by Charles Egan
Father Ward went to the door, and asked the other two to help. Pat was surprised when they both refused.
‘We’ve got families,’ Eoin said, ‘and we’ve enough fever already.’
Father Ward shrugged his shoulders, and looked to Pat. Pat lifted the baby and carried it out onto the cart. Father Ward followed with the young child.
They both returned to the cabin and carried the young women out in turn, holding each by the shoulders and ankles. They laid them on the cart, alongside the children.
They returned to the man. The moaning had stopped.
‘Dead,’ Father Ward said.
‘I know,’ said Pat.
They carried him out.
‘Have ye spades?’ Pat asked.
‘Hold a moment,’ Dónal replied. He went back to his own cabin and returned with a spade and a sleán. He left them inside the cart. Father Ward stood at the front of the cart, and drove the donkey. Pat followed, leading his horse, the other two men following with the woman of the house. They turned off at a small boreen and stopped at a high bank of turf.
‘This would be best, Father,’ the woman said.
Pat looked surprised.
‘There’s no graveyard within five miles,’ Father Ward explained, ‘and we’re not going to carry the fever that far. It’s bad enough already.’
They took the spade and sleán. ‘Here, let ye two rest,’ Father Ward said to the other two men. He passed the sleán to Pat.
‘I’m not sure either’d be able for heavy labour,’ he whispered.
They worked for some time. When it was still less than two feet deep, Father Ward stepped out.
‘Let that be enough.’
He and Pat laid the corpses into the hole. Then he stood on the edge, and gave the blessing. They shovelled the wet turf on top of the dead bodies.
Pat walked to another boghole, and carefully washed his hands and forearms. Father Ward joined him.
When they had returned the cart to the village, Pat and the priest rode back towards Tourmakeady.
‘We’ll have to go faster than this,’ Father Ward said.
‘I know,’ Pat said. ‘Burying bodies takes time.’
But the road had worsened. Again, the donkey stumbled, pitching Father Ward forward, but he clutched the donkey’s mane and did not fall.
A few minutes later, they came to a corpse in a ditch. They looked at each other.
‘No burials,’ Pat said. Father Ward nodded. He stayed on the donkey, and whispered the blessing.
A mile later, they saw another body on the road. A dog had found it already. As the blessing was repeated, Pat slipped off from his horse, broke a small branch from a whinbush and rushed at the dog. He whipped it sharply across the back. The dog ran, whelping.
‘You’re wasting your time,’ Father Ward said. ‘He’ll be back the moment we’re around the corner.’
It was dark when they entered the village of Gortmore, but a bright half-moon lit the cabins. They did not dismount.
‘Anyone here?’ Father Ward shouted. ‘Father Ward here. Can anyone hear me?’
A door opened, and a woman came out.
‘You’re welcome, Father Peter,’ she said. ‘We’ve much need for you.’ She went back into the cabin and took a half burning branch from the fire.
‘Come with me.’
She grasped the donkey’s bridle. They came to a cabin. The mud sloped back steeply, ten or twelve feet thick at the bottom. The roof rose further up to a high ridge. It had been constructed with ancient bog oak and scraws of heather, blackened by smoke. The woman opened the door without knocking, and handed the burning torch to Father Ward. He and Pat entered.
Pat came close to vomiting. He counted seven bodies. Controlling his choking, he decided to check them for life. He went on his knees, and crawled to each in turn, watching and listening closely. He shook his head.
‘All dead,’ he said.
Father Ward gave the blessing once. ‘I’m sure the good Lord will understand,’ he said. ‘There’s no need in repeating it seven times.’
‘I’m sure you’re right, Father. And we’re not burying them neither.’
‘Don’t worry, Pat. They’ll pull the roof in on them instead. They might bury them when they have more strength, and when the bones are eaten clean.’
They went out again. Pat heard keening, though he did not know from where.
The woman was waiting.
‘Do ye have anywhere to sleep?’ she asked.
‘Nowhere. Not yet.’
‘That ye may stay with me.’
As they were leading the animals back, Pat hesitated.
‘Have you fever in the house?’ he asked the woman.
‘I’m alone,’ she said, ‘and I don’t have fever.’
‘I’m sorry asking…’
‘No need for that. We must all have a care.’
When they came to her cabin, Pat went to tie his horse to a whinbush on the other side.
‘Ye’d better bring the animals in,’ she told them. ‘They’ll be stolen otherwise.’
‘Are they of so much value?’ Pat asked.
‘For food, yes. There’s not a donkey left in this village. They’re all gone for eating.’
‘And if they didn’t eat them, the dogs would?’
‘There’s no dogs neither.’
Pat thought about the reason for that, but did not ask.
‘Rats so?’ he asked.
‘Yes, there are many rats. Too many to hunt down, and too fast in the moving.’
They brought the donkey in, but they could not force the horse under the low lintel. Pat tied it to the door jamb, and slept at the open door.
When they arose, Pat took oatmeal bread from his sack, broke it into chunks and passed it to the others. The woman filled a cup with well-water, and each drank from it before it was refilled. Then they left.
At Tourmakeady, they turned, climbing away from the lake and up the Partry Mountains.
They passed a man crawling. Pat took bread from his own sack, and tried to hand it to him. The man looked at him, but did not take it. They went a few yards. Then Father Ward stopped. He turned his donkey around, and quietly whispered the blessing.
They came to a building with windows, but most had been broken in, and the front door swung open. ‘That used to be a school,’ Father Ward said. ‘Let’s see if there’s anyone sheltering inside.’
They entered. Pat saw the cast iron remains of desks, but there was no timber.
‘Gone for firewood,’ Father Ward said. In one corner, there was a corpse. It was far decayed, and eaten down one side. They went no nearer, and the blessing was given from a distance.
Pat knotted the door shut, and they left.
‘We had over a hundred children there once,’ Father Ward said. ‘Now not one. Do you know Pat, five years ago, there were fifteen hundred children in eight schools in my parish? One thousand five hundred boys and girls. Can you imagine it? Now we have one school open in Ballinrobe. And do you know how many children there are attending school there? Ten!’
‘Where have they all gone to, Father, do you think? Have they emigrated?’
‘Emigrated! There’s few enough of them could emigrate. No, they’re too weak to come to school. They’re dead or waiting for it.’
‘So many?’
‘Indeed, and that’s just the children. I’ll tell you something, Pat, it’s places like Partry where the dying is done. I’m sure it’s bad with ye around Kilduff, or even Castlebar, but I’d say it’s nothing like this. Even in Ballinrobe they have some food, but up here in the wilds of Partry – nothing. Nothing since Castlebar’s last supplies, and nothing much before that either.’
‘Nothing from the landlords neither?’
‘No, the landlords don’t want to know – if we even knew who the half of them were. There’s very little corn here and the potatoes are gone. What’s worse is the way they all crowd together. Once fever enters a village it jumps from house to house
and kills everyone. You’ve seen it yourself.’
‘I have,’ said Pat, ‘but it no longer surprises me. This is just the way it is in Erris too. And my brother Luke, he told me about it in the Ox Mountains, but that was back in ’46 and ’47. Knockanure Workhouse too. But you’re right. This is worse.’
They were climbing now, following a road leading towards the higher ground. To the far right the ridges of the blackened potato ridges went higher and higher, nearly as far as the tops of the mountains, only heather and rock above.
At length, they turned off the road, following a narrow boreen across the side of the mountain. The road was rough, with more mud than gravel. Again, the donkey fell. Again, Father Ward grasped the mane, but his fingers could not hold it, and he fell sideways into the mud. He rose, rubbing mud off his soutane.
‘You get used to it,’ he told Pat.
Pat dismounted and they led the horse and donkey along, but still the men and animals staggered and lurched in the mud.
‘A rough road,’ Pat said.
‘It is. A road of sorrow for man and beast.’
*
They came to another village.
‘Baile Uí Bhánáin,’ Father Ward told him. O’Bannan’s village. Ballybanane.
There were perhaps twenty cabins, all built into the steep slope of the land. Father Ward shouted, but this time there was no answer.
Pat knocked at three doors in succession, but there were no replies. He opened each door, but all were empty.
‘You needn’t bother about those ones,’ Father Ward told him. ‘They’re gone already. Dead and buried. Buried everywhere you could think – fields, bogs, ditches, it doesn’t matter anymore.’
They came to a hovel, more miserable than most. There were no walls. A round roof rose from the ground, the back built into the bog. It was covered with turf. The entrance was less than two feet high. There was no door, no chimney and no window spaces.
‘Willie Walsh,’ Father Ward said. ‘Dead some weeks back, him and the son. They were to bury them. I’ve blessed them already.’
‘I’ll have a look,’ Pat said.
‘No. Don’t.’
But Pat ignored him and crawled inside. As his eyes became accustomed to the gloom, he spotted a blanket in one corner. He lifted it, and pulled back, choking. Underneath were the skeletal remains of a man and a child. There was nothing left of their flesh. The child looked to be hugging his father, the skulls touching at the foreheads.
Father Ward was waiting outside.
‘The rats didn’t leave much.’ Pat said. ‘Nothing more than bones.’
‘There was more flesh on them when I last came. It was horrible.’
Pat saw he was shaking.
‘What?’ he asked. ‘What was so horrible?
‘Never mind. There’s things it’s better not to know.’
They left. Another cabin, walled this time.
‘Martin Walsh, I spoke with him a month or two back.’
The door did not open. Through a gap, Pat saw it was propped shut by a branch. He found a thin piece of wood and, pushing it through the gap, displaced the branch.
Inside were two dead men and a dead woman. There was little except bones left of the woman’s body, showing through the ragged remains of her dress. The rats still squeaked around the corpses of the men. Another blessing.
Pat spotted a heap of scraws of heather in a tiny field beside the house. Knowing well what he would find, he walked over and pulled a few back.
Another corpse. Another blessing.
‘Are there any left, do you think?’ Pat asked.
‘None.’
Pat went down one side of the boreen, opening each door, sometimes using force to break the door open, but every house was empty. He came back up the other side. The same.
‘Didn’t I tell you so,’ Father Ward said. ‘Everyone else we’ve buried, and that last man you found, that was Anthony Derrig. They wouldn’t have had the strength to bury him. If there were any left alive.’
They crossed from Baile Uí Bhánáin and came to another mud village.
‘Droim Chogaidh,’ Father Ward said. Drimcaggy. The Ridge of War.
‘What war?’ Pat asked, not noticing he had slipped into Irish.
‘Who knows? Some long-forgotten brawl in the hills. It’s of little matter now.’
More empty huts. Then a larger house, built of rock and thatched with reeds.
Pat opened the door. Inside were five skeletons. Again, Father Ward gave the blessing.
‘Pat Shaughnessy, Three more of them too – his mother, wife and little girl. I saw him the day he died. He said he was so hungry he could eat his children.’
‘He didn’t…’
‘Never got the chance. He was dead the same night, I’m told. The wife and child were too. I meant to come back, but never got the chance till now.’
They spotted two dogs, scrabbling at a manure heap. They pulled out a tiny, manure-covered corpse. Pat ran at them, but they ignored him.
Father Ward grasped his arm. ‘Come on, Pat. I told you before, you’re only wasting your time.’
At the end of the village they spotted a saw pit. As they rode past he spotted two corpses lying in it, a man and a woman. They dismounted. Pat twisted the man’s skull around. The eye sockets were empty; the face a vivid pink colour, pockmarked with black. Pat’s insides heaved.
‘James O’Brien,’ Father Ward said, his voice flat. ‘He was the last man I spoke to living here. There were only a family of three alive from eight, all the rest buried.’
‘Three? There’s only two here.’
‘The daughter must have died since. They might have buried her already.’
Another blessing.
As they crossed the ford out of the town, Pat spotted clothing caught in the branch of a tree by the stream. A dress? He dismounted and splashed down.
‘Father – down here.’
It was the body of a young girl. The head was in the water. Grasping her hair, he pulled the head up, and dropped it in shock. Carefully, he did so again, and pulled the body out of the stream. He laid her on her back. The face was grossly swollen, giving the appearance of a head twice its natural size. It was a pale, yellowish white. One eye bulged out of its socket, the other was gone.
‘That’s what water does,’ Father Ward said. ‘I’ve seen many drowned men out the Killaries and Clare Island. A few days in the water and they swell up.’
He gave the blessing. Pat vomited.
*
Across the stream, was another mud cabin, more wretched than most. They led the animals through the water. Pat wiped his mouth, still dry retching.
They came to another cabin.
‘Mary Kennedy,’ Father Ward said. ‘They were all near death when I last called.’
Pat held the reins of the horse and donkey. Father Ward tried the door, but a rope was tied through a hole in the door and around the doorframe. It was knotted tight from the inside. He took a small knife from his cassock, cut the outside of the rope and entered. Moments later, he came out again, his hand across his mouth, gagging and spluttering.
Pat left the animals and made for the door, but Father Ward caught him first, holding his arm in a vice tight grasp.
‘No, Pat.’
‘But I must see…’
‘NO.’
Pat stood back, stunned, as Father Ward knotted the door shut. ‘There are things no man should see.’
‘But how can I understand…?’
‘You’ve seen other cabins. Let that be enough for you.’
‘And you?’
‘I’ve seen too much already,’ the priest said. ‘I’m damned to hell this long time.’
*
They returned to the animals. Pat was disturbed and puzzled. What could be so awful that Father Ward could not even say it? So terrible as to damn him. It made no sense.
The priest led the donkey along. Pat grasped the horse’s reins and followed him out
of Drimcaggy. All around were the dead and dying villages of the Partry Mountains. Below, the houses and hovels of Tourmakeady crowded the edge of Lough Mask. The lake sparkled in sunshine, but sheets of rain were closing in from the west, shrouding the peaks of the Maumtrasna and Devilsmother range. A rainbow glimmered at the end of the lake.
He stopped. To the side, a goat track went higher, past a few cabins and up to another ridge above Drimcaggy. At the highest point of the ridge, a dead blackthorn tree clung to the edge of a high, rocky outcrop. Its gaunt limbs stood stark, sunlit against a darkening sky. He gazed at the tree, sensing the primeval power of it.
‘Come on, Pat.’
‘What’s up here, Father?’
‘Just a few cabins. There’s no name to them.’
‘Shouldn’t we see who’s there?’
‘No-one lives there anymore. Hunger and fever killed them all.’
‘All of them?’
‘Twenty people, I don’t know. The dogs had a feast, I can tell you.’
‘That’s awful. Did you see it?’
‘Nothing much. I gave them the Last Rites a few weeks back. Not that there was much left to bless. Only a few skulls.’
‘Oh God!’
‘Don’t let it be upsetting you, Pat. Sure it’s no different to many another place. A few years’ time, and they’ll all have been forgotten, by God and by Man. Now come on.’
Pat followed Father Ward down towards Tourmakeady. Then the rain began, a light drizzle at first, which quickly became torrential. Behind him, he heard the rolling of thunder over the crag above Drimcaggy. Soon he was drenched through. His hands were trembling, and he found it hard to grip the reins. The village of no name had frightened him. Why should it? It was tiny, just a few mud cabins, like so much of Mayo.
A simple place. A place of skulls.
Chapter 21
Bradford Observer, April 1849:
We call this an Irish question; but we are beginning to find out it is an English question too. Edinburgh, Glasgow, Liverpool, Bradford etc., have long been saddled with far more than a sixpence rate-in-aid for the support of the thousands of Irish emigrants whom idleness, crime or poverty throws upon British resources. Our labour market is thus over-stocked with shoals of destitute wretches whose misery prompts them to offer their services on terms frequently most prejudicial to the home operative. Besides all this, we are heavily taxed to maintain 30,000 troops in Ireland, whose duty is to keep discontent within due limits and enforce at the point of the bayonet the sacred duty of submitting to fate! These are no times to be squeamish about trifles. We should be ashamed to advocate spoliation, but the millions of Ireland ought to derive sustenance from their own soil; and as its present owners cannot rescue it from barrenness, there remains no alternative but to hand it over to others who should submit it to cultivation, make it feed its own inhabitants, and rescue England from the disgrace and peril to which she has been so long exposed.