Jennie O’Sullivan
Statue, well I suppose for me like, it was always the statue. There was never, actually for a long time
I didn’t realise it was Fr Mathew – you know it was just the statue – statue is the word that kind of as
a child and as a teenager it was always a case of the bus; get the bus to the statue; you’ll meet
somebody at the statue and you know, recently I was kind of thinking about the statue; you know in
other places they call it the monument, but in Cork it’s the statue and you kind of go why was Fr
Mathew called the statue? And then you kind of think that maybe it’s a Catholic thing; that they’d St
Anthony’s and Holy Mary’s and there was the statue. But then you have this huge thing that’s about
four thousand times the statue at home in the middle of Patrick’s Street and I actually figure thinking
about it long and hard it has more to do with the fact that Statue rhymes with Mathew. We like the
lyricism of it and we can’t help ourselves you know, so, and nobody in Cork, no matter how refined
you are, calls it Fr Mathew Statue, it’s always the Mathew Statue. So there’s a lyricism there that I
think appeals to Cork people. For me I suppose the first memories of the statue and what I’ll always
associate it with is being a teenager and getting the last bus home because you’d have to go the
statue and the last bus always left at a quarter past eleven and you’d have the busses lining up
facing southwards or northwards on either side of the street. And they were almost like horses, not
horses, dogs in traps you know, you could almost feel the engines were getting ready to leave the
trap because what used happen was once you got on board you were there and in those days you
had a conductor. The man, the inspector used to come out of the, em, the bus hut which was under
the shadow of the statue and blow his whistle, and the busses took off and no matter how often I
was on the bus at that hour of the night you were always with a sense of waiting for the whistle to
be blown by the inspector under the statue and they took off and I suppose you felt the excitement
that they were finishing their day and you were actually getting home and you weren’t going to be
killed because you missed the last bus from the statue. So I suppose they’re my associations with the
statue. I think it’s intrinsically Cork. For me on a romantic level I suppose Fr Mathew has seen
everything from famines to feast to festivals. I kind of curiously wondered the other day what
happened during the burning? Did he witness that as well? Was he standing there wondering what
was going on? There’s a calmness that the Statue brings and it’s kind of hard to imagine the city
centre without it because you just – he’s just there. He’s calm. His hands are out-stretched and I
suppose he’s probably the only person who’s been at more St Patrick’s Day parades than I have and
he’ll always have that record. But I suppose that’s really what it means to me. It’s just as long as Fr
Mathew’s is standing serenely at the top of Patrick’s Street, all is right with the world.
Q: Your kids, my kids, mean anything to the modern kids?
A: Actually funnily enough I don’t think so, not in their, not consciously anyway. I don’t think for the
moment that they’re aware of it as – as anything other than this statue. I don’t that they’re as
romantically involved with it as we were – you know they don’t get off the bus at the Statue as such
or they don’t have dates under Mangan’s Clock at the Statue – I don’t think that’s the way it is. But I
think as they get older, it’s just – you can’t help it, it seeps into you. It’s part of your DNA as a Cork
person. If - you know every postcard when they’re abroad, if they see Fr Mathew – they’ll be
thinking of Cork.
Q: And so is it worth celebrating?
A: Celebrating is a funny old word. I don’t know if it. I suppose – celebrating – it’s worth - treasuring
I think is what I would say. Celebration is something that happens and it’s over whereas I think
with Fr Mathew you have to – it’s just to be treasured and I suppose the best part for us is you
know when you think about it there a couple of years ago when Beth Gali suggested removing it
from Patrick’s Street and suddenly people who had never thought about it, people who passed by it
day in day out suddenly stopped still and kind of went ‘oh no, that’s not going to happen’. So I think
really, as you said to me there about kids whether it’s in their consciousness, they probably aren’t
aware of it but they will be and it’s a bit like that. Maybe if it happened in ten years time would they
miss it? Would they react like we would? Yea, I’d say they would because it is – Cork.