Sifting

by Mike Mac Domhnaill

  Clancy … you weren’t the worst of them. Of course I forgive you. You had to survive too. Butty, they called you …

  We were two weak links in a strong boyish chain, not destined to survive side by side. That last composition-style was for you!

  At last we can laugh.

  The Chalice

  I’m here in the Workhouse. Over here in this row. I SAID I’M HERE IN THE WORKHOUSE. Over here in this row. We’re over the Laundry. Can’t you hear them, down below?

  Well then. Come closer, I’m not as I was. The man who found the chalice. Me. It was me. ‘I,’ says her ladyship, Lady Godiva! On one of her visits. Another one of ye! One of the Guardians. Themselves and their Poor Laws. I found it and of course Jimeen claimed it. Mrs Quin did all right out of it and His Lordship, Bishop You-Know-Who, did right well out of it. Nuns’ property really so in the sight of the Almighty he’s away in a hack, no problem spinning it out to St Peter above at the Pearly Gates. Nuns’ property, Church property, ergo – my property! Ergo – you laugh, but you don’t go to Mass, if you did you’d hear lots of that.

  Where was I? Oh, yes. As the man said, it wouldn’t take a Jesuit.

  I pulled out. Of course I did, what with Jimeen and his mother claiming the hoard, but it was my spade, there in the fort, that tipped the stone, and, says I, ‘That’s a hollow sound,’ and bent down to investigate, neat as you please, the chalice and the pins, snug in their little nest.

  I’m here in the workhouse, heading for the Paupers’ Grave. I SAID I’M HERE IN … Shhh! Will I whisht? They’ll call for the Master. But sure I’m nearly spent. Little the same man can do now. There’s arguments about who got what but I’ll tell you as sure as I’m here in this bed that I got naught. Or little enough, compared …

  You’d like to see the wheel, the Workhouse Wheel? Come on and I’ll show you. Let me get hold of your elbow. Your auld schoolmaster used to talk about it … There. Round and round they’d walk, pushing before them, grinding the corn. That’s the wheel. Often left to the women! You’ll need to give that a big ‘W’ – are you writing it down? God bless your pen.

  Yes, yes. That’s the Stone-breakers’ Yard. You want to try your hand at that? Ah-ha!

  You’re here … you’re here wondering have I any more to tell. How was it coming in? When you’re poor you’ll do anything. And bitter, bitter I will admit. I’d only have drank it, that’s what was said. Maybe they’re right.

  The day came nice and bright and myself and Jimeen approached the ring fort to start forking out the prawteens, no sign of blight.

  Approaching the gates no one wants to approach, those gates with their high surrounding walls. Too high to see in, too high to see out. My father had worked on the stone, imagine that! Look up on your way out and maybe one of those is one that he cut – a mason by trade, something I never got. That passed on to my brother Matt. For me the spade and the spailpín work. Be sure to look up, on your way out.

  Come on while there’s a bit of a sos and see if you can push the Wheel. That’s how ’twould be. All day long. The novelty’d soon wear off. Left to the women half the time, but you know all about that – the poor Master under the cosh when the Guardians found it out. A great hullabaloo. Oh, we know more than you think! You’ll walk me back.

  Over you go then, to poor old Jack. Sure I worked for him too – when he was well off. Too fond of the drop. Like many the one.

  That didn’t take you long. Oh? He tells that to one and all! ‘Look down my throat.’ He’ll open up with his finger pointing down. ‘Take a good look.’ And he’ll wait while you take a gawk. ‘There’s three farms of land gone down that gullet!’ Over and over, poor man.

  September. We set off for the ráth, the old fort in towards the village, where we’d planted that year. There’s some that wouldn’t go near – you know – the fort, the ráth, Reerasta! That’s what it’s called, you have it right. What it means? Sure that I can’t tell. Little time we had for all that. That went to the grave with those gone before. But the bauld Mrs Quin said as long as you don’t touch the ring of sceachs we’ll be right as rain, and do you know what, they were the finest of spuds to be dug that year.

  Do you hear me speak from this bed? Will I shss?

  I’m settled again. Settled.

  *

  I’ll take the high road and you’ll take the low road. Again the rattle of the stick. In the porch. The black of night. Mam shushing us. ‘Whisht will ye? Quiet for God’s sake.’ Inclined to laugh. Inclined to be afraid. But we had Mam. I’ll take the high, settling down. Then a rattle of the stick again. Against the door. A grumbling of curses. Mallachtaí ón tseanshaol.

  Three small children and their mother. In the one bedroom. Recently widowed. She is your mother but she is way younger than you are now. You can sense the fear but you snuggle close and, somehow, are not afraid. You are five and have seen the gate, the walls, the little entry house where Mary Jane rules the coming and going of these men of the road. Strictly closed at six o’clock. The overflow in sheds, hay barns, or in our front porch. Singing drunk. The Bonny Bonny Banks of Loch Lomond. The Workhouse is now the County Home. Ireland is free. Do you hear me? IRELAND IS FREE! Cool down.

  *

  Oh the Master often comes round. He does. He’s not the worst. The smell at times. When there’s fever. However he stands it. And I think of my cup, my chalice and pins, under that stone in September.

  When all else fails, welcome haws! And there were haws that year, tons of them ripening that September. Blackberries too. Poking out of the hedges, a few there ready for picking. I can still almost reach with my fingertips.

  My father? Oh the father, Matty, he seldom or ever spoke of it. What you’re now calling the Famine. Nor did he have a year for it. His brother died in here. After the father helping to build it! You’ll look at the stone on your way out. Those capstones. Oh, he chiselled at them you can be sure. A quiet man, said little on any of that.

  Every summer then looking … looking at the stalks … looking at the sky … light windy days we loved but not the dull cloud and the fear of that awful smell when the leaves curl up and the stalks shrivel, black. Tá an dubh orthu, they’d say, the old ones. But enough about that.

  He worked away with the chisel down in Massey’s Yard. Kept him going. Never a visit to the brother. You know well – why. He had us and couldn’t bring home the galar. Fan amach ón ngalar, you’d hear them say. Mind for the plague! An excuse? Maybe. Sure who visits here? The Guardains, holding their noses. All right, all right, ye’re not the worst!

  Young Matt took it up from him. There’ll always be need for a mason, no matter what the pittance. I moved on at ten or eleven. Working the spade! Staying with this one and that. Spailpín. Until I arrived at Mrs Quin’s. Young Jimmy and I of an age so we got on. I found a bothán nearby where no one else would live. Afraid of the plague. And funny ’twas never knocked. It seems they left before the battering ram.

  My mother’s favourite tune, you know, the ‘Battering Ram’. A great jig with a fearful name. A lonely jig when it’s played right. She’d dydle it for us as she washed the clothes, Um da-dil-um doo-dil-um di-dil-um daa. Those times. Kneeling there by the bank of the sruthán.

  Where was I? I settled in with my few pots and pans. And it was good enough. Unusual in that? I suppose I was. Most would stay in the house or shed but if I found any old spot I’d stay on my own. That bit independent, whatever it was. Young Jimeen and me off to the odd house dance or a few drinks below in the village. I think Mrs Quin was cagey of me, that I’d lead him astray! But she saw him off in the end, I hear. Off to Australia with his few pound. They said I’d have drank my share. That I never got. I swear. Do you hear the bell? Listen. It’s time for the supper. Oh meal indeed! But it keeps us here. They’ll be on to help me down. That’s the way I am now.

  The chalice be damned.

  Not gone? I thought you’d left. The ward will soon fill up. Are you not afraid, of what you’d catch? Aren’
t you the brave one. Mother? Yes … When I’d go back for my few days at the end of the year, having worked for whatever farmer, I’d always stop by the river, a stream I suppose, where she used to bring us when she’d be washing the clothes. The sruthán was all we ever gave it. And now that you’ve brought it up, I can see it there as it was. Bubbling down the side of the hill. A long time since I laid eyes … My mother was ever … They say you never forget, your mother, and do you know what, it’s true. Going back in the winter I’d always stop first at that little river, for some reason I don’t know. Memories, I suppose. Oh, she was great, the mother … Ah wisha now, you’ve brought me back!

  *

  Johnny Bradford! Say hello to Johnny. But he won’t come in. Always out here by the water tank, he’ll drink his mug of tea and then be off. Mornings, after emerging from the County Home. Onwards he must go. A drover to the last. With his stories of droving cattle. Even in Scotland. Imagine that. Tall and lanky with the drooping moustache. Johnny’d been a drover, one of the last.

  My mother smiles at the way he says ‘the Workhouse’, spits it out. With a rasp. He’ll never call it ‘the Home’.

  Off then with him towards Rathkeale. Swinging the blackthorn.

  *

  My mother used to say there was food all right, but they shipped it out of Cork and Queenstown. Soup kitchens then but you’d have to change your God – the way she put it! – so they preferred to starve, or come in here to die. THE ENGLISH LEFT US TO DIE. All right. All right, I’ll quieten. But that’s the way she told it. That or take the ship. And big farmers – you know the ones – took hold. With many a grabber …

  Down by that river, each year on my way back. And Matty, the father, would joke about my find. ‘A deal of good it did you! A deal of good!’

  *

  A voice emerges after the short lull. As if to cap it all, here outside Reilig na mBocht, The Famine Graveyard, duly named – by a committee – where all sorts of famines are intertwined, overlaid, bundled in. The voice begins in spring-song eternal:

  O Mary, we crown thee with blossoms today,

  Queen of the angels and Queen of the May.

  The singer going back on his heels to reach the high note. All the while casting a glowering eye for anyone out there smirking.

  And on it soars, with the chorus spontaneous. Does it resonate in the bones interred? Blossoms there are and it is May. Here with the priest, his blessing done, and the spectacled young orator, praising the committee – your new Guardians! – all volunteers who got little help from the Authorities, it seems, the spectacled man getting in his digs, and the first name buried here – the first recorded – is one Mary Lynch. Each in the crowd pictures Mary Lynch, 17 April 1841. We all picture our Mary Lynch. Poor Mary. And there is mention of you too, Paddy. Chalice-finder. Pauper. Buried somewhere in that field of mounds. Our Chalice finder.

  It Was Noble Then

  ‘Just give me the gun,’ said Frank. ‘Come on, give it over, you … you …’ Then, bang! That was that. Bang-Bang the Dublin character couldn’t have done it as well. Bang-Bang jumping out in front of the bus queue, steadying his index finger to aim … position … fire! Go ‘Bang! Bang!’ with the crowd responding, diving for cover, mortally wounded mar dhea. While some look on, demure. Above all that and sniffy. A good laugh in the really good old days. Rare oul times. But Frank was passed a revolver, a real gun, and he plugged poor man, the cop, Old Johnson.

  They had passed the revolver one to the other not wanting to shoot, afraid now that the prearranged was staring them in the face. Too much written to order, this. Better if he hadn’t shown, then at least … Donoghue went white it is said and afterwards had to be helped from the road. Puking, his hands trembling, all in a jitter. But Frank was made of sterner stuff. A rebel with a cause.

  As in all of these cases there was the mind drill – more important than the wacky gun drill on the side of Barnagh: present arms, all that nonsense. More important than the firm boots for jumping dykes, the trench coat for the hours lying in ditches waiting for the patrol which either never came or came too strong. ‘Fortified, no hope there boys, lie low a while, always another day,’ as you gathered your half-frozen limbs and jaunted home or to the safe house. The mind drill, Frank went through it before we set off. It worked for him. Summoning up the past, the heroes of ’98, the famine victims left lying in the grass.

  Frank had all that and it stiffened his resolve. ‘By God give me that gun.’

  ‘Give me the gun,’ Frank said, simple as that, and fired into Johnson’s perplexed chest, one for the head as he lay struggling with shock and disbelief, there at the Cross Roads, a short trot from the town.

  How did they get him there? A ruse. You might have guessed. Ah but you’re too young, far too young to be listening to my rigmarole! His wife sick in Galway, mar dhea, came in on a telegram: ‘Urgent, Come quickly.’ In the know. The driver and all set up. Hackney. Broke down so soon. Must be the plugs. We’ll have a look. No sooner stopped than out jumps our boys. Freedom fighters, thugs, rebels, gunmen. Subversives. Would-be heroes, latter-day saints, a blow for dear old Ireland. Ordinary men made extraordinary. And some just wetting their pants.

  Old Johnson had many lives, was many people, depending on who’s telling. A spy, to those who – take your pick – killed, assassinated, murdered him. Executed him, is that what your age group say! That lot you’re hanging around with. Wouldn’t I love to be as clever as ye! The eyes and ears of the people: the Royal Irish Constabulary, according to the lore. Nothing stirred without their knowing. A word in the ear and in no time at all it was above in the Castle, the Dublin hub, before Collins took them out. Then our boys got the bullet, strung up, houses burnt. So this Johnson, he was a spy, stood around the Square soaking up every tittle-tattle, especially after closing time and the porter breath let out half hints, spite at a neighbour came out, snatch of a song, enough for a lead, in Johnson’s mind another note was taken, lick-arse to Dublin Castle, gave him an ‘in’.

  But others – drop the curtain, and now, raising it, here presenting, the new Johnson – portray a genial cop, dug into everyday policing of misdemeanours, a blind eye to the rising of the moon, not too taken with the Tans, and – whisper – a conduit to Don Flynn, Commandant Don Flynn, IRA commander, who cursed this sad adventure and swore that all actions in future pass through him. ‘Orders for fuck sake mean something.’ And not like the good Flynn to curse but this time he did. ‘The bloody fools,’ he is meant to have said. Depends who’s telling.

  What happened the Carnegie? I’ll tell you what happened the Carnegie and the fine building he sponsored here off the Square – a Scotsman, of all things! – doling out largesse, and ’twas burned by the RIC and Tans that night after Johnson to deprive the citizens – if such there were, under the Crown – of their Carnegie Library. £5,000 it cost back in those years, imagine, and that not enough they then went after Ó Dálaigh the chemist as he was Sinn Féin, enough said, and the creamery too got the torch.

  ‘The town was eerie quiet,’ Proud Maggie Lane said to me, though the same lady had her tea box there on the shelf with the Queen, for all to see, thereon emblazoned. Thereon? That’d be her all right! ‘Those July nights in 1920 were eerie I’ll tell you,’ Proud Maggie folding her arms at the door and looking into the distance.

  The reprisals gave it legitimacy – up pipes the Analyst. We’ll silence the Analyst, bang-bang! Your age group with your books.

  They gathered at the monument on Easter Sunday morning for the roll call of the Old IRA, a nomenclature bestowed on past-it rebels, remembering the fallen.

  ‘We are gathered here today to remember those who gave their lives that we might live in freedom.’ He cleared his throat as a few Mass-goers stopped for a gawk. The Tricolour was raised and crows in the chestnut over the Arra gave an approving squawk. ‘Squawk!’ Hovering over their refurbished nests, another layer to bed down the past.

  Seán a Chóta stopped at the gate, leaning
on the bicycle that he never cycled. He walked the bike home each day from the paper shop. A kind man – if from the Fianna Fáil side, my mother had to concede. The message bag hanging on the handle bars. The loose-fitting, long dark raincoat. The hat.

  ‘Aye, those were terrible times. They came in and broke up the printing presses. Poor Byrnes was livid. After he setting it all up. That was the Observer gone for a while! I suppose we got under their skin a bit. With all the writing!’

  His own skin was parchment white against his dark attire. And when my mother had gone back to clipping the hedge: ‘You know I stayed a while when we were on the run … with your father’s people. You don’t remember him of course, your father. And what age are you now?’

  He moved off slowly down the road. An old soldier, the pen being mightier than the sword, living out his life among old papers, in the teetering newspaper shop. Walking the bike out home.

  And what is more these men did not lower themselves to those modern killers who masquerade as freedom fighters. Freedom fighters my hat!’ He was warming up. ‘No, my friends, the Old IRA that we here commemorate did their duty with pride and fought that we might be free. They did so with honour, with … with pride, unlike, unlike …’ And he reddened while the words became stuck in his windpipe. An encouraging clap from those assembled, with the murmured, ‘Sound man Dan. Sound man. Maith an fear, maith an fear …’

  ‘It is wonderful, a Chairde,’ he recovered, ‘to see the relatives of many of these heroes here before me. You may well be proud that those who went before you and whose names are here inscribed carried out their duties with dignity. They did not lower themselves to the present day “bomb and the bullet” with their post-office robberies. They did what they had to do for you and me.’ His voice was wavering again. ‘Different times, yes … But noble men. Noble men, who did not shirk when Ireland’s call was greatest.’