John James McGarrigle: Still bursting with energy and a love of life

One of the many remarkable things about 97-year-old John James McGarrigle from the lovely townland of Cashelard near Ballyshannon is that deep inside, he still feels 17. 

And John James has the frame of a man much younger as he sits composed, with his arms folded and ready to face anything.  

He is as bright as a star, as hardy as heather, bursting with an energy and love of life that must have been something else when he wore the invincible armour of youth. 

John James is a most independent soul as he still drives his Massey Ferguson 35; his home, which is full of memorabilia, is   like a country palace, and he has been singing in the Cashelard choir for the past 76 years. 

Members of his family live close by, but John James is still the king of his castle in every sense.

John James with his children Seamus, Anne, Hugh and Margaret

In his youth he was  a noted actor and can still deliver a scéal with all the flourish of a true thespian and seanchaí. 

Of course, it helps that he has a photographic memory and is a real man for all seasons. He’s  what the ancient Irish would have described as a ‘duine ildánach’. 

It is warm in his Cashelard home on this icy December evening as story after story tumble from his fertile brain, of the cloth capped era of the 1940s and early 50’s when he was a handy footballer with Cashelard. He also played with neighbouring Corlea. 

At school he loved words, books and singing and became a very erudite and eloquent secretary of the football club and, as a very hard-working farmer, was also secretary of the Ballyshannon Mart committee. 

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But the tea-total John James has also been involved in a number of local community ventures such as a group water scheme for the area in the 1950s which was only the second in the county at the time. 

He loves the land with a passion beyond words and has been rearing top quality stock since the early 1950s, with a more recent passion for sheep. 

But there is also a strong streak of enterprise in this most entertaining of men as he has sowed a few acres of potatoes and sold turkeys too. And when he was young, he recalls smuggling “anything and everything both ways across the border.”

Ballyshannon

John James McGarrigle was born in the Back Street in Ballyshannon in 1925 in the house of a Mrs McNulty who had a small maternity home for expectant mothers.

His father was John McGarrigle and his mother was Annie Barron and they were neighbours. 

“My father was in America and he came home to get married. We moved to Trummon and I wish those days would come back again,” John James said.

John James McGarrigle in his younger days

He remembers going to school in Behey in a “wet coat and sitting the whole day in it”. 

His teacher was Mrs Doherty - “a lovely teacher”. It was at Behey National School that he got his great love of singing and he has been a member of the Cashelard choir since 1946.

“I love music and I am singing away the whole time,” he said.

“My sisters were good singers as well. We danced to them all, Bing Crosby, Nat King Cole, Frank Sinatra and even Elvis. There were some great dances in those days. 

“McCabe’s Hall in Belleek was great too.

“We were coming back from Bundoran on the bicycles and it was a dark night. One of our boys had a puncture and it couldn’t be fixed. So one of our lads borrowed a donkey. It was one of the donkeys that used to be on Tullan Strand. 

“When they got to the head of Finner they hit the donkey a slap and he headed back for Bundoran.”

Cashelard

Life was tough growing up in Cashelard in the 1930s with “plenty of hard work with the spuds and the turf to be won.”

“We smuggled the butter up from Belleek. Eddie of the Road who had a shop in Corlea had the white flag out if there were any customs men about and James Óg Gonigle did the same. 

“And then you would come up by the Crooked Bridge and then up by Brian Devanney’s back to Cashelard. 

“But the funny thing was that we smuggled the butter both ways depending on the price. 

John James still drives his Massey Ferguson 35

He added: “During the war years things were scarce and there was black bread and white bread, and sure only for Belleek and the smuggling we would have been lost. 

“The customs men were tough. They took shoes off my mother one time, and she had to walk to Ballyshannon then to redeem them”. 

But the artful John James was never caught by the customs. 

“I didn’t give them the chance.”

 “Money was scarce and if you got half a crown to go to the dance in Corlea, you were a lucky man. There were plenty of women in Corlea Hall but sure the half of them would not look at Cashelard fellows. 

“It was a cracking hall and so was McCabe’s Hall in Belleek and we danced all over”. 

John James and his sisters Bessie, Annie and Marie

John James’s local hall in Cashelard was built in 1927. 

“It was an Ancient Order of Hibernians Hall,” he said.

“There were dances in it and Maureen Slevin played music and Tom Connors and James Hoey used to come out from Ballyshannon to play music too. 

“And then there were local people like Vincent McGurn and John McGurn who also played. 

“I heard Eddie Moore from Corlea and he was a great fiddler”. 

But John James was also a bit of a thespian, and he acted in five or six plays. He was also  a key force in the Cashelard Group Water Scheme in the early 1960s and the Mart Secretary in Ballyshannon for over 20 years. 

“I was nearly secretary to everything that ever was,” he said

“I was there from the 1960s to the 1980s. I loved the writing and recording of things, taking minutes, sending out correspondence and everything that went with it. 

“I was secretary of the GAA club here and secretary of the Hall Committee. 

“I still have the minutes from the Mart, and I loved it. It was a real education”. 

John James also has fond memories of the legendary local man Jimmy Rourke from Corlea who worked in Cashelard Creamery. 

“He was my manager when I played football with Corlea”. 

A remarkable man - John James

And he also remembers a peddler of the road in the 1940s called Bob Davitt who maintained he was a relation of the Land League President Michael Davitt. 

“He would come with needles and pins and slept in houses and would sleep on a cock of hay if he got into it. 

“Davitt only had the bag that was on his back, that was his whole world”. 

Singing was and still is a consuming passion as well and John James must be one of the oldest chorists in the land. 

“The singing is great as it lifts the spirit as well as the soul,” he said.

“The chapel in Cashelard was built in 1898 and the creamery which is still going strong was built in 1904. Willie Hamilton was the first Chairman of the creamery. 

“I brought milk on a donkey and cart, and you brought home the skim.”

John James and his family moved from Trummon, his ancestral home to his current home in Cashelard in 1972. 

So where did he get his great interest in Gaelic football? 

“Six or seven of us used to play in the school yard among ourselves,” he said.

“We listened to Micheal O’Hehir’s wonderful commentaries on the radio. We went to neighbours’ houses, and you would nearly think you were at the match he was that good. 

“Cavan were the big team at that time. I remember John Joe O’Reilly playing in Bundoran and Donegal were playing Cavan. Big Tom O’Reilly took a bleed in the nose and the game was called off.”

John James thinks the GAA club was formed in Cashelard in the early 1930s.

“The Cashelard colours were blue and white, the Cavan colours. Everybody wanted to look like Cavan.

“My sister Annie used to wash the jerseys. 

“We trained in Murray’s field across from the pub and Murray charged us 30 shillings for the field for a year.” 

For many matches the Cashelard team used to travel by lorry but they had very close links with the neigbouring club of Corlea on the border with Belleek. 

He also recalls Cashelard getting to a Donegal Junior Championship final in 1937, only to lose out to Dungloe by 3-2 to 1-0.

John James was only 12 then, but he often heard stories about these local footballing legends and their exploits when football was all that so many people had.

And with that, he effortlessly rhymes off the Cashelard team that lost out to Dungloe in that 1937 final.

The team was William Coughlin, Wee Francie Donagher, Michael Coughlin and Big Francie Donagher; John Joe Donagher, James McCool and Jim McGarrigle; James Gallinagh, John McGahern (who was county standard and played with Ballyshannon but moved to Cashelard which was fairly close to him), Vincent McGurn, Patsy McGarrigle, Josie McCauley; Con Clarke (grandfather of Mary Matthews of Shannon’s Corner), Michael McCauley and John Coughlan.

John James is the last living link with these local heroes, but he is too modest and matter of fact to say that he is one of that band from a later era when he was also club secretary, 

“I knew everybody in Corlea and Belleek from the dances in Corlea Hall.

“Some of the Corlea players played with Cashelard in 1949, and in 1950 the Cashelard club broke up. Corlea reformed in 1951 and some of us played for them. Dungloe beat us in the county championship”

John James played in the forwards and liked to hit the frees. 

He quit playing in the 1951/52 season and his last game was against Abbey Shamrocks, a country team just outside of Ballyshannon. 

“That game was played in Legaltion and we beat them. But there was a bit of an ould scrimmage about a line ball near the end and the game was called off. 

“Big Francey Donagher was Cashelard’s manager and Patsy McGarrigle and Dinny Kelly used to be refereeing. 

“There were a lot of  McGarrigles who used to play for Cashelard. 

“John, Ernie, Eddie, Patsy, Michael, Ben, Eunan and Jim all played. 

“There were McGurns on our Cashelard team and Michael Coughlan who used to come home from teaching in Monaghan on his motorbike to play full-back for us. 

“Vincent McGurn played as well 

“We had some lads playing who were working for the Cementation  - the company that dredged the Erne and built the hydro-electric power stations in Ballyshannon and Cliff.

“Paddy Gallagher, Tom Lambe, John Carr and Hughie Carr all played for us.

“We used to have sports days in Cashelard as well and while I won some races there were no medals. All I have are Sacred Heart medals. 

“We had a camogie team in Cashelard as well in the 1930s and Mary McGarrigle, Suzanne Phillips and Mary Jane Donagher played in Kistenagh. 

“Cashelard was a great place in days gone by with the McCauleys, McGarrigles, Donaghers,, Rooneys and Coughlans who all played. 

“Dinny Kelly came to Cashelard as a blacksmith, and he trained our football team. 

“Con Clarke was a great GAA man as well and he was club chairman. Dinny Kelly was Vice Chairman. 

“Josie McCauley was a great footballer and Patrick McCauley of the mountain is a first cousin of Joyce McMullin of Four Masters and Donegal.So Joyce got his football from Cashelard.”

He added: “We had a Tug of War team as well in Cashelard and we once pulled against the Army in Bundoran”. 

Cards were played, and 25 Drives were a big go to raise funds for the hall and the parish. 

John James got married to Susy McCrory from Omagh in 1964 after meeting up with her in Cashelard where she came to work. 

“Susy had an aunt, Susan McGarrigle that lived up in Carrcknahorna and she became very good friends with two of my sisters, Bessie and Cissie Gillespie who lived in Kildoney and that’s how I met up with her.” 

Even though he is 97, his birthday was a few weeks ago, John James still works the land every day on his trusty Massey 35, his main mode of transport. 

He is also a big Fine Gael supporter and local councillor Barry Sweeny took an iconic picture of John James on his tractor. 

“I joined Fine Gael In 1949,”  he said.

“I came out of the chapel in Cashelard one day and this wee man asked me. He was a Coughlan man from the mountain. 

“Nearly all the old people around Cashelard were Fine Gael because many of them were Hibernians”. 

He produces minutes from meetings about the AOH,  Croagh Breesey Bog and various other organisations  - all written in his own lovely copperplate handwriting. 

An avid Donegal and Arsenal supporter, he reads the Democrat from cover to cover every week, and also the Irish Independent.

He read the recent book on Anthony Molloy by Frank Craig in a day. 

It was much later when I left John James and his children Hugh and Margaret who were great prompters. The stars of heaven were shining brightly over the white hills of Cashelard, and John James’s sunny soul and spirit stayed with me every inch of the way back to Belleek.  

Footnote:

John James’s wife Susy died in 2013 and he is the sole survivor of his family who were Annie Gillespie, Elizabeth Brady and his foster sisters, Phylis Carney and Marie Reddington. 

His children are Seamus who is married to Julia Mulligan, Anne who is married to Des Boyle, Hugh who is married to Jacqueline Martin, and Margaret who is married to Murt Cullen. 

He has eight grandchildren, Lorcan and Ciaran Boyle, Amy and Stephen Cullen, and Daniel, Emer, Aoibhinn and Niamh McGarrigle.