‘After a pantomime rehearsal one year I was asked to lock up as the director was in a hurry. A young lady asked me to allow her stay another while in the old Green Room to finish her costume. I reluctantly agreed, telling her to make sure that the lights and heaters were off before she left.
Máire and I went to the car and as we drove past the old stage door the girl came running out. I stopped the car. She came to the window said: “She’s there!” (our theatre folklore had it that our ghost was a nun who had been walled up alive for committing a grievous sin ).
‘I asked if she had put off the lights and heaters. She had not. So I got out of the car, entered through the stage door and went down the corridor to the Green Room. Only minutes before the room had been stifling hot. Now as I opened the door a blast of ice-cold air hit me full in face. For the first time ever I felt fear in the theatre. I ran to the heater plugs, pulled them out, and hit the light switches by the door….running!’
This extraordinary story was told by Seán Stafford, an important figure in Irish theatre, who for some 60 years served as actor, director, and board member at Ireland’s unique Irish language theatre An Taibhdhearc, in Middle Street. With his wife Máire they were an inseparable force in the promotion of the Irish language as part of the cultural life of the nation. Over a period of many years they translated and produced a number of remarkable plays including Criostóir Ó Floinn’s Mise Raifteiri an file, and Mozart’s Cosi fan Tutti.*
Seán was certainly not a man to exaggerate the fear he felt in the presence of something supernatural, or to mistake the chill he felt in the room.
‘Cat and mouse’
That the poor ghost existed there can be no doubt, and it may well have been a nun. The first mention of the location in Middle Street, where An Taibhdhearc now stands, comes from Galway’s famous historian James Hardiman who tells us that during the Penal Law times, when the Catholic religion was forbidden, and its clergy were hunted down and imprisoned, there was a raid by the mayor of Galway and his men on the Augustinian nunnery on that site: ‘In the year 1731 the mayor reported that he had searched the house and that he had found none but servants therein; but discovered, in seven rooms, ten beds, in which it was apprehended the reputed nuns lay before their dispersion.’
Obviously a ‘cat and mouse’ game was being played between the religious and the authorities. It seems that if the mayor found 10 hastily vacated beds the building, the nuns cannot have gone very far.
In Maurice Semple’s book Some Galway Memories there is a photograph of ‘All that remains of the Augustinian Nunnery in Back Street, (now St Augustine Street )’. Seán speculated that the nunnery may have extended through from Middle Street into St Augustine Street, for on the back wall of An Taibhdhearc, partly below ground, there is the outline of a small Gothic window.
Tatters the dog
There is another mention of the Taibhdhearc ghost in early May 1975. Sean was rehearsing The Shaughraun with Mick Lally in the title role. On this particular night he intended to rehearse the ‘wake scene’ and all the ‘extras’ (some 20 people ) were relaxing in the Green Room. Seán was finishing a small scene involving two or three people and Tatters the dog.
Suddenly Tatters turned towards the stairs leading from the stage to the Green Room and growled. Seán looked and saw no-one, and finished the scene.
Seán and the actors joined the crowd for a coffee break. It was the old rectangular Green Room and people were sitting on chairs mainly along its wall. Tatters was lying quietly at his mistress Mairéad Ní Choncheanainn’s feet, beside the door leading to the corridor which led on to the auditorium. Suddenly this door opened. No one appeared but Tatters stood up and growling fiercely followed something with his eyes as it moved diagonally across the room. The hair on his body stood up straight! Then to everyone’s amazement the door opened and closed. The dog immediately calmed down and settled once again at Mairéad’s feet. ‘There was stunned silence for at least 30 seconds. Then everyone began to speak together’. Everyone was convinced that something had crossed the room before their eyes, but there was nothing to be seen except the hair rising on poor old Tatters, and his growls.
A builder’s skip
Finally in 1977 during the theatre’s reconstructing, a deep excavation was made under the Green Room. Seán visited the site every day to see how work was progressing. Going down into the excavation one day he saw bones which he was certain were human remains, protruding from the side. He put them in a plastic bag and placed them on the old ‘sound deck’ in the stage wings intending to tell someone in authority about them.
Returning two days later he noticed that the plastic bag had disappeared - possibly, he thought, put into the builder’s skip and taken away.
That seems to have been the end of the ghost. There were no further sightings or other strange phenomena reported since.
Seán concluded his testimony: ‘During our Golden Jubilee production of Diarmuid agus Gráinne our wolfhound in the cast spent his time between scenes resting peacefully in the new Green Room. In contrast to Tatter’s wild behaviour, the wolfhound sensed no disturbing presence.’
Next week: Colonel Richard Martin, impolitely known as ‘hair-trigger Dick’, and his theatre at Kirwan’s Lane.
NOTES: * Sadly Máire and Seán are no longer with us. Seán past away on August 27 2020. Máire had predeceased him. I am taking this story, and the history of An Taibhdhearc from an informative and amusing paper Seán gave to the Old Galway Society March 8 2001.
The idea for an Irish language theatre grew out of a conversation between Prof Liam Ó Briain and Dr Séamus Ó Beirn, two renowned Galwaymen, no doubt caught in the excitement of the new Ireland that was emerging in the opening decades of the last century. Others joined them including an tAthair Tomás Ó Ceallaigh and Tomás Ó Máille. Civil unrest at the time delayed the project. During 1920-1921 Ó Máille was on the run, and Ó Briain spent periods in prison about the same time.
However with limited Government backing a theatre was hammered together in the old Augustinian Hall, which had replaced the nunnery raided by the mayor during Penal Times. The fledging theatre was fortunate in securing the enormous energy and theatricality of Mícheál Mac Liammóir and his partner Hilton Edwards, who organised the actual building of the theatre, and appeared in its opening play, Diarmuid and Gráinne on August 27 1928.
As it approaches its centenary, An Taibhdhearc has survived, and at times triumphed, despite tough days when actors were paid £5 a week, but even that was reduced to £3, until finally in 1968, until box office takings improved, everyone was let go as there was no money whatsoever.
One memorable night in 1961 during a performance of Oíche Mhaith agus a Mic Uí Dhómhnaill the collapsible bed collapsed too soon. Unfortunately Seán was hiding under it at the time.
Listen to Tom Kenny and Ronnie O'Gorman elaborating on topics they have covered in this week's paper and much more in this week's Old Galway Diary Podcast.
