One womans memories of dancing at Offaly carnivals

The Carnival Girls

by Frances Browner

I went to my first dance in Cloghan Carnival. The Friday night céilí it was and I only a slip of a girl, all of fourteen years, in a purple empire-line dress my mother had made me.
We set off up Castle Street, my cousin Alice and I, turned right at the square, which is now a roundabout, where we fell in with a few girls from the Hill Road. Another two or three we picked up on Banagher Street and by the time we reached the sports field, we were a giddy group. The chat was all about which lad they had their eye on for the evening and whether they’d ‘go’ with one of them later, or not. Looking back, that was the best part. Down on holidays from Dublin, I clung to the camaraderie of this small Midlands town.
We could hear the strain of fiddle strings, a tin whistle and piano accordion. The Kieran Kelly Band was warming up, luring us with their lively tunes. We could smell the turf smoke, even though it was July; crunch the grass under our cube heel shoes; see the Marquee soar majestic towards a royal blue sky.
We popped into the pongo tent first, to eye up the talent. For me, it was a chance to calm my nerves. For, I’d never chatted a boy my own age before and the place was packed with them. Not just the local lads who had hovered after us through the town, but strange ones too from faraway places like Banagher and Ferbane, Belmont and Ballysheil. Alice and the girls seemed unperturbed, greeting some, ignoring others, as we entered the Marquee.
And I had never been ‘asked up to dance’ before. What would I do?
I lined up along one wall with the women, that’s what I did, and ran away every time a surge of men made for us. For men they were, aged sixteen to sixty and all agog. I took solace several times in the ladies’ loo, where I sat despondent on a bale of hay, while a frenzy of females jostled in front of a postage-stamp sized mirror. Amid the scent of perfume, there now mingled toilet odours and the smell of sawdust.
“Did ya bring yer knittin’?” one lad had the nerve to shout in at me.
Alice was having the time of it twirling around the floor for the two-step; quick step; slow waltz and jive. In and out and in and out and in and out for the Siege of Ennis. She’d been to Tommy Gannon’s classes, you see, another opportunity denied to this one from Dublin. Her younger sister Marie was there too, and the three children she was babysitting. You’d find all sorts at a ceili. Every time she caught my forlorn face in the corner, she’d roar, “Did ya not get a dance yet?”
I was beside meself.
Finally, I found comfort from the cloakroom attendant. An elderly woman, I thought, and dependable, although by my reckoning now, she was only in her 40’s then. Thanks be to the Lord God. I was about to relax, even tap my pointy toes and hum along with Brendan Shine’s Bridges of Paris, when a burly farmer approached, red face and freckles, a tweed cap clutched in the huge hand he proffered.
“Will ya dance?” he asked gruffly.
I nudged my cloakroom companion.
“Say no,” she said and I obeyed, filled with guilt for letting him down, worried that he might feel rejected. But, no sooner had the words fallen from my lips than he’d whisked HER out on to the floor, whirling HER away from me. Never saw a sign of them since.
Next thing, a nice-looking lad appeared, his face shiny and hopeful, his hand clammy when he took mine. At the end of the set, I didn’t know how to take my leave of him. I had forgotten to ask Alice, you see. What was I to do? He tilted his head towards the floor and we danced again. And again and again. Panic started to set in. Couples were meeting and parting all around us and after seven sets, I felt faint. What would he make of me? The Girl from Dublin. A Hot Bit of Stuff. The only heat I was feeling was around the Peter Pan collar of Ma’s homemade dress. Eventually, Alice ended up beside us, turned to her partner all smiles and said ‘thank you.’
Thank you?
As easy as that?
“Thanks a million,” said I to my lad who looked like he’d been hit with a hurley.
I couldn’t be stopped then. Tripping across the floorboards. Sweat steaming. Faces and lights rotating. My heart lifting with the music, falling for the National Anthem. Alice and I running all the way home laughing, the start of many nights, the tea and currant cake left out by Auntie Peg. The two of us, then three of us, four of us, five, according as her sisters started out, sitting in front of a dying fire, reliving dance after dance after dance.
During the day, we practiced our steps around the kitchen. I would carry a portable record-player down on the bus and we’d jive to Marmalade’s Suddenly You Love Me, waltz to Larry Cunningham’s Don’t let me cross over and had to make do with humming Shoe the Donkey for the two-step.
The season started in June with Ferbane; July was Cloghan; August we had Birr Vintage Week and Ballycumber; September all roads led to Shannonbridge. And Banagher. The tent pitched beside the Shannon, water rustling, the moon shimmering above the bridge. What a picturesque place for a court. If you got off with a Banagher boy you were made up. With their leather jackets, long hair and revving motorbikes, they were the cool dudes. And, with a bit of luck, you might wangle a date for the Donkey Derby.
In winter, we had the dancehalls. Standing on the square, thumbs out for Birr, Ballinasloe, Athlone or Tullamore. All of Ireland’s main arteries flowed through Cloghan, you see. Or, we could pile into the Bennetts’ Ford Consul for the price of two shillings. Packed in with another nine or ten maybe. Sardines would have been sorry for us. More sins were surely committed on that journey and we couldn’t do a thing about it, Father. Alice had to sit on the radiator in the Central once, to steam the creases out of her black bell-bottoms.
The only place open on Christmas night was Quigley’s Hall in Banagher. How I’d envy Alice and Marie and I at home in my bedroom, dancing every step in my head. Next day, I’d be on the train to Clara, in time for the County Arms on Stephen’s night. One year, there was no bus to Cloghan. “Do you know anyone around these parts?” The stationmaster scratched his head, not knowing what to do with me. My mother’s cousin, Rita, and her husband Jimmy Keenaghan? His eyes lit up. He took me to their house and Jimmy later drove me all the way to Birr for the dance.
Alas! In the seventies, the carnivals ended and we had to make do with the discos and cool bands like the Freshmen, Plattermen, Conquerors and the Memories. Ah! The memories. It was at the céilí it all began; that first Friday night in Cloghan. After turning up the hem of my empire-line for the following Friday, I never looked back.
“Life in the Midlands long ago could be mundane,” Marie recalled recently. “The carnival with the lights and the music and the people coming in from everywhere was a huge thrill.”
I know Marie, I know. Wasn’t it the same for me? Didn’t I cross the country for it? Trek eighty-two miles on a train and a bus and even hitch lifts from auld lads to get there?

A condensed version of The Carnival Girls has already been broadcast on RTE's Sunday Miscellany and appears in Frances Browner's collection of short stories - You Could've Been Someone - launched in Birr Library recently.