Master Blacksmith Jack O'Neill - Leitrim Guardian

M A S T E R B L A C K S M I T H
Jim Williamson
Gretta & Jack O’Neill with new tongs
ON AN AFTERNOON in early Septe m b e r,
I stood in Jack O’Neill’s fo rge at the back of his
home in Carrigallen. Along with his wife, Gret t a
and Tony Fahy with his camera, we watc h e d
Jack making a pair of thongs.
Jack, now 80 years, is a blacksmith and is st i l l
going st rong. His people have been blacksmiths
for generations in the area. His brot h e r
P had a fo rge in nea r by Arva, from 1940 to to
the mid-’70s. He was also the first to have and
work an electric welder in the re g i o n .
Jack learned his trade with his father and his
Uncle Charlie and with his brother in Arva fo r
nine years through the forties to 1950.
I used to hang around P O’Neills fo rge in the
’50s. Jack was gone then, and seeing him in his
fo rge now, which was partially equipped fro m
the fo rge in Arva, brought back many memories.
Jack has tools and implements of the trade,
many of which are over a hundred years old
and nearly all made by the O’Neills. He has all
the modern equipment as well like the elect r i c
welder and grinder and an electric fan for his
purpose-built fire p l a ce. The fire is fuelled by
Wigan co ke (not the white stuff!) and the hea t
attained is much hot ter than the fire of the old
d a ys which was fuelled with co a l ..
John Donnely & Jack O’Neill at work in the forge in Carrigallen.1984
As Jack pro ceeded to make the tongs, he deftly
cut a piece of iron into two equal lengths. He
put them into the fire in the intense heat them
so that he could shape them with his hammer
on the anvil. This was a sound that I hadn’t
h ea rd in over 30 years: the ringing sound of
the hammer on anvil that had echoed thro u g h-
out the towns of Ireland up until the ’50’s .
When the people in Calloughs, on the ot h e r
side of Callough’s lake from Carrigallen, hea rd
the ringing of the anvil in the village, they
knew the rain was coming soon and that it was
time to get their farmwork finished—the lake
and the extra moist u re in the air, acted as a
co n d u ctor of the sound!
I asked Jack, how much did it co st for a horse
to be shod. 4 shillings (45¢) was the re p l y. ‘Not
all of the horses we re quiet’, he said and he
s h owed me a scar that went halfway around his
w r i st. A horse atte m pted to pull away when he
was turning the nails in the shoe. Dr Michael
McManus stiched it and told him the arte r y
was missed by a hair’s - b readth! It was important
‘the acc u r a cy of hammering in the nails’.
Th e re was very little space for them in the hoof.
The shoe itself also had to be a perfe ct fit or it
wo u l d n ’t funct i o n .
I myself re m e m b e r
so well the smell
Jack in 1945 with
Willie O’Donnell
Gretta O’Neill & Jim Williamson watch Jack at work
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Hugh O’Neill, Jack O’Neill at
12 years old and his Uncle
Charlie. This picture taken at
the original forge in
Carrigallen where McCanns
supermarket now stands.
of the hooves as the hot shoes we re mea s u re d
a g a i n st them to e n s u re that they we re level and
the smell of the horsehair burning and the oil that
the blacksmith used to paint the hooves to give
them a nice finish. Many of these blacksmiths had
a great rapport with the horses, but they got lots
of abuse to o, both from the horses and their ow n e r s .
Jack remembers John Duffy ’s Circus in the ’40s
and all the wagons we re pulled by horses. Fo rg e s
we re full of circus horses all day. ‘John Duffy
made up the area’, acco rding to Jack. He bought
p l e n ty of hay, oats and grain, food for the big
ca ts, hard w a re items and supplies for the st af f.
The big four wheel circus wagons we re pulled by
P H O T O S I N J A C K O ’ N E I L L S F O R G E 2 0 0 4 & 2 0 0 7 (Sept) : T O N Y F A H Y
USING THE FO RGE IN CARRIGA L L E N
This account by Declan Tierney, was published in
The Leitrim Observer in Sept 1984
T R A D I T I O N S in a place are not easily broken and no
place is this more evident than in Carrigallen where
Jack O’Neill contents himself in pursuing that age old
occupation of a blacksmith.
Even in these days of electric welders and the like,
there is something distinctly appealing about the
furnace and the bellows that heat the metal until it is
nearly liquefied.
Jack O’Neill is by no means new to the business as
his great, great grandfather, John O’Neill was also a
blacksmith and the tradition has been handed down
through generations.
Jack still does business in repairs for a few people
around the area and mostly concentrates on repairing
machinery or other metal items. He built the furnace
himself along with the water trough beside it to cool
down the metal. But instead of using the time co n s u m-
i n g puffing bellows which were responsible for a lot
of arm muscles in its time, Jack uses a double blast
electric fan to increase the strength of the fire.
The process he told me for joining two pieces of
iron together is to first prepare them by cleaning off
any dust or dirt to ensure a perfect joint. Then you
scarf the two pieces, which means that you cut a slice
off each one in order to, basically, graft them together.
When the two pieces of iron are ready to drip with hea t
in the furnace, they are joined by putting one gently
on top of the other. They are then hammered together
and smoothed with a rounding iron. The perfect joint
is achieved when the graft cannot be noticed.
The making of loy-iron and horse shoes were the
big business with a blacksmith. The loy was originally
used for ploughing and often farmers had to face into
a few acres of land with just a simple loy in their possession
with which to plough with.
The implements used in making a horseshoe were a
fuller, which made the tracks on the shoes, the stamp,
which was used to bore holes for the nails while
pritchel was used to finish off around the nail holes.
Jack O’Neill is a qualified blacksmith as he served
his time with his brother for nine years in Arva. At the
moment he turns his hand to doing a few welding jobs
whenever he is approached, but he is otherwise occupied
with his thriving electrical shop in the town.
Jack believes that, even though technology has
taken over with the electric welder, there is still quite
a lot of business to be done with the old furnace if he
had the time and farmers especially seem to have
more confidence in the blacksmith where they could
come and watch a job being done and they can identify
with it better than an electric machine.
There were five blacksmiths in Carrigallen at one
stage and there were loads of work for all of them.
Indeed, if one were to seriously concentrate on doing
work with the furnace even now, there would be
plenty for him to do, Jack told me.
“The reason I have rebuilt this forge is to show my
kids how it was all done when I was a young lad,” he
explained.
M etal frames for cart wheels we re also a popular ite m
that needed repairing and Jack showed me some sa m p l e s
of joints that he did and how to make a frame. He said
that there is another blacksmith in Carrigallen also
who is still working the forge and he is Pakie Maguire.
“People who have worked on an old forge are well
co m p etent to work an electric we l d e r,” concluded Jack.
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78 Leitrim Guardian 2008

Left: Inside the forge
in Carrigallen
Above: Working on the
tongs.
Right: The O’Neill,
Hardware & Electrical
shop in Carrigallen.
Dec 2000.
Far Right: Jack with
two long spades that
he has just made.
P HOT OS: TO NY FA H Y
horses and some of these included Lion and
Tigers, who seemed to watch eve r yone inte n t l y
as they passed.
Many blacksmiths at that time made the rims
for the ca r twheels and also the blades for the
ploughs that the draught horses pulled. To d a y,
Jack still makes fine spades, tongs, hand-loys ,
slans and other items for the home such as
w a ter keys, co o ke r-lid lifters, ash box lifte r s
and solid fuel stove openers.
In 1950, Jack went to England and wo r ked for a
year in a copper mill in Cove n t r y. Af ter he
returned, he went to Smiths garage in Cavan
(their cousin), with his Uncle Charlie and
bought a new Fe rguson 20 tracto r, tvo fuelled,
for £444 including plough and tailor-made
canvas cove r.
Jack wo r ked up the country in Leitrim for five
years and soon got a mowe r, a threshing mill
and later a diesel Fe rguson. He mostly wo r ke d
in the Ballinamore and Carrigallen areas and
of ten wo r ked through the night by the lights
that he had fixed up on the tracto r. And yet
when the tractors came in, it signalled the
demise of the blacks m i t h .
In 1956, Jack’s Uncle Charlie died suddenly and
his Aunt wanted him to take over in Carrigallen.
He opened a hard w a re sto re in 1957 and also
sold implements from the fo rge as his uncle
had done. Jack married Gretta Dolan from
B a l l i n a m o re in 1970. They rea red two sons,
Hugh O’Neill, a solicitor and fluent Spanish
s p ea ke r, living on the Iberian peninsula and
Pete r, an accountant working and living in
Dublin. In 1977, Jack’s brother P who was
s even years older than him, died af ter an
illness.
Jack continued working at his trade and
running the business until 2004 when he
closed the hard w a re shop and ret i red fro m
business. As well as his fo rge wo r ks h i p,
Jack does plenty of gardening and re m a i n s
a ct i ve. May he have many years of good
fortune ahead of him.
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