Tipperary artisan now sees himself as a songwriter who can thatch

Billy O’ Dwyer Bob pulled up beside me in the boreen in his pink car, (he called it maroon), sunglasses and long grey hair.
Not my idea of a thatcher! “You follow me,” he said, more of a direction than a question. I followed him into the yard of a farm, owned by Billy Bob’s friend John, who needs his roof thatched.

“Park over there.” Another direction, but this time with a pointing finger. John arrives on his bike and the three of us head off through two fields to an amazing house that looks like it is straight out of The Lord of the Rings, the windows and door at the front forming an actual face.
Billy Bob is here to re- thatch part of the roof and as I say hello to the cat, John puts the kettle on.
Billy Bob thought back to how it all started in the early 80s.

FOLK VILLAGE
“Dad owned the folk village in Cashel. He came out to me one morning saying, “I think I’ll thatch that roo.”
“Are ye nuts?”
“He said, “We’ve all seen slates go on and this is the same idea - one goes here, and one goes there,” he said.
“Never saw thatching been done before, so how do you think you are going to do that?” Billy Bob speaks with both disbelief and admiration.
“‘Trial and error. Nothing sure, but we’ll start and then someone will come along and tell us we are doing it wrong,” said his Dad.

“He was right. We started it, hadn’t a clue what we were doing, and someone came by to tell us what we were doing wrong. Even a thatcher stopped by to show us a little bit to get started,” said Billy Bob.
In the mid-1980s, a thatching course came up in Wexford with a Master Thatcher from England.
Billy Bob signed up, learned the true craft of thatching and that there was a reason the teacher was called a Master Thatcher.
“He had it in the hands and, if I was thatching for the rest of my days, I still wouldn’t be as good as him,” said Billy Bob.

Thirty years later, of the 14 students who took that course, two are still thatching today.
Billy Bob pours the coffee. I don’t know why but I like that we both like coffee the same way – milk and no sugar.

LONGEVITY
He explained that people are using reed more nowadays because of availability and longevity. Straw used to have a long body and small head, good for thatching.
Now it is difficult to get good quality straw because of how straw is combined in the production process. Fertiliser makes the straw soft, so it wears away and grows too fast.

“A thatching straw would be… that height standing in the field, [Billy Bob gestures over his head], so they have to be specially grown,” said Billy Bob.
There are specialty growers but 9 times out of 10 the materials are bought in from England, Poland or China. Today, the reed for the roof is from Turkey.

REED BED
Billy Bob remembers a time when he cut his own reed – wading through icy water in January. A sickle was used to cut reed from the reed bed (a massive floating root).
He lost count of the times he fell in and got soaking wet. For straw thatching, the straw is shaken out into a big bed and then pulled by hand. The bedding is put together and brought up to the roof. It could take 9 or 10 tonnes of straw to thatch a roof, so Billy Bob is quick to add, “you have to be fit for it.”

The tools of the trade are quite simple; a drill, a mallet, a legget, (to pat and sculpt the roof) and something for tightening the wire.
Plastic scallops are used to keep the reeds in place. To put a bundle of reed in place, the wire goes across it, and the scallop goes in to hold it down. Wire keeps the birds out. And the one thing that Billy Bob will not do without is… knee pads!

As he says himself, “You get one set of them in your life, so you have to protect them. I wouldn’t even genuflect in a church without knee pads,” said Billy Bob.
Thatching can be expensive, costing up to €40,000 to thatch a standard house.
Many houses in Holycross in Tipperary were thatched recently. There was a time when the quality of thatching dropped. A 7-year grant for a thatch meant that people got a thin thatch that lasts 10 years.
Back in the day it was different, they would take the scraw off the bog (top sod) and cut the roof rafters from the forest. They scalloped their thatch on top of the scraw and left it to dry, like the Cashel Folk Village.

The English thatchers had superior methods where a roof could last 40, 50, or even 80 years depending on the reed, the person putting it on and where your house is situated.
Billy Bob considers Matt Whelan in Wexford to be the best thatcher in the country. “If he thatched a roof, you would get 40 or 60 years out of it – he uses mostly straw. There is some skill in it,” said Billy Bob.

SCHOOL OF THATCHING
Matt runs the Irish School of Thatching in Wexford and has a 4-year course that will teach someone everything they need to know about thatching to get a really good trade.
Today is great weather for thatching - warm, dry, with little breeze.
“A roof needs a tightness, a bounce and a softness,” said Billy.
Billy Bob pats the roof as he speaks.

“A tightness to keep it on. A bounce to show you it is on correctly and soft enough to allow the wind to go through it, to dry it. It is like a set of lungs – the better it breathes, the longer it lasts,” he added.
The roof Billy Bob is working on is 20 years old. The original thatch was tied very tight, so Billy Bob loosened it to let it breathe again. He checks the wear spots, especially at the windows to make sure it is not rotting. The roof was originally thatch and rye straw that John grew himself. It was beautiful and though the roof is long gone, I know Billy Bob sees it still.
HARD WORK

These days when Billy Bob thinks of thatching, two words immediately come to mind - hard work, made even harder if you are not doing it every day.
“Yesterday, I came off the ladder and was crippled. You are standing on the top rung of the ladder, it’s that wide [spreads his fingers 2 inches], on your tippy toes all day,” he said.
Thatching is “shocking physical” and especially hard on the legs, hips and knees. Billy Bob jokes, “I am too heavy for light work and too light for heavy work.” Thatching is good when you are young and hardy, “I never wanted to be an old thatcher on a roof.”

SONGWRITER
Last year, Billy Bob retired from thatching giving him more time for his passion for song writing.
Living in Cashel with his artist wife Karen Colbert, Billy Bob sees himself as “a songwriter who can thatch. I am not a thatcher who writes songs.”
He thinks back to when he was 16 and a science teacher took them for a free class. The teacher spoke about the song The Boxer by Simon and Garfunkel and how it was written and from that moment Billy Bob knew he wanted to write songs.
He speaks of the “full concentration” needed to write a song and that “when I leave the world of thatching, I can go into the world of song writing then, well, it is just the contrast that is beautiful.”

SONGS FOR STORIES
He has written hundreds of songs from blues, traditional folk and light jazz – depending on what comes to him or what is inspiring him at the time.
Billy Bob has released three singles and has various songs covered by other artists. He writes songs for the stories in the hope that people will understand something after they have heard it and it will help them through a situation.

His fourth album “What do you dream?” was released in Autumn 2022.
It is perhaps fitting that the songwriter who thatches also makes the roofs under which we rest our heads to dream.

Two books, Artisans of Clonmel and Artisans of Cashel, were published before Christmas.
They were launched as part of Clonmel Applefest and the Cashel Arts Festival. They both carry the stories of craftspeople in the community.
Over the coming months The Nationalist will carry stories from both books. The article for this week was written byMarie Walsh
Marie Walsh is a mother, writer, singer songwriter, teacher and self-confessed optimist! She lives in Tipperary with her 2 amazing children - Holly & Tom. She is a Lecturer based on the Clonmel Campus of the Technological University of the Shannon. Marie believes light always wins and knows anything is possible.