The Whitest Flower

by Brendan Graham

  ‘Praise be to the good Lord!’ Martin Tom Bawn exhaled, dropping to his knees and crossing himself.

  They all followed suit, and Ellen, her faith in the goodness of God restored, silently asked for His forgiveness.

  Then Martin Tom Bawn and Roberteen started on the next row. The old man put his slane gingerly into the ground and slowly, surely, drove it down, afraid of what he might discover. Anxious lest he be the first to break the run of good fortune here in the Hare’s Garden.

  He bent, he levered, he lifted, leaving it to Roberteen to grab hold of the stalks and then shake the tubers vigorously. ‘They’re sound!’ Roberteen shouted, and did a twirl of a jig. ‘They’re sound! See, they’re sound!’ he shouted again, still twirling, still disbelieving what they were discovering.

  The two men began to dig faster now, as if the blight, given its rapaciousness, might beat them to it. Might strike at the rest of the patch before they were finished. The boy and the woman worked beside them, bending, shaking, picking, and basketing. The boy working to his father, the woman to her husband. In silence they worked. No one spoke, as clump after clump of lumpers were lifted from the ground, all of them unblemished by the blight that had ravaged the valley below.

  Each of the workers was preoccupied with their own thoughts: How did the blight pass these ones by? How many days’ extra food would the yield from the Hare’s Garden give to them? How would they get the crop down the mountain, avoiding unwanted attention? Any sign of food would attract great notice – and talk. And they could not afford to have word getting back to Beecham or Pakenham. They’d have to chance waiting till nightfall.

  Each of them found refuge in these practical considerations, their minds unable to fully cope with the enormity of the moment. That this patch of ground to which they were led by the sheerest of chances, a wild hare, was the difference between life and death for their families. At least for a while longer.

  The men, each time they completed the digging of a row, stopped a while to stretch themselves. At one such break, as the diggers leaned on the handles of their slanes, Ellen announced that she was going to see to the children below.

  ‘Michael, Ellen – before you go—’ Martin Tom Bawn held up a hand, beckoning her to stay. ‘What I wanted to say to ye was this,’ he started, somewhat awkwardly, ‘this place, here, that the hare found for us … Well, there’s only himself there’ – he gave a nod in Roberteen’s direction – ‘and herself below, and my own self – just the three mouths to feed … but there’s the six of yourselves in it, counting the little one.’

  Ellen sensed what was coming.

  ‘Now, this here garden, and the sight of spuds that’s in it … well, all we’ll be needing is what’s come out of those first two rows over there—’ he gestured towards the lazy beds – ‘and the rest of it I want ye to have.’ Having finished his speech, Martin Tom Bawn hunched forward over the spade-handle, looking not at them but at the ripe, upturned earth that had brought such unexpected good fortune to their miserable lot.

  ‘No, Martin!’ Ellen got in before Michael. ‘You will not do this thing. You and Michael made a bargain: ye would share the work between ye and share the fruits of the work in like manner – equally!’

  ‘Right enough, that was the bargain, Martin,’ said Michael. ‘And we’ll not go back on it now!’

  ‘Well, if it was itself, it was a bad bargain, Michael O’Malley. It’s true we broke the ground together, and we broke sweat together, and somehow we saved what shouldn’t have been saved. But Martin Tom Bawn – or anyone belonging to him – is not going to take the bit out of the mouths of children because of a bargain between us.’

  ‘No, Martin.’ Ellen went up to him. ‘Who knows what’s going to happen in the times ahead – to any of us? We’re thankful to you for your great kindness – you are a true friend and neighbour, but we cannot do this thing – not in these famished times.’

  ‘Well, I’ll tell ye what, so!’ Martin Tom Bawn said defiantly. ‘Roberteen, gather up the lumpers from the first two rows there, and put them in one stook over by that big rock. That’s what we’re taking down the mountain with us.’ Then he turned to her. ‘Now, Ellen Rua, you and Michael can either leave the rest to rot back into the ground or be picked at by the birds of the air, but neither him, nor me, will carry down one extra lumper above what he’ll stack over there. Now, have ye got me?’

  This time Martin Tom Bawn looked fully at both of them, lifted his slane, and then rammed it back down into the soil, ending all discussion on the matter.

  Leaving the Hare’s Garden and the men behind her, Ellen hurried back along the mountain to her children. Her conscience was troubled by the old man’s offer. Much as she wanted to ensure the survival of her own family, she did not want their future to be secured at the expense of Martin or his wife or young Roberteen – or, the terrible thought struck her, all three of them. She resolved that, while she herself lived, and while they had a bite of food at all in the cabin, the Tom Bawns would not go without. Somehow they’d all manage.

  She was so deep in thought that she neither saw nor heard the figure crouched down between the rocks, until she was almost upon it. Nor had the figure been aware of her barefooted and silent approach across the top of the mountain.

  One of Pakenham’s spies! Who else would be keeping out of sight like that? It had to be a landlord’s man. Well, no spy was going to deprive them of the life-saving crop they had just lifted, or have the rent raised further on them because of it. She would protect them – whatever it took.

  He still hadn’t spotted her. She crouched low, keeping an eye on the landlord’s man while running her hands over the uneven surface of the ground. Finally her fingers found what they were looking for: a jagged, fist-sized stone.

  She inched forward until she reached the cover of a large rock. Was this close enough? She wondered whether she’d be able to cross the ground between them and bring the stone down on the back of his head before he could stop her. The devil take him anyway! On the mountain spying on them, with Famine staring them in the face. Spying for the sake of a landlord’s shilling.

  She peered over the top of the rock at the victim of her intended assault. It was hard to make out what he was up to as he crouched, right knee on the ground, left elbow and forearm resting on his other knee. He seemed to be writing something into a notebook. That was it! He was sketching the mountaintop, drawing it all out for Pakenham – marking the spot for him. Marking out the Hare’s Garden, the food that would see them through till Christmas.

  She made to stand up and rush him, clasping the stone high above her head, ready to crash it down on his.

  Whether it was the rush of air or the rustle of her skirts, Ellen never knew. But, as her hand descended to crack his skull, the man turned, dropping his notebook. A strong right hand shot up, grabbing her above the wrist, stopping the death-dealing blow in mid-air.

  ‘Ah, a wild mountain woman!’ the stranger laughed. ‘Going to split my skull, were we?’

  He tightened his grip on her arm, forcing her to drop the stone.

  ‘This is something they don’t tell you about in botany school, at least not in Kew, anyway!’ he said in a broad accent. ‘Maybe Dr Moore should have forewarned me regarding what I might find atop the mountains of the West …?’ He seemed amused, despite Ellen’s fierce glare as she wrested her arm free of him. ‘I suppose you don’t understand a word I’m saying, my red-haired beauty?’ He tried a few words of Scots Gaelic on her, but she interrupted him.

  ‘Cogito,’ she said, startling him as much by her mien as by her use of Latin.

  He looked at her again, forced to reappraise his initial impression of this beautiful but murderous woman.

  ‘Do you also speak the Queen’s English?’ he asked.

  ‘Your Queen may hold sovereignty here by virtue of a forced Union, but she holds no sovereignty over the hearts and minds of the Irish people – a people long versed in the use of languages.’


  The stranger was taken aback. Here was this peasant woman, wandering barefoot on a mountaintop, not only fluent in the Queen’s English but seemingly able to render an account of herself in Latin too. It was extraordinary! Wait until he told them back in Dublin – they would scarce believe him!

  ‘My apologies, ma’am,’ he said, inclining his head towards her. ‘I did not intend to convey any disrespect, but you must admit the circumstances of our first acquaintance were rather … unusual, and somewhat unnerved me. Pray, tell me what action I was engaged in that so incurred your displeasure that you would crack my skull with a rock?’ he asked pleasantly.

  Ellen was considerably embarrassed by this polite rebuke. ‘I, too, am sorry,’ she said. ‘I intended you no harm.’

  He raised his dark eyebrows at her.

  ‘It was a case of mistaken identity – I took you for another.’

  ‘I had better introduce myself, then,’ he said with a smile, ‘in case you might mistake me again!’

  This time she laughed with him.

  ‘Stuart Duncan McCallum, at your service, ma’am. I hail from the Isle of Jura off the west coast of Scotland, and I am a student of botany apprenticed to Dr Moore at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Dublin. You may have heard of him? It was he who, a year ago, first discovered the murrain upon the potatoes.’

  Ellen was interested at his mention of Dr Moore. ‘And has he yet discovered a remedy?’

  ‘He has pursued many avenues in his efforts to find a cure, but he is at the behest of others. Not many agree with him that the blight is caused by a fungus whose spores are spread on the wind. They would argue that his efforts to find a cure are misdirected, citing other factors as the cause. Factors Dr Moore now believes could not be the cause, ergo’ – he smiled at her as he slipped in the Latin word – ‘precious resources are being dissipated with experiments which Dr Moore deems to be non-scientific twaddle.’ The young man shrugged his shoulders, pleased with his explanation.

  ‘With my own eyes I have seen these strange mists,’ said Ellen. ‘And where they have descended on the fields everything is destroyed. In the plant itself the rot starts first on the leaf and stem, and then goes down into the tuber. Sometimes the tuber is sound even if the leaf and stem is blighted, but never the other way around. Ergo,’ she emphasized back at him, ‘the blight comes from above, not from below. All the people of the valley know this. Yet why do the men of science disagree while we, the people, starve?’

  McCallum marvelled at the woman before him. In simple terms she had explained her understanding of the potato murrain exactly as he had heard his mentor, David Moore, explain it. Extraordinary. He couldn’t wait to get back to Glasnevin to report on his encounter with this woman whose name he didn’t even know.

  As if reading his thoughts, she said, ‘I am Ellen Rua O’Malley, wife of Michael O’Malley, and we are of the valley below in Maamtrasna. As of now, we do not know how we or our children will survive this winter …’ She paused. ‘And do you, Mr McCallum, rambling the mountains of Ireland – do you search for a cure?’

  ‘No, ma’am.’ McCallum gave a nervous cough. ‘My work is of a different nature.’

  Ellen remained silent, her eyes narrowed against the sun behind him.

  ‘I … I am charged with collecting, and documenting, the native flora of the West of Ireland. This past month my occupation has taken me to Connemara, and now along the borders of Mayo and Galway. Some three hundred miles on foot, I have travelled in all.’

  ‘So, you are studying the wild flowers of our mountains and hedgerows?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am, and collecting samples of them, too. In fact, that is what I was engaged upon just now.’ He seemed encouraged by her question. ‘See here, where I was bending as you approached, this is the Daboecia cantabrica, St Daboec’s heath, not previously recorded along the Mask.’

  Ellen smiled thinly. His was a different world – a world of books and study, a world more interested in new discoveries than old ways. Where plants were more important than people – especially poor, peasant land-occupying people.

  He waited for her response, wondering what she was thinking, what lay behind those inscrutable dark-green eyes.

  The dark-green eyes studied him, this young man who came from that other Ireland, so far removed from the Ireland in which she, and millions like her, lived on the very margins of existence.

  Mistaking her silence for approval, the young botanist ploughed on. ‘Ma’am, if I might make so bold as to enlist your assistance in a small matter?’

  Ellen was curious.

  ‘I have,’ he went on, drawing from his satchel a largish book, ‘some other plant specimens that I have gathered in the West.’

  The book was divided into sections by thick leaves of paper. Between these were pressed a variety of wildflowers and plants. Ellen found it hard to believe that this could be considered work: putting into a book what grew, free and wild, under God’s sky. The young man was speaking to her again.

  ‘I was wondering if you would be so kind as to assist me with their local Gaelic names, for the sake of completeness. The English I have, and, of course, the botanical – the Latin name. We are not required to record our finds in the native tongue, but ’tis an idea I myself have had for some time. They are, after all, native plants …’

  This foolish young man with his plants and flowers was beginning to irritate Ellen, and she wanted to get back to the children. But he was a stranger – so she would spare him a minute or two.

  ‘I will help you if I can. Then you must answer one question for me in return.’

  ‘But of course, ma’am. Thank you,’ he said eagerly. He turned the pages searching for what he wanted. ‘This one – “Goldilocks Buttercup”. How do you call it?’

  How English it sounded, Ellen thought to herself. She looked at the flower, yellow-golden, kissed by heaven’s sunlight. ‘This is Gruaig Mhuire,’ she said.

  ‘Would you spell it for me please?’

  ‘Here – let me write it for you,’ she said, taking the pencil from his hand.

  He, glad not to be embarrassed by his clumsiness with a language which was after all almost sister to his own, proffered the book to her. She inscribed the name Gruaig Mhuire beneath the flower.

  ‘Are you not interested in what the name means?’ she asked as he made to turn the page.

  ‘Oh, yes, of course.’

  ‘Gruaig Mhuire means “the Hair of Mary”.’

  He looked at her quizzically.

  ‘Mary – the Mother of God … Her feast day comes soon – the fifteenth of August. On this day, when she was assumed into heaven, her hair shone like the rays of the sun, brilliant in gold and yellow. So this flower is named for her – Gruaig Mhuire.’

  ‘Beautiful,’ the young Scot replied, awed by the lyricism of the naming. ‘And this one?’ he turned the page to reveal the purple-hued foxglove.

  ‘This is the Méaracán Púca,’ Ellen said as she wrote the words on his page. ‘The fingercups of the púca, the spirit-man. When he dips his fingers into it, he can drug you with poison. Then the púca-horse will carry you away to the spirit world.’

  Ellen couldn’t resist embellishing her story for the benefit of this avid student, who had taken the book back from her and was now writing feverishly.

  ‘Excellent! Now, just one more – I shan’t keep you much longer,’ he pleaded, sensing her growing impatience. Ellen relented before his enthusiasm. ‘The English name for this one is Chickweed.’

  Cluas Luchóige Móinéir, Ellen wrote for him, ‘“Ear of the Young Mouse of the Meadow”. Now, I must go,’ she said firmly. ‘But before I do, I have a question for you to take with you on your rambles: In all your travels here, did you not once notice the state of our fields, the blight on our harvest, the plight of our people?

  ‘Did you not see the rags and poverty, hear the keening and wailing, people wondering how will they ever pay the landlord’s rent. Then waiting for the moment when the
sheriff’s knock will come and the crowbar brigade smash down all that they possess?’

  The young man recoiled from her attack, clutching his satchel tightly.

  ‘Have you not seen the faces of the people? People with no hope, no future, not knowing if they’ll see out another Christmas? Is that not worth writing down in your book to bring back to your masters in Dublin?’

  The botanist’s face had turned scarlet. ‘The potato blight is not to be laid at my door, ma’am, nor at the door of Dr Moore. He merely discovered its first manifestations here. Surely it is as Church and Government have named it: the Visitation of God?’

  ‘How convenient that it should be a visitation of God – now you can all stand idly by saying that nothing can be done. Life must go on, flowers and plants must be collected and new glasshouses built at great expense to house them. Oh, yes, that great news has even reached the West,’ she said, noting his surprise. ‘Why could that money not have been put to finding a cure for the blight? And you kept in Dublin instead of wandering the mountains, taking even our weeds and nettles from us?’

  He stood cowed before her. ‘I regret, ma’am, most sincerely, that you think as you do. In truth, it was not something my mind had much turned to, apart from reflecting that perhaps Sir Robert Peel and the Tories might have moved more quickly. I am certain Lord Russell and the new Government will act. You are, after all, Her Majesty’s subjects.’

  ‘Peel! Don’t talk to me of Peel. “Orange Peel”, as he is well named by O’Connell. Peel who sent his hard yellow meal to feed the Catholic Irish. Sure, we’re only used to potatoes and shouldn’t we be grateful for Peel’s Brimstone – hard as the hobs of hell?’ she mocked. ‘And then the merchants hoarding it, driving up the price till those who needed it most could not afford it.’