Music over Moville
By Stephen Joyce

In those golden summer days in Inishowen, the two towns most imprinted on my mind were Derry and Moville.

My memories of Derry in those days are of The Lairds Loch, the waterfront and our first glorious footsteps on Irish soil on our way back home to Inishowen . I remember Derry mostly at dawn as her streets lay silent and only the quayside bustled into life as we all made our ways to the buses and taxis and coaches that would take us to the cottages and people we loved.

Derry was a kind of mystical , momentary city only glimpsed in haste as we all threaded our way through the empty streets. It was only in later life that Derry became a real, living tortured city. Little did we all know then that the same quiet streets would echo around the world with tragedy and tears and torment. But that was to be in another time, as yet unknown to us in our childish summer fantasy world.

The real centre of our Inishowen world and the town to which we were drawn was Moville. I first heard the name Moville during my Whitecastle holidays in the strangest of places. It was when I was helping Charlie Barr bring in the turf from high up on Glencaw Hill . The boys I was with then, Billie and Albert Doherty, Hugh Hancock and Eddie Davenport were new and exciting friends - full of fun and mystery and devilment and we jostled and played and talked after our long day in the summer sun high above the distant shores of the Foyle . To me this was a totally new enchanting world. It was a world of stories and tales of the old people who had brought home the turf on the their own back or if they were lucky on the back of a donkey. They had maybe made twenty journeys to the hill as the summer sun sunk low earlier each day to herald the beginning of Autumn.

Our journey back down through Glencaw and over the Mullinroe Bridge was full of singing and laughter and as we clung onto the ropes that held in the turf, the constant talk came up about Moville and sailing and a regatta.

Although Glasgow was my home and I was near the river Clyde and boats and ships that made their way across the seven seas, I had never heard of nor been to a regatta. To us that was for the ' toffs ' - doctors and lawyers and business people who went at weekends down to Helensburgh or Troon or to sail their yachts for prestige and to relax in luxury from their weekly business duties and routines .

I loved the sound of the word Moville and wondered where it was and how you got to it and what new adventures and mysteries it held for us. Aunt Lisa had told us about 'the far town' which to our amazement was less than half a mile away across the rodden in front of our cottage. We were amazed to find that this 'far town' had only two or three houses and was no further than a five minute walk . This was where Old Jane lived and the Davenports and Wee Mary - who had brought me into the world in our dimly lit Ruskey cottage during the harvest on the fifteenth of September 1941.

But to our city minds, Edinburgh or Aberdeen or London would be classed as far towns, but in the idyllic wonderland of the Inishowen hills, the far town of Lower Ruskey told us about the smallness of the world we were now living in . We now knew that we were cut off from the real world of distances and miles and concrete streets and roads and tram car lines and tall buildings.

But where was Moville ?

And why was there such interest in it high up on the hills as we struggled to fill the hired lorry and pack its sides to the brim and get finished and get home to tea and scones and bed.

It was the regatta they were talking about. Now that August was coming in and the hay was being cut and stacked in the fields along the Foyle and the carts were bringing loads of turf down the twisting, winding rough tracks.

But Billy said he had heard that this year was going to be the best ever for the Whitecastle sailing team. His dad and uncles and cousins had a new punt - a special Whitecastle punt, kept closely guarded and tested in the evenings around the shore at Whitecastle House. I was overawed that he talked of a castle and secret sailings - and trophies . And I couldn't wait until I could find out more from my Uncle Johnnie and Aunt Lisa as we sat around the turf fire that evening after the exhausting day on Crehenan Hill.

Uncle Johnnie had only been once to the regatta but what he told me about its magic and the people and the atmosphere meant that I would have to go.

I remember my mother telling me that her father would often walk the two hour journey to Moville from Ruskey, through Redcastle, down past Clar and out round the old pier and into the town .

But walking like that was nothing to my grandparents. The walk to Moville was nothing to the dawn walk he would make every June - the whole way to Derry - to reluctantly work his fare on the Lairds Loch and go to Scotland to earn a few extra pounds to send home to Ruskey .

It was strange that he had to travel to Scotland to earn some money as a seaman on the pleasure boat The Iona - leaving his family at home as he took the Middle Class Glasgow day trippers doon the watter to Rothesay, Dunoon and round the Kyles of Bute.

But to me, Drung was our nearest town, where I had been baptised - where the real shop was - Sean Di's - and a petrol station and the Church and Hugo's . Drung was where we walked to on a Sunday to go to Mass and meet up with relatives and friends on the bridge and down at the shore beneath the Royal Oak pub.

But Drung was nothing to Moville Billy Doherty said. Moville was the place. That was where his dad and his uncles would take their punt and sail and win the cups - just as they did year after year with pride . Even my fiercely independent aunt Ellen over from America regaled me with her own stories of Sandy Doherty's exploits and successes every summer in his special Whitecastle punts.

So my blood was up and we sat around the lanes and fields at night, working out how we would take part in and win at the field races, the swimming in The Foyle and the five-a-side football. We even heard that Bobby Evans and Berti Peacock of Celtic and the magnificent Danny Blanchflower of Spurs would be playing in the Bay Field. The lure of it all was too great and our whole time was spent in planning our time, our route and our victories.

And everyone helped us in our dreams of glory. One of our neighbours, Willie Davenport, took us out in the evenings with his sons Martin and James and Eddie, with Paddie Joe Callaghan and a whole host of friendly faces I never even knew. And we raced and ran and tackled and scored goals and tried out tug - o ' - war until nightfall, with Rex the dog snapping playfully at our feet and our mother's voice calling us home .

On the great day of the regatta, we hitched a ride to Drung on my Uncle James's beautiful sky blue cart. Then my sister Bridget would go the rest of the journey with my Aunt Ellen in Sean Di's new van with Maureen and Carmel Doherty and their mum.

My own route was to be by sea - down the Foyle with my cousin Torrance who was proud at so young an age to be given the honour of taking the helm in the Smith's newly painted punt with his Uncle Jim. On a sunny but windy morning, Torrance steered the punt carefully down the coast past the Black Point at Redcastle, round the dangerous Brown Shoulder, skirted the dangerous hidden shallows along past Claggan Shore and majestically towards the pier at Moville.

As we skimmed along through the moored yachts and the rowing boats packed with day-trippers, we could hear the roars of the crowds and the shouts and the ever increasing sound of music. We had reached our goal and could barely wait to see what lay in store for us at the Moville Regatta that beautiful day which has embedded itself for ever in my memory .

The Bayfield was bursting at the seams as Torrance eagerly tied up the new punt to the edge of Moville pier and I scrambled up the iron ladder. I had known that although he had taken me with him in the punt, there was no room for me in any of the sailing events. He knew also that my mind was set on getting up onto the pier and into the crowds and noise and the roars of laughter that echoed up Moville Main Street.

My first aim was to get up to the Bayfield where a torrid football match was in full swing. I raced up Quay Street and out onto the main road and across the bridge, weaving and dodging in among the crowds who ere making their own way up the main street towards the Square. As I skirted the fields down on my left I got a clear view of the football and the surging, swaying crowd - going this way and that - as a massive wave, keeping in time with the attacking team.

Moville Square was jam packed.

Horses and carts and lorries and tractors all crossed and criss crossed as they made their way up towards the fields at Lafferty's Lane for the horse racing or the ploughing. Hordes of youngsters, hair flying and eyes electric with excitement raced this way and that as their childish fancy drew them towards the stalls in the Church fields or across the Square. Others raced wildly down past Gerry Lynott's corner shop and down past the Prospect Hotel and out onto the Green.

I had only seen the Moville Green from the distance of the Foyle as we had sailed majestically up towards Derry on the morning we arrived. Then, from the deck of The Lairds Loch that morning, the Green had looked so neat and measured and trim and empty . Now, as I came bursting out from around the Prospect Hotel, my eye caught sight of Eddie Davenport and some of the Ruskey boys racing along the edge of the cliff and down past The Anchor Tavern to the crowded pier. Their target was the starting point at the slipway for the swimming race in the Foyle.

My heart raced as I realised I had a chance to shine in front of the very people I admired so much, but who knew nothing about me or my life . But I had one golden advantage from my Glasgow upbringing. I had one secret skill which I had never spoken about and had never had the opportunity to use as we passed our days high up in the hills up the Ruskey Road. Although it was normal to be trying to boast about friends and games and events back in Glasgow, we never really talked very much on holidays about life back in Scotland. We wanted it left behind.

The race which was marked out with rope on either side looked an easy one for me and I soon borrowed a pair of swimming shorts from Sean Doherty. About nine of us all around the same age were ushered into two large rowing boast and taken out as far as the bathing boxes. The day was glorious and the warm sun shimmered along the glistening Foyle.

As I stood on the edge of the boat waiting on the shout from one of the Committee to plunge into the water, a sudden hush came over the crowds sitting along the edge of the upper green and in the little bays along the shore. My mind raced back to an amazing film from back in Glasgow called ' Geordie' where, after the hush, the athlete is roused to win the race by the sound of his girlfriend's voice - echoing from far far away. As I waited and our heads dipped down to catch the very second that would start the race and get the slightest advantage, I heard Anna shouting from the shore and just as her voice reached my ears, the shout went up. GO.

We were off the edge of the boat and into the cool water of The Foyle.

As I swiftly eased myself into the crawl I had practiced so often back in The Public Baths in Maryhill, I knew I was going to be the winner of this Foyle race. As the others drifted behind my powerful stokes, I could see the slipway coming up closer and closer and the shouts of the crowds urged me on, faster and faster.

Before I realised it, I was out of the water and running up the slope, my hands high in the air in a victory salute.

It was a day I would always remember, to have pleased the crowd and won a race in front of the people I loved and on the shores of the glistening river Foyle.

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