The Mayo News

Living and learning

A love of learning and an openness to new experiences have made Úna Quinn’s life a busy and diverse one

Denise Horan

ÚNA Quinn is easy to describe, but impossible to define. A retiree. A mother and grandmother. A widow. A Gaeilgeoir. An academic. A musician. A teacher. So many attributes – and yet none which fully captures her.
When you talk to this Westport woman, it’s best to leave your stereotypes and preconceptions at the door, because you won’t be needing them. Úna Quinn is more than the sum of the parts that have made up her life. And what an interesting and fulfilled life it has been.
The third in a family of six girls and one boy, Úna points to her parents, Owenie and Kitty Hughes, as strong influences in her life, though not in an orchestrated way. Both primary school teachers by trade, Owenie was also a well-known and widely-respected county councillor for 29 years. Theirs was a literary household, where reading formed part of the daily routine, debates were many and cultural interests – particularly those pertaining to Irish culture – were pursued and encouraged.
“You go through a lifetime with your parents and you take them for granted really. But you look back over your life later, and you look at your values, and you can see where the whole thing came from. The influences were huge without us even knowing it. You were never told to do such a thing, it was drawn out of you. Nothing was ever preached at us but we picked up vibes,” she says of her father who died in 1987 and her mother who passed away, at the age of 84, in 1990.
One of the ‘vibes’ picked up by the young Úna was a love for the Irish language – and it has remained a constant thread in her life ever since.
“We were reared through Irish and spoke Irish all the time at home. My mother got first place in her training college when she was leaving because of her standard of Irish and, as a result, though she was trained as a primary school teacher, she was offered a teaching post in the training college in Tourmakeady, which she took and where she remained for her career,” recalls Úna.
The young Owen Hughes was a determined Gaeilgeoir too. Though it wasn’t taught in the primary school he attended, he chose at the age of 12 to attend night classes in Irish with a ‘timire Gaeilge’, a teacher who went from place to place teaching the language. By the end of his first year in secondary school, having entered with no Irish at all, he had overtaken all of his previously-initiated schoolmates in his mastery of the language and came away with a gold medal prize.
By the time Úna Hughes was a young teenager, Irish – and all things Irish, like music, drama and dance – was in her blood, she recalls, and, despite her parents’ slight misgivings, so too was her will to be a teacher.
“I was the only one in the house that wanted to be a teacher, and I decided it at a young age. It was said of me by the nuns [Ursulines in Sligo, where she attended secondary school] that I was good at maths and science – but I wasn’t really and I certainly had no interest in them. But my father had this idea that science was the coming thing and they thought maybe I should pursue something in that area.”
It was all decided one day on the shores of Killary harbour.
“We went for a spin to Leenane and I remember when we got to Killary, I got down on my knees and I said ‘Daddy, if I get the call to training, can I take it?’. I got it and I took it,” she smiles with the utter contentment of one who knows the right path was chosen.
“I really never, ever, ever looked back. I enjoyed every minute of my career,” she says of her brief stints in Walkinstown and Dundrum in Dublin, her three years in Carrowholly and her quarter century in Scoil Phádraig in Westport.
While her teaching methods were varied, with music and drama frequently used as tools for making subject matter more enjoyable, her teaching philosophy was simple, based on principles of love, respect and encouragement.
“The most important thing about teaching is that you leave no bad mark, that you do no damage. I think if you love, you won’t do damage; if your heart is in the right place no child will pick up a negative vibe.
“Giving children a positive attitude to themselves is vital and remembering that, no matter what level they’re at academically or behaviour-wise or anything else, you must recognise them and respect them. Life is all about how people have received you and perceived you. If that has been positive, then it doesn’t matter what happens in life, you’ll survive,” offers Úna.
The breadth of her own educational experience in the Ursuline school in Sligo – where sport, music, drama and field trips were all used as complementary aids to bookwork – coupled with her parents’ love of learning, gave Úna an appreciation for diversity in education and for the unlimited possibilities and joys of lifelong learning. The latter has been particularly evident in the decade since her retirement – during which she has completed an MA and a PhD, she has overseen four successful hostings of the Winter Merriman School in Westport, and, most recently, she has headed up a choir for retired schoolteachers in Mayo.
Her enthusiasm for all is evident in her face and in her words as she relates how each came to pass.
“My daughter Kathy says to me ‘it’s wonderful what happens when you leave yourself open’, and it’s true. I never went looking for anything [since retirement], they just happened.
“One year after I retired I did the Masters. Then, a year after that I got cancer, but thank God, I had a doctor who recommended that I go for tests and it was got in time and I made a full recovery. After that, I did a lot of research on old Irish songs in Mayo in the 19th century and I ended up doing the PhD on that, in Belfast.”
Her completed thesis is an impressive tome, entitled ‘Pádraig Ó Loingsigh agus na hAmhráin as Maigh Eo I Lámhscríbhíní Bunting 1802’. While her conferral with the doctorate in December 2006 was a moment of great pride, it was also tinged with sadness, as her husband, Paschal, was ill in Galway at the time and was unable to attend. Just over a month later, he passed away, leaving her alone for the first time in over four decades. He, too, was hugely influential in her life and in the lives of their four children, Kathy, Peter, Seán and Brídín, and his going left a huge void.
“We were married 44-and-a-half years when he died. It’s a lifetime and it was very difficult without him. I met Paschal when I was very young and we were married when I was 22. I was a boarding school girl, cloistered really, especially after the training college, and Paschal moulded me all the way and we just became one. We had the same values; I didn’t lose my individuality, but our focus just became one,” she recalls of the man who was known for his quietly efficient teaching style in Carrowbeg College in Westport, from which he retired in 1990.
In spite of the heartache, life has gone on for Úna Quinn. Though she has eight grandchildren to dote on, she is not content to settle into the role of grandmother rocking by the fire. There’s too much still to learn and to do, her latest project being the choir.
“For most of last year I did very little with any organisation; I just didn’t have the give in myself to be creative. Then recently, the Active Retired Teachers’ Organisation of Mayo asked me would I head up their choir, I did and it’s wonderful. They’re unbelievable. They have done five songs in the space of three meetings and they’re just fantastic to work with. We decided on four things for the agenda – Irish music, church music, choral pieces and negro spiritual. I’m really delighted that I’ve done it and the music has been very healing for me,” she adds.
Side by side with her newest project, she continues to remain involved with Cumann Merriman, of which she is Chairperson locally and Secretary nationally. She is also a member of the academic committee of the cumann, which decides on the programme of events, themes and guests for each school.
With most of this year’s work for the cumann completed – the winter school took place in Westport at the start of February – Úna intends to spend the coming months seeking to get her thesis published. She has already made some tentative enquiries and is hopeful that she will succeed. “It should be published, because there are 238 songs in it and it’s very valuable from the point of view of our social history,” she says.
With the determination that seems to have marked all of her life’s endeavours still very much in evidence, chances are ‘published author’ will be the next adjective added to Úna Quinn’s description. And just like all the others, it won’t define her. Nothing will; the descriptive list will just keep getting longer.

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