I remember the dreaded day
11plus exam results
Postman came round the road
Delivering envelopes
It marked the end of childhood days
It caused such separation
Some folk went to clever school
The rest to a lower station
And I was picked out from the crowd
Boarding school for me
A hundred miles away
In a seminary
Should not have happened
The whole thing wrong
We happy lads together
Friendships broken scattered now
To cope with different weather
Brian Fahy
1 February 2023
+ It was bad enough to separate children into different schools when we were growing up together, as the 11 plus examination did, but to take children from their home and family and deprive them of the natural joys of home and institutionalise them in a college far away, and do it in God’s name, was deeply misguided and downright wrong.
Erris Poetry 