By Ronald Black

It was that most wondrous of days in late June, 1937 when Jessie was 13 years old, Angie was 11, Jimmy was 9 and I was getting close to 7 years. It was the last day of school before summer holidays. Six whole weeks off to play games on the canal banks, take exciting trips across the city to the Animal Museum, make cork and paper boats to sail on the canal from the upper locks down to Binns Bridge, learn more soccer tricks from Jamesy Halion in Birmingham’s Lane and take trams to Dollymount to swim in the Irish Sea and play in the sand dunes.

The normally long walk from our home on St. Ignatius Road to the Church of Ireland Mission School in Lurgan Street didn’t seem a bit long or tiring on that day. As usual, though, Jessie was the leader and talked to us along the way pointing out certain things in Dorset Street that she felt were of interest, such as why the lights were on in Youkstetter’s butcher shop window in the morning sunshine, why the door of Murphy’s chemist shop was not yet open and how the blue sparks sprang off of the tram car turning into the North Circular Road…as if we hadn’t seen them ourselves.

As we approached Eccles Street, I got a chance to tell them about the great picture that I had seen in the Drumcondra cinema the evening before with Ma and Pop. The scene that I laughed most at was when Harold Lloyd swung out of the window on the lit up sign that read "Hotel" and couldn’t get back until Patsy Kelly reached out and grabbed a cord that was hanging from the sign and pulled it back in. However, they didn’t seem to think it funny at all and didn’t say a word.

Passing by St. Joseph’s National Boys School – the toughest school in north Dublin, two rough looking boys at the entrance to the school shouted after us "Proddy Woddy on the wall, half a loaf will do yiz all" We just kept walking fast without looking back or saying anything at all until we crossed Blessington Street and moved into Bolton Street where Jessie said, looking at me, that we shouldn’t pay any attention to those kind of boys jeering us because we go to a Protestant school.

Just as we were passing the Plaza cinema, Angie let out a loud cry "Hey, Willy….Willy" and sure enough, there was Willy Birmingham who owned the huckster shop on our road driving his pony and cart along Bolton Street on his way to the vegetable market in Smithfield. Although very deaf, he heard Angie’s shout, smiled and waved to us.

Further along, just near Bolton Street Technical School at the approach to Capel Street there was an old hotel close to the corner with a large single sign "HOTEL" hanging outside. Now I raised my voice and said that that was the same kind of sign that Harold Lloyd was hanging on in the picture that I saw last night at which point Jimmy hit me on the shoulder and said "the word is ho-tel not hottle" as I had pronounced it and it explained why they were silent and didn’t laugh. 

He emphasized the HO in hotel, repeating it several times and then imitated me saying "She pulled the string and hottle came in." Now they laughed.

Shortly, we passed the Spinning Wheel shop and reached Lurgan Street where the school entrance had a sizable sign announcing it as a Church of Ireland Mission School . Just inside the front door, we turned immediately into the large classroom that held all the pupils. Jessie sat down in the front row beside a couple of other senior girls, Angie and Jimmy sat a few rows behind her and I went over to the lower classes side of the room and sat with Victor Crawley and Ernie Fletcher behind a young girl named Ann Nixon. 

The benevolent principal, Miss Annie Jackson, signaled for prayers and everyone knelt with their heads bowed into their hands while she said the Lord’s Prayer out loud in Irish. We were supposed to it say with her but it was never taught to us because Miss Jackson had little or no Irish and the way that she said the prayer didn’t sound like the Irish that we heard at home on the wireless. After prayers, Miss Minnion, the young students teacher, started our day of learning by writing short division sums on the blackboard which we copied on to our slates and proceeded to work on.

And so the morning passed with Miss Jackson reading out loud from the Bible, interpreting difficult passages for us. Then there was the English reading class followed by grammar and spelling and, finally, time for lunch in the room beside the classroom. It was furnished with one long wooden table running down the center, long benches each side and a counter a few feet away on which there was usually a large pot of whatever Miss Blake had cooked that day, most often a fatty mutton stew served on tin plates with slices of dry bread.

Following lunch we all trooped out into the school yard to play games and use the toilets. The yard had a gray gravel wall half way around on the street side and our school was part of a three story dark faced building with gloomy looking windows on each floor. This was, to us, the somewhat mysterious Ashleigh Boys Orphanage and the building reached the full length of our yard and beyond a high wall was the orphanage’s yard.

It was mostly during our break times that we heard the awful cries of boys being punished with loud whacks from canes and leathers. I learned in later years from an Ashleigh boy with whom I corresponded that the entire building had been a prison for wayward seamen over a hundred years ago and that the rooms and corridors were haunted by the ghosts of convicts who had been hanged in the yards that we played in. He also told of the awful cruelty of the schoolmasters.

Miss Jackson let us out an hour earlier than usual on that special day and when we went out into Lurgan Street, Jessie said that we were going home "the other way" meaning the longer but nicer route by way of the Law Temple near Broadstone and that we were to look for the Secret Arrow in the grounds of the Temple and also in the park nearby that stretched up to Phibsboro from there. She had been telling us mystical stories about the Secret Arrow for weeks now and had been promising to let us search for it on a special day

Angie told Jimmy and me one night when we were in bed that Jessie probably knew about the Secret Arrow from a picture with the film star that she loved: Gene Raymond. I knew about him just from her writing his name with a fancy flourish in different parts of the house and backyard.

We searched in vain in the Temple grounds and then went on to the park near the North Circular Road . It was when we were in the last section of the park close to the haunted house near the Blacquire cinema that Jessie finally pointed to a sign outside of a small business office that had a black arrow with a long shaft below the name of the company. I followed the disgruntlement expressed by Angie and Jimmy with my own complaint that the arrow wasn’t secret and wasn’t hidden in the park or Temple grounds.

We soon reached what was to have been Phibsboro Bridge when it had been planned to extend the Royal Canal down to Broadstone Railway Station. Jessie guided us across the busy street, whereupon Angie said that he wanted to show us a new level behind Mountjoy Prison.

This was of great interest to Jimmy and me. So Jessie nodded approval of the walk that would take us home by way of a curved lane behind the prison wall and onto the canal banks at the Ladies Lock.

The word level that Angie used was a name given to bold tests of skill and bravery undertaken by the bigger boys of Angie’s age….Jamesy Halion, Brendan Buckley, Mick Mahosha and others from our road. A couple of levels that they conquered were walking the long but stony wall that separated the back lane from the canal banks and jumping over the gap without falling into beds of high nettles. Another was walking on the slippery wooden posts along one section of the canal without falling into the water.

A fast-flowing narrow stream ran around the back of Mountjoy Prison’s high wall, possibly intended to deter convicts from jumping down from the wall provided that they could scale the wall on the inside. However, the stream was not more than two feet deep. 

Looking down from the laneway, Angie pointed to a narrow ledge along the prison wall, just inches over the highest part of the stream. It was about four inches at its widest part and about two inches at its narrowest. This was the level that the older boys had recently discovered and Angie and Jimmy, leaving their school bags up in the lane, climbed down the steep embankment and proceeded, with backs to the prison wall, to slowly inch their way along the level.

Even though they moved very slowly I was engrossed and felt sorry when Jimmy’s left foot slipped into the water. They continued to the end of the level and jumped across the stream to climb back up to the lane. In the meantime, Jessie, lost interest in their efforts and started singing in a sweet soprano "Boo hoo, you’ve got me crying for you" a new song that she had heard in a picture. Angie and Jimmy caught up with Jessie and me as we headed towards the Ladies Lock. They were talking about how they did the level and what they would do differently next time.

As we strolled on down by the canal, Jessie pointed out the different kinds of wild marsh flowers and tapered rushes to us and then told us to look away across the canal, over the railway wall to a large brown building that she said was the Drumcondra Hospital on the Whitworth Road. Some famous Irish writers had been patients there, she said, adding that there was a cemetery at the back of the building where some of the writers were buried. Then she started singing "Boo hoo" again as we got nearer to our part of the canal.

Shortly, we came to the slope above our own canal banks where we played all summer long and had snowball battles in winter. This was where we would watch barges full of grain from the midlands being pulled by horses on each side of the canal…where we watched as the boatmen manipulated the sluices on the locks to bring the water to a level that would permit the boat to glide into the deep gully and then be lowered to the main basin level in order to be horse drawn again all the way down the end of the canal at Dublin Harbor.

As we got closer to our backyard Jessie told me to do my special call so I let out a high pitched yodel and sure enough our lovely little brown and white dog, Bunny, came running around Birmingham’s Lane, up the canal banks and started jumping up and down all around us. Within minutes,we were in the back yard door to the garden calling out to Ma that we were home and once inside, rushed into the front parlor where our school bags were hastily deposited under the couch where they would remain untouched and unmissed for the next six weeks.