Uncle Joseph cuts in, “We got better things to do than sit round an’ listen to stories about sham heroes, ghosts an’ lost rebellions. Why dwell on the histories?”
“If the past is as unknown as the future, it is alive, and therefore volatile,” says I.
My uncle’s face pinches, “Where’d ye hear that one?”
“The shanachie told me to say it if someone asked, and then you asked, so I said it. Da!” I yell at my father’s back. “The Brennans’ll be there. So too the Leddy’s. Both the Halloran’s and the O’Halloran’s. The Cudmore’s, Ryan’s and even the McNamara’s and the Neylan’s. And what would it say about us if the Garrihy family doesn’t show?”
But Da doesn’t answer and continues walking away from me.
“Maybe we could celebrate for owning the farm?” I yell in desperation.
“T’is a fool who celebrates bein’ given what is rightfully his,” he calls back without even a glance.
I stand in the turned field as they pull the horse plough toward the barn in the dark, my uncle and brother shaking their heads at me.
“Liam child,” My mother calls out. “Dinner is ready, come help set the table.”
“I won’t eat tonight,” says I, then look away in shame, stomping toward her. “But I’ll help set the table, of course.”
“Ye understand that the Land War has lasted in East Clare longer than in other parts? Men died in the unrest so that we could own our own land one day.”
“I know Mam, I know,” I answer as my eyes flood, doubling my vision.
“Oh with the tears runnin’ down the apple cheeks on ye,” she wipes them away and runs her fingers through the hair over my ears. “Ye’d have us all at the O’Dea farm just fer stories, ye would? I don’t blame ye fer thinkin’ about the world beyond, Liam. In this far-flung place? But ye have to try and remember that it’s yer home and yer family who cares most about ye. We’ll always defend ye, Liam. Yer father has always been there fer ye. Always fought to have a better life than what he’s had, which includes the upkeep o’ this property to make a stable home fer us. Are there any other families that’d do that fer ye? Do ye think o’ that?”
“I understand, Mam. But. . . Maybe if I promise to work double hard next weekend, then I can go by myself tomorrow?”
“Double hard is it?” she chuckles. “Ye know Liam, ye already worked hard. Mendin’ the roof o’ the O’Dea’s today. An’ what did ye get fer it? Why not ask Miko if he’ll come with ye next Sunday in return fer lettin’ us go tomorrow?”
“That’s a great idea, Mam. I’ll go tell Da now—”
She grabs hold of my arm, “It’s better heard from myself than a child, such a request is. I’ll speak to the man, ye’ll go an’ set the table as I asked.”
I hug my mother at her waste, “You’re the best Mam that ever was, Mam. I love you so much.”
~~~
The smartest thing about Mam is that she never takes credit for being smart. In fact she’s always the first to blame herself for things. With that, my father believes all emanates from his own thoughts. And so, it was his idea from the start that we should all go to listen to the storyteller and have Miko O’Dea bring his slain tool and come with us next weekend to pull the peat in the bogs.
I know it’s not right, but I love Mam more than Da. But it’s no secret that I favor her because Timothy calls me “Da’s eldest daughter“ and Miko O’Dea says I’ll make a lovely bride one day.
As I bend to sit on the wood floor in the front row I notice a strange man who warms me with the look of him. The peat fire bathes the old fellow in an amber glow from behind and a smile forms across his face when he notices me stare at him.
“Who is that?” I whisper to Miko.
“That’s the shanachie, Liam. Are ye so shattered from work that ye can’t recognize him? That’s the auld wan we worked with all day, t’is.”
“The itinerant man?” I say incredulously. “He looks different now.”
“Aye,” says Miko. “Now he’s the shtoryteller.”
I turn to the man, “Are you a druid here to interpret the mist? Or are you a god from the Otherworld?”
I hear Mam’s laugh behind me, but the old man storyteller hadn’t heard me. I look on him again as he leans forward in the rocking chair, his eyes alight with the happiness of many children at his feet awaiting tales. A man’s eyes says loads about him, Da says. And even as the shanachie’s face droops and he appears sad and old, his eyes are as bright and hopeful as a young child’s, even as they are half-covered by a wild patch of bushy brows. But atop his head is a tangle of white hair in the shape of crown and in the slow gesture and thoughtful glance on him I recognize both great wisdom and a mischievous guile.
“Ah well,” the old man’s voice fills the room to silence his listeners’ bantering, while his mouth is all smiles. “I’m not much fer the newspapers, but these days all the talk in Dublin-town is of the un-veil-ing at Leinster House of the statue erected in remembrance of their Jackeen queen, Victoria.”
When he draws out the word ‘un-veil-ing,’ we all snigger because he says it in the smug accent of the lordly English. His big knuckley hands and growly sandpaper voice intimidates the wee children, but his jowly smile is the heart of him.
“Maybe it’s in Dublin they use words to describe such a thing as un-veil-ing, but out here in the West we’ve a way o’ gettin’ straight at the truth of it. And so we’ve always called the auld woman exactly what she was, ‘The Famine Queen’.”
Even Da allows himself a smirk at that crack as he stands like a sentinel among the other impassive men in the back of the room with pints of pure in their fists. Timothy wants to stand with the men too, but my uncle Joseph shoos him off, then puts a hole in his stout quicker than all and summons a second before yet even the story’s begun.
Only Mam understands the magic in the storyteller’s voice. With Miko in front, I look back at her and as always she’s right there with the winking eye and the big proud smile as my baby sisters Abby and Brigid sit on her lap with owl eyes.
“Oh and it’s the ways of us that make ye wonder, to be sure,” he rocks in the chair and throws out his arms. “In the auld days our laws came from within us. From the bottom. Risin’ up from us, all judgements were made accordin’ to the culture. The outsiders though, they believe that everythin’ important comes from their aristocracy at the top an’ decisions should be disbursed at their whim an’ fancy,” he laughs a sad laugh. “When honor clashes against power, power always wins, which in turn immortalizes honor. Yet they say we’re a beaten people. If that’s so then why is our music so happy? If we are to be hated as the outsiders claim, why are we loved everywhere? If we lose all rebellions, why do we still hope for freedom? An’ if we truly are beaten, hated and hopeless, why do we elevate our heroes to such great heights? Brian Boru, Finn MacCool and his son Oisin an’ Niamh, Cú Chulainn, Wolfe Tone, Emmet and more. Every generation has a hero one part man an’ another still myth. Even as he is begrudged durin’ his lifetime, showered with treachery, abused by the lust fer power, menaced by cruel cunning while outsiders are invited to break his body. It has been this way since the stone age, it has,” he lowers his voice and one eye too. “An’ still today it plays out like a theatre show with many characters who must play their roles.”
He laughs again, the old fellow, and rocks back and forth before the crackling fire, “But what is a hero, really? An Irish hero? In the old tongue, he was known as the laoch who comes to care for them what need it most, summoned by seers known as Sean Dream it’s said; the Old Folk. But who is the hero to us? An’ why must we always summon him like an apparition in our time o’ greatest need?”
Myself and the other children think on these questions with an urgency in us, but we’re just children and we want to learn the things, not to answer them.
“Oh it reminds me o’ a ghost story!” The words roll off his tongue and quickly he sits high in his rocker.
The f
ire moils and churns. The shadows shimmer. The children look at each other with bright eyes and mouths gone small. And here I am about to take flight in the story and I can barely hold my breath. In fact, I can’t breathe at all until I burst out, “What’s the name of it?”
“The what, child?” The old fellow asks, but I’m ashamed now, so Miko speaks for me.
“The name o’ the ghoshtory, he’s arskin’ ye.”
“Ah the ghost story? Yes, yes, well, it’s had many names over the years. Some call it, A Song to Divide the Dawn, but I always preferred The Keenin’ Croon an’ the Risin’ o’ the Moon. But let me assure o’ one thing, child. Every myth, every aged lore is no more than a fool’s murmurin’s if they do not contain elements o’ great truths. A great story exists in a time before even time existed.”
Oh but I can’t help but be carried away by the manner in which the shanachie speaks. The charm of him! The one-lowered eye and the voice that moves in a singsong pattern, up and down in levels like open-winged birds dip and rise with the sea winds.
He looks round the room menacingly into each and everyone of our eyes and gently begins, “Those who survive are chosen, and so we are a chosen people. Some say we were chosen to suffer. But whatever the case, we’ve proven that we can flourish under the greatest duress an’ the worst o’ troubles an’ tragedies. We are survivors, but we don’t just survive alone. We have survived because o’ our communion an’ fellowship. An’ it’s been proven over hundreds o’ years that no one can suffer as beautifully as the Irish.”
A round of laughs comes from the parents behind, while we children listen intently.
“Monsters!” He suddenly yells, the kindness of him disappeared, his eyes affixed upon the rafters and the shadows of the dancing flames above. “They come to turn us. To turn our souls too so that a shadow falls over our hearts. To turn our people against each other so that we can never trust again. The honor corrupted.”
“Monsters,” his voice drops low into a gloomy sadness. “The labors o’ their trade are but rape, war, theft an’. . . starvation. But turnin’ us into them is their evil dream, ye hear it? An’ fer those who refuse? They move us off the land. Banish us to the westernmost island. But fer the monsters, this far-flung island is not far-flung enough fer our like. So they send us into the sea! Yet still we endure. But how?” He pleads. “How is it possible fer a people to’ve survived centuries o’ invasion an’ attack? It is impossible! Improbable! If t’were a story, not a single listener would believe it. How is it possible that we are still here an’ with the love in our hearts?”
We children look at each other, but we know by now he isn’t asking us to answer his questions.
“Because love saves the soul. Where there is no hope. . . then an’ only then does the heart sing the song. We may forever an’ always lose, yes, yes, but forever an’ always we must fight. T’is a song, as I’ve said,” he sweeps his smiling eyes along the line of children. “A bygone song that is long in the Irish. We look to hear it, so we do. Because there is no thing so egregiously beautiful as a glim of light in the envelopin’ darkness. Twinklin’ like a distant song in the beleaguered soul. An’ in the depths o’ us there is the ancient prayer; fertile hope springs from despair.”
The shanachie bows his head and wipes away a raw tear with a sandpaper, calloused palm. I stand among the whole crowd to comfort him, but Miko places a hand on my shoulder, “He knows what he’s doin’, Liam. Shtay put.”
In his gloom the shanachie manages these words, “T’is but the dream o’ a hero in that song an’ in that dyin’ light. A hero who appears throughout our history. He may have different names but the hero is there when we need him, risin’ like the moon. Yes, the moon. Before St. Patrick brought us his faith, t’was to the harvest moon an’ the trees we prayed, an’ a portent to the hero’s comin’.
And the old fellow turns his sea-green eyes down to me and gives only but the slightest smiling nod. His voice croaks out in a low and despairing calm, “When the great hunger came, so did the monsters. Again. Slinkin’ back through the black, laughin’ shrill with rotted teeth corrupted from the defilement o’ their souls within. They let us starve, they did. Howlin’ and snappin’ amongst each other at what they called a great opportunity. An’ how can starvation equal a great opportunity, ye ask? Change, they crowed to us. Change or starve an’ begone. That is the great opportunity monsters exult in. Fer when the mist rolled down from the hills an’ smelled o’ death, t’was the mornin’ moon what stared from above knowin’ly like the evil eye. An’ we knew that our greatest tragedy was now begun. Yes, the mornin’ moon! The aura o’ the past felt to be within our grasp an’ endlessly repeatin’ itself in the now.
“I was but a teen. The eldest male in me fam’ly. T’was on a cold night that the black mist rolled down through the Moylussa mountains an’ the Maghera bogs into the lowland villages an’ farms o’ Tulla an’ East Clare. T’was the smell o’ death came in that mist. Some in Tulla immediately knew the horror to come an’ keened on the spot where they stood. An’ some walked all the way to the coast to fling themselves from the Cliffs o’ Moher, so they did, for they had not the heart to fight the monsters. The next mornin’ when the mist finally cleared, there t’was!” He points toward the ceiling and stares into the distance. I look up too, but only see the rafters.
“The mornin’ moon! Starin’ from above knowin’ly, the evil eye lookin’ down through the barren trees. That was when they appeared, the monsters did. There were so many o’ them those days, but not-a-one was more deceitful in his approach, devilish in his comparin’ the blight to divine providence, no one more fraudulent in his assistance nor as cold in his reliance on the aristocracy’s whim an’ fancy; he was Charles Trevelyan, the Famine Queen’s henchman.”
At the sound of that terrible name, a name we all know from stories of that time, the younger children begin to cry round me. And so the mothers look upon the storyteller with anger. Though the fathers are unfazed as they drink the dark stuff and mumble to each other in the back. I don’t care about being scared though because I want the truth of it. I want to know of the past so I can see the future, like the shanachie.
The old fellow speaks, “They came in packs with official uniforms an’ signed papers an’ drove us from our homes. They burnt the thatch roofs an’ pulled down the walls to send us to the roads, starved. We had no shoes upon our feet an’ no more than patched wool over our shoulders. Weakened we became, until the roamin’ dogs licked their salivatin’ grins at the sight of us.”
His face twists in anger and with a bent finger he points toward the northeast, “We waited with the masses outside the Tulla Workhouse, so we did. Hundreds of us as day turned to night, night to day, until we swelled to thousands! All with the same names your neighbors carry today, an’ many others whose surnames died off forever. The state of us was a wretched sight, fer t’was disease that killed the most. Children’s eyes gone white with blindness, groups o’ boney figures with blackleg, the stench o’ putrifyin’ flesh was overwhelmin’, an’ then there was the typhus an’ the dysentery. Some o’ the people’s limbs would swell so horribly that they would burst. Entire fam’lies with smallpox an’ the famine fever. Every night outside the gates we rattled an’ moaned an’ the aged would fail to wake from sleep. Babies too, an’ children. The weakest of us leanin’ up against the Workhouse wall only to stare into nowhere. The look o’ hunger on our faces; an indictment o’ Trevelyan’s policy on its own. Then rumors came to me fam’ly’s ears that the soup the monsters offered inside would either kill ye, or worse; that if ye drank it, ye would lose the faith forever, an’ in its place ye’d be left with the soul o’ the monster,” he hisses and stares with bulged eyes. “When we looked over the wall an’ saw they were burying our people in shallow graves behind the Workhouse, we knew it to be true.
“We had no choice. Me mother an’ father an’ me three sisters an’ a younger brother, we left the gates o’ the Workhouse grounds. Ye mus
t know, it meant certain death. There was nowhere to go, so we dug a scalpeen in the earth along a hillside, the whole fam’ly o’ us. We were to die there, though that went unsaid. But then it came. . . A storm! At dawn when the veil between life an’ death is thinnest an’ the powers o’ darkness an’ blight are in the ascent, our only hope bein’ the old proverb; from whence death is wrought, life is due. A paltry prayer, to be sure. But how could it be that we deserved this? Starved, we had no food an’ at the moment the monsters had beaten us, the freezin’ cold an’ snow comes to finish us off? Why, by god? Are we cursed?”
Indignantly, I yell out to him, “But you said we were chosen. Why ask if we’re cursed then?”
My mother bursts out in laughter until the other mothers hush her with taps to her crossed knee.
“Fertile hope springs from despair,” he reminds with a chuckle. “But the snow was everywhere. Taller than I was. T’was 1847, the year the song would come to my ear. The wind whistled cruelly an’ the snow came down for weeks on end. Me father had fed us any scraps we came across, an’ so he was the first to die. That was when me mother began to sing. She sang over our father’s body as I watched. She had us clear a path o’ snow from the entrance o’ our scalpeen an’ I helped her drag me father’s body out by his shoeless feet. Then, on a frozen night, we saw what comes o’ the storm; visitors came a-rappin’ on our hovel. They were one o’ us an’ had our tongue. Surely they were not my enemy, an’ so I begged alms. But they must have changed at dawn’s storm, fer they had turned. Their eyes were mere holes o’ black an’ the bones in their shoulders poked through their rags an’ when they spoke, the blood spilled from their mouths an’ the sores on their faces leaked.”
“Monsters!” The children yell fearfully.
“They had made their minds. In all our hearts there is the eternal struggle to decide, fer we are fixed in that constant position o’ change between right an’ wrong, an’ between the remembrance o’ night an’ the unknown day. The contradictions pull at our souls. These visitors chose the lyin’ life against a truthful death, can ye blame them? Can ye?” The old man is at the edge of his rocker now, searching for our eyes until he sits back, defeated. “Well they knew we wouldn’t turn by the honor in our eye. So they took our last morsels, the only rags we had to cover our bodies, an’ the sod we had pulled for a turf fire, as well as our blankets. They took it all. Me sisters an’ younger brother died within a couple days, an’ so me mother sang. She keened the auld way. So heartfelt, t’was! So powerful! She sang by night. An’ she sang by day. T’was a song so strong, it had the strength to divide the dawn!”
Divide the Dawn- Fight Page 2