Cabra History.Com

‘My Granny Burke lived on Broombridge Road. Before that she lived in a flat in town. In 1896 when she was five years old, and due to family circumstances she was placed into care. She eventually ended up in a Reform School for girls in County Tipperary, a million miles away from Dublin. She left the school when she was sixteen years old and went working for a lovely family as a domestic. She told my mother that one day her and her pals all went out to the countryside for a dance at the crossroads. All the lads would be there from around the area and there’d be a fiddler and an accordion player providing the music. The craic of course would be ninety and they’d all be dressed up in their Sunday best and hoping to find someone. This was every Sunday at around 4pm and mainly in the summer months. Granny said that they were all there one day in particular doing the set dances and the fellas would have buckets of sweat coming off a them as the girls all danced with their dresses swooshing around the place. She said it was all clean fun and no carrying on or anything like that. But on this particular day didn’t the oul Parish Priest arrive out on his bicycle waving a blackthorn stick at them and shouting at them for taking part in immoral dancing. As he passed by my granny didn’t he hit her a belt of the stick across the back. Well she was having none of that and her being born in the Monto in Dublin ran after him and dragged him off a the bike. And of course everyone took to their heels at the sight of the priest flying off the bike and into the ditch. Granny stared down at him as he lay on his back and she told him never to raise a hand to her again or he’d get worse. Now, I love this story about my granny because although she was only sixteen years old at the time and living in a different age to us today she still wasn’t afraid of the oul priest and good on her for giving him what for. She said that she’d had enough of that kind of thing from the Nuns…’