The Music Makers

by E. V. Thompson

  It was exactly a week since the All-Ireland Association meeting at Kilmar, and Father Clery was paying a visit to Eugene Brennan.

  As the heavy iron door of the narrow cell crashed into place behind him, Father Clery shook hands warmly with the frail white-haired old man who stood up from the single bunk.

  Eugene Brennan looked more like a scholar than a revolutionary and, indeed, he was a very learned man. A brilliant lawyer. Only his eyes betrayed him for what he was – a man with a vision. An all-consuming purpose in life. Eugene Brennan had fought the English, within the law, for five decades. He had founded the All-Ireland Association with the declared aim of separating Ireland from England and giving his country a free and independent government. But, for all the passion of his beliefs, Eugene Brennan had always preached against violence. He had been a young man when Ireland rose in rebellion against English rule in 1798 and the bloody slaughter he had witnessed then haunted him even now.

  ‘How very kind of you to come all this way to see me, Matthew.’ The two men were old friends. ‘Time drags in here, with little to brighten the day.’

  ‘A man of your age should be at home in his own warm house, not in a damp prison cell.’

  Father Clery was genuinely concerned at the appearance of Eugene Brennan. He looked listless and weary, as though his seventy years were beginning to weigh heavily upon him.

  ‘I must agree with you, Matthew. Perhaps between us we might persuade the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland to imprison me in more salubrious surroundings.’ A smile passed briefly across his face. ‘But enough of my comfort. Our country sleeps less easy than I. What news do you bring?’

  Father Clery reached inside his coat and pulled out a thin sheaf of papers. ‘I have brief details here of all meetings held throughout the country. They all tell much the same story. Strong protest at your arrest and demands for action to free you. Collections have been made for your defence and the usual subscription receipts have been trebled – and there’s more promised.’

  ‘I am deeply grateful for the contributions, Matthew.’ The emotional old politician abruptly began pacing the length of the narrow cell to hide his feelings. ‘But there must be no talk of action to free me – or of any other form of violent protest. Not only would it defeat my lifetime’s work but it would also seriously jeopardise an acquittal and be playing right into the hands of Sir Robert Peel.’

  Sir Robert Peel was the Prime Minister of England and a lifelong opponent of Eugene Brennan and the aims of his association.

  ‘Pass the word to all branches of the Association, Matthew. There must be no trouble.’

  He swung around to face his friend. ‘Tell them the English brought troops to Dublin in preparation for my arrest. There are five thousand more than there were three months ago.’

  Eugene Brennan ran his fingers through his long white hair. ‘God! We can do without another bloodletting. You are nearly as old as I am, Matthew. You can remember ninety-eight. Irishmen killing Irishmen and English soldiers sacking the countryside. I’ll not have history say I was responsible for another such time of carnage.’

  Eugene Brennan stopped and looked up wistfully at the small barred box of blue sky high up in the cell wall.

  ‘Ireland’s the most beautiful country in the whole world, Matthew – God’s own land – but He has put in some hotheaded tenants to look after it for him.’

  He turned back to Father Clery with tears in his eyes.

  ‘Don’t let them wreck everything I’ve worked for, Matthew. Have the rules of the Association read out at every meeting. I want to be sure that each man there knows what they mean. It’s an association for every man and woman born in Ireland – a united Ireland. That’s our aim and we’ll achieve it through peaceful means. Through the English Parliament. What happens to me is unimportant. There can be no personalities in this matter. When I go, however I go, someone else will take my place, and I pray he will have more success than I. But whoever is leading the Association must have Ireland first and foremost in his mind at every moment. Ireland and our people. The people of the mountains and the fields, the villages and the cities, whether they be in the north, the south, the east, or the west. Tell them, Matthew. Make sure they know.’

  Eugene Brennan turned back to the barred sky again and his shoulders sagged.

  ‘What’s happening out there, Matthew? Is the sun shining on the corn in the fields? Are there children playing games in the streets of Dublin? And what of your own village, Kilmar? Ah! I can almost smell the sea and the wet sand and the fish on the quay.’

  The politician returned his attention to the priest and produced a weak smile. ‘Memories are a great comfort to an old man, Matthew. He is able to see faraway things more clearly than can a young man.’

  ‘You’ll soon be seeing everything for yourself,’ said Father Clery, alarmed at the depressed state of the great man before him. ‘Have they fixed a date for your trial yet?’

  ‘No, and they won’t for a while. They have no evidence against me that would stand up in a properly constituted court. They will bide their time in the hope that our young men will lose patience and do something foolish. Then the prosecution will be able to point to it as an example of what my speeches have brought to pass.’

  ‘All the more reason to keep our members under control,’ said Father Clery firmly. ‘I’ll make sure that every one of them is fully aware of his responsibilties.’

  ‘Then this has been a very successful visit. I thank you, my friend,’ said Eugene Brennan, clasping Father Clery’s hand in both his own. ‘Leave your notes for me and I’ll look through them. They will make better reading than the English newspaper they bring me here.’

  ‘Goodbye, and may God remain with you,’ said Father Clery to his old friend.

  ‘He will, Matthew. He will. Go now.’

  Turning the corner, away from the shadow of the high grey walls, Father Clery felt the evening sunshine warm upon his face and thought of Eugene Brennan’s tiny square of daylight. He determined to petition Eugene Brennan’s fellow-MPs in a bid to gain his release, or at the least a speedy trial. The ageing politician needed friends now as never before.

  At about the time Father Clery was walking into the sunshine of a warm Dublin evening, two men sat down to dine together in London. One was Sir Robert Peel, Tory Prime Minister of the uneasy union of Great Britain and Ireland, the other Sir James Graham, Peel’s Home Secretary with responsibility for the administration of Ireland.

  Peel was talking.

  ‘… I have no wish to exaggerate the importance of Brennan’s association, or to give the Irish another martyr. Pass the word along to the judge that I am looking for a light sentence to be given to Brennan. Who knows, it might gain us a friend or two in Ireland.’

  Sir James Graham leaned well back in his chair and shook his head slowly.

  ‘We will make no friends in Ireland, Sir Robert. Clemency would be a serious mistake. The members of Brennan’s All-Ireland Association would interpret it as weakness. Either we drop the charges or pursue them with the utmost vigour. Personally, I favour the latter course. Brennan has been a thorn in my flesh for as long as I care to remember. I can make no statement to the House on Irish affairs without suffering his interruptions. At least once every day he accuses me of not understanding his countrymen and demands self-rule for Ireland with monotonous regularity. I confess there are many occasions when I feel like giving him the damned country. They deserve each other. Ireland has little but mist and bog and argumentative peasants.’

  Sir Robert Peel smiled wryly. ‘There is a great deal of truth in what you say, James – but Ireland is a part of Great Britain, albeit a troublesome part, and so she will stay. A light sentence, if you please, Home Secretary.’

  The Prime Minister had issued an order that Sir James Graham would disregard at his peril, but Sir Robert Peel had already passed on to other matters.

  ‘Try some of this wine, James. The French ambassador has it brought i
n from his own vineyards in the Loire valley. I fancy it lacks the body of a Bordeaux, but I’m sure you will find it quite palatable. With the current state of things in France we are lucky to have any wine at all. The country is ripe for another revolution….’

  Ireland’s problems were thrust to one side as the two most powerful men in the land discussed France, its problems … and its wine.

  Father Clery reported back to a noisy and divided meeting of the Kilmar branch of the All-Ireland Association. The older men accepted Eugene Brennan’s instructions, seeing the wisdom of taking no action whilst their leader was held in prison, but the younger men were bitterly opposed to a period of inactivity. They argued, quite rightly, that Brennan could be held for many months before he was brought to trial. During that time the Association would be totally lacking in direction.

  ‘Not necessarily,’ argued the priest. ‘We’ll gather signatures on a petition to the Lord-Lieutenant in Dublin, calling for an. early trial.’

  ‘He’ll give it to his servants to light fires,’ retorted Dermot. ‘I say we take positive action, to frighten the English into releasing Brennan.’

  ‘I’m with Dermot,’ said the eager young Sean Feehan, and around him other young men murmured their agreement. ‘Unless we show we mean business the English will do as they like with Eugene Brennan.’

  ‘The English don’t frighten so easily,’ said Father Clery patiently. ‘You can’t fight them with hot words. They have at least ten thousand well-armed troops in Dublin right now. Would you face them with a few hundred men armed with knives tied to poles?’

  ‘We’ll find a way – but not if we agree to do nothing. The men of Wexford will rise to help Brennan, and others will come with us.’

  ‘Don’t be so hasty, Dermot.’ Father Clery put a hand on the young man’s shoulder. ‘Eugene Brennan knows more about this than we do. When the time is right he will tell us to make our move and, if need be, the men of Kilmar will have all the arms that are necessary. Until then we must just bide our time.’

  ‘We’ve been biding our time for seven hundred years. I for one think it’s time to be doing something to change things. If no one else takes the lead, I’ll do it myself. Who’ll come with me?’

  Dermot McCabe’s plea brought an enthusiastic response from the young men of the All-Ireland Association.

  ‘Your way will help no one, least of all Ireland, and I’ll have no part of any of it,’ declared Father Clery. ‘If you take the path to violence now, you’ll be going without the blessing of the Church.’

  Dermot glared defiantly at the priest. ‘Then so be it, Father. We’ll make our plans without involving either you or the Association.’

  Chapter Four

  When Liam broke the news to his mother that Kathie Donaghue would be helping with the fish-gutting on the quay, Norah McCabe was not pleased.

  ‘I need no one to help me – on the quay or in the fish-cellar. I’ve done the work for all these years by myself and I’m not old or helpless yet.’

  ‘No one is saying you are, Ma, but we are doing so well with the new boat that I want to find a market for our salted fish in Gorey. If I can do that, we’ll need to catch more fish and you’ll have to salt more. You’ll be glad enough then of the help. Besides, her father has broken his fingers and can’t play his fiddle. I’d rather she worked for us than begged for them both.’

  ‘Oh?’ Norah McCabe was full of sudden interest. ‘And are we to have all the cottiers working for us now to keep them from begging? I can’t wait to meet this girl; I think she’s bewitched you.’

  Liam’s growled reply was unintelligible, and Norah McCabe watched him stamp from the house with very mixed feelings. Her son was twenty-seven years of age now and had been the breadwinner in the McCabe family for more than half of his life. He had taken on his responsibilities when a young boy without a protest and she had never heard a complaint from him since. But there had been many nights when Norah McCabe had cried herself to sleep because of his lost childhood. She had suffered agonies whenever the wind freshened while Liam was fishing a mile from land, only a piece of stretched canvas between him and the sea that had taken his father.

  She could do nothing to make up for those lost hard days now, but Norah McCabe believed her son deserved something special from life. She was determined that no cottier girl was going to use Liam as a stepping-stone to a comfortable home and a secure future. But, for all her expressed opposition and personal misgivings, Norah McCabe took to Kathie immediately. By the end of the first week, she was a welcome visitor to the McCabe cottage after she had finished her work. Quite often Tommy Donaghue came with her. He kept the whole family amused with his exaggerated stories of incidents he claimed to have witnessed during his travels through Ireland. Since the night of his injury he had not been back to the ale-house and it did Kathie’s heart good to see her father again as the man he had once been.

  Kathie, too, enjoyed working with Norah McCabe, but most of all she liked to be on the quay with Liam and Dermot when they returned from a day’s fishing.

  Liam was quiet, almost shy, yet he had such a strength of purpose and a faith in his own ability that Kathie found herself a little in awe of him.

  Dermot lacked his brother’s seriousness. To Kathie he was fun. His carefree nature deserted him only when Kathie goaded him about the All-Ireland Association.

  ‘One day I’ll take you to a meeting,’ he declared finally. ‘Then we’ll see what you have to say when you’re there.’

  ‘I’ll keep you to that promise,’ said Kathie. ‘I’m for a free and independent Ireland – and so is my father – but I’m particular about who I have to speak on my behalf. I’ve never heard Eugene Brennan or Father Clery – only Dermot McCabe – and you don’t make a great deal of sense with some of your ideas.’

  Then, early in September, came news that temporarily overshadowed even the high aspirations of the All-Ireland Association and its members. Rumours began to circulate that a blight had hit the Irish potato crop. A week later the grim rumour was confirmed.

  For anyone not familiar with the Irish economy it would be difficult to understand the seriousness of such a situation. Even the English Government was slow to accept the stark truth.

  In Ireland, the vast majority of farm labourers were not employed on a regular wage-earning basis. Indeed, the majority of farms were too small to support a labourer. Instead, in return for work in the appropriate seasons, farmers and landowners would grant a plot of land to a man and his family, for an agreed rent. On his small plot the cottier would build a tiny cottage and plant potatoes over the whole of the remaining land. Often it was not suitable for any other crop, but from this tiny patch of land a man had to feed his family for the whole year with sufficient potatoes left over to sell to pay the rent. This unsatisfactory system was spread over the length and breadth of Ireland, and in 1845 at least three million people depended entirely upon the potato. If it failed, they starved. The economics of the matter were as starkly simple as that.

  And, in 1845, the potato crop failed.

  It was almost a total failure, the tubers rotting as they were brought above ground. Soon the once pure air of Ireland was fouled with the stench of rotting potatoes, and death beckoned every man, woman and child in the countryside.

  To the fishermen of Kilmar, the blight made little difference, at first. The begging of the cottiers lasted longer than usual, and they were unable to exchange fish for potatoes, that was all.

  Then, starving thousands from inland made their way to the coast and crowded the quay when the fishing boats came in. Women and children begged for every scrap of the fish, and even heads and guts were scooped up hungrily. More serious to the fishermen was the thieving. If a fisherman were foolish enough to turn his back on a basket of fish, it would be emptied by the time he looked at it again.

  In the village itself a host of homeless hungry cottiers roamed the narrow streets. Children, dirty, ragged, barefooted and bewildered,
clung to the tattered dresses of their mothers, all respectable clothing long since sold or pawned for food. Starving families would ‘adopt’ a fisherman’s household and squat for hours outside the back door, hoping someone would come out and empty a few scraps of food on the ground for them.

  For the cottier life became a deadly duel with death and all over the land he was the loser.

  As winter approached, the situation became even more desperate. The worst gales for years hit the coasts of Ireland, and for weeks even the McCabe and Feehan boats were unable to put to sea. Gradually, the cottiers drifted away from the village, hopelessly seeking food elsewhere.

  The winds blew mainly from the north, and some days the people of Kilmar saw the sails of great merchantmen and passenger-ships from Canada and America, blown miles off course, seeking an Irish landfall to set themselves back on course for Liverpool, or making for an Irish port until the storms blew themselves out.

  One evening, Liam was in the house with the rain lashing against the rattling windows when there was a sudden pounding on the door. Before he could rise to his feet the door crashed open and a number of young boys spilled into the room. One of them, the son of a fisherman drowned in a storm two years before, picked himself up and said excitedly, ‘Mr McCabe! There are wreckers out along the hill a way. Me mam said I should come and tell you about it.’

  ‘Wreckers?’ Liam was on his feet reaching for his waterproof coat in an instant. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘We’ve seen them,’ answered one of the other boys, his wet hair hanging about his face. ‘They’ve got a fire going, and lanterns – and there’s a ship out there.’

  ‘Get down to the ale-house and call out all the men you can find. Tell them I’m going up the hill to find out who it is.’

  ‘Liam, take care….’

  Norah McCabe’s cry was snatched away by the wind as Liam ran out into the night, shrugging on his coat as he went.