The late Tom Malone flanked by his daugher Marian and his son, Fintan.
By all accounts, if you knew Tom Malone you were probably a sportsman. Or a piper. Or a trad musician. Or a lover of a good pint. Or a dog-racing aficiando. Or a Republican, in the Irish sense.
When he died on April 1 at the age of 92 in the town of Miltown Malbay in County Clare, Ireland, the local paper stressed his influence on local sports—it was he who set up the local GAA club in 1936, brought hurling and ladies football to the county, and launched a cycling race a la the Tour de France. But his son, Fintan Malone, now of Cheltenham, prefers to think of him as “a man of many hats.”
That’s an understatement.
“Firstly, he sold insurance starting out on a bike,” recalls Fintan, a musician who performs locally as part of the duo Blarney and at many sessions. His father also operated a bar in the Malone home on the main street. “But it was run mostly by my mother. He could never pull a proper pint, God love him. He ran horse races for a time. Next he bought a farm and we being townies, I found it hard to adjust.” It wasn’t so easy adjusting to Tom Malone’s next venture either. Terrier racing. “It’s like greyhound racing,” explains Fintan. “My job was to hook the artificial hare and take it back to the gate for the next race.”
When Tom Malone bought the Fair Green, he booked traveling circuses to come to town. “We never paid an admission into a single show.,” says Fintan. “We also traveled the countryside with amusements such as bingo, shooting gallery, and slot machines.”
Along with introducing hurling and ladies football to Miltown, Tom Malone was also the first to sell bottled milk and cooking gas cylinders. There were so many firsts,” says Fintan, “that I can’t remember them all.”
Though not a musician himself, Tom Malone loved music. “My mother was very much into both dance and music which is where I got my interest from.,” says Fintan. “I believe my father, when the house dances ceased, could see bigger and better things ahead and started to book traveling bands on their way from the North down to Kerry. Our house doubled as a boarding house and these musicians would stay with us and he, of course, would have clinched some deal to have them play across at the hall as part of their payment. I got a chance to see the singing tinker, Maggie Barry, along with the great Michael Gorman, Bridie Gallagher, Joe Heaney, and the hypnotist Edwin Heath who had the local bank manager under hypnosis, frantically looking for leprechauns up and down the Main Street.”
A number of ceili bands were booked into Malone’s venue, including the famed Kilfenora and Tulla bands. “I believe it was when he first saw the Tulla Pipe Band that he decided it was time for Miltown to have their own pipe band. “says Fintan. So he founded one—the Clonbony Pipe Band. “The first pipes that were brought into Miltown went to Willie Clancy and Martin Talty,” says Fintan. “Willie played the war pipes before he played the uileann pipes. My father told many great stories about cycling around the countryside to raise money for this endeavour as money was tight then.”
Uilleann virtuoso Willie Clancy was houseguest for several years. Born in Miltown Malbay, Clancy was such an iconic figure in traditional music that a trad festival held every July in the town was named in his honor. And Tom Malone’s pub has traditionally been a hub for festival goers, just the way his home was an inn for itinerants. Clancy was by far not the only houseguest, says Fintan. Some were even more. . .interesting.
“There were Ruari O’Bradaigh and Daithi O’Connell who escaped from the Curragh Concentration Camp; Van Morrison; Andy Irvine; Joe Cahill, chief of staff of the IRA at the time; Joe Cooley; Robbie MacMahon; the Liverpool Ceili Band; Tommy Peoples; even an elephant from Fossett’s Circus (with a drunken handler) and other numerous people on the run.”
Tom Malone’s political leanings—he was a 32-county Republican—also made him a controversial figure, says Joe O’ Muircheartaigh, reporter for The Clare People newspaper, who wrote a lengthy profile of Malone after his death. “He was very Republican at a time when it wasn’t popular to be a Republican. And he never made any apologies for this fact.”
It wasn’t easy being the son of a man like Tom Malone, says Fintan. “He answered to no one and marched to his own drummer. But I’d like to think he has made me the man I am today. He was among many things, a wheeler dealer and as an early teenager when I caught a religious bug, I went through a period when I feared for his mortal soul. I remember vividly going up to the local church to pray for his soul. But in his latter years he had made up for this as every time I would call my sister to check on him I could hear him in the background reciting the rosary. He always tried to cover all of his bases.”
Marianne MacDonald contributed to this story.
