Mick Lally recalled his first encounter with a battery radio

THE late Mick Lally, ‘Miley’ of Glenroe fame, was a native of Tourmakeady, writes Tom Gillespie.

The eldest of a family of seven children, five sisters and one brother, he went to the local national school, where Joe Mulrooney was teacher, and then to St. Mary’s College, Galway. After studying at UCG he taught history and Irish for six years in Tuam from 1969 to 1975, but quit teaching to pursue a highly successful career as a stage and TV actor.

Nineteen years ago, eight years before his untimely death, Mick contributed an article to the Tuar Mhic Éadaigh parish magazine, The Waterfall, which was headed ‘Early encounters with the modern world’.

He wrote: Mick Reilly and Julia Connolly have got married. The wedding is taking place in their house and I’ve been allowed to go to it. It’s fairly late at night and I’m really enjoying the whole atmosphere of the occasion.

There’s black frothy porter being dished out. There’s music playing and people are dancing sets and waltzes mainly.

Now and again ‘silence’ is called for someone to sing a song - usually a ballad or love song. My father sings at some point and I’m quietly delighted.

At some point in the night I hear talk of two men who are ‘up on Lally’s roof’. There’s talk of them tying a wire between the two chimneys. There’s talk of them being ‘very handy men’ because they were able to go along the ridge of the roof between the chimneys ‘and no bother to either’. There’s talk about ‘the aerial’ and them ‘getting in a radio’.

I know about radios. I seen one in my grandfather’s house in Churchfield and I’ve heard talk and music coming out of it. I’ve heard my youngest aunt talk about the radio, and I’ve heard her sing snatches of songs that she heard on it.

‘Hubert’s late, after being out late, walking his baby back home’, or something like that anyway.

This song puzzled me for years. I could not understand any person out late at night walking a baby back to their house. Now, of course, the man might have reason to be out late, but I often wondered why he didn’t carry the poor child.

Then the other thing about it was that this was an American song and you’d expect Hubert, or whatever his name was, to have a pram.

Then there was the one about the ‘doggie in the window, the one with the waggly tail’. This one bothered me as well. I mean what a ridiculous place to put a dog - inside a window.

At least the person in the song was wondering if the ‘doggie was for sale’, so I suppose there was some chance of rescue.

Both these songs were a long way from ‘The Foggy Dew’ and ‘Lovely Derry on the Banks of the Foyle’.

But back to the night in question. I’m back home with my father and mother, and, sure enough, there on the shelf is the radio.

My father turns it on and after a while a dim light comes on inside. He starts to slowly turn a knob. My mother is beside us watching intently. I’m aware of them saying the names of various places written on the dial - Hilversum, Dusseldorf, Luxembourg, AFN, BBC, Strasburg, Athens, Stockholm, and many more.

My father has lifted me up into his arms and I’m trying to listen to the voices coming out of it, but I can’t understand a word the most of them are saying.

After a while I say ‘Haven’t they awful square accents.’ My father says ‘They’re not accents, they’re languages.’ ‘Foreign languages,’ my mother adds.

'Languages', I’ve never heard the word before, but there’s something mysterious and attractive about it. I’ve a memory of them trying to explain this new word to me and how the people in England speak English. How the people in Ireland speak Irish and English, but mainly English because the English were the bosses here for hundreds of years.

Later on when I’m lying in bed this word ‘languages’ is rolling around my head. I’ve seen the map of Europe and the world at school with all the different countries in different colours.

My child-mind is trying to grapple with all these different countries and all their different languages.

Then I realise that I’m able speak two languages - Irish and English. Indeed everyone I know is able to do the same thing. I’m fairly pleased about this, because I’ve an idea that knowing two of anything must be better than knowing only one.

Already this thing called a ‘radio’ is having an impact on my life, and indeed would continue to do so for many years after.

It is difficult now, in this high-tech, computer age, to convey the invigorating beacon of light the radio shone into my life. To say that it opened up a whole new world of wonder and excitement for me is to understate the extent of the magic it brought to my childhood.

However, there was a drawback - a major drawback. All of what I have outlined so far was in the era prior to rural electrification. This meant that the radio was powered by dry and wet batteries, which were notoriously unpredictable. They had a ferociously irritating habit of ‘conking out’ with little or no warning.

You’re listening to Micheal O’Hehir in full flight as Mayo are tearing into Galway in some cliff-hanger of a Connaught final, and, next thing, nothing.

You don’t know if Mayo made the fight back and won, you know nothing. It was agonising. It was torture.

Then electricity came and all was changed.

Without question the electric radio was a wonderful relief. Now Michael O’Hehir could remain in full flight and not be rendered speechless by the vagaries of a big glass full of acid.

Now ‘Dan Dare and Pilot of the Future’ would no longer disappear into an empty, crackling silence.