Volume: CBÉ 0407 (Part 1)
- Date
- 1937
- Collector
- Locations
Archival Reference
The Main Manuscript Collection, Volume 0407, Page 0083
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- One of the characters of north Carlow in my young days was Jim Carroll. My father allowed him a room in the farm-yard where he slept each night for over 20 years until "he set the whole place on fire". He was a poor simpleton but endowed with a natural wit. The sayings of Jim Carrol are famous to the present days. John Dar's, Clairmont in the late Bishop of Kildare & Leighlin (or Cullen) wrote a wonderful collection of his sayings wh. would he worth procuring. Jim always arrived in the priest's cast-offs_ block serge from head to foot. I never appeared without a top hat. I counted 14 beaver hats in his room at Castletown on one occasion. His tongue was keen on hound's tooth when vexed. "That's a nice hat Mom love, Jim" "If your reverence covets it, none can love it." He used to call John Stallom and his wife Ten (ie 10) by tall, thin man and a woman characterized by rotundity to a remarkable degree. "Will none love a cup of tea Jim, indeed. That's not what Mrs Foster, would say. She'd say "Sit down love, Jim, and sat a bit." He was devotion personified and man and wool from waist up every morning of the year with cold water and soap. Although we were very much afraid of him he was by no mean vicious.
