Old friend and beloved blacksmith passes away

Tom O'Sullivan

It was an autumn afternoon in the seventies when I came around a sweep in the Clare road near the village of Ballinacally, the sun still shining low in the sky, and there by heavens was the living poem of a blacksmith at his anvil, the fire red, the anvil singing and a spreading chestnut tree creating a yellowly whispering umbrella over the little roadside forge. I stopped of course and had a chat with the blacksmith.

His name was Tom O'Sullivan. He was not the big brawny smith with sinewy arms defined in the classic poem.

He was a thin and hardy quick man with a bright pair of eyes in his head, a gift of the blarney, a wide smile and a quick wit. We got on like a house on fire, the two of us, and I never passed Tom's forge without calling during all the years afterwards.

Sometimes there were years between the visits but that did not matter at all. We just took up where we left off the time before.

Even in the seventies there were not that many working horses left to be shod. Tractors had taken over the world where four generations of O'Sullivan smiths had shod the horses of Ballinacally in their time and season.

And replaced the iron tires on the carts and traps those horses patiently hauled. And the ploughs and harrows and Tumbling Paddies of a different age.

Yet Tom O'Sullivan adapted to the times, and his forge was always busy and full of chatting customers every time I called.

It was a special place, there under the spreading chestnut tree.

That first time I called I mentioned the chestnut tree. He left the anvil and came outside with me.

He pulled down one of the low branches without breaking it and he said, "Look. Do you see the marks left by the hooves of the horses of the faeries?"

Incredibly, indelibly on the glossy bark, the growth marks of the season are etched as absolutely perfect miniature hoof prints!

I suppose that is the reason the trees are called horse chestnut trees. I never forgot that.

Tom adapted to his era with great speed and skill. He would still shoe any horse that arrived at the forge door, but he became adept with the electric welding machines that were not available to his ancestors and became a master welder.

No better smith in the region to repair the increasingly more complex farm machines that the tractors pulled and powered. He was always busy at that.

And, in between, he produced ornamental gates and every kind of garden furniture, all marked with his "O'S" brand.

He bought old mowing machines for their heavy steel wheels and converted those wheels into the supports for garden benches that became famous.

He was such a craftsman that examples of his best work can now be seen in the Clare Museum. His forge was the place where men called as much for yarns and folklore and craic as they did for business.

He became the popular father of the community as well as the biological and proud father of a son and four daughters.

He was by far the oldest practicing traditional blacksmith in Clare when he lit the forge fires day after day last spring as the chestnut greened again in Ballinacally.

He was 87 then and it was to be his last year by the anvil. He closed the forge due to illness a few months ago and he died last week.

He was buried in his local Kilchreest graveyard a few miles down the road last Saturday. The whole community mourned and many wept openly, both women and men, at his Requiem Mass in the Christ the King chapel in Ballycorick, especially when Father Tom O'Dea preached a warm homily and even more especially when his son Declan spoke in praise of a good father from the altar.

His little forge is on the road between Ballinacally and the graveyard. The community saw to it that the forge was open again for the cortege's passing.

The fire was burning redly by the anvil. The door was open wide.

Tom's tools were displayed beside the door, and so were some of his works, including a big crane to guard the open hearths of yesterday.

The hearse stopped there for a while in respect before going on to the graveyard. When it turned into the graveyard it passed between a pair of heavy black ornamental gates that had been crafted, in his time, by
Tom's father, also named Tom.

And there was a breeze as they buried the blacksmith. So the little faery hooves danced along the branches between the whispering leaves of the chestnut tree, yellow and russet again.

And it is geographically true that the townland of Paradise lies less than a mile away from the grave where the people of Ballinacally buried their blacksmith.

So a lovely soul had only a very short way to travel towards eternal rest.

A self-inflicted writing ban on feathers and fur

Illustration by Caty Bartholomew

Sometime between twilight yesterday and this windy Monday morning our swallows flew away to a warmer and brighter place.

I think maybe they departed a week early, but who would blame them after the generally bad summer season?  There are glossy wise heads among them too.

Today along the western coastline we are getting a backhand slap from one of your hurricanes. The sky over the cottage and the Shannon has been swept clean of all birds, not just the swallows, branches are being snapped off the crowns of old trees, the country roads are covered with the first whispering clans of tinted autumnal leaves, the clouds high above have razor edges on them.

Winter is a-coming in. The evenings are getting shorter. Another summer gone.

There are associated pleasures for me in the fall. Before sitting down at this keyboard I found my trusty bottle of Paddy, a yellow lemon, and cloves.


I boiled the kettle and found the sturdy thick glass with the handle and made myself a mighty hot whiskey. There is a real punch in Paddy punch.

The bogfire of the whiskey melds with the exotica of the little brown cloves and the lemon juice in the most comforting and fiery fashion. I toast the fleeted swallows and summer and swig slowly, and I'm feeling grand now. Hope most of ye feel the same.
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-------------------Actually I'm very fortunate to be alive this week. Three weeks ago in my column in the Irish Examiner I noted the fact that our (broke) government spent over a half million U.S. dollars to conserve our dwindling corncrake population.

A subsequent count revealed that harsh-throated population had increased by one male corncrake! I said we could not afford him.

I said further that the last thing this country needs is another corncrake. Any of you who grew up in rural Ireland thirty years or so ago knows where I was coming from.

The meadows of our childhood and youth were filled with bull corncrakes calling out for mates and mating with the most dreadful sound in birdland.

Crek-crek, crek-crek, crek-crek! You had to go to your summer bed as a boy in broad daylight  and you could not get to sleep with that bloody crek-crek. Maybe three or four of them at the same time and it went on all night!

They were ventriloquists too, those corncrakes, and they could throw their voices right up to the bedroom window. Do you remember? I will never forget.

I said mildly enough that if they disappeared altogether from the island I would be delighted. The government, I suggested, could spend the same amount of money on a national cull of the exploding magpie population.

There are millions of those in Ireland now.  They not alone possess the second harshest voices in birdland -- akin to demented machine gunners -- but they also rob the nests of the eggs of our genuine little songbirds like larks and finches, the backbone of our dawn chorus.

I should have known better.  There was a flood of complaining letters to the poor Irish Examiner from an enraged lobby led by BirdWatch Ireland. I got a stream of emails from  folk who said they were prepared to cull me!

It was an extraordinary reaction which, however, I should have been prepared for. Anytime in my life that I have written anything about the world of fur and feather I have landed  in hot water.

Once, when reporting on a hare coursing meeting in Liscannor, I said I'd counted the road kill of foxes and badgers and birds on the way to the event, and it had far outnumbered the toll on the coursing field where only two hares had died. I got a bullet through the mail a week later!

And it was nearly as intense, some years later, when I factually reported on the culling of the litters of pups bound for the famed pack of the Galway Blazers. Any pup that was weak or did not color conform to the pack was instantly drowned by the expert doing the selection. Hunting pack dogs lead spartan lives.

And I was in deep trouble even afterwards when reporting on the basking shark hunters of the Aran Islands and how they harpooned those  great marine creatures for their liver oil. It was a big trade at the time.

The oil was an element of expensive perfumes and was also used for lubricating the innards of even more expensive wristwatches!

Will ye remind me please not to write any words about the world of fur and feather again!  I will live longer and easier that way.

And if there are any corncrakers over there (and I'm sure there are), then don't bother responding to this because all your colleagues here in Ireland have already more than adequately defended the bird and properly castigated me for my views.

My hot whiskey is gone and it is raining outside under a swallowless sky. Can I please go back into the kitchen and boil the kettle and make myself another? Just a small one...