Thread by @shellakeypookey

#BrendanBehan100
1. My cousin Richie Dooley served time for Land Agitation in Mountjoy Gaol
He was working the farm of an arrested man so it couldn't be siezed
In Jail he met the Quare Fella, because they shared a landing with the IRA
At night the RA would march to the cells

2. in military fashion and Brendan would wink at Richie and turn off the lights when they were walking by when the guard was checking. Then turn them back on so the men could read. As a child I sat on a wall in Killeshin & listened to Richie Dooley talk about Brendan.
The view -

3. from Rossmore is breathtaking
I only took my eyes from it long enough to check that a malevolent hen wasn't about to assault me
Richie was about 6ft 3
And he wore a waistcoat & a battered pinstripe suit about the farm, milking cows, feeding chickens, a collie on the back step

4.He had a pioneer pin in his lapel & bryl creamed hair
His big hands dangled
as he talked
Elbows on knees
Tobacco, musky, a faint smell of carbolic, bristles
He'd a husky voice & a ready laugh
He prefaced every conversation with begorra man & a slap of a flat cap on a palm

5. 2 of his sisters were Nuns in the Brigidine Convent - May Dooley (pictured) became Sr Cathaldus & Noreen became Sr Mercedes
(I know, right?)
Nellie Dooley (on right) helped her Mam in the farm shop "goin'at the tins of sweets as soon as her back was turned"
She wore a floral

6. sprigged housecoat making soda bread & apple tarts
She lost both breasts to cancer
& prayed through the pain
All her life she listened to Richie telling people about Brendan Behan
Everytime I went there he told me the stories
Turning a small copper ring on his little finger

7.Just as I was about to write these stories - when I came back from New York after my play "The Scourge" ended - the World shut down. My planned research in The Delayney Archive was shelved indefinitely. In June of 2021 I got a lift to Killeshin for the first time in 30 years ✍️

So many memories came flooding back at the gate
The farmhouse down the steep lane has a big glass box on the side
It took 3 separate cousins - Niall, Paul & Francis Dooley to get me to the house, across the road from the grotto Richie Dooley funded
It's called Frocken Hill
😏

7. My Grandfather Tom "The Keeper" Dooley was born & reared in that house. He was the Asylum Keeper in Carlow and is pictured here with his daughter Maura & his Aunt 1930

8. "Begorra man,
Brendan was a pure genius
he could bark like a dog
howl at a moon
he'd words at the drop of a hat
his clothes were in flitters
he'd sleep where he dropped
He was some character begob
He made me this ring from a penny you know
in the workshop
and a silver one -

9. from a shilling!
- Richie Dooley ©️
He wore those rings all his life showing them to lads at wakes and patterns
& an undiagnosed Autistic child from Wexford on a wall
Richie loved Brendan because he was real
& Brendan was real
& utterly brilliant
To #BrendanBehan
& Richie 👏