Original subtitles

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(wind blowing)

Yes, it was a very nice place.

A good community to grow up in.

My name is Anna Rogers.

I was born on the 18th of January 1935.

I lived most of my life in Mullaghderg Mountain.

There was lots of people around, and there were families

in every home around about us.

Everybody knew everybody,

and the people in the community were very close,

and if one was in trouble or needed help,

all the families gathered and helped out.

There were a lady that lived with her mother.

Her father was dead, and when she went away

we went up and helped that old lady out.

And my brother Brian would go and take the turf home for her

with the donkey and the cradles.

And people ran about in their bare feet in the summer time,

they didn't have shoes.

You would go the shortcut through the bogs,

and over wee streams, and...

we had lots of fun.

My father would take us down the lake in the boat to the sports.

You have a great view from out there.

You see right out to sea,

out to the horizon.

I'm just trying to think.

Go back and think.

It was all happy memories.

It was all happy memories here.

"Where's the dance tonight?

And where's the dance tomorrow night?"

It was all music, and going to houses at night to talk, and...

You had to depend on what you grew.

You had to make use of what you had yourself.

We had to look after the cows,

and take the cows home, and we had to milk the cows

when we got older, and it's not what you call a very fertile land.

And you had to work hard to look after it.

Me father bought a bicycle for me once,

and the bicycle was made up of all different parts! (laughs)

And I thought I was a millionaire.

People didn't have a lot.

They didn't need a lot, different times.

It's not like now, for everybody, there's too much.

* (quiet, sombre music)

It wasn't an easy place either.

There were a lot of sadness in the area, was all...

But the saddest moment we had was

all them coffins lined up in the hall in Mullaghduff,

and the blood seeping out of them,

and they weren't.... they weren't whole people.

It took a long time to get over that.

A very long time.

But somebody else will talk to you about that.

(dog barks)

It's Monty Don, is it? (laughs)

Yeah, well, we have the...

(dog whines)

Rosie!

Rosie?

Right, well, we'll just have the, eh, flowers

and all sorts of things there.

And then we have the herbs. We cook a lot with the herbs.

My name is Jimmy Duffy.

I delve into local history, and all that goes with it.

I was born listening about it. I heard about it,

my mother talked about it all the time.

We used to go to Mullaghduff to my grandad, closer to the area.

They wouldn't talk too much about it.

Right, Rosie!

You happy out?

She's a bit of a hard life.

She had an accident when she was a year old.

She'd a leg came off about five years ago.

She's been through it.

Aye. On my wee foot there. She...

She's been sick again.

She's like a baby.

This community at the time probably had about 200 people.

Everybody was on the one level.

Nobody was any much richer than the other, per se.

But they had a system.

They would put the thatch on their own house, they would, for the...

They would do lot of things that a lot of people today couldn't do.

They were self-sufficient.

There is this wider theme of where Donegal fits in

when it comes to priorities.

The theme that goes right back, you could argue,

to previous centuries,

even the idea of Donegal at the outer edge,

that there are communications issues,

that there's distance from Dublin.

And as a consequence of partition as well,

there were those who felt that Donegal, whilst, of course,

being a part of the Republic,

felt quite on the edge of that Republic.

That feeling lasts to this day,

and it's not an irrelevant issue

when it comes to the Ballymanus disaster either.

I'm still surprised to this day

how neglected it is, given the loss of life.

It was devastating,

and for such a small, isolated community in West Donegal,

it must have reverberated down through the decades

in a very traumatic way.

Was there a tendency for it to lie under the radar?

It being known that these families were unlikely to be

a thorn in the side of the political establishment.

(film camera running)

The last stroke of midnight dies.

All day in the one chair

From dream to dream and rhyme to rhyme I have ranged.

In rambling talk with an image of air:

Vague memories,

nothing but memories.

(Jimmy Duffy) People as they get older, they tend to look at

who they are themselves and what moulded them.

In this case, their lives have been moulded by the actions

that happened on the 10th of May 1943.

They probably never got away from the ghosts

that haunted them through their life.

* (brooding music, birds calling)

They basically lost a generation.

There's no other way to describe it.

The story goes that on that fateful day, something was spotted

on the shores off Ballymanus.

They didn't really know what it was.

They wasn't sure, but it was bobbing in the waters

just off the, as we call them now, the Disaster Rocks.

It had spikes like horns coming out of the side of it.

Word would have trickled through

that there was something coming in,

and I was heading that direction towards

the Mullaghderg, Ballymanus shore.

She was in the vicinity, very close, right,

the tide, I think, was just getting higher.

I think it was six o'clock on a lovely summer's evening.

Of course, young people as they are, had to go and investigate.

My father was in Mullaghduff at the time.

He remembers crowds of people going down to have a look,

and it transpired that it was a mine.

* (sinister music, waves lapping)

There was always going to be huge interest

in what was being washed up

or coming close to the shore during the Second World War,

because it was an opportunity,

perhaps, for some valuable material to become available

to them in their everyday lives or in their working lives.

Boats at that time were coming across the Atlantic in convoys,

and German U-boats were sinking them.

And as they were sinking them, cargo was coming overboard.

Logs of wood, lumps of lard and candle wax...

The level of awareness,

education that would have existed about the

potential for great damage is another question.

How much was known about mines?

What the consequences could be

if there was interference with an unknown quantity.

It was coming in close to a place called Port Tabhóige ,

which means "the landing place of the crows".

The coast watcher was Morgan Dunleavy,

and he was there, present there,

because he was local and he heard about it.

He was probably stuck between a rock in a hard place because

he tried his best to stay,

to warn the people off it, and observe the situation.

But also if he was to phone for help,

he would have to leave. (waves crashing)

I was described that it was

8 to 10 foot high, when beached.

It came in. They all ran for cover down here on these sand dunes,

and I suppose there were a kind of a silence.

Nothing happened.

She must be okay.

At that point, it was nearly dark.

Mr. Dunleavy had to go and alert the ordnance people

to come and defuse the mine.

He told everybody "Stand back",

and at that stage, he left on a motorbike.

And he was at Mullaghduff Hall when the mine blew up.

(wave crashes)

This almighty blast went off.

My mother was standing on the door.

She said "What happened?"

I said "I don't know, I don't know!"

It was heard in Derry, 70 miles away.

The shock broke the windows of the houses in Ballymanus.

A relation of my own was milking the cows in the byre,

and he thought the byre fell on top of him.

He lost his two boys.

So the byre did fall on top of him,

his life fell on top of him.

* (dramatic music, waves crashing)

Then the news soon got out, and everybody started going down,

women and men, screaming, crying.

Most of my school friends, you know,

there were a lot of them killed.

Well, it was described in newspapers and different places.

I think it was gruesome.

Newspapers at the time were quite frank

in referring to the mutilations,

to the mangled state of the bodies,

to these low groans from those

who had survived, but were dying.

On this strand that we're standing on now,

there was people carrying their own relatives' body parts

identified by their colour of their jersey or whatever.

Sixteen of them killed outright.

There was one of them kicking back, and he died that night up at home.

The next day, another body came from Letterkenny

and the other boy died the following week

from the loss of blood.

Eleven of them was under 18 years of age.

There was also bodies sitting there...

with the last expression that was on their face...

of laughter.

(click)

Everybody was so happy, and

the girls stayed on one side of the hall and the boys on the other,

and you had to wait for somebody to come and ask you to dance.

(laughing) And if you were a wallflower, God help ya!

All the young people would gather there,

and there were a priest in Kincasslagh,

and he would go up, and a big blackthorn stick with him,

and he would chase them all, and he'd be

hitting them with the stick.

He would be saying you were going to hell!

He just didn't like them all to be having fun,

and he thought that wasn't good for the soul.

Yes, we had good fun at the dancing.

Yes, and, eh... I had all me brothers,

me cousins going to the dancing, and they would always come

and dance with you.

So you never had to sit out.

(waves breaking)

They lifted all the remains, that they could see anyway,

and took the coffins to Mullaghduff Hall.

Later that night, around maybe half 10

or 11 o'clock, there was going to be a dance in it.

And instead of a dance, it was a wake.

If the doctors and things came out, they would have to be

paid, I suppose.

The people had no money then, to pay for anything.

They probably could have saved them,

some of them fellas that were killed.

But they had to just leave them and let them die.

My aunt, Cissy, she was on her way back home,

and she met a man called Mickyfiddy Hamish,

and he told her that her brother was

dead and that her mother, Anne, had gone missing.

Anne took it real bad.

She basically disappeared for the full night,

and, eh, she returned the next day, but she was

a broken woman for a long period of time.

You can imagine the hysterical nature of it.

They had a makeshift morgue in the hall in Mullaghduff.

You had the Gardaí, you had the ordnance people,

you had the Red Cross, you had the army, and you had the priests.

And the priests, I suppose, wanted to be in ultimate control.

Over 90% of the population of southern Ireland

in the 1930s is Catholic.

In many respects, it was a Catholic state for a Catholic people.

And when we think about pillars of the community,

we have to, of course, place the parish priest at the very top,

because that's how they were seen in their communities at the time.

Many of them enjoy that.

Some of them abuse that power.

When you consider the manifestations of Catholic identity,

of Catholic power, of Catholic control, they're everywhere.

Industrial schools, reformatories, Magdalene laundries...

There's widespread obedience to the strict rules that are being

overseen by the Catholic Church.

There's a widespread belief amongst Irish Catholics

that the Catholic Church is the greatest force for good

in the country.

Some of the older women born around about the hungry times,

they still had the old tradition of caoineadh.

Coming from the Irish word, caoineadh,

it was a custom It was just about dying out at the time.

It was akin to something a bard would do for his chieftain,

where he would praise the chieftain to no end.

It was done in Irish, and it was mixed with prayers,

and a kind of a wailing sound like a banshee.

The priests were totally against this

because it was associated with Celtic religion,

and they were trying to suppress that.

So they thought "We'll stamp this down,"

and they did stamp it down.

They reared up and they took control.

The priest stamped one of the coffins with his blackthorn stick.

And at this man of the cloth stopped the people from mourning

in their traditional way.

Comments that are reported at the time about respecting the collar,

and the clergy banging the coffins and, you know,

talking about making the community look like fools

because of what happened, and really blaming the victims

for the fact that they were on the beach.

It was unreal because the mourning was completely different.

It was removed from the family home.

The privacy of the mourning and everything was interrupted.

If there was a wake about,

all the neighbours would come and they would sit up,

and they would pray the rosary at twelve o'clock.

And they would sit up to morning,

and they wouldn't leave the house until

somebody would come in in the morning to relieve them.

And everybody was very attentive to things like that, yeah.

And very supportive.

It got worse because the people were removed from the wake.

That was for the process of identification.

Everybody was told that was his coffin, that was your coffin.

But maybe in that coffin, there would be only a shoe.

They couldn't tell who was in them,

but they would pretend that they knew.

And after a year, the hall in Mullaghduff was reopened.

Dances were resumed, and the physical mark of the blood

of the victims was still on that floor, forever more.

Lieutenant Dunleavy could tell people of the danger,

but he couldn't tell people what to do.

He didn't have that authority.

That was the authority that lay with the Garda Síochána

and he didn't have that help.

The Irish police force for this new state, what was the Civic Guard,

and then becomes An Garda Síochána,

one of the great challenges is to get An Garda Síochána accepted

as the legitimate police force, as an acceptable police force.

That eventually happens.

There is a certain distance, of course,

between the police and those they are responsible for policing.

That's inevitable,

but they do have significant social standing.

A Garda is regarded as a pillar of the community.

They were fishing at the back of Inishfree,

and they seen the mine,

and they put one of the younger guys up to Annagry.

He went into the Garda station,

and he said "There's a mine approaching the shore."

The Garda never lifted his head, never acknowledged him.

So the mine was reported at least three times,

if not more, to the Gardaí.

They had, by law, to have an inquest, and that inquest was held

a month after the disaster.

By the flickering dim light of three matches and a small hand lamp,

the verdict of the coroner's jury on the Ballymanus mine disaster

was recorded late on Friday night.

The very Reverend Canon MacAteer, the parish priest,

counselled the bereaved

to now let the matter rest,

and content themselves with prayer

for the happy repose of the souls of the victims.

The inquest gave some information.

That was published in the papers, and that was the narrative,

but it wasn't the true facts.

Researching about it and trying to get a bit of truth,

everybody had their own version of it.

They asked Garda Boylan when did he get the notification,

and he said it was a quarter to seven in the evening,

which was maybe when he got the first notification,

but it wasn't the first notification

that went to the barracks.

They asked him who was present in the barracks, and he said it was

him, the other Guard, and Sergeant Allen.

This is the statement of Sergeant F. Allen.

"Beyond conveying the report to Lieutenant Dunleavy,

I did not do anything in the matter.

I did not proceed to the scene,

nor did I send any of the other members to the scene.

I knew, however, that Lieutenant Dunleavy had gone to the scene,

and I remained to wait word from him

as I took it that if the mine was coming ashore,

he would send me word."

That would suggest, of course, that he was passing the buck,

that this was the responsibility

of the coastguard, of the Marine Watch,

as opposed to being my direct responsibility.

The instruction to the Garda Síochána

relating to mines which are washed ashore reads as follows.

"The member in charge will immediately take such steps

as are necessary to ensure

that no one approaches to within 500 yards of the article...

You will observe from the reports that this instruction

was not observed by the local Gardaí

inasmuch as they did not take any steps

to prevent members of the public from approaching the mine.

The Department of Defence do not consider that any useful purpose

would be served by holding any enquiry

other than an inquest in this case."

There seems to be an attempt to close this down

at a very early stage.

We don't want this developing a lifespan beyond the inquest,

the difficult questions that the Ballymanus tragedy gave rise to.

Why the hell wasn't that area cordoned off?

There were very clear instructions to Guards about what to do

in the event of a mine appearing near the seashore.

You cordon it off.

You don't let anyone within 500 yards of that area.

Why wasn't that done?

* (sombre music, waves lapping)

And like many other scandals,

within 24 hours of those young men losing their lives,

the Garda was shipped out to a different area.

The night of the inquest, he wasn't present.

He should have been present, but if he was present,

he would probably be lynched.

Some people were blaming the coast watcher, but ultimately,

they were blaming Sergeant Allen,

because he was the man who could take charge.

But in saying that, I think that if your sergeant is intoxicated,

there's somebody who should be next in charge.

And they seemed to have, in the inquest,

brushed over the Garda in the barracks.

They said they had no authority.

Present at the inquest was members of the clergy,

the Garda Síochána, and TDs.

There was a number of things noted.

One of the things was that there were going to be an inquiry,

but that inquiry never happened.

"The Chief Superintendent has expressed the opinion

that the request for the inquiry was made

on account of hostility against the local sergeant,

who was, of course, guilty of grave neglect of duty in this matter.

On Saturday last, Canon MacAteer, the local parish priest,

had a conference with the two local curates...

and they came to the conclusion

that nothing would be gained by an inquiry."

There are an awful lot of things going on here at local level.

We can speculate about some of them, but there are also some things

that are emphatically clear.

It is stated here without any ambiguity

that the sergeant, of course, was guilty of grave neglect of duty

in this matter. And this reference as well

to the local parish priest having a conference

with the local curates. Well, it's clear

where the decision-making forum is.

This is an account from Superintendent Lean,

who mentioned he was approached Mr. Cormac Breslin, TD.

"He said that it would be ridiculous to hold an inquiry,

that would only show up the local people

as an ignorant, stubborn lot who had no respect for authority."

This is quite remarkable that Cormac Breslin,

who went on to represent Donegal until 1977.

So he's at the beginning of a very long career.

The use of that word "ridiculous",

that it would be ridiculous to hold an inquiry.

And that great fear of how the locals would be depicted.

What will this reveal?

Will this provide an opportunity for people to depict the people

I represent as some kind of half-wits,

who don't respect authority,

who are ignorant of the realities of modern warfare and its dangers.

For a TD, and it's in the name,

there was a big debate when this state was set up

as to what would members of parliament be called,

and it was settled on that there would be Teachtaí Dála,

they would be the messengers of the people.

It appears that the TD in question had a different agenda,

and that isn't, in my view, the role of a TD.

I think the role of a TD was to listen.

"It was then decided that a further meeting would be held

to decide definitely the question of the demand for an inquiry.

I received a phone message from the Reverend Canon MacAteer,

parish priest... He expressed himself very strongly

about being double-crossed by these people

and intimated that he would find out as to who was responsible

for this further demand, etc.

stating that he was under the impression that the question

of an inquiry was finished."

Wow.

The question of an inquiry was finished

because he had decided that it was finished,

and he's not one bit happy about

what seems to be either a direct or an indirect challenge

to his authority, to his word.

It was an Ireland that never had ordinary people's interests

at the heart. That allowed for, and this is what I can't understand,

how somebody put pen to paper

and basically said, "no public inquiry here".

You do have the esteemed pillars of the community

that do revolve around priest, police, politicians.

They are watching each other's back.

They would have worked in concert with each other, and perhaps

would have regarded an attack on one as being an attack on them all.

What the state has said on a number of occasions now,

because I'm not the only person to raise this in the Seanad,

a couple of years previous,

is that they've expressed condolences.

Condolences is when something happens

that is outside your control.

But that's not what we're talking about here.

The fact that it happened so many years ago

doesn't make it any different.

You know, if you come to that community,

it's a very proud community,

a community that still hurts.

Because there's never a wrong time to do the right thing.

Now is the time to actually stand up and say "We failed you."

By not cordoning off that area, by shutting down the questions

that you had, that many of you are no longer here

to actually hear the answers of.

I think the hurt that people had

at the time helped the authorities

to brush it under the carpet.

There's definitely a degree of manipulation there.

If you have suffered that level of trauma,

consider what those people had seen,

you can only imagine the devastation of the scenes

on that beach as the light faded.

There were body parts everywhere.

They're the kind of scenes that would never leave people.

Sometimes when you're reading these, what really are instructions

from the parish priest, they do seem very...

patronising.

Em... Yeah. It is.

Put your faith... put your faith and your trust in God now.

There's nothing more that can be done on this Earth

for your dead loved ones,

Which, of course, is not true, but it's very convenient.

The thing that I see about inquiries,

you can either have closure

or it can open wounds wider.

How many inquiries have we got throughout Ireland at present?

Do they help?

I don't know. I don't honestly know.

There was...

you know, whose fault was it?

There was... that went over and over and over.

Everybody was sort of blaming other people

who done what, and who should have came there,

even my brother-in-law, his father was in the army,

and you know, they blamed him for not going down quick enough.

Why did they take their son down? And why didn't they...?

Oh, yes, they went through all that.

Maybe I'm saying... they can't say things

that they would have liked to say.

That's what happened.

(click)

was to keep questions for another day.

It's just a pity that they didn't ask them more questions,

but that was as near as we ever got to the truth.

* (sombre music)

Though leaves are many, the root is one;

Through all the lying days of my youth

I swayed my leaves and flowers in the sun;

And now I wither into the truth.

My grandmother, for a long time after,

she would go out onto the hills,

up in the Farragans outside her home,

and she would basically cry for hours.

Em... She was so devastated, but that was the same, Rannyhual,

my mother said she could hear the women crying in the evening.

And then the man across, not far from here,

he would start about six o'clock in the evening,

calling the names of the boys that he lost,

Patrick, Dominick, and he would be screaming and crying.

And that would never leave my mind, this...

that man out, and it would come on every night, you know...

So much hurt and pain that people experienced

through their whole life, in days when there were no counselling or

bereavement therapy, or anything like that.

There were reminders all the time of where people should be.

Come the next year, when what we called meitheals,

gangs of maybe eight able men from different households

would congregate to cut the turf.

There were fellas missing.

All of my uncles, every one of them would have emigrated to Scotland.

John would have been there as well,

to send money back to the mother and father,

you know, to keep things going,

because you can imagine trying to make ends meet

on the the small holdings that we have around here.

It was not easy.

In June then, all the young men and women would have left

to go back to Scotland to work.

All that was left in that community then was the old folk grieving.

I mean, if you lost your three brothers,

you wouldn't want to hang around.

I can... It was being in a...

a hole that you couldn't get out of.

I stayed away from down there, from Ballymanus.

I didn't want to go down there any more and see where it was.

Then that... the hall, then, was terrible.

You couldn't pass it at night with the loneliness.

Oh, even to this day,

I wouldn't pass down at that.

I'd be afraid of ghosts!

Afraid of people coming... Oh!

So I'm Frank Sharkey.

I'm 19, and I've been living here since I was 2,

I think 18 months we moved over.

Around here, there's always stuff to do, and, eh...

Donegal, if you have the right kind of lifestyle for it,

if you want to be out playing on the water like we always did,

out on the lake.

We've had boats since as long as I can remember anyway.

Everything draws me towards it.

So peaceful, you know, and it gives you a break from everything else

'cause whenever you're on the water,

you're not stressing about any wee problems you have,

and you're just glad to be on the water.

'Cause that's what it was for them.

They were probably with their parents out fishing,

bringing in food for the family.

And then this came in from the water then,

and they just didn't know what it was.

I think it's strange....

I, like, never really thought, when we were doing it,

em, to be really embodying it.

But thinking back on it now, the role that you're playing, em,

these lads were even younger than I am.

Most people around here know of the disaster, but the names of people,

unless they're in your family,

probably aren't remembered very well.

There'll still be some people left

who were the same age as the people who died.

They won't want to talk about it.

You hear of it, but you don't get the personal

kind of connection.

I just think that it's quite a taboo, almost, subject.

Yeah.

There were a lot of sadness,

and the area was all really down.

But the saddest moment we had was, em,

all them coffins was lined up in the hall in Mullaghduff,

and the blood seeping out of them.

And they weren't... they weren't whole people,

lots of them was just blown up to bits.

Our cousin, Jimmy Anthony, they knew he had his wellies on,

and they knew that it was his wellies,

and they knew by the socks that was in the welly,

and they were picking up bits of pieces of his body.

I'm sure they would be... eh...

(exhales) They're...

Like, we're a very close family.

Em... I think it would be devastating. Abs... there's no...

I don't really even want to think about the...

eh... like, my mother and that, what...

Eh, yeah.

I got a lot of family from here.

I've got personal history with the disaster.

It was my great uncle that had died in the disaster.

His name was John Joe Carson. He was 15.

Well, it's not really talked about that much.

It's just... I don't think he ever really talked about it.

I think Grandad would have been...

13 when it happened? 'Cause it was his brother.

I guess I was, like, his close family,

I were probably one of his closest friends

'cause there wasn't much of an age difference, so

I'm guessing it probably was very hard for him.

Yeah, I'd say so, actually, yeah.

I don't actually think I've ever heard him talk about it.

I've heard Mum and Dad talking about it, but I don't think I've

ever heard him talking about it.

Yes, going to school and that, and...

young and herding cows, and going up to the bog,

to get turf and that, you know?

We were only young, fighting all the time, too. (laughs)

(laughing) I dunno, the football, or something!

You're just kicking football on the strand there. (laughs)

You know, the usual.

Brothers, yeah. Aye.

Remember it, surely, aye.

Well, I'm Gerry Carson of Braade, Kincasslagh,

and I was born in Belfast.

Me and me brother John.

And I weren't even six months old and we were brought down here.

Me mother came from here.

So, eh... he was about 15 years of age

when he was killed in the Ballymanus mine disaster.

I would be about 10 that time.

I remember down in the house, an explosion.

We heard it in the house there that evening.

He was wounded, badly wounded.

We thought he would have survived once he went to hospital,

that he'd be okay, but...

he just bled to death in Letterkenny hospital.

That was the worst part to it, like, you know.

Just all of a sudden, one evening they said that he had died.

If it was now, he would have made it, but

that time, they just... they weren't up, the doctors

wouldn't be up to it at the time.

I still cried about it, with me aunt there, and, you know...

for the years after that.

Because they brought him up, you know, to that age.

Even after I went to Scotland, too, you still thought about him,

you know, and...

Nobody to talk to there, either,

I was just on me own, more or less, you know?

That time.

And, eh...

as you get older, you thought more about it, and

you missed him more, you know?

It's pity it wasn't prevented just when it did come in,

onto the beach.

It was just the part of Donegal there, you know, we're

kind of a forgotten place.

God knows what would have happened, you know,

where would he be?

Married someplace, maybe, you know?

Of course, he would have gone away like meself, just...

maybe he would have stayed away.

Could have settled down, maybe, in Glasgow, or some place.

I want to go to university to do pharmacy.

Become a pharmacist, sell it all in one, you know...

Then I've also got sports on the side and that, so,

yeah! So I'll hopefully be successful anyway.

Just as you get older, so much more to do as well, so...

Get a car, go anywhere, yeah.

(Gerard) That's right, aye.

He is like him a bit, you know.

It's good to have them about. You know what I mean?

Johnny, too, you'll probably meet him later on.

Daniel's brother.

Oh, about 88.

Years piling on!

(laughs) Years are all slipping by!

The disaster is a distant memory now, you know?

I get worried when I start remembering things myself.

From when I was four years old or six years old,

you know, I remember things like that.

There's something wrong here.

Maybe I'll be lying in bed at night and I'd start thinking of

somebody that I knew 80 years ago or something like that.

But I wonder, did all that do that?

That mine and all that. I don't know.

It definitely changed the whole... place.

It changed over and it's going to change again.

Not really, but maybe he was that young, I just...

didn't bother, you know. Aye.

I think people just accepted that was it.

New generation came up and you just didn't say nothing about it.

Well, I suppose it would be better if you talked to the young crowd

about it, but it's just the way things were, you know?

They probably should have been... should have been told

about it, all that happened and that, you know, but...

Maybe some of the young ones just wouldn't be that interested,

now, in this day and age, in it, you know?

That's just life, eh? (laughs)

I don't believe in omens or fear Forebodings.

Death does not exist.

Everyone is immortal.

No point in fearing death at seventeen,

Or seventy.

There is only here and now and light;

Neither death, nor darkness, exists.

We are already on the seashore;

I am one of those who will be hauling in the nets

When a shoal of immortality swims by.

(click)