A Fireside Chat with Fr. Tommy Doherty, Priest, Raconteur, Historian
BP: Sitting at the fireside with me this evening is the Venerable Archdeacon Thomas Doherty, pastor to his flock, film maker, entertainer, known all over the world and many other places besides as Father Tommy. You’re very welcome and thanks for coming.
FT: Thank you very much.
BP: You’ve had such a varied life that it’s hard to know where to start, so the beginning would be a good place. When and where were you born?
FT: Well, I was born in the Bridge End, Ramelton, 1903 and I was reared there till I was about eleven years of age. So at that time it was a thriving town and a very nice little town, and I’m very glad to know that today it’s becoming a Heritage Centre. I went to school there under the teaching of Master P L Ward from Killybegs, and his wife and a Mrs. Strong. And along with a lot of other boys I paddled in the Lennon river and followed the salmon up to the pool, and followed the football team, of which – Ramelton had a very famous team at that time – a soccer team – and earlier on I was told that my father was a member of that team that won the Northwest Cup. There’s a famous photograph of all the Norries and the Kellys standing in the team. So I enjoyed the Lake of Shadows, the paddle steamer that came from Fahan and connected with Ramelton and that was the outlet for the people of the west who were going abroad. They always had to come to Ramelton to get the paddle steamer, and to get the connection with the train at Fahan to bring them to Derry, and that prevailed until later on – I’ll tell you more about that later.
BP: Can I go back? Your father, what was his name?
FT: John.
BP: John Doherty – he made jaunting cars and traps – stuff like that?
FT: Yeah. Well there was a company called Hilferty’s at Bridgend, and they for years had been in the coach-building business, and they got old and some of them died off and my father and his two brothers Hughie and Emmet took over. Father was a coach painter, Hughie was a carpenter and Emmet was a smith
BP: They had it wrapped up between them, didn’t they.
FT: I’ve seen them producing jaunting cars and traps and wagonettes from scratch, so to speak.
BP: Your father was a coach painter, not a builder then. You never thought of taking up the business then, did you Father?
FT: Well, as a matter of fact, I learned a lot from him and I became interested in art. Later on I used to do a bit of scenery dabbling for Fr. McLoone and so forth. I got to know how to mix paint and so forth. But the motor car arrived in about 1910 or 11 – a man called Charlie Mitchell was the first man to have a motor car in Ramelton.
BP: Yeah, I heard that he used to hurtle round the streets and 3 to 5 miles an hour.
FT: (both laugh) Yeah, we used to keep up with him anyhow.
BP: Well, there was a rather sad occurrence because of the advent of the motor car.
FT: Yeah. It was the end of the jaunting car, so they had to close down, but the…another feature about Ramelton at that time was the railway coming from Strabane into Letterkenny, 1908. That meant that people could go through Letterkenny on towards Dublin or wherever else, so as a trading centre, Ramelton began to close down. I often saw, when I was goin’ to school, 38 or 40 carts drawn up one behind the other for the steamers, merchant ships which were at the quay, unloading coal, flour for Kelly’s mills and Russell’s mills and…
BP: Where did all these steamers come from?
FT: Well from England mostly I suppose, Scotland too, and I remember Spillers Of Cardiff – flour – I remember that distinctly because one of the lads who had been bathing with us, had bathing togs, and written on the back was ‘Spillers of Cardiff’.
(both laugh)
FT: It was a thriving town then.
BP: It was, and you mentioned the Lake of Shadows – Jim McDaid was the skipper of her – you were great fans of hers when you were running around the streets. Jim McDaid was a big hero wasn’t he? Was he the same McDaid as the bottling people?
FT: Well they would be connected. They were there at that time too, but not in the big way they are today.
BP: But the railway line killed off…
FT: Oh it was the downfall of Ramelton. Of course, nothing came into Ramelton, and people like my father losing his job, he had to clear out, and people like that couldn’t re-start. There was no method at all, not like the modern times where they give them grants to start over, or factories would start up – and Ramelton was doomed.
BP: It started into a decline around that time.
FT: Yeah.
BP: And it had been thriving hadn’t it. For many many years.
FT: It was it was. Sure you had harness makers, and at one time you had a tannery in Ramelton – the remains of it is still there – and you had a distillery.
BP: That big building on the other side of the bridge, was that the distillery?
FT: Naw, that was the tanyard. Y’know it was always famous for fishing – the ‘pool’ is still there – Sir Harry Stewart looked after that, and famous men used to come from London, from the House of Lords, to fish the pool. Many a time I saw big 30 pounders being brought out of the pool. So it was a lovely spot.
BP: You mentioned Sir Harry Stewart, who were the other big families around here at that time?
FT:Watts of Clara, Mansfields, (?) Sweenys of Moyle Hill, Fullertons of course.
BP: You told me a story earlier about a little boy who went shopping for sweets in Ramelton.
FT: Oh aye, a wee boy went into the shop and shouted “I want a penny worth o’ mixed sweets’ and the man came out and he threw down two sweets and he says ‘Caddy, you’ve more time than me, mix them yourself’. (both laugh)
BP: Mr. McAdoo?
FT: Aw yeah. I don’t know much about him, but me father used to talk about him – he was the Vice-President of America. He lived in the Mall, but I don’t know much about that.
BP: The British navy used to come in?
FT: Aw, well, the navy came up half way between Ramullen and Ramelton, at Aughnish or the Whale Head and little boys from what you’d call the Market Square in Ramelton, we used to stand and the flashlights would come from the ships in Ramullen and sometimes pause and we’d wave in the light, y’see, and then pass over. That was before the first World War.
BP: But then they’d come in a play football?
FT: They did. The sailors would come up to Ramelton and there used to be big crowds there for these matches. And it was all soccer. We didn’t know a thing about gaelic football down there. Patsy Gallagher, y’know, one of the greatest players that came out of Ireland, played for Celtic for years, and for Ireland. He was born in Ramelton.
BP: There’s another lady, father Tommy – I should really give you your proper title y’know, Archdeacon Tommy but I’m not used to sayin’ it having know you for a long time. (FT chuckles) There was a Nurse Black from Ramelton wasn’t there?
FT: Yes. Her father was Mosey Black. He had a drapers shop up near where you’d call the Finelands? She was a nurse. Yeah, she nursed King George V. And she wrote a book about it afterwards – ‘King’s nurse, Beggar’s nurse’ …
BP: Because of the demise of Ramelton and its coach-building and jaunting car company, the family moved to Letterkenny.
FT: We moved to Letterkenny, but before we leave Ramelton, I’ve some people belonging to me there. Seeing you mentioned Nurse Black, I’ve two cousins now living in Ramelton, Molly and Cathleen, and they’ve just retired from nursing, after years in Glasgow, and they’ve come back to settle down in Ramelton. They might write two books (laughs).
BP: Let me move on because we’ve got to get you into the priesthood, but you enjoyed Letterkenny?
FT: I got very excited when I came to Letterkenny, ‘cos I’d never seen a train, and I used to spend me time down at the station watching the trains shunting. I didn’t know what they were doing, but if you got a penny, you were able to get from the station in Letterkenny to the Oldtown. And if you got tuppence, you could buy a bar of chocolate as well – for leaving, y’know. For a journey. You’d get off at the Oldtown and then walk up the main street and home. It was a great thrill to get on the train y’know after being years in boats on the Lennon.
BP: You moved to Maynooth to study for the priesthood.
FT: Yeah. I went there in 1920. It was before the troubles ended. Actually, the first impression of Dublin was stepping out of the train at Amiens Street Station, and the British military and the Black and Tans put us all up along the wall. There was an ambush further up in Inch(?) street – we didn’t know about that. So they put us up against the wall an’ in due course released us, and we came up Amiens street and shots were heard and we all rushed for shelter. I remember we went down into a little cinema called the ‘Masterpiece’. I don’t know what was on but we were in shelter anyhow, and eventually we got out. That was my first impression of Dublin.
B: After seven years in Maynooth you were ordained, where was your first parish?
FT: Well, seeing as they had too many priests for the Raphoe Diocese, I had to go to Scotland, ’cause Scotland was short of men, and the Archbishop of Glasgow wrote to the Bishop to see if he could get the loan of a few priests. And Fr. Glackin and I were ordained together and not only that Edinburgh too wanted a man. So it was a toss-up between Glasgow and Edinburgh, so I tossed and I won Glasgow.
BP: Aha, the double-headed penny – you still have it? (both laugh)
FT: Fr. Glackin went to Edinburgh and I went to Glasgow and I was sent then to Paisley. I was only there for six months as their priest was ill. And then I was sent from there in 1927 to a place called The Shotts, half-way between Glasgow and Edinburgh, a mining district way up in the mountains. In the Shotts, it was a tough time because there was terrific unemployment in England and Scotland, two and a half millions. So the people were very depressed – the mines were closing down. Finally there was only one place open and people were in a very bad way. And you must remember, talk about our times now, in their times there was no such thing as a ‘dole’. People got no dole, but they got what was called a ‘means test’ and if there was two pounds ten shillings coming into the house, nobody else got anything. So we had to fall back on very desperate means to try to make a living. It was very depressing in the mining districts because there was no hope at all.
BP: It was that bad?
FT: It was that bad and people, everybody would say ‘there’s only one cure for this and that’s a war’.
BP : You told me earlier that the men got two shillings for digging a ton of coal. It took three tons of material to be dug to get one ton of coal.11
FT: Yeah. They worked in terrible conditions. I used to go down, and one night I was down in the pit and after crawling for a couple of hundred yard on my stomach, they told me I was underneath my own house. And the tunnel roof was a foot and a half high. Two men working under conditions like that.
BP : Awful conditions. I know that you did what you could with little concerts and drama just to lift their hears. Was this the first time getting into entertainment?
FT: Oh no. I was a star in Maynooth you know?
BP: I didn’t know that
FT: Did you not. That’s where I made all the money. My first year in Maynooth they put me into a play, a comic part, so I never got off the stage after that.
BP: I see, a Star is Born. (both laugh)
FT: Oh they were great fun. We did Shakespeare an’ all you know, Hamlet, Macbeth, the lot. I can tell you a funny story about Macbeth. Frank Fay from the Abbey Theatre came down to coach us for about three months, and you had to be good for Frank Fay. So I was one of the witches and he could never get us to walk around the cauldron the way we should – no no, cut, no no. So this went on for a long time, and I was a bit of a soccer player, and one evening I put me knee out. They took me to the local infirmary in the college, to make matters short, I was able to get up, and with the aid of a stick I was able to move around. Then Fay called for a rehearsal and I went down and he called for the witches. So, not knowing about me, he saw me coming out and going around the cauldron, and he turned to the other students and he call ‘Gentlemen, I’ve seen this done many and many a time by professionals, but not until this evening has anyone done it as good as Doherty’ (BP laughs) I was barely able to put me toe to the ground. And then from that on I was afraid I’d get better.
BP: I didn’t know you were a big star in those days. And Fr. McLoone was a great friend of yours at a later stage…
FT: Indeed I was just thinking of him and I think he had a better voice than Sydney McEwan, but anyway I was thinking ‘Bonny Mary of Argyll.’ as you mentioned him. Well, maybe not better, but as good as. I was with him for twenty one years.
BP: We’ll come back to Fr. McLoone in a minute, but you moved on to the town of Greenock. Tell me about Greenock in those days.
FT: Well again, Greenock was totally different from The Shotts because it was down on the Clyde as you know, famous for its sugar and its ships, and again there was a decline there too. Our church and parochial house were situated beside Scott’s Shipyard, and from my window I could look into the yard and see a ship being built from the keel right up. I remember on one occasion, I was there for five years, I saw a Cruiser being built and it was one of the ones that took part in the Battle of the River Plate. Things were bad in those days too. Shipyards closed down and there was nothing but depression. I think the population of Greenock at that time was about 64,000 – there were 16,000 unemployed.
BP: Goodness. You told me the young people in Greenock when they got married had a very good reason for doing that.
FT: There was a reason for that. The Parish, the Government, would give them twenty five shillings a week if they were married. There was nothing for a single person. I knew a man beside me who went to the pictures everyday at two o’clock and he came home at eleven. He got in for tuppence, and he told me that it kept his mind off food, and he could sleep. Imagine that. And these were decent people who were working all their lives up until that. They hated to be unemployed, and when these couples were getting married, most of them hadn’t the money to buy a ring, so I had to use the ring on my keys.
BP: Heavens above. Talking about marriage, reminds me, you once married a couple in Dungloe.
FT (laughs) Well, I was making a speech afterwards and I was saying that everything went alright until the end when we were in the Sacristy writing out the papers, that the trouble started. It all started when the groom gave me a shilling. So I took the bride over to the window and I had a long look at her an’ I gave him ninepence change. (Both laugh)
BP: Well aren’t you the little devil.
FT: Yeah!
BP: Well I know that when you left Greenock that a lot of people were very very sad to see you go, and the bands came out as well. How long were you in Greenock?
FT: Just five years. But then I was very lucky in a way, because although people were downhearted and depressed and all that, we had a hall, and I made the best of it, and ah I started a thing called the Ladies Social Union. That was for ladies on a Wednesday night who were depressed all week, hard times and all, and I thought I would get them together. And I did, I got five hundred and we met together on a Wednesday night and they made their own fun, had their own dances and a dramatic club later on. That went like a bomb and not only that, the Sweepstakes were legal at that time, the Irish Sweepstakes, and I got them to give me, I think it was thruppence, and I bought tickets in the Irish Sweepstakes, and believe it or not we won a prize. We got one hundred pounds.
BP: That was a lot of money in those days.
FT: It was until I looked in my book and I had 253 names in the book. Divide that into a hundred pounds.
BP: I think maybe 8 or 9 shillings each. But a win nevertheless which must have cheered them up no end. We’d better move on to Dungloe.
Fr. Tommy, it’s now 1934 and you’ve moved to the Dungloe curacy, the district of Meenacross.
FT: Yes, four miles west of Dungloe. The church had been built about four years at that time, and it’s still as good looking today as it was then, and it was built for 1500 pounds. But there was a lot of things to be done – the house was in a very bad state, and the toilet facilities were very crude. The loo had three walls and half a roof, facing Broadway. (laughing) Something had to be done. The only way to get money at that time was by running concerts and dances, but mostly concerts, so that’s where Fr. McLoone and I got together. He had a terrific voice – he could keep an audience spellbound. And then I was able to come and turn the music, tell an odd joke and so forth. As a matter of fact, on one occasion we did a whole concert because of a mistake – none of the other artists turned up.
BP: (laughs) – The two of you did the whole thing.
FT: We had to.
BP: Around about that time you got interested in films?
FT: Yeah, but really that happened in Greenock. I got a little machine in Greenock, a nine point five machine and I was able to take shots around the place, and then I brought it with me to Meenacross. Then I thought if I could take local scenes, of course it was black and white, and I thought I’d better concentrate on the people, which I did, and that could pack the hall in Dungloe because it was an awful sensation. These people walked in… as a man said the following morning, ‘I paid ninepene to see meself walking down the street.’ But even so, they’d come back again the following night. Then I got an idea, y’see, with Fr. McLoone, that we’d do a bit of a – like the Pattersons later on – a sort of concert and films y’see. It worked alright.
BP: I know that you had a problem getting power in some places and you contacted Kodak.
FT: Well, I wrote to Kodak in London and asked them if they could supply a battery powered projector . They wrote back and said they would, but I’d have to guarantee to take it, so I guaranteed to take it and that cost me a fortune – seventeen pounds, ten shillings.
BP: A lot of money.
FT: Errigal ! A terrible lot in those days. It had a twelve volt battery which Paddy the Cope would charge for nothing in those days – take it out to the islands – I showed pictures on Inisfree and Tory Island, Arranmore…
BP: People seeing films for the first time
FT: First time. A very funny thing – Inisfree island lies at the mouth of Dungloe bay. And to get there from Meenacross you ascended a hill called Lough Salt and I had an arrangement with Lennon (?) on the mainland and on Inisfree as well, and I would stop the car, put off the lights, put on the lights, and after about five of that, motored on and everything was in order in the school. They knew I was coming. I could hire pictures along with my own – Charlie Chaplins, Easy Street and all that, and the sensation of seeing these things in black and white, but you would give them a two hour show. There was one night in Inisfree I was running a picture Robinson Crusoe and everything went well and it was a good show, and the oldest man on the island came to me, Tim Gallagher was his name, and he congratulated me and he thought it was terrific. Says I ‘Tim wasn’t it terrible to think of a man stuck on an island and nobody around’. And he looked at me, he had a bit of a stutter, and he said ‘Ay. B b but who t-tuck the pictures?”
BP: Not so slow. Fr.Tommy, in 1935 you had personal experience of the Arranmore Disaster and film of the occasion the very next day; you were involved in the Donegal Association formed in Dublin to make money for the dependents; you took many many films around that time, in fact that so much so, they were the subject of of documentaries by RTE and ITV.
FT: That’s right yeah.
BP: Famous character. And your films have become archive materiel.
FT: (laughs) the old stuff anyway. Maybe I might be able to video the stuff now too, but I don’t want to be makin’ too much money, y’know.
BP: It’s a pity to have to rush you along like this Father, but time is the enemy, and there’s so much to tell. Let’s go to Convoy 1941
FT: 1941 when the war was just started a couple of years. The mills were going strong as you know with nearly 400 working. There’s no mills there now, but I was able to make a film of the mills, Convoy Mills with the help of Shell.
BP: …and Jim Woods.
FT: of course I have to mention Jim Woods, ’cause I wouldn’t have pictures in the hall only for Jim Woods. Y’see we had no electricity in Convoy at all, and Jim Woods had a terrific machine and he had all the power and lights on in Ballymunster, so I went out to Jim and told him my predicament and believe it or not, that man gave me that whole machine for nine months – a generator – and I was able to run the big pictures in the hall. And Jim’s still going strong by the way – indeed he is, and I want to thank him for that.
BP: You knew a character in Convoy called Paddy Rooney?
FT: Well, Paddy was a terrific character – the best humorist I’ve come across. Natural fun, y’know what I mean. He said things that were just funny. For instance I was telling him about the good flour me sister had got, and she made a cake and I thought it was very good, and he says ‘ That may be Father Doherty, but my wife’s as good a baker as you’ll get in this country, an’ she got the flour down in the shop. I got a bit of the cake this morning, and honest to God, it would sink a duck’. He said things like that.
BP: He was a builder, wasn’t he?
FT: He was indeed. He built the new chapel there at the college, and one of the best architects in Ireland says he never saw a better stone builder. He was building one day, and I said ‘Paddy, how did you learn this?’ and he looked at me and he says ‘Father Doherty, if it’s in ye, it’ll come oot, and if it’s naw in ye, it’ll naw come oot. Y’see, my father was a builder ‘ he says ‘ a stone builder an I worked wi’ him for a year and then I went over to Scotland and I got a job at the Central Station and y’know it was a cakewalk. Y’see ye had the big blocks here y’see, an’ ye put the mortar on top of the block, then you got another block and ye put it down, edge to edge. You’d nothing else to do but lift your trowel and knock off the wee snotter o’ cement’. That’s the way Paddy talked you see.
BP: His daughter went to a dance in Convoy, did she not?
FT: Aw, aye. (laughs) He had three girls and I was telling him, says I ‘You’re getting on alright now Paddy and the three working in the mill’. ‘That’s what you think’ he says ‘ sure they spend it all on sticklip – sticklip’ he says ‘an’ ye know, Maisie was goin’ out to a dance the other night an’ just had a look at her before she went oot, an’ honest t’God Father Doherty, she hadn’t as much on her as would tighten the hannel on a spade’.
BP: (laughing) Father Tommy I’m going to have to tell the rest of your life in sentences which could take programmes on their own. For instance from 1954 to 65 you were in Donegal Town, you ran a cinema in the chapel. You were involved with Howard Temple in the golf course at Murvagh. From 65 to 89 you were in Dunfanaghy; you’re the Donegal Man of the Year; friends with Barry Fitzgerald, Cyril Cusack, Liz Taylor, Richard Burton…
FT: (laughs) Known all over the world..
BP: and many other places besides. You’re a star of TV and radio. Would you come back sometime for another fireside chat? …
FT: Well if I got the expenses y’know…
BP: Before we leave, you retired in 1989…
FT: And living in Gortlee, so if you’re sending cheques, that should get me.
BP: (laughing) – Who’s looking after you there or are you doing it yourself?
FT: Oh, me sister Rose Coburn, she’s looking after me.
BP: And by the look of you, she’s doing a quare job.
FT: She was in Letterkenny, four years during the war with her family. Her husband couldn’t get over to bring her back, so her son Tommy would have been in Dan McTeague’s class, and was ordained, and was over here a short time ago. So Rose is happy enough.
BP: And Rose looks very well too. Now, if you were shipwrecked on a desert island, and you had only two books to read what would they be?
FT: War and Peace and another good hefty one, Gone with the Wind. That’ll keep me goin’ for a while.
BP: And if you had one luxury.
FT: Eh, I don’t know. Now, what could I say.
BP: Now it musn’t have brown skin, long hair and a grass skirt…
FT: As long as it’s not that. Well, I suppose, a (laughs merrily at that) nice wee picture house.
BP: I want to thank you very much for coming in, and I want to read, if you don’t mind, a few lines of a poem that your good friend from Dunfanaghy the Reverend Raymond Stewart wrote for you – he’s the Church of Ireland minister there. Here they are:
From Greenock to Convoy, and valley and town,
The name Fr. Tommy is one of renown.
He helped all the people to laugh and to sing,
Fr Tommy we thank you for the joy that you bring.
FT: Thank you very much Billy.