100-year-old Maisie recalls meeting handsome Collins

THE life of a Sixmilebridge centenarian is more reminiscent of a Hollywood starlet at times than that of the stereotypical Irish woman of her time. While like many of her generation she recalls the tyranny of the Black and Tans, she also remembers the bright lights and glamour of Monte Carlo.

Born in Ballinalee in Longford, Maisie O’Nualláin moved to Sixmilebridge in 2005 at the age of 95 to live with her daughter Eilis and son-in-law Michael Rogan. Last week, she celebrated her 100th birthday with a party for friends and family. “We had a great weekend altogether,” Maisie tells The Clare Champion. She is sitting in her adopted home with Eilis sipping mid-morning tea. Maisie looks well and vibrant and could be mistaken for a woman 20 years her junior. “But for my daughter, I would be lost,” she comments.
Maisie Heraty’s parents were shopkeepers. Seán MacEoin, the Blacksmith of Ballinalee, veteran of the War of Independence and later government minister, was a regular visitor to the Heraty family home where Maisie remembers him playing cards. When she was very young, she suspects around six, she got to meet with Michael Collins in the flesh. He may have been in the area having attended a party in Edgeworthstown to celebrate his release from prison in December 1916. She remembers his standout charisma and the important detail, “He was very handsome”.
At the age of seven, Maisie was sent to board at the Convent of Mercy in Longford, taking her place as the then youngest girl in the school. It was there four years later, she learned of her father’s death.
“I was in school when I heard the shop was burned down. Our house was burned down by the Black and Tans in 1922. My family weren’t in it at the time. They had to go to Edgeworthstown. They were tipped off but it was January and bitterly cold,” Maisie outlines. Her father died shortly afterwards of hypothermia.
“I suppose the worst time for the country was all the trouble, the War of Independence and the Black and Tans and the Civil War. We thought the Black and Tans were really terrible,” she remarks.
When Maisie was 15, she went to Dublin to attend the Pharmaceutical Society of Ireland, based in Mount Street.
“It was mainly men at the time but there were some women and I didn’t feel particularly out of place,” she comments.
For a few years she worked in pharmacies around Dublin, before buying her own in Rathgar in the mid-1930s.
“I wouldn’t say it was easy to buy your own business at the time. There were others doing the same thing. It wasn’t just me,” she recalls.
In 1936, Maisie, her sister and a friend went on a cruise, taking the Cunard liner RMS Lancastria to Lisbon, Palma, Monte Carlo and Gibraltar.
“It was very glamorous,” recalls the Longford woman. The ship attracted mainly British occupants, making Maisie and her companions something of a novelty.
“One gentleman kept saying ‘I just love listening to Maisie talk’,” she remembers.
“We dressed up every day. I still have the menu from the last meal on board because I remember it wasn’t that much different to how we had it at home,” she adds.
She sums up the trip, “We thought it would be a nice thing to do and it was marvellous”.
For Maisie, it was a floating paradise but she didn’t know then that the ship would take its place in world history. It was to become the tomb for more than double the number of people lost in the Titanic and Lusitania disasters combined.
During WWII, the Lancastria was used for cargo before becoming a troopship, the HMT Lancastria, which was sunk by German fire off the coast of France in 1940 with the loss of between 4,000 and 6,000 lives.
In 1947, Maisie married Padraig O’Nualláin, a national school teacher from Dublin. Their engagement and subsequent wedding in Terenure were documented in The Irish Times. The Times outlined the bride’s “flame coloured two-piece ensemble” and her floral headdress. Her sister Kay attended her in an outfit of powder blue.
Seventeen years after his death, Maisie’s face still lights up when she speaks of her beloved husband. The couple honeymooned in Glengarrif but because of petrol rationing, it wasn’t as carefree as they might have hoped.
“We got to the Victoria Hotel on the outskirts of Cork but we had to push the car for the last bit,” she laughs.
Maisie’s fun-loving disposition is evident within moments of meeting her. She shows photos of her and Padraig at fancy dress parties and a dance schedule from the British Pharmaceutical Conference Ball held in 1956, which appealed to her love of dance. “There was lots to do,” she says.
While the hardships of the 1950s didn’t go unnoticed, Maisie’s business didn’t suffer unduly, with people still requiring medicine.
For all her fun, she worked hard in the shop, occupied from 9am to 6.30pm from Mondays to Saturdays and half days on Sundays. She retired in the 1970s and dedicated more time to golf and bridge.
Maisie was lady captain of Castle Golf Club in Rathfarnham, from which she received birthday wishes, but it was her love of bridge that helped her transition to life in Clare, joining two clubs when she arrived here five years ago.
Now she tends not to go out to play but neighbours and friends call to the house for the occasional game.
Looking back on her life, there were many highlights but Maisie has managed to whittle them down. “I must say the cruise was hard to beat,” she concludes.