I dedicate my song today to my dear mother who died at the early age of 64 years. Had mum not chain-smoked, and had she given birth to fewer than seven children and the hard life that went with rearing us all, she wouldn’t have been taken too early from this world. Had she lived longer, she would have been enjoying her 98th birthday today, and would no doubt have been downing as many rum and blackcurrant drinks as her children would buy her. The only thing which mum would have found intolerable today would have been just how antisocial in polite company, her chain-smoking habit would have made her.
Other birthdays of friends and Facebook contacts I jointly dedicate my song today to include Lorraine Blair from Perth in Western Australia: Angie Boback from America: Heather Walley from Stoke-on-Trent, and close friend, David Green, from Mirfield in West Yorkshire. I wish you all the happiest of birthdays and hope that you leave room for lots of cake and suitable refreshments. Have a nice day and thank you for being my Facebook friends.
Everybody I know loves their mum to bits, and I’m no exception to that rule. Where I may distinguish myself from many loving children though is that not only did my mother give birth to me and loved me, she was me and I am her. Her influence on me was so pronounced that from an early age, I willingly adopted her positive philosophy to life, along with her general belief that nobody is either better or worse than their neighbour.
The things I can remember most about my mother is her compassion, her charity, her capacity never to hold grudges from one old day to a new one, and her forgiving nature. Her most priceless quality, however, was her boundless love which she would liberally and unashamedly deliver to all and sundry. Not once in my entire life (until I left home), did my mother fail to tell me that she loved me. Her last words to me each day before I went to bed and the very first words she spoke to me on a morning when I got up were ‘I love you, Billy’. Whenever I complained that we were poor or for want of this or that which household finances could not furnish, she would instantly remind me, “Billy Forde, we may have no money to spare, but we are not poor. We have each other!” When she died, there was no material inheritance to bequeath to her children. The inheritance that my mother left me was my six brothers and sisters, along with the most precious of memories that she loved each of us, and told us so daily.
Mum was an intelligent woman, despite having to curtail her education and leave school early to help out at home as the oldest of seven children. Being the firstborn (and female) in a household where her father’s poor heart prevented him doing any manual work, mum (like many an Irish female firstborn) essentially acted the role of ‘little mum’ to all her younger siblings.
My mother was a romantic through and through; in thought, emotion and deed. She not only dreamed constantly, she believed in her dreams; a trait that was undoubtedly passed down to me, her firstborn. Mum never hid her true feelings from my father or any of her family or neighbours. She gave honest expression to her feelings at the moment of their birth, which meant she often acted before thinking. In her own way, mum appeared happily resigned to her natural disposition and was always prepared to renounce any embarrassment in exchange for the possibility of any excitement, and new experience. In short; she loved life and the living of it far to much to ever let it pass her by.
When my father and all my younger siblings were in bed on a night, I would often stay up chatting with mum past midnight as she ironed and darned and got ready for the next morning’s round of motherly chores. This was my most precious time of day that I will always cherish the memory of. We would talk about all manner of things, and not once did my mother refuse to tell me anything I ever asked of her. We shared a relationship that held no embarrassment and could be entirely open with each other. I now realise just how special and rare such a relationship is between a parent and a child, especially between a mother and her firstborn son.
I once recall asking my mother a question about the circumstances of my birth. It was a question that most boys would simply never dream of asking and most mothers would instantly shy away from answering. All my mates on the estate knew the place where they had been born, but I was the only 11-year-old boy I ever knew of whose mum (when directly asked by her son) told him precisely the location ‘where he was conceived’. When I asked mum, she said that it was in a farmer’s field by the ‘Metal Man’ in Tramore, County Waterford. I always revisit this famous tourist site each time I return to Ireland, and which the public cannot get officially close to anymore.
If any dishonesty resided in my mother, it lay in the many Irish tales she would tell me from the old country; tales wrapped in Irish superstition and stretched as far as the truth could be credited. I have not the slightest doubt that my becoming an author of over sixty books was a direct consequence of my mother’s vivid imagination.
After I had written and had published over fifty books for children, young persons and adults, I gave up writing books. Then, after I married my wife, Sheila, she persuaded me to take up the pen again. So, I decided to take the kernel of some of the stories my mother had told me as being Gospel, and after wrapping them in the clothes of Irish myth and a shroud of rustic superstition, I embellished them with a touch Irish artistic licence. I wrote an additional fourteen romantic books between 2011 and 2017. These Irish stories were written and published under the umbrella title, ‘Tales from Portlaw’(the Irish village where I was born in the front room of my maternal grandparent’s house).
All these ‘Tales from Portlaw’ books can be bought from Amazon or any established publisher in either hardback or e-book format, with all profits going to charitable causes in perpetuity (over £200,000 profit given to charity from the sales of my books between 1990-2005). Or, if you would like to read for free, please access my website and the section http://www.fordefables.co.uk/tales-from-portlaw.html
Of all the things my mum would do daily as she completed her housework would be to sing Irish songs. The only English songs she sang were Vera Lynn’s songs. Mum was a wonderful woman, who was also blessed with being beautiful in her prime. And yet, despite her love of singing, mum couldn’t sing for toffee. She couldn’t hold a note any longer than she could refrain from giving a beggar her last shilling. I never heard her sing one verse of a song without forgetting the lines or mixing up the words, and making up her own instead to fill in. Mum sang all day long, every day of her life, and like the late comedian and pianist, Lez Dawson, she always sang all the right notes, but unfortunately, in the wrong order. The only difference between mum and Lez Dawson was that he was a comedian who struck all the wrong piano cords deliberately to get a laugh out of his audience.
After berating my mother for her poor singing one day, mum replied, “Tell me or show me where it is written, Billy Forde, ( she would always add my surname whenever she was angry with me) that only good singers are allowed to sing? And until you can, get out of my way, boyo, because I’ve got lots of work left to do and lots of songs still to sing!”
There was never one day in my life as a child when I did not hear my mother sing, ‘The Isle of Innisfree’. This song was the background music and song to the 1952 film, ‘The Quiet Man’. This American romantic comedy directed by John Ford starred John Wayne as (character Sean Thornton) and Maureen 0’Hara (character Mary Kate Danaher) and Victor McLaglen (who played the part of Mary Kate Danaher’s bullying brother). Never did one Christmas go by without all the Forde Family watching ‘The Quiet Man’. Both mum and dad loved that film, and so it was only natural that all seven of their children grew to love it.
Mum’s favourite song of all was ‘The Isle of Innisfree’, and my father’s favourite film star was John Wayne. Dad admired all the film characters John Wayne played in his films so much that he would daily quote large sections from the films of his hero. Dad’s favourite quotation was ‘A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do!” He would quote this particular line to his children whenever expecting us to do that which we didn’t want to do.
For you uninitiated English film buffs who have so far gone through life without ever seen this marvellous film, here is a potted synopsis. In the 1920s, Sean Thornton, an Irish-born American from Pittsburgh, travels to his birthplace, Innisfree, in Ireland, to purchase his family's former farm. Shortly after arriving in Innisfree, he meets and falls in love with the fiery Mary Kate Danaher, the sister of bullying but prosperous landowner, Squire ‘Red’ Will Danaher. Will Danaher also wanted to buy the Thornton family's old cottage and land off the owner, Widow Tillane (whom he hankers to one day marry), and he is angered when the Widow Tillane (a woman not to be taken for granted by any man), accepts Sean's Thornton’s bid instead of Will Danaher’s offer. So when Sean Thornton and Mary Kate Danaher fall in love and ask Mary’s brother, Will, to give them his blessing to marry, he replies, ‘Never!’
When I started my daily singing practise over two years ago, in order to increase the amount of oxygen in my blood and improve my lung capacity, the very first song I sung I dedicated to my mother. It was the song of my childhood that my mother sang every day of her life. I sing that same song today in dedication to a mum whom I dearly loved and have missed every day since her death in 1986. Today, on the 98th anniversary of your birth, Mum, your firstborn sing you ‘The Isle of Innisfree’.
My mother loved this song and she loved the land of her birth, the Emerald Isle, a country where I too was born and shall have part of me buried. Like my mum, going back to Ireland for me is going back home. As soon as I see the Irish shoreline, my heart falls back in love with my country. But it is only when I am travelling that road from County Waterford towards Portlaw and catch sight of the Bridge that is positioned at the bottom of the village of Portlaw where I was born that I feel my spirits rise as my soul rejoices in restorative excitement. This song is for you mum from your firstborn, and for my six brothers and sisters. I love you mum. Billy xxx
As for the ‘Isle of Innisfree’, I recently looked up to see if there was such a place or whether it was a form of mythical Brigadoon. I understand that it is an uninhabited island within Lough Gill, in County Sligo, Ireland, near where Yeats spent his summers as a child. I will certainly check it out when we next tour Ireland.
Love and peace Bill xxx
Other birthdays of friends and Facebook contacts I jointly dedicate my song today to include Lorraine Blair from Perth in Western Australia: Angie Boback from America: Heather Walley from Stoke-on-Trent, and close friend, David Green, from Mirfield in West Yorkshire. I wish you all the happiest of birthdays and hope that you leave room for lots of cake and suitable refreshments. Have a nice day and thank you for being my Facebook friends.
Everybody I know loves their mum to bits, and I’m no exception to that rule. Where I may distinguish myself from many loving children though is that not only did my mother give birth to me and loved me, she was me and I am her. Her influence on me was so pronounced that from an early age, I willingly adopted her positive philosophy to life, along with her general belief that nobody is either better or worse than their neighbour.
The things I can remember most about my mother is her compassion, her charity, her capacity never to hold grudges from one old day to a new one, and her forgiving nature. Her most priceless quality, however, was her boundless love which she would liberally and unashamedly deliver to all and sundry. Not once in my entire life (until I left home), did my mother fail to tell me that she loved me. Her last words to me each day before I went to bed and the very first words she spoke to me on a morning when I got up were ‘I love you, Billy’. Whenever I complained that we were poor or for want of this or that which household finances could not furnish, she would instantly remind me, “Billy Forde, we may have no money to spare, but we are not poor. We have each other!” When she died, there was no material inheritance to bequeath to her children. The inheritance that my mother left me was my six brothers and sisters, along with the most precious of memories that she loved each of us, and told us so daily.
Mum was an intelligent woman, despite having to curtail her education and leave school early to help out at home as the oldest of seven children. Being the firstborn (and female) in a household where her father’s poor heart prevented him doing any manual work, mum (like many an Irish female firstborn) essentially acted the role of ‘little mum’ to all her younger siblings.
My mother was a romantic through and through; in thought, emotion and deed. She not only dreamed constantly, she believed in her dreams; a trait that was undoubtedly passed down to me, her firstborn. Mum never hid her true feelings from my father or any of her family or neighbours. She gave honest expression to her feelings at the moment of their birth, which meant she often acted before thinking. In her own way, mum appeared happily resigned to her natural disposition and was always prepared to renounce any embarrassment in exchange for the possibility of any excitement, and new experience. In short; she loved life and the living of it far to much to ever let it pass her by.
When my father and all my younger siblings were in bed on a night, I would often stay up chatting with mum past midnight as she ironed and darned and got ready for the next morning’s round of motherly chores. This was my most precious time of day that I will always cherish the memory of. We would talk about all manner of things, and not once did my mother refuse to tell me anything I ever asked of her. We shared a relationship that held no embarrassment and could be entirely open with each other. I now realise just how special and rare such a relationship is between a parent and a child, especially between a mother and her firstborn son.
I once recall asking my mother a question about the circumstances of my birth. It was a question that most boys would simply never dream of asking and most mothers would instantly shy away from answering. All my mates on the estate knew the place where they had been born, but I was the only 11-year-old boy I ever knew of whose mum (when directly asked by her son) told him precisely the location ‘where he was conceived’. When I asked mum, she said that it was in a farmer’s field by the ‘Metal Man’ in Tramore, County Waterford. I always revisit this famous tourist site each time I return to Ireland, and which the public cannot get officially close to anymore.
If any dishonesty resided in my mother, it lay in the many Irish tales she would tell me from the old country; tales wrapped in Irish superstition and stretched as far as the truth could be credited. I have not the slightest doubt that my becoming an author of over sixty books was a direct consequence of my mother’s vivid imagination.
After I had written and had published over fifty books for children, young persons and adults, I gave up writing books. Then, after I married my wife, Sheila, she persuaded me to take up the pen again. So, I decided to take the kernel of some of the stories my mother had told me as being Gospel, and after wrapping them in the clothes of Irish myth and a shroud of rustic superstition, I embellished them with a touch Irish artistic licence. I wrote an additional fourteen romantic books between 2011 and 2017. These Irish stories were written and published under the umbrella title, ‘Tales from Portlaw’(the Irish village where I was born in the front room of my maternal grandparent’s house).
All these ‘Tales from Portlaw’ books can be bought from Amazon or any established publisher in either hardback or e-book format, with all profits going to charitable causes in perpetuity (over £200,000 profit given to charity from the sales of my books between 1990-2005). Or, if you would like to read for free, please access my website and the section http://www.fordefables.co.uk/tales-from-portlaw.html
Of all the things my mum would do daily as she completed her housework would be to sing Irish songs. The only English songs she sang were Vera Lynn’s songs. Mum was a wonderful woman, who was also blessed with being beautiful in her prime. And yet, despite her love of singing, mum couldn’t sing for toffee. She couldn’t hold a note any longer than she could refrain from giving a beggar her last shilling. I never heard her sing one verse of a song without forgetting the lines or mixing up the words, and making up her own instead to fill in. Mum sang all day long, every day of her life, and like the late comedian and pianist, Lez Dawson, she always sang all the right notes, but unfortunately, in the wrong order. The only difference between mum and Lez Dawson was that he was a comedian who struck all the wrong piano cords deliberately to get a laugh out of his audience.
After berating my mother for her poor singing one day, mum replied, “Tell me or show me where it is written, Billy Forde, ( she would always add my surname whenever she was angry with me) that only good singers are allowed to sing? And until you can, get out of my way, boyo, because I’ve got lots of work left to do and lots of songs still to sing!”
There was never one day in my life as a child when I did not hear my mother sing, ‘The Isle of Innisfree’. This song was the background music and song to the 1952 film, ‘The Quiet Man’. This American romantic comedy directed by John Ford starred John Wayne as (character Sean Thornton) and Maureen 0’Hara (character Mary Kate Danaher) and Victor McLaglen (who played the part of Mary Kate Danaher’s bullying brother). Never did one Christmas go by without all the Forde Family watching ‘The Quiet Man’. Both mum and dad loved that film, and so it was only natural that all seven of their children grew to love it.
Mum’s favourite song of all was ‘The Isle of Innisfree’, and my father’s favourite film star was John Wayne. Dad admired all the film characters John Wayne played in his films so much that he would daily quote large sections from the films of his hero. Dad’s favourite quotation was ‘A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do!” He would quote this particular line to his children whenever expecting us to do that which we didn’t want to do.
For you uninitiated English film buffs who have so far gone through life without ever seen this marvellous film, here is a potted synopsis. In the 1920s, Sean Thornton, an Irish-born American from Pittsburgh, travels to his birthplace, Innisfree, in Ireland, to purchase his family's former farm. Shortly after arriving in Innisfree, he meets and falls in love with the fiery Mary Kate Danaher, the sister of bullying but prosperous landowner, Squire ‘Red’ Will Danaher. Will Danaher also wanted to buy the Thornton family's old cottage and land off the owner, Widow Tillane (whom he hankers to one day marry), and he is angered when the Widow Tillane (a woman not to be taken for granted by any man), accepts Sean's Thornton’s bid instead of Will Danaher’s offer. So when Sean Thornton and Mary Kate Danaher fall in love and ask Mary’s brother, Will, to give them his blessing to marry, he replies, ‘Never!’
When I started my daily singing practise over two years ago, in order to increase the amount of oxygen in my blood and improve my lung capacity, the very first song I sung I dedicated to my mother. It was the song of my childhood that my mother sang every day of her life. I sing that same song today in dedication to a mum whom I dearly loved and have missed every day since her death in 1986. Today, on the 98th anniversary of your birth, Mum, your firstborn sing you ‘The Isle of Innisfree’.
My mother loved this song and she loved the land of her birth, the Emerald Isle, a country where I too was born and shall have part of me buried. Like my mum, going back to Ireland for me is going back home. As soon as I see the Irish shoreline, my heart falls back in love with my country. But it is only when I am travelling that road from County Waterford towards Portlaw and catch sight of the Bridge that is positioned at the bottom of the village of Portlaw where I was born that I feel my spirits rise as my soul rejoices in restorative excitement. This song is for you mum from your firstborn, and for my six brothers and sisters. I love you mum. Billy xxx
As for the ‘Isle of Innisfree’, I recently looked up to see if there was such a place or whether it was a form of mythical Brigadoon. I understand that it is an uninhabited island within Lough Gill, in County Sligo, Ireland, near where Yeats spent his summers as a child. I will certainly check it out when we next tour Ireland.
Love and peace Bill xxx
