A time when Mount Sion boys danced with local convent girls
Pictured during the summer of 1969 are Rita Power, O’Brien Street, and Michael O’Connor, Tycor Avenue, Waterford, a time when céilí dances were held for 5th and 6th year pupils of Mount Sion, Presentation and Mercy Secondary schools.
1968 and 1969 were my years of preparing for the dreaded Leaving Certificate examination. I was a pupil at Mount Sion Secondary School, Waterford.
Academic activities mostly occupied our lives, but we also enjoyed hurling, athletics, soccer, and class debates. An early opportunity to break from the tedium came when we gathered to elect a student committee. I threw my hat into the ring and was pleasantly surprised to find that I was elected “coiste rúnaí”, the committee secretary. One of the committee’s most agreeable tasks was to organise a dance between the 5th and 6th year boys of our school and the girls of the Mercy Convent School, Military Road, along with the Presentation Convent School, Slievekeale Road, Waterford. The dance was a Céilí, providing an opportunity to gain experience and practice the steps of Irish dancing, but most importantly the event was where boys got to meet girls!
Committee members would arrange a meeting with each principal of the three schools and agree to the use of the school’s hall and the date for the Céilí on a rotating basis. These meetings were conducted entirely “as gaeilge” as Mount Sion school was an all-Irish school and we pupils and staff spoke regularly through Irish.
In advance of the dance, I, as secretary, would order crates of soft drinks from O’Sullivan Bottlers, High Street, Waterford. A volunteer group, mothers of the pupils, agreed to prepare sandwiches and pots of tea, and all these items were for sale during an interval break from the strenuous dancing. A Céilí band of former school pupils provided the music.
Our Leaving Cert class comprised 30 pupils and the girls’ classes were the same, but fifth-year girls and boys had two classes each, resulting in a substantial number of students attending the dances.
The Céilís were held several times a year, the first one was at the mid-term break of Halloween, then Christmas. The next Céilí took place on St Patrick’s Day, followed by Easter and the last one took place before we broke for the summer holidays. Irish dancing is extremely physical, also demanding and exhausting, but great fun. On the night of the Céilí, crowds would gather and queue for admission, the sense of anticipation, giddiness, and good humour evident to all.
We had instructors on hand to teach us the basics of the different dances, we had set dancing, solo dancing, slashing, and a few of us created our own “makey-up” moves.
Off we would go at breakneck speed, hands by our sides, jumping, laughing, giggling, leaping high, bouncing on the balls of our feet, and stretching them from heel to toe as we counted the steps, “one, two, three, one, two, three”. The “Walls of Limerick” (Fallai Luimnigh), was a challenging dance, involving inter-changing between partners, with skips and high steps. From memory the dance began with a reel of diddly-eye music, you held your partner’s hand and faced another couple, you danced towards them, stepped back, then you crossed diagonally and changed partners, the others did the same and we all gently slashed. Dancing back to your partner you turned around to face a new couple and on and on it continued until the music stopped or you died from exhaustion.
In a time-honoured tradition at the Céilís, the boys gathered on one side of the hall and the girls were opposite and as each dance ended the separation resumed as everyone went back to where they came from.
Shakespeare’s Hamlet was on the Leaving Cert curriculum but there was no evidence of ‘procrastination’ when a much looked forward to event, “rougha na mBán” (Ladies choice), was announced and because the girls outnumbered the boys a stampede ensued as the girls ran to grab the hand of the boy they fancied before anyone else got there.
Cosmetic manufacturers would have salivated at the prospect of bottling the frisson of excitement and passion evident in those sweat-filled dance halls.
After completing one exam paper or another for the Leaving Cert we heard the news that exam papers were stolen from the Department of Education offices and were distributed to startled but excited students in Dublin. We never got a sneak preview of those exam questions as they never made it to Waterford or elsewhere in the country. To our dismay we had to attend the exam hall on a Saturday morning and repeat two papers, Maths and English. As the invigilator was handing out the English paper to us before the exam started, he loudly pronounced it as “An páipéar Béarla”.
When the Leaving Cert exams were over a farewell Céilí for the class of sixty-nine was held in the Mount Sion sports hall and with it came the realisation that our school days were over.
