by Charles Egan
‘Here,’ he said, ‘look at this. Letters begging for help. They come from all sorts of people – masters of workhouses, justices of the peace, local committees of all sorts, landlords even. And worst of all, priests. And that might shock you, why I say ‘worst of all’. I’ll tell you why, it’s because they’re closest to their flocks, and they can describe the suffering of the people. They’d wring tears from any man. Yes, we know – you know as well as I do – that Mayo is in a terrible condition. No matter what we do, it can never be enough. We need money – tens of thousands – no, more like hundreds of thousands – to make the slightest impression on it all. And what do we have? Less than ever before. Half the landlords are bankrupt, and can’t pay a penny of the County Rates. As for the other half – Lucan and the like – it’s like getting blood from a stone. The Rates Proctors are going up and down the county trying to get money from them, bankrupt or otherwise. They send them letters, they take them to court, and what do they do? They get judgements against them, but judgements aren’t money, they won’t feed anyone.’
‘So what can we do?’ Pat asked.
‘Ensure that whatever little money we have is spent in the best possible way. And that is impossible to assess. Everyone who writes in to us, the priests especially, their parish, their village, whatever, is the worst of all. I don’t blame them for that. They’ve no idea what’s happening in the next parish, how could they? The same with all the rest of them. So sitting here in Castlebar is no use at all. We have to decide which parishes and which baronies need the money the most. And for that we need someone who’s willing to travel the County and decide…’
Pat looked up in shock.
‘Decide!’
Now he understood the full reality of what he was being asked to do. Not just observe. Decide too.
‘I know,’ Gaffney said, before Pat could say anything more. ‘Giving out sackings in England was an awful job, I’m sure, and I’m not saying this is any better. In fact, it might be a great deal worse, but at least you’ll know that the work you’re doing is beneficial to humanity.’
‘But you want me to decide where the food goes.’
‘If not you, your reports will decide it for us. Not that there’s much money for food anyhow.’
He threw a notebook on the desk.
‘Here, you’ll need this.’
He put a pencil on top.
‘You might as well take notes of what I’m saying, Pat, and get well used to taking notes. The way I reckon it is this. There’s starvation right across the county, but the centre is best, or least bad, should I say. The Plains of Mayo – that’s the better land. Lucan’s gangs are still evicting people for sheep runs there, but we have some knowledge of that. And we know all about his evictions around Castlebar. And in spite of the dreadfulness of that, I still reckon the real starvation is around the edge of the County.’
‘I’d say you’re right.’
‘Four places are worst. The Ox Mountains, and you’ll know them well enough from your work in Knockanure. Father Nugent is the priest in the mountains. Then there’s Erris, and God knows it’s savage there, and damned near unreachable. And Partry – we’re getting fierce reports from there. Father Ward particularly. And the seacoast from Leenane to Louisburgh, close up to Mweelrea Mountain, there’s many dying there.’
‘And Achill?’ Pat asked. ‘What about Achill?’
‘Don’t think we haven’t thought about that.’ Gaffney replied. ‘No, for the moment, we have to leave it to Nangle and his gang of damned missionaries and proselytisers. It’s not what we’d want to do, but he has his friends in Dublin and back in England, and he can get the money and food supplies from there. Our task for now is to feed their bodies, and Nangle can do that for us in Achill. Their immortal souls can wait till after.’
‘So then, it’s the Ox, Erris, Partry and Mweelrea?’
‘That’s right. So what I want you to do is to travel these areas for us. I want you to meet everyone you can. We’ll give you names of the people who have written us letters, and anyone else we know, but like I said, they’ll all tell you their area is worst. Have them take you to the villages and farms around? Note down everything about evictions, and find out in each village how many survivors there might have been from starvation and disease thus far. You should go into the cabins too to witness the truth of what you’re being told, but be careful you don’t get fever. And everywhere you go, sit down in the evenings or whenever you can, and scribble notes as best you can. Always remember, whatever you say, we must assess the worst need and want from what you tell us. People will live and die on foot of your notes.’
Pat stayed two days in the County offices with Gaffney. He read all the desperate petitions, requests, demands and pleas from all around the County. What he read was a picture of Hell. And his job was to find the truth of it.
He found the County maps and studied them too. Many of them were Ordnance Survey Maps, mostly from the 1838 survey, though some were many years older, and, he suspected, far out of date.
There were villages, hundreds of them, most of whose names he had not known. Mountains, lakes and bogs. He wondered how easy it would be to find any of them.
Then it was time to go.
Gaffney organised a pack for him with a single change of clothes and a package of food. He also gave him an introductory letter and a general provisions requisition for use in the Unions around the county, so that he would not starve.
‘There’s no point in sacrificing yourself,’ he told him. ‘You have to be able to think clearly.’
Then Pat took a horse from the stables, forced his way out through the gates, and set off in the direction of Carrigard and the Ox Mountains.
Chapter 8
Dublin Evening Post. September 1848:
The Earl and Countess of Lucan, the Ladies Bingham, and suite, arrived at Castlebar House on Friday last, on their usual autumnal visit to his lordship’s estates in the county Mayo. The noble Earl and Countess are in excellent health.
As he rode out of Castlebar. It was cold, but not raining. The cartloads of starving children and dead bodies no longer upset him.
Eleanor was surprised when he arrived with a horse.
‘Best bring it inside,’ she said. ‘We don’t want losing it.’
He led the horse through the door, and settled it down on straw at the far end of the kitchen. Eleanor sat him down with a cup of buttermilk.
‘Now tell me, what’s this job Gaffney has for you?’
‘The worst possible, mother. He wants me to travel the County and make reports back on the condition of every part of it.’
‘Don’t they have reports enough?’
‘They do, and that’s the problem. Everyone who reports, priests and all, they make it sound as if their parish is the worst. Since the County doesn’t have enough money, they have to decide which parishes are really the worst, and where the money might go.’
‘So how do you choose?’ Eleanor asked. ‘How do you choose where to start?’
‘Well, we’ve a good idea of that already. Erris, Partry and Mweelrea for sure, but seeing as Luke and myself were working in Knockanure and up the Ox Mountains, Gaffney reckoned it was best to start with the Ox, so I’m heading over to Knockanure now.’
He rode on to Knockanure. The usual crowd of men, women and children were outside the gates, most thin, some skeletal. With difficulty, he fought his way through, and, using Gaffney’s introductory letter, he was admitted with his horse.
The next morning, he walked to the Union building. To the side, two inmates were working beside a heap of clay. The edge of the death pit.
Voisey met him.
‘Pat! What brings you here?’
Pat explained Gaffney’s plan.
‘Yes, yes,’ Voisey said quickly. ‘Come on in.’
Pat gave his horse to an inmate, and followed Voisey into the administration block. Voisey sat him in front of his desk, as Pat explained the plan in more de
tail.
‘I can see the sense of it,’ Voisey said. ‘You know what, I’m only hoping you see us as the worst, because, by God, we need the money. Where could be worse in Mayo?’
‘There might be one or two places,’ Pat said, without revealing more.
‘So what’s your plan?’
‘I’m thinking of going on up to Brockagh and meeting with Father Nugent, find out what he thinks.’
‘Yes,’ said Voisey, ‘that’d be an excellent idea. In fact, best of all might be to do that, and then visit me on the way back.’
‘I’ll do that so,’ Pat said, ‘but tell me this, how’s Knockanure, how’s the workhouse?’
Voisey made an arch of his fingers, as if thinking.
‘Frightful. We can’t feed the whole countryside, and you see the results of that at the gate. We’re always near bankrupt. So for those we do admit, we have food, very little, but enough to keep body and soul together for a few weeks at least. So long as we can keep the grain merchants paid, the corn will keep coming.’
‘And the fever?’
‘Not as bad as it was last year, but it’s always there. There’s times I wonder what good we’re doing, any of us. If the hunger doesn’t get them, the fever will, and it just goes on and on.’
*
An hour later, Pat left Knockanure, and rode in the direction of Brockagh.
That evening he found a ruined cabin, the straw-thatched roof half collapsed. He took some of the thatch from the ground and brought it in to what was left standing of the cabin. He brought the horse inside too and slept on the straw.
When he left, it was raining and still dark. He rode on, his hat pulled down to his nose.
Slowly, the rain cleared, as the sun rose behind grey cloud. By the time he reached Brockagh, the sky was clear. The town was quiet. There was no answer to his knock at either the church or the priest-house. Two men stood leaning against the corner of a cabin, watching him closely, but saying nothing.
From memory, he found his way to Gallagher’s. Winnie’s mother answered his knock.
‘I know that face,’ she said.
‘Of course, you do,’ Pat answered. ‘Pat Ryan.’
‘Luke’s brother, is it? Come on in out of that. Better bring the horse in too.’
She sat him at the table, as two children came shyly out of the back room, and stared at him.
‘I’ve met these young fellows before,’ Pat said.
‘You have,’ Mrs. Gallagher said. ‘These are our twins. Up to devilment the pair of them are, all the time.’
‘No, we’re not,’ one of the boys said.
‘They think they can get away with anything when their father’s not around. That’s right, you little devil you.’
There was no answer from the boys.
‘Is John out working?’ Pat asked.
‘Out working is right,’ Mrs. Gallagher said. ‘Over in England he is, himself and young John, building railways.’
‘But – young John?’
‘I know, ten years old he is now, and a sharp lad. I don’t know what kind of work they’ll have him doing, but I’m hoping it’s a bit lighter than the men. It’s hard work building railways, I understand.’
‘It is,’ said Pat. ‘But we never heard of them going to England.’
‘John didn’t want saying to anyone.’
‘But why? Why did he go?’
‘He couldn’t take it any longer, what with friends and the like not knowing him anymore.’
So Gallagher had left. Like Luke, he could not take the hatred? Had he been blamed for working as a foreman? Perhaps.
‘I understand,’ Pat said.
‘So what about Winnie?’ she asked him. ‘She’s gone now too?’
‘She is,’ Pat said.
‘To a better place, I hope,’ she said; tears in her eyes.
‘Jersey City. It’s right by New York. A much better place, by all accounts.’
‘I’m sure it is,’ she said. ‘It was a pity she couldn’t come over. She wrote me, but said the ship was going too soon for to visit me.’
‘It was,’ said Pat.
Mrs. Gallagher wiped at a tear running down her cheek.
‘Ach, I’m sorry, ’tisn’t crying I should be when my daughter is off to a new world. The little lad too. But even so, ’tis sad he had to go, and I not even having seen him. Sure it would have been impossible for any of us to travel with the way the County is. I’d have tried to make it down your country myself, but with John gone and two little ones, sure what could I do.’
Again, she wiped at her cheek.
‘And what about yourselves,’ Pat asked. ‘Are you intending to join John in England?’
‘Not as long as I don’t have to,’ she said. ‘So long as John can send us enough money to buy corn, we’ll stay here. He still believes in Mayo, believes there’s a living to be made here, when the times come together again. God knows when that will be though. And it’ll take longer for people to forget the Relief Works – they’re already saying they were worse than the workhouse. So yes, we’re eating, but that’s only because of the money John sends back. There’s thousands around here dying from hunger and fever. How long it can go on, I just do not know. All I know is this, we’re planning on waiting until the early harvest next year. If the potatoes are gone at that time, then it’s off to England with all of us.’
*
It was late in the afternoon when he returned to the church. A priest was standing on the steps outside, and Pat recognised him as Father Nugent.
A donkey and cart had drawn up alongside. An old man knelt by the cart. It was only as Pat got closer he realised what was in the cart. Corpses. All were desperately emaciated; yellow and purple in colour. Father Nugent raised his hand in blessing. When the blessing was finished, the old man stood and wordlessly took the donkey’s bridle. Slowly the cart turned and trundled past Pat. Neither he nor the old man said a word.
Father Nugent glanced at him as he came up the steps.
‘Do you think all these blessings are worth anything?’ he asked.
‘What?’
‘All these blessings, and we can’t even bury them in consecrated ground. There’s no one with the strength to dig graves anymore. Do you think there’s a God at all? Do you think he listens to us?’
‘Well, I don’t know…but sure there must be. If there’s not, what’s the point of living?’
‘Indeed,’ Father Nugent said, ‘and what’s the point of dying neither. So who are you?’
‘Pat Ryan. We met at my brother’s wedding, right in this church.’
‘Luke! Luke Ryan and Winnie Gallagher, wasn’t it?’
‘It was.’
‘And how is he? What’s he doing now?’
‘Gone to America,’ Pat replied. ‘He left last year at the end of the summer. She’s followed him now.’
‘Yes. I’d heard stories of that, but I didn’t believe them.’
‘It’s true, right enough.’
Father Nugent shook his head.
‘What’s wrong with this country, Pat? We can’t even keep our best. It’s men and women like that we need for Ireland. If there ever is to be an Ireland.’
He ushered Pat inside to a pew and sat beside him.
‘Tell me of Luke’s dear wife. What of young Winnie? How is she finding America?’
‘I don’t know that she’d be there yet,’ Pat said. ‘She’s gone out of Westport, herself and her baby son.’
‘They’ve a son?’
‘They have.’
‘It’s sad they’re all leaving. I knew Luke well, you know. For a young man like him, he was able beyond his years. Tough too, but God knows, that came with the task he had to do. And all he wanted to do was help, get money into the people’s pockets so they wouldn’t starve. But they were working for seven pence a day – Castlebar would have it no other way – and then they dropped to tuppence ha’penny with the piecework. Oh God, they hated him for that, though
it wasn’t him that decided it. And the winter, it was almost as if they blamed him for the snow and ice too. But the County people, they’d never let up, insisted they had to work, right through the snow, wouldn’t pay them otherwise. No, I never wondered at him leaving the country. What else could he do? And poor Winnie too. Not the only ones either. John Gallagher – he left too.’
‘I know. I met with Mrs. Gallagher.’
‘You did?’
‘I did,’ Pat said. ‘She told me much.’
‘Yes. He had to go. Himself and the son. Old John had worked as a foreman with Luke, and they hated him for it. Young John was only a child, but he had to go too.’
Pat thought of Danny and the horrific conditions of the navvy shacks.
‘Do you know where he went in England?’ he asked.
‘Somewhere around Manchester. Martin Davitt and his family had already gone over, and Gallagher knew him. And there you have it, the Gallaghers, a family scattered over three countries. And the ones leaving Ireland are the lucky ones.’
‘I know,’ Pat said. ‘God knows, we saw it all in Knockanure Union; what with the death pit and the rest of it. The fever killed them at a terrible rate last year. And worse in the mountains, from all I hear. It was hard on ye all here.’
‘You’re right there,’ Father Nugent said, ‘but in many ways, Luke had it the hardest of any of us who were trying to help. He was lucky he didn’t die, there were times I thought he came near it. One time he was in the mountains with me, he saw something that terrified him, something I couldn’t see.’
‘And you saw nothing?’
‘Nothing at all.’
‘He must have been feverish so. Wasn’t that it?’
‘Maybe it was,’ Father Nugent replied, ‘or maybe it was something else. I don’t know, and now I’ll never know. But enough of that. I’m sure it’s not for such talk you came here.’
Again, Pat explained Gaffney’s plans.
‘It’s quite a task you’ve got,’ Father Nugent said when he had finished.
‘It is, and I’m hoping you can help.’
‘What would you want to know?’
Pat took out his notebook and pencil. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I’ve been through Brockagh and the lowlands, but it’s the mountains Gaffney wants to know about. ‘Where would you suggest? Where’s the best to go?’