While I was gathering oral history for my PhD, traveling the boreens and byways of North Mayo and West Sligo, I interviewed one old man who wanted me to come outside into his garden before I left his home, after we had enjoyed a lively chat about local characters and names of fields.

“Can you hear it?” he asked, looking at me with sudden saddened eyes.

I heard only a lone dog barking somewhere and a car revving in the distance.

“Hear what?” I replied.

He sighed, turning to look in the direction of the now-closed local national school.

‘‘The quiet… I could set me watch when the children would be out playing each day and now... nothing, just meself and the wind.”

He hurried me to my car, not wanting his glistening eyes to give away the ache of community loss. As I was closing the car door, he suddenly remembered something.

“You don’t have children yourself?”

“No,” I answered and he just nodded, saying: “Ah well.”

As I drove back to my parents’ home in the spitting rain, I fought with the realisation that without children, seemingly active communities would disappear. It happened sooner than I expected.