John Murphy will be 100 next June 22nd. He divides his time between two of his daughters, who live in Dublin and Sligo respectively, but lived most of his long life in Co Louth. He grew up on a small farm in Bush, a townland 10 miles from Dundalk, one of 11 children, and recalls his schooldays there.
"Catechism was the hardest job, we used to get a lot of slapping over that. Our teacher told us one day she would beat us if we didn't get new Catechisms and they cost a penny. I asked my mother for a penny and she said she didn't have it. Times were hard then. So I was walking to school, crying, and I passed my father ploughing in the field, and he said `Son, why are you crying?' I explained, and he took out his purse and gave me a penny. In school I had my new Catechism and the teacher said she would give a prize of a penny to whoever could say the Confiteur the best and I won. "I was on my way home from school and I passed my father, and I told him what happened. He took my penny and put it back in his purse. I thought he was the meanest man in the world."
John left school at 14 and eventually got work for a Mr Kearney, a potato merchant and auctioneer in Cooley who imported coal and exported grain to England. At Mr Kearney's office he met his wife-to-be, Rose McGeough, from south Armagh. They eventually married (in 1926) and had six children. In 1927 he got a job as a rate collector for Louth County Council, a job he kept for 35 years (he also worked as the local social welfare agent).
He also remembers the night before the Easter Rising: "There were six fellas, IRB members, who were meeting locally. I wasn't a member but I was invited along. They all started making excuses about why they couldn't answer the call. One said his wife was expecting a baby any day. One said he didn't know anything about using rifles. I wasn't a member so I wouldn't be trusted even though I would have liked to go.
In fact, two of them decided to go but only got as far as Castlebellingham. A year later John had joined the old IRA - the Fourth Northern Division, under Frank Aiken - and took part in a raid across the Border: "The others went in a boat from Carlingford, and I was on patrol duty on the road. I held up a motorbike - and it was someone I knew. In the end we only got one old rusty shotgun out of the castle." He didn't do any "fighting" during the Civil War, but he did take part in the burning of old coastguard stations and barracks.
"Collins was all right but he let us down. He accepted the Treaty too quick," says John, a staunch de Valera supporter. "It was sad that Collins was shot, but that film Neil Jordan made about him wasn't 100 per cent, because it wasn't Dev who shot Collins. I don't know who did it." Dev, says John, "was a saint. He was the one we all fell for. He came to our place several times. Everyone looked to him. Collins was popular in his own place but we hadn't so much of him."
Raids on the Magazine Fort in Dublin and one on the Dundalk barracks yielded guns and ammunition which were stored in Cooley where John lived: "Most of it went to a man called Jemmy Rooney. It was locked up in his yard. I got two rifles out of it which I hid in a cock of hay." He managed to convince the local Garda sergeant he didn't have any rifles: "I kept him in agony." Finally, in 1932, when he and two others were building his new house, he decided to hand them over: "The two lads, who were new recruits in the IRA, said I should hide them in the rafters of the new house but I said I wanted to hand them in at the barracks. The sergeant couldn't believe it. The next morning two guards arrived wanting to know if I wanted a receipt for the rifles. I said I never wanted to see them again. That was the end of the rifles."
He recalls the first World War: "That was the one that put the fear of God into us all. I knew a few who joined up. You heard so much of bombing and sinking of ships." During the second World War "we used to listen to Lord Haw Haw on the radio. He came out with all classes of language about Churchill."
He has seen a lot of changes "for the better" during the century and remembers men and women working locally gathering potatoes and thinning turnips for 15 shillings a week. "The men were permanent. They got a free rood of ground for potatoes and vegetables. It kept them in food for a year. The women were casual and I remember the ones who brought their six-month-old babies. They'd leave them by the fence while they worked in the field.
"Who'd you get out to work for 15 shillings a week now?"