Sir , – Fintan O’Toole’s article (“Ireland’s Christmas story is still underpinned by separation anxiety,” December 23rd) stirred memories of how emigration shaped the rural community of my childhood.
In the period between 1945 and 1960 almost half a million people left the island of Ireland. In my mother’s family, three of four brothers left, nothing unusual there.
My uncles came home on holidays, their children speaking with English accents.
Given our limited experience to anything foreign, we children – their cousins – felt somehow lesser. Young men, home from the UK for Christmas or holiday, would spend time in our small family pub before returning to the building sites.
RM Block
It was often chaotic, boisterous and loud. My mother always had a kindly way with these lads and quoted what she had once heard about emigration, “Fair play to them, the ones that stayed couldn’t keep the slates on the roof.” – Yours, etc,
NUALA GALLAGHER,
Castleknock,
Dublin 15.
