One evening in the summer of 1962, in ‘The Queen’s Elm’ on the Fulham Road, Tom and I had a long conversation about our home towns. I knew Tuam reasonably well but Tom had never been to Tullamore and was curious. Who were the big men? Who the failures? What made the town tick? In Tuam patois, who were the ‘fly shams’ and the ‘rager shams’? His interrogation covered the multiple interactions and complexity of a society whose scale created a close-knit but relatively comprehensible, socio-economic unit.
We both agreed that growing up in a provincial town was a very valuable education in that it gave insights into the kind of experiences and personalities that would later be replicated in the bigger world. How things worked in small town society could be observed and understood in a way that would not be so comprehensively available to those living in a rural community or a metropolis. For us Tuam and Tullamore were the formative catalysts. (more…)
Category: Arts
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‘A great town to get a letter from’ Early recollections of Tom Murphy (1935- 2018) ‘HOME TOWNS’ by Fergal MacCabe. Blog No 90, 14 July 2018
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