Trasna
2021
Pasteur and Uncle Paddy marg ar e t o’b r ie n
Today much of the world is still in the grip of a pandemic because of COVID-19, the deadly coronavirus. Although it has claimed many lives and disrupted economic and social life around the globe, it is not the deadliest virus. That distinction goes to another, the bullet-shaped rabies virus, which kills nearly one hundred percent of its hosts, both human and animal. Unlike the coronavirus, which spreads by droplet, the rabies virus needs a host animal and it must cross from animal to human through a bite.
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t was Ireland in the summer of 1898. After police shot dead the dog that attacked and bit two-year-old Paddy Cullinane, an order came from the local Inspector that the dog’s head must be sent to the Veterinary College in Dublin to be tested for rabies. In the previous year, 1897, measures had been put in place to reduce the incidence of rabies in Ireland. The Disease of Animals Act was updated and all dogs in public places were required to be muzzled. More stringent measures were also enforced and stray and unmuzzled dogs were seized and destroyed. Dogs were, of course, an essential part of working farms, smallholdings and Irish rural life in general. Paddy’s family, the Cullinanes, along with their neighbours in rural Ireland, could not have been unaware of the threat of rabies and its impact. The marauding dog attacked the little boy as he played outside his house on that warm August day. The dog caught Paddy’s right hand in its jaws and bit into his forefinger as the boy, shocked and frightened, struggled to escape. Blood appeared on the terrified little boy’s hand as the dog’s teeth punctured his skin. Alerted by her son’s screams, Mary his mother, rushed from her kitchen and with frantic efforts managed to fight off the dog and rescue her son, despite being seven months pregnant. In the struggle she also suffered scratches to her own hand. Mary was my great-grandmother. The Cullinane family lived near the tiny village of Mothel in County Waterford. Today Mothel consists of the remains of a sixth-century abbey, a nearby Holy Well and is just a meeting of some minor country roads with a scattering of houses and a single pub. Then and now this is farming country, a mixture of dairy and tillage, the green fertile fields overlooked by the heathery purple of the Comeragh Mountains. Despite having three children by the summer of 1898, and later several more, Mary Cullinane worked occasionally in the stillroom or pantry at the local big house, Curraghmore, owned by Lord and Lady Waterford. The Curraghmore estate lies to the south of Mothel near the village of Portlaw. Mary’s husband John worked as a labourer on a local farm, Prendergast’s.Mary and John Cullinane were my paternal great-grandparents, Paddy my granduncle.
The Lowell Review
161
