I’m a retired librarian, born in Ireland but living in Wales where my family and friends call me ’Barry’ Tobin.
However, ’Patrick Finbarr’ Tobin is the name on my Irish passport and on the free bus pass I received in January 2003 following my 65th birthday!
I was born in Cork City on January the 12th 1938.
I was baptised in the Lough Chapel because my parents were then living in a rented house overlooking The Lough, the famous lake in one of the most celebrated parts of that city.
Not long afterwards they moved to a place on the Model Farm Road before they managed to buy ‘Hollymount House’, on the Lee Road. It was there that I first became aware of my existence...
Eventually I became old enough to walk with my mother to the Sacred Heart Church.
My earliest memory of being at Mass there is of a place full of people, more people than I had ever seen before. The priest said something and the church filled with a terrifying sound. "Is it the thunder?", I asked my mother. "It is not", she said, "it is the people praying." Relieved, I relaxed a little.
Later, early in 1944, I was taken to school. On the very same day our mother took me, my late brother Brian, then aged 3, and our sister, Ina, then aged 4, all the way from the Lee Road to the Saint Mary of the Isles School. This school, then run by the Sisters of Mercy,is situated near the famous Beamish and Crawford Brewery and is overlooked by the Church of Ireland Saint Finbarre’s Cathedral, famous for its three spires.
Later in 1944 my parents bought the ‘Apple Market Tavern’ in nearby Barrack Street. In the yard out the back there were various outhouses. I rememember sitting in one of them watching and listening as the local ‘Barrack Street Band’ practised their splendid repertoire. How nice they all were to me! That old tavern is still there but now it is known as the ‘The Brown Derby’.
In the summer of 1946 we moved back to Hollymount but my parents continued to run ‘The Apple Market Tavern’ until they sold it in 1948.
In May 1945, as peace returned to a shattered Europe, I made my First Holy Communion in The South Chapel.
In late 1948 I received a welcome home to Hollymount that I will never, can never, forget...
In late May or June 1949 I was confirmed by Bishop Daniel Coholan at Saint Patrick's Church In August 1950, very reluctantly leaving behind our very own Garden of Eden, we set out from Hollymount and ended up in Belton Park Road, Donnycarney, Dublin.
In 1956 my father left Dublin (we were then living in Leeson Street) and went to work in Wales. Eventually he bought a house in Clare Street, Riverside, Cardiff.
One by one the family left Dublin to live with our father. I joined them on the 17th of September, 1960.
For better or worse, I am still in Cardiff...
If your surname (or your mother’s maiden name) is Tobin there is a chance that we may be related and there may even be a story there somewhere, depending on what county in Ireland your Tobin side came from, and of course when.
My father Stephen Tobin (1913–1988) grew up in Rosscarbery in West Cork and so far as we can tell there have been Tobins in those parts for a very long time. If your Tobin forebears were also from that area then we could well be cousins.
However, if they came from Tipperary, Waterford or Kilkenny (other Tobin haunts!) we could be more remotely related, from the time, about 1200 AD, when the first Tobins, then called ‘de St. Aubyn’, came from Brittany or Normandy after the Norman conquest of Ireland in 1170 AD.
When I have been to that part of France I have been impressed at the number of little villages called ‘de St. Aubyn’.
In Ireland they soon spread out across the country and began to make a name for themselves. They became so influential in County Tipperary that in medieval times the head of the family was known as the ‘Baron of Coursey’.
I am told that in County Kilkenny there is a village called Ballytobin.
A branch of the family returned to their country of origin and became established at Nantes. The best known of this branch was Edmund, Marquès de Tobin (1692 – 1747) who was killed in action while in the service of Spain during the War of the Austrian Succession .
Another branch of the Irish Tobins settled in Newfoundland and have prospered there.
The spirit of those distant relatives of ours can be deduced from their family crest of oak leaves (try knocking down an oak tree!) and their Latin motto/war cry: “Noli me tangere” which means, I believe, “Do not touch me”, meaning of course that if you did you’d be sorrier and wiser after the experience.
But that was then and this is now — they say that the modern Tobins have become quite sweet, really!
Anyway, I am, for better or worse, a native speaker of English, Cork style!. My eight great‒grandparents were probably monoglot speakers of Irish. My grandparents were certainly bilingual.
My parents, though they could only speak English, knew many Irish words.
My own Irish, learned at school in Ireland because it was compulsory, is my key to a priceless treasure chest.
March 1996: I’m the one who’s off duty (©: Anne and John Sweeney, Cardiff).
March 2001: I’m the one who looks just like me (©: Irene Parow, Cardiff).
November 2001: I’m the one with the yellow flowers (©: Irene Parow, Cardiff).
December 2005: Sitting pretty at a friend's house (©: Áine Ní Cheannabháin, Dublin).
(masseytown@yahoo.ie).
