Would you not go out to the graveyard and dig up a good, old, decent Fenian

Lorna from the Aidan Heavey Library, Athlone talks to Eamonn Hughes about his life as a teacher, the value of primary sources, and his most recent project.

What is Past Perspectives?

A Westmeath Libraries podcast where we chat with a variety of local historians. We'll learn what started them on the path towards history and they'll share some gems of our local history collection

Welcome to the Westmeath Libraries Podcast. Today we are celebrating local history and having a chat with Athlone historian, Eamonn Hughes.

Lorna : So where did your interest in the subject stem from?

Eamonn Hughes : I suppose, you know, when you're in school and you find out how bad you were at everything, you just realize I'm not so bad at this. And I think I had a sympathetic teacher, that sometimes let on that he actually liked the subject.

Lorna : Was that from National School?

Eamonn : That would have been from early secondary school.
And then you make your priorities. Would I be for maths or would it be for the other ones? I was for the other ones. Yeah, so that's where I went. So the thing just took on wings, and the rest is history.

Lorna : And did you study history for your Leaving Cert?

Eamonn : I did, yes, and I would have probably spent maybe a little bit too much time because, you know, you always stay longer with the thing that you like.

Lorna : Absolutely. I was the very same. And you loved it for your Leaving cert, did you pursue it then after in third level?

Eamonn : Yeah. I then went to university and then you have the options of the subjects. It was a really interesting set of teachers in Maynooth at the time. And one of them was Tom Fee (Tomás Ó Fiaich), who afterwards became the cardinal. And Tom was a really good sort of a less common, good, decent Republican. Okay. I remember in the BA year, all of us would have to present our subject for a mini thesis. So we'd have to, in a sense, defend it in front of of the peers and Tom and the faculty. And of course, I was very keen on writing on the contribution of T.P. O'Connor. The M.P. for Scotland-Liverpool to the Home Rule party. He happened to be born behind the castle in Athlone.

So I thought he would be suitable and reasonable. So, Tom Fee says to me, says, you're from that bloody old garrison town down there in Athlone. And he said, And you're doing one of those home rulers. He said would you not go out to the graveyard and dig up a good old, decent Fenian that you might write about. And I remember it was a big laugh. And I thought about it. But then afterwards he came to me and said, look, if you're happy to do T.P. O'Connor then go and do it.
So that would have been the first long extended essay that I ever wrote.

And then, you know, once you kind of write your first one you break all of the taboos and the worries. And then the next one isn't so difficult.

Lorna : Yeah, absolutely. And would your family have had a history in history of studying history, I should say.

Eamonn : My mother's people were. They would have been more academic than my father's people. They would have been they would have been Cavan farmers and there would have been a few historical figures in the family going back generations. So there's always a good sense of where they were from and a sense that they were part of a historical sequence in the county.

So that was always something that was part of the rearing at home. Of course, my father would say, Well I don't know who the Hughes are, and he was kind of proud of that. But my mother knew who her people were. Yeah. And that was kind of instilled into us.

So that kind of tied in with the school thing. And the good teacher and then the very good teachers in Maynooth. You always need a good teacher because you can't do it on your own. You know, just wither and die. You have to be brought on. You have to be encouraged. And there's absolutely no shame in that.

Lorna : I always said the same. I was very much encouraged by my teachers and very influenced by them. And you went on to become a teacher yourself?

Eamonn : Yeah. Well, now, you know, there are many, many, many career options, I don't think back in 1970 and so many of my colleagues and my peers just got on the boat or on the plane and just left. And they left a small and a sort of a decrepit crowd behind them. We just had to make do wherever the jobs were. In pubs or wherever you just went and you did it. And then if you were lucky enough, then you got your chance to go to university. And if you're lucky, and if you worked hard because it was hard and it was difficult and in those university exams, there was no prisoners taken. And you just had to go swimm in it or you were out.

So it was difficult, but it was exhilarating as well.

It was always edgy. There was always an edge to us. And you went to your tutorials. You got ready because if you didn't and if you were asked a question, the mortification of not being prepared. So you got to always got prepared. And then that's something that stayed with you. When you were going into, say, into a First Year class teaching, the first thing a teacher had to be was prepared.
And, you know, to walk into a class and say, well, boys or girls, what will we do today. That, to me, was a sign of a teacher who just wasn't doing his business.

Lorna : They weren't ready for it.

Eamonn : I kind of ashamed about that. Because the first rule of life is don't waste people's time. Not even young people in the school, don't waste their time. Because they expect, and they need, and they deserve a focused class.

Lorna : Yeah, I think that's a nice way of approaching it.

Eamonn : Yeah, that's. That's how I would have seen it.

Lorna : Yeah. And did you think when you were doing your BA that you'd like to teach when you were finished.

Eamonn : Yeah. Well then, you know, I was teaching away and then the opportunity then came to do, to do a law degree in Galway. So we did that. And then after that then we an opportunity came. You get invited to the King's Inns on the basis of the quality of your degree. So we went there and we did that and we went to the bar and we did all that.

And then, then you have a career choice will I stay teaching or will I go down to the law library? And for me, its really a no brainer because the reason for doing the law was to get a good sense of it and to understand it. And then it might help in the quality of my teaching. So that's why I did it. Yeah, it was a aid to teaching rather than a new career option. So we went back to school and we were fine and happy about that.

Lorna : Yeah. that's good. That's good. And was there a particular year you preferred teaching in the school? Did you like to Senior cycle?

Eamonn : It was great to get into the first year's because you can really make your mark and you could show them the way it was going to be and you got to them before they were kind of spoiled or ruined, or off the track. Yeah, you were able to lay down a good tracks, especially history.

Because you could go immediately with the primary and secondary sources and the kids could really understand what the difference was and once you had made that, then it was easy because sometimes history was a teacher reading it out of a book and explaining the explained thing.
That's quite tedius, and people were saying this isn't for me, but there was a whole other way of dealing with history, which was getting access to primary sources. Explaining what a primary source was. How you interrogate, almost like being over in the Garda station, you know, how you'd ask questions of a primary source and how then you would build up almost inductively, you'd build up the story rather than having it dictated to you by a board or tired teacher.

So it was kind of a reverse and that's what I used to do.

Lorna : You bring it to life then.

Eamonn : And then about ten years ago, then I think the department were getting a little worried about the way the teaching history was, was what's been taught in school. It was very didactic. It was teacher down. And this huge focus on memorization and secondary secondary sources and learning quantum and then exams became memory tests rather than understanding.

So they began to change the focus I suppose. And hiring for teachers who might not so much focus on the content but try and focus on a methodology? To try and give teachers new tools to actually teach with. So there about ten of us. And we were preparing material for the teachers for the first year, Junior Cert, Leaving Cert, Transition Year and then how to use all of this, how to use the Internet and all of the electronic stuff that was just literally avalanching on us. And how rather than see it as a kind of fearful thing, how a child could fully embrace IT and bring history to life and use it to enhance their skills. So , we published a few booklets and we went around the schools teaching teachers.

Lorna : Fantastic.

Eamonn : One thing that I did for them I wrote a TY module for the Flight of the Earls in 1607, and we did it purely from documentary sources. So we were able by say, nine or ten good well-chosen, good contextual sources we were able to teach the flight through the documents only with no reference to their secondary books.

Lorna : And it prepares the kids much better for college life than.

Eamonn : Some people could really understand. And they were asking questions of the documents and they could see how the linkages were made. One interesting point- I was trying to explain to them the difference between what they call "official history" and tradition. For example, O'Neill and O'Donnell were big men in themselves and they knew that. So they had this guy following them around, the scribe or historian, O Cianain. And he would be writing down all of the famous words and all of their activities, both in Ireland and Rome, and wherever.

And I was trying to explain that was the so-called official history that he was giving. But then there was a tradition then where the people, the ordinary people had their stories. And like Damien Kiberd would say, a really interesting thing happened on the morning that they left Lough Swilly in the boat, the so-called Flight. It was actually a physical flight. Yeah, they had got on the ship. They were all over the place. Some of them forgot their sons, O'Donnell forgot his wife, and off they went and the people were jumping up and down on the sides of Lough Swilly. And the argument is the official historian says they were weeping and wailing and lamentation and crying at the leaving of these great people who might never return.

But then Damien Kiberd said the tradition was that they were jumping up and down with delight and glee and happiness, that these rack renters and these steelers of taxes and herders of cattle who had made their lives miserable were finally leaving Ireland, and that they were free of them. So, where do you go there? Which source do you trust - The official history or the tradition? Sometimes you got to go with the tradition.

Lorna : Yeah. and its great to make children of school going age think that way, to think outside the box.

Eamonn : And sometimes you can see the windows, the eyes of wonder open up, like there is a different way of looking at it, rather than what their teacher at the top of the class.
So sometimes history can be quite subversive. And I suppose what you trying to do is you're trying to get the kid to, you know, of course you want them to get Leaving Certs and you want good results. But really I think that a teacher's work is done when a 40 year old girl comes home from work after a hard day, and she sits down, and she pours herself a glass of wine and she picks up her favorite history book.

I think that's when the teachers work is done.

Lorna : Yeah, absolutely. It's a lifelong love, isn't it? Yeah. And I had a very inspirational teachers and I often think of them because I still go home and read books and read historical books. And I loved reading your work and yeah, I love my work here.

Eamonn : Yeah. And it's, it's just a sort of a thing that gets you. And if you're properly encouraged and you've good people around you, and nobody hurt or upsets you, or tells you that you are no good.

Lorna : But I think even I only know you even from working here. You're so enthusiastic and that comes off you in waves. So I would have loved to have had you as a teacher.
But it's infectious, you know, and you can't help but get caught up in it.

Eamonn : It's when you show them that, you know, the textbook is wonderful but there's so many textbooks and it's a wonderful story, but sometimes you can build a story yourself.
By actually staying true to the facts. And your story is better almost than what's in the book because you've made it yourself and you really understand it. Yeah. So, like, you know, primary sources, somebody said, What is a primary source? Well a primary source is, I suppose, is really created by your witness who experiences the thing first hand. It's the original material of which all of our research is based.
So it really it's the raw material of history. And then a secondary source, is always kind of one step removed away from the process that you study. It kind of interprets, it gives meaning to the primary source, but it's not the primary source.
So once a boy or girl can understand that then there're armed literally for life. The potential is that you will be a really good historian.

Lorna : Absolutely. Yeah. And you taught in the Bower yourself?

Eamonn : Yeah. I taught in the Bower for perhaps too many years and, and I taught other places. My first job ever as a history teacher was working as a tutor for the first year students in history in Maynooth. I used to take tutorials and it was the first time that we were actually brought into the main dining room of the college. you could sit down and eat.

Lorna : It's a beautiful colleges isn't it?

Eamonn : Very nice, but it was very churchy and there was a lot of priests teaching then. So it was a kind of a male place.

Lorna : Yeah, still is a bit, I think.

Eamonn : Yes. And the only females there were the people bringing in and out the food and I said this, this is very old fashioned. This is not going to be the way of the future and it wasn't. And I suppose by the time I left it then they actually made appointments to the history staff, they'd two or three women lecturers. Mary Cullin I remember, a really good teacher.

Lorna : She was there when I was there and I didn't have her, but I remember the name all right.

Eamonn : And they were all smart people. So I worked at there for two years and then come home then to the Marist and then went to the Bower.

Lorna : And you taught modern history.

Eamonn : Yeah, I taught modern history for a long time. And then there was a teacher who was teaching what they call the early modern, or back then they'd call it the medieval history. And she retired, so I was asked then to do both. I think we were the only school in the province.

Lorna : I would have loved to have done medieval history because I did a lot of medieval history in college, but I didn't have the option in secondary school.

Eamonn : Yeah, but there was there was actually a Leaving Cert paper, and it started with the Lordship of the Kildares, around say 1500 and it went right up to the Flight of the Earls in say 1607. So it was really the conquest and the colonization of Ireland. And then in terms of Europe, then I suppose the whole thing would be coalescing around Renaissance and reformation.
So you're looking at say 1477 to 1610. Those would have been the course parameters.

Lorna : And was there a particular area you were interested in researching yourself?

Eamonn : Yeah, we did a lot of Irish history. And I suppose the Nine Years War and trying to explain why Ulster was different. Yeah, even back then Ulster was different because back then Ulster was the most Irish of the provinces. Today it's the most English. But Ulster was always different to the other three provinces. It was never in step. When the south of Ireland was becoming colonized by the Tudors, Ulster put up its gates and they weren't eventually breached until maybe 1610. But then afterwards, then, of all of the provinces, it was the one that became most Anglicized. So there's always that point of difference between Ulster and the rest.

Lorna : Yeah. And have you pursued your own research since you finished teaching?

Eamonn : Yeah. Well, you know, one of the biggest kind of worries that people have when they're sort of retiring is what'll I do next? There's only so many times you can read the Irish Independent. And there's only so many times you can sweep up the leaves. So I just took on a little project. There was a couple of nice houses, up in South Longford that needed their stories to be told.
Well, we picked out maybe a half dozen houses and we told story of the families that moved through them, you know, so successively. Going back to the Longford plantation, in say 1620. And telling the story right up to the present day and seeing how the actual physical house in its many shapes and iterations, how it interacted with the Townland and the bigger district.
I would have looked at some of the minor gentry families that would have lived in those houses. They were very quick to make that distinction back then between what they called parish gentry and county gentry. And they were very conscious among themselves of which was which. So the people I would have been researching would have been the ordinary parish gentry, who would what you would call middle men. Who would have taken lumps of land from, say, the Forbes's or the Foxes or the Featherstones or the the LeFroys or the King-Harmons. They would have been seen as landlords in their own right. But they were only renting from the big fellows. And then of course they would have built these lovely elegant Georgian houses that are tucked away up the side roads, and some of them are still there and some of them have been renewed and reinvigorated and some of them are falling down as we speak. And then others have just melted into the quiet of the countryside. But that's how things are.

Lorna : Yeah, but it's lovely to have their stories told.

Eamonn : But only one or two of them were actually burned during the, what was called The Bad Times. And so Longford was unusual that only two or three burned. But the houses are still there, most of them. And the families who are in them, some of them are quite interested and chuffed to find out the eight or nine previous occupiers of the house going back as far as say the time of Oliver Cromwell. Right down to this day. So we're telling the story now of about 18 of them, so we might publish something later on in the year. We'll see how it goes.

Lorna : it sounds fantastic. Eamonn, thank you so much for giving your time today. It's great to hear how people work in the area, I suppose. And I know you're a familiar face from the library in Athlone. You're in and out of the local studies room all the time for activity.

Eamonn: Too much.

Lorna : Never. But I'd like to wish you the best of luck with your with your book.

Eamonn : Lorna, thanks very much for even consiering me for this interview and I'm delighted.

Lorna : Thank you so much.