Oh Riobard, it is so nice to have you back. You were so missed. What a delightful story and lovely memory for you. Thank you so much for sharing it. Loretta McDermott McGinn In a message dated 9/23/2015 10:16:01 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time, beara@rootsweb.com writes: Recenty, I read an article in the paper from a Paula Vallely from Keady. Co. Armagh, saying that she was researching about dance halls in rural Iraland during the 1930s, 1940s, and the 1950s. This is the answer I wrote her back: Dear Paula, My parents' dance hall in the (Ardgroom) Village was opened circa Christmas 1936. The Priests here were very much against dancing at the time. One of them used ask people going to Confession if they were dancing in my parents' hall on the previous Sunday night. If they admitted it. they would not be given absolution by him, as he looked upon dancing as a mortal sin. Such rubbish !! Once, he walked into the centre of the dance floor., and spread out his hands as if to "clear" the hall of the "sinners". Many of the local people used be walking up and down the village road outside the dance hall, afraid of their lives of the damnation of the Priest if they went in. I remember, as a young lad of about 10., sitting on the 2nd set of the top left of the Church during Mass, and listening to my father and mother being denounced from the Altar by the Priest for not closing the dance at 10 p.m. on a Sunday night ----- dances used be held early here on a Sunday night. One time, my father held a dance to 12 o'clock on a Christmas night, and the Parish Priest went to court to stop him. It used cost 4 pence to go to the dances in those days; later, it went up to 6 pence; and, later again, to a shilling. The dances in the hall were the Set Dance (to Irish traditional music), the Waltz, the 2-step, the Barn Dance, and the "Stack of Barley". The dance band consisted of my father playing the "button-key" accordeon, and my mother playing the fiddle/violin, and sometimes the concertina. There was no such thing as amplification. People kept up as near as he/she could to the stage. The men used stand on one side of the hall, and the girls on the other side. During the dance, there used be what was called the Ladies' Choice ----- when a lady had the privilege of going across the dance floor and asking the man of her choice for a dance. Sometimes, the man of her choice would feel he was "fixed up" after that, and would, later in the week, ask her out for a "date". The girls wore ordinary-length dresses ----- not like the "up to their ar__s" that some of them wear nowadays. Before their dance hall of 1936, my father built a very small hall at the top of the village, up beside the nearby river, when my parents came back home from America. It was after the Civil War, and one night during a dance (I heard it said), when my father and mother were playing their music up on the "stage", a row/fight started between two men in the middle of the dance-floor ----- one belonging to Fianna Fail, and the other from the opposite party, Fine Gael. My father jumped down off the "stage", knocked out the two of them with his fists; then jumped up on the "stage", and continued playing for the dance. As the old people used say: "Them were the days" !! I hope that this will help you with your research. Best wishes from Riobard (=the Gaelic for Robert) O'Dwyer. ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to BEARA-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message