大象传媒

Story told by Eamon Gallagher and transcribed by Bruce Logan

A gentleman stayed with us during the war. I鈥檒l always remember his name, Mr Fisher. He was an elderly man, just on the point of retirement. He was staying with us, and my mother kept boarders. And he invited my sister to come away with him to Bundoran. And the y went away to Bundoran on the train. Coming back, there was a woman on the train. And she said to Mr Fisher 鈥淓xcuse me, sir, but would you do me a favour? Would you hide a couple of pounds of butter for me? You see, I鈥檓 smuggling a few lbs of butter. Would you hide a couple of pounds of butter for me?鈥�
鈥淚 will,鈥� says he.
Of course, Customs man used to come in and look around. Little did she know, Mr Fisher was the superintendent of Customs and Excise! But he took it in very good spirit. They say 鈥渨hat you don鈥檛 know doesn鈥檛 do you any harm.鈥�

A man we heard about went down to Buncrana to buy a suit. On the Knox-Willie train. And he got the suit. He was smuggling it. And he was very aware he had a brown paper parcel. Someone says to him 鈥淭hat鈥檒l be taken off you at the Customs.鈥�
鈥淭hat should I do?鈥�
鈥漈ake your old suit off, throw it away, put the new suit on. They鈥檒l be none the wiser.鈥� It was a very very good idea. He took his suit off, opened the parcel, and discovered the tailor had forgotten to put in the trousers!
Sweets, of course, were rationed. You had your coupons for sweets. You had your coupons for clothes. We were all right here, because we could always go down below. I mean, if you were stuck for butter you could always go down to the Free State. As far as we were concerned, we didn鈥檛 even know there was a war on. As far as food was concerned. Because we all did a wee bit of smuggling in a small sort of way.
On one occasion I went out to Carrick or somewhere to get a bottle of whiskey. It wasn鈥檛 for myself, because I didn鈥檛 drink whiskey. And I was coming in, and this lady 鈥� there was a whole group of us, and then we broke up. And I was coming in, and this lady 鈥� a girl, you would say 鈥� where the cemetery is, the incline going on to the long road out to Letterkenny. We were coming up that incline at the cemetery, the next thing I saw was the red light and a policeman. I had the bottle of whiskey, and you know what he stopped me for? I had no light on my bicycle!
He let me off with a caution.

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