Patrick Comerford
I was musing a few evenings ago about the Greek word for tomorrow and how we can joke that the word avrio (αύριο) can never convey the same urgency that mañana has in Spanish.
Our anxieties about tomorrow are raised again in the Gospel reading tomorrow (Matthew 6: 25-34), when Jesus says: ‘But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you – you of little faith? … Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own’ (Matthew 6: 30, 34).
Tomorrow seemed to be a far-away world to us as children on those Sunday afternoons when we were regularly brought on family outings to the ‘Vee’, a scenic, V-shaped hairpin bend in the Knockmealdown Mountains, with spectacular views across the Golden Vale and three counties, Waterford, Tipperary and Cork.
At the Vee we were halfway between Cappoquin and Clogheen, and only a few miles from my grandmother’s farm, we were entertained with stories and tales about Samuel Grubb and the grave where he was buried standing, and about ‘Petticoat Loose’ and the monsters in Bay Lough, the ‘bottomless’ lake, who came up and asked, day after day, ‘Is it tomorrow.’
Samuel Richard Grubb (1855-1921) was a wealthy landowner of Quaker descent and a former High Sheriff of Co Tipperary. His distinctive, beehive-shape grave stands on Sugarloaf Hill overlooking the Vee and the Golden Vale. He said he wanted to be buried on the mountainside, standing upright, so that he could keep watch over ‘his people’ and ‘his fields’ at Castle Grace, where he farmed over 1,600 acres.
Before he died, Grubb designed his grave of rubble stone, looking like one of the clochans on the Great Skellig. Some say he asked to be buried there because the Grubb family had been by the Society of Friends or Quakers before Samuel was born for attending ‘balls at which music and dancing form a chief part’.
Grubb died on 6 September 1921 and was buried four days later, with the Revd J Talbot of Clogheen conducting the burial service. Grubb was buried standing up, with his dog beside him, although some people in the area said the men who buried him put him in the grave upside down.
From his grave 2,000 ft up in the mountains, there are panoramic views across the Golden Vale, and of the Galtee Mountains, the Comeragh Mountains and Slievenamon. On clear summer days as we looked across the valley below, and the villages of Clogheen, Ardfinnan and Ballyporeen (later known as the ancestral home of Ronald Reagan) were pointed out to us, and the towns of Cahir and Clonmel. The Grubb family sold Castle Grace near Clogheen in 2019, although many of his descendants continue to live in the area, including Nicholas Grubb who lives in Dromana House at Villierstown, near Cappoquin.
Close to the Vee Gap, on the county boundaries of Waterford and Tipperary, Bay Lough is on the side of Knockaunabulloga in the Knockmealdown Mountains, close to Saint Declan’s Way, the path Saint Declan trod as he made his way from Ardmore to Cashel.
Bay Lough is easily accessed from a car park on the Co Waterford side of the lake. Many people believe it is a ‘bottomless’ lake and that it is not possible to swim across it, even though it is quite small. In late May and early June, the rhododendrons are in bloom at the lake, providing spectacular views from Bay Lough to Clogheen.
Folklore in South Tipperary and West Waterford says the lake is the place where Petticoat Loose was banished, condemned as penance to drain the ‘bottomless’ lake with a thimble until tomorrow came.
Local folklore portrays Petticoat Loose as a vengeful ghost, a banshee or a haunting witch and sometimes identify her as Mary Hannigan. She was said to be a 6-ft tall, strong woman who did a man’s work on the farm, drank like a man, fought like a man and wrestled and fought the local men when they mocked her. But she was known too for adulterating milk and for her wicked behaviour. They say she killed a bull with a single blow of her first, killed a farmhand with his own spade, and threatened to kill anyone who told on her.
Mary Hannigan was born in the early 19th century, the only child of a well-to-do farming family who lived in the townland of Colligan, near Clogheen, and she was known for her love of dancing and drinking. During one drunken dance, as she spun around, her skirt was caught on a nail and fell to the ground, causing mirth and leading to laughter and jeering. The incident raised her anger and left her with the name ‘Petticoat Lucy’ or ‘Petticoat Loose’.
She met her future husband on the dance floor, but the marriage lasted only a year, and he met an early death. Local people whispered that Mary’s lover, a local hedge-school teacher, had murdered him.
Then, one night during a drinking session in a pub in Dungarvan, Mary drank half a gallon of beer, suddenly slumped forward onto the table and died. There was a big wake but no priest was called, even for the burial.
Seven years after her death, there were several sightings of Petticoat Loose, seen as a ghost with red hair or as a monstrous horse-headed figure who had returned to haunt people on the Vee road. She was also seen in the pubs and dance halls and became the terror of the Vee road, although – for some inexplicable reason – she never harmed any man with the name John.
She continued to haunt the Vee road close to Bay Lough, and it became a common practice for people travelling at night to carry religious relics or hazel sticks as protection.
Finally, people who were living in fear of Petticoat Lucy called on a local priest to rid the area of Mary and her nightly visits. One night, the priest and two men spotted her coming across a field. When the priest asked her name, she replied ‘I’m Petticoat Loose’, telling him she would do evil wherever she was.
‘We will see’, the priest replied. ‘I will place you head downwards.’ He took out a bottle of holy water and sent her to the far banks of the deepest lake, telling her: ‘You shall be condemned until judgment day to empty it with a thimble!’
The priest is said to have died two weeks later – some say she had drained the life out of him.
Many people say Petticoat Loose still sits on the far bank of Bay Lough with her thimble, vainly trying to empty the lake, waiting for tomorrow. Some say she sometimes appears out of the water and asks the same questions over and over again: ‘When will judgment day come?’ ‘Is it tomorrow?’
She is often associated with other spirits and monsters trapped in the lake by Saint Patrick. He told them to stay there and wait, and that he would be back tomorrow. So, they are still there, deep in the dark waters, waiting for tomorrow. Petticoat Loose, or one of the monsters, is said to surface occasionally to ask ‘Is it tomorrow?’
Bay Lough is a favourite for walkers and family outings, although it is only possible to walk about half way around the lake, and few ever swim in it, frightened off by tales that Petticoat Loose waits below to grab your legs and pull you down.
Perhaps the idle tale that Samuel Grubb was buried upside down was conflated or confused with the story that Petticoat Loose had been sent head down into the lake. As children we revelled in those stories, pretending to be only slightly scared. But in the 1950s and the early 1960s, the men in the family had probably driven up to the Vee and Bay Lough to get better radio reception.
Back on my grandmother’s farm near Cappoquin, in a valley below the Knockmealdowns, the mountains often blocked reception of what was then Radio Éireann. Instead, I grew up listening to the BBC Light Programme, nourished by a daily diet of programmes that included the Archers, Mrs Dales Diary, Hancock’s Half Hour, Housewives’ Choice, Listen with Mother, Woman’s Hour, and, of course, the Goons. Petticoat Loose may have been as far from Petticoat Lane as I could imagine, yet I understand how I grew up in rural Ireland with Received Pronunciation or ‘BBC English’ as my first language.
In those years, the Waterford hurlers were at their peak, reaching the All-Ireland finals in 1957, 1959 and 1963, and the men in the family needed better reception to hear the match commentaries. The ‘wireless’ was taken from the house, brought with us up to Bay Lough or Grubb’s Grave and connected to the car battery so my uncles could listen to Mícheál Ó hEithir’s match commenaties while we children played and picknicked by the lake shore or on the mountainside.
As a treat later, we were brought back to the ‘Cats’ near Melleray for lemonade and crisps, while the men celebrated the match result – or drowned their sorrows. Later we might even be allowed to listen to the music or watch the dancing at the ‘Stage’ … if we behaved ourselves.
The working week resumed on Monday morning. Cows were to be milked, animals had to be fed, there was shopping to do in Cappoquin, and children had to go to school. Tomorrow always came.
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