‘We are lucky we had their shoulders to stand on’

Launch of Snappin’ Twine

A packed audience attended the launch of Snappin’ Twine, a collection of verse and vignettes by Ursula Kane Cafferty honouring the women who reigned in Dominick Street, Mullingar, in the 1960s, at the Mullingar Park Hotel.

Special guest Tina Kellegher, star of stage and screen, said she was moved, entertained, and enlightened by the book. She met the author about 40 years ago through Ursula’s husband, the late Garda Hugh Cafferty. Ursula, like Hugh, had wonderful energy, warmth, and joie de vivre, Tina said.

Ursula elaborated saying that she met Tina “in her amateur days of treading the boards of the County Hall, when Tina and her sister ran Uisneach Boutique in Castle Street, Mullingar”.

Ursula’s soon to be husband, Hugh, lived in a flat over the boutique. She recalled how Hugh inadvertently flooded the building one day, and “Uisneach Boutique had a sale the following week!”.

“And amazingly, there were no hard feelings afterwards,” Ursula laughed.

Snappin’ Twine charts the impact some of Ursula’s female role models of 1960s Mullingar, Dominick Street in particular, had on her growing up. A few of those women were present and Ursula called on her “flower girl of yore, Emma Daly Giles, granddaughter of Irene Connolly of No 17”, to assist Tina in presenting a single rose to each of them – Ida Forte Coppola, Ruth Morrison McDermott, Kathleen Sheils Mulderry, Dolores Martin O’Callaghan, Ethna Glennon Cornally and Angela Mann Whelan.

Some of the women of that era married into long established family businesses, others, like her mother, were “raw newcomers who bought into the street”; some stayed single, living with siblings or elderly parents, and a few entered religious life, Ursula said.

“How did they manage to blossom as they did, in the midst of so many constraints and daily struggles?” she wondered. Were their dreams and ambitions to take second or even third place in the face of practical needs? Did they ever really get to indulge in life’s little luxuries? Had they space to consider things such as rights, identity, or culture? Where might they find sanctuary to think or just BE… alone?” Ursula asked.

She also wondered from where they got their confidence, how they were so alive with interest, energy, and inventive ideas, and how their hearts survived life’s inevitable disappointments. “How radical could they allow themselves to be when others laughed at the very notion of a woman president? Who taught them how to put people in their place using a mixture of quiet, thorny elegance and a comprehensively withering look? Did those women have to sacrifice their individuality to survive in that world?” she asked.

The answer to many of these questions is that they were “unlimited in their own mind’s eye”, and “aren’t we the fortunate ones to have such strong shoulders to stand on”, she declared.

Ursula said she felt lucky to have grown up surrounded by such amazing women, and she hoped she had done them justice in her book.

She thanked Sean Magee and John Daly, who were present, for allowing photographs from their collections to be used in the book, and the many “children of my era” who raided family albums for photographs of the women in their younger years. Many of those photographs were displayed on a projector screen during the launch.

Ursula thanked local actor Mary Hughes, who was MC at the launch, for co-narrating the book with her, and said a QR code is available for each chapter for those who wish to listen to the stories.

She thanked Ruth Illingworth, historian and author, who was also present, “for her prompt and informative answers to my queries”.

Finally, Ursula applauded Mullingar based Wojciech Lecki of Simply Logo Design “for pulling everything together” and for his impressive attention to detail in his high-quality work, and his wife Joanna for her photography.

“If you are looking for someone with exceptional creativity, who will pour effort and professionalism into your idea, then Simply Logo Design is for you,” she said.