the Rising – he would have been about five at the time, and I six and a half. All I saw of the Rising was the redness of the sky from the big fires that were burning in the middle of the city. There must have been a lot of discussion about the Rising in our house, but if I heard it I have long forgotten it. However, I remember our father revealing his attitude a few months afterwards when an English airship came across the sky and flew over our house. ‘Where is it going?’ I asked him. ‘To Hell, I hope,’ he answered.