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Johnnie Harron stories

Johnnie was my Granda Harron’s brother so he was my father’s uncle; even though he was actually my generation’s grand uncle or great uncle, we usually referred to him just as ‘Uncle Johnnie’.

Johnnie lived in Artigarvan. He and his wife Minnie had 8 children but only one son, Patsy, survived to adulthood along with 3 sisters, Annie, Maggie and Lena. Annie had a son Mickey who was reared by Johnnie and Minnie and was generally regarded as a brother to Patsy and his sisters.

Annie married Hugh Kelly, a widower, who was grandfather of Johnnie Kelly who owns the Fir Trees Hotel; I lodged with her for a while after our family left Strabane. Annie and Hugh had two children, a daughter Kathleen who died at just 10 years of age and a son John Joseph who emigrated to America at a young age I don’t have much information on her son Mickey except that he became a well known cricketer in the Northwest; I don’t thnk he ever got married or had children. I know that in his later years, he came back to the family home in Artigarvan to help Maggie care for their aged father.

Patsy married Kathleen Magee and settled in Ballykelly; they had a large family – 5 of his daughters appeared on Family Fortunes one time.

Maggie never married.

Lena emigrated to England at a young age where she settled after marrying a man called Robinson.

Johnnie drove a steam threshing machine when he was young which took him around all the farms in the area so he ended up very well known. Getting the steam thresher in was a big community event in those days. When it would come to a farm, all the neighbouring men would gather in to help and then they would all move on to the next farm. The owners of the farm in question would provide hospitality and refreshments including dinner for the men doing the work and this was the source of much gossip exchange, leg pulling and general craic.

Johnnie was famous – perhaps notorious would be a better word – for telling some rather tall tales on these occasions or about them. These stories have been handed down into my generation and somebody remarked to me a while back that they should be recorded for posterity.

Here are a few that I know, maybe some of the family can add others.

I remember Johnnie from regular visits to Artigarvan when I was young; he lived until 1970 when I was 19. He was born in 1878, so I reckon these stories took place back about the end of the 19th or start of the 20th century.

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Quare stuff, that Persil

There was an old man who died somewhere outside Artigarvan. As he was a bachelor who lived alone, the local custom was for the neighbouring women to wash his body for laying out but this man had a reputation for a certain lack of hygiene so the women were a bit reluctant to do it.

One of them had the bright idea of asking Johnnie to do it, he had a reputation for being a very obliging chap – especially if a half pint of whisky would be on offer.

Johnnie told the story something like this:

“There was this new washing soap just out at that time, I think it was called Persil or something like that so I thought it would be a good thing to try out.

“I headed up to the man’s house with the Persil, a bucket of hot water, a scrubbing brush and me half pint of whisky.

“I started into scrubbing him, stopping for an occasional nip of the whisky – strictly medicinal purposes, you have to understand, as the house was very cold!

“Now I wouldn’t like to talk ill of the dead or say that the man was particularly dirty, but as sure as God, I was scrubbing for a full ten minutes when I came on an inside shirt!”

Note for the younger generation – an ‘inside shirt’ was an old fashioned name for a vest.

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The Thirsty Dog

One time Johnnie was threshing at a big Protestant farm. It was a very hot summer’s day and when the men went into dinner, it being a Friday, they found that the woman of the house, respecting their religious practices, had provided fish for dinner in the form of salt herrings for the Catholic men – the last thing that thirsty men would want on a hot day.

She plumped down a big plate of the herrings in the middle of the table along with a pot of potatoes and a slab of butter. She told the men to help themselves and went outside, leaving them to it

Of course nobody wanted to offend the woman so they weren’t sure what to do. Johnnie noticed a collie dog under the table sniffing the air so he took a herring from the plate and slipped it to the dog who wolfed it straight down. Another herring followed, then another and another until the plate was empty, the men just ate the potatoes.

The woman came back in and seeing the empty plate exclaimed “Good, Lord, have you ate all the herring already Don’t worry, I’ve plenty more!” Off she went and came back a couple of moments later with a second plate.

Again she left the men to it and again the herring were passed to the dog.

After the dinner, the men went back outside and the dog ran after them, gasping for breath. There was a burn running beside the house and the dog ran over to it and started lapping the water and continued lapping non-stop for several minutes.

According to Johnnie, the dog couldn’t get enough to drink that way so it jumped into the burn and lay with its mouth open, letting the water flow into its mouth. After about five minutes of this, the dog climbed out of the burn, shook itself dry and then stood barking at the water for another five minutes!

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The Milking Goat

One time Johnnie was threshing for people called Crampsie down at the lock gates between Strabane and Ballymagorry. Johnnie happened to mention that he was on the lookout for a good milking goat – I think he used to goat’s milk for some kind of ‘cure’ that he used to concoct.

Mrs. Crampsie told him that she had happened to have a goat for sale. She showed him the goat, Johnnie was under pressure for time and didn’t have time to give it a thorough examination but Mrs. Crampsie assured him that it was the best milking goat she ever had and she was only letting it go because she had no room for it any more. They struck a deal, I think it was for something like 1s 6d (about 7½ p in modern money) and Johnnie said he would would collect it that night.

When Johnnie collected the goat, it was a clear moonlit night so he decided to take a shortcut across the fields with the goat on a tether. As they were clambering over a ditch, he noticed something glistening on the goat’s belly but couldn’t make out what it was in the moonlight.

When he got home, he investigated further and was amazed to find a large safety pin wrapped up in the hair on the goat’s belly. He opened the safety pin and out fell a long teat – at least the length of his arm, according to Johnnie – which had been folded over a number of times and then pinned up out of sight. He would have had fun milking that!

(I have a soft spot for this story. My wife Carmel’s granny, Mrs Holmes, mentioned her sister Mrs Crampsie down at the lock gates one day and it turned out that she was the Mrs Crampsie in Johnnie’s story; Mrs Holmes had never met Johnnie but had often ‘heard tell’ of him. She also hadn’t heard the goat story but she said it was exactly the sort of thing her sister would have done!)

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According to my brother Michael, Johnnie claimed that he sang "Moorlough Mary" in the Ballymagorry Hall one night and he was stopped on verse 90!

He also said that Johhny was so well-liked and respected on both sides of the community that on the day of his funeral, members of the local Orange Lodge lined the route of his funeral cortege to show their respect.

Michael has told me since that the reason they honoured him was because he played the fiddle every Saturday night in the local Orange Hall, the only Catholic to attend it!

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