great stories your grandparents told you (2 Viewers)

[piratio]

My Greatgranduncles [3] fought [Irish] volunteered and fought for england during the first world war. Only one survived.

He went on to fight in france, with the british again, during the second world war.

When he came home in 1948, the "IRA" killed him in rosslare a few minutes after getting off the ship.

Pricks.

 

[Super Dexta]

well you wouldn't be wanting to raise some sort of DEVIL CHILD now would you

 

[smallbrownbear]

as a child, my mothers ma told me some of the family fought in WW1 and WW2. they all came back shell shocked, and drank themselves into early graves. she keeps some of the shell heads they brought back on her mantel piece. she says they never talked of their experiences and were treated like outcasts by some of the neighbours because they joined the British army. so we've no idea what they did or where they served.

last summer after dublin won the leinster we were in raheny with my da's side celebrating. one of their old neighbours was with us. she is in her nineties. she served in the british army most of her working life and was posted all over the world. she told some horrific stories. one was how her boyfriend was killed on a troop ship beside the one she was on in the meditteranean somewhere. the convey was bombed and his ship was hit. she never married afterwards.

 

[Catwoman]

well you wouldn't be wanting to raise some sort of DEVIL CHILD now would you

No but I'm marrying one born on the 13th. Should I be worried?!

 

[Lord Damian]

as a child, my mothers ma told me some of the family fought in WW1 and WW2. they all came back shell shocked, and drank themselves into early graves. she keeps some of the shell heads they brought back on her mantel piece. she says they never talked of their experiences and were treated like outcasts by some of the neighbours because they joined the British army. so we've no idea what they did or where they served.

last summer after dublin won the leinster we were in raheny with my da's side celebrating. one of their old neighbours was with us. she is in her nineties. she served in the british army most of her working life and was posted all over the world. she told some horrific stories. one was how her boyfriend was killed on a troop ship beside the one she was on in the meditteranean somewhere. the convey was bombed and his ship was hit. she never married afterwards.

fucking horrible. i can't even begin to fathom something like that.

 

[Super Dexta]

No but I'm marrying one born on the 13th. Should I be worried?!

eeek! that's the last time i go to your house!

 

[smallbrownbear]

ah wait now....neither of these were great stories

a great story is the one where my great granda gets boozed up and thrown on a cattle ship bound for liverpool the night before his wedding. he wakes up in liverpool, has no money to get back, and leaves the bride at the altar. he eventually gets a job to try raise his fare home, meanwhile he meets a new lady in the 'pool, marries her and has kids. they come back to dublin and lay low. it becomes the big family secret and everyone is in denial that it ever happened. years later my mother is stopped on the street by an elderly lady who tells her the whole story and reveals she was the bride left standing at the altar and she sould have been her grandmother....me ma said she was a kindly old lady too.

 

[Catwoman]

eeek! that's the last time i go to your house!

I'll get the place exorcised next time he heads out to the pub.

 

[ICUH8N]

I'll get the place exorcised next time he heads out to the pub.

He's probably off playing games of chance with the devil. Tsk.

 

[Squiggle]

When my (paternal) grandparents were courting my granddad asked my gran to go with him to a dance. She asked her Mother, who said no. (She felt that my gran was spending too much time with him and that she would get a name for herself if she wasn't careful).

So, my grandad went to the dance (on his bicycle - 8 miles), discovered that my gran wasn't there, cycled 12 miles to her house and threw stones at her window (everyone was in bed).

Instead of my Gran he gets her mother leaning out the window, hair in rags.

Great Gran: "What do you want George?"
Grandad: "Where's Eileen?"
Great Gran: "In bed where she should be"
Grandad: "Why wasn't she at the dance?"
Great Gran: "Because I said she couldn't go and she listens to her Mother"
Grandad: "Well, that makes her an even bigger ejit than you!"

Whereupon he got on his bike and cycled off as quickly as he could, glancing back to see Great Gran standing at the open front door of the house with a poker in her hand!

Strangely enough she didn't ban him from the house after that!

 

[classic seanc]

My paternal grandfather was shot at by the Black and Tans. He would have been about 5 or 6 at the time.
Apparently he was born in Amerikay, only found that out at his funeral.

Most of the stories involve their youthful country shenanigans, and farming in the days before tractors and electricity. Not too exciting, but extremely endearing. I love those stories.

Maternal side is a bit messier, and there's a lot that I don't know about on that side.

 

[Dr Winston Umbogo]

jaysus the black n' tans were a right bunch o' cunts wha?

 

[classic seanc]

West Brits

 

[Osama Van Halen]

THE GHOST OF MY GRANDAD'S DOG APPEARED TO GUIDE HIM HOME THROUGH A STORM ON TOP OF A MOUNTAIN SOMEWHERE IN MAYO. I THINK IT'S SAFE TO SAY HE WAS OFF GETTIN' ILLICIT BOOZE SOMEWHERE'S.

ALCHOQUAANNNDOHOL!!!

 

[Wilbert]

ah shut it, you do-gooder come-lately.

I was referring to my grand uncle.

Thats fair enough. Never met a grand uncle who wasn't.

 

[La La]

my Papa didn't fight in any war, but he's been one of the driving forces behind football in the country for the last god knows how many years.
to this day he trains the goalies in Shelbourne Rovers and pushing 80, he's one of the fittest men i know.
worked in the John Player factory when he was in his 20's and not one cigarette has ever passed his lips.

i think he's the greatest man i've ever known

 

[frona]

One of my grandas was dead before I was born (well he wasn’t but he is now and that’s another story) the other died when I was six. He was fantastic! Anyway, my nanas have good stories.

One of them worked in an ammo factory in Coventry during WWII. She has all those stories about having no silk stockings so you put make up on your legs and draw a line in eye brow pencil up the back of your leg to represent the seam. And then if it rained your little scheme would be found out! But I’d imagine makeuppy legs wouldn’t actually look like tights anyway. And then there were no men so at all the dances half the women had to learn to dance like men. The bombers were going for my nana’s factory when they got Coventry Cathedral!

Rewind a few years and the other nana was working in a clothing factory in Limerick (and this is during WWI) and all they amade were British army uniforms. Anyway, they’d all be standing around reading the Brits and wishing death on them etc.

So at this time Coventry nana’s father (a Limerick man also) is fighting in the Somme. He got hit by shrapnel and reached into his pocket cos they had a mini medical kit there with iodine an suchlike and what does he pull out but a note saying “I hope you die and rot you English Bastard, from all the girls in Limerick”. Ho ho.

There’s looooads more (with bigamy, amnesia and war loot!). Great thread BTW

 

[Scientician 0.8]

My grandad was born the same year as Hitler was. He outlived him by about 40 years. Grandad died at 95. He used to laugh about how all his enemies (and friends) were long dead. He used to give us kids cinammon lozenges which when I were a lad I thought was holy communion. When my first Holy Communion around I was severely disappointed. Stale bread flavour instead of cinammon flavour Jesus. When grandad died his dog used to go up to the room where he spent his last few years and pine for him.

 

[Scientician 0.8]

*slight aside- Is there a British Music Message Board somewhere where people tell lovely anecdotes about their grandads "facking shot a load of paddies during the '20s", "My grandad burnt Cork to the ground, innit." and all that.*

 

[Denny Oubidoux]

my dads father and uncles were all up to there ankles in the blood of black and tans i believe, shootin and blowing up bridges and that sort of carry on in west cork. my grandad was in charge of a group of lads sent to pick up some of roger casements arms although i think they may have gone to the wrong beach, im not to good on the historic details, not that it mattered much anyway. he died when i was a baby but he wrote it all down in a journal which i tried to read once but gave up on it due to the scrawly handwriting. my granduncle who was born in 1904 wasnt quite as involved as he was a bit younger but he used to carry messages around and help out that way. a few years ago i recorded him recounting various tales about the tans and percivals column and michael collins and that sorta thing - a good idea if you have interesting relatives still alive. i got about an hour of cool stuff interspersed with songs, poems and tunes on the fiddle. my dads mother was a fierce brit hater and had no objection to my uncle painting a big swastika on the ceiling of the living room during WW2, and she was very slow to accept the nazis were a bad lot

my mothers parents were a bit younger again and missed all the war action. they used to employ young lads from the orphanages whos mothers were locked up in the laundry in bantry, or somewhere like that, and give them a home and get the mothers out for a few weeks each year to come and stay stay with them for a while.