Even on Days when it Rains

by Julia O'Donnell

  ‘And were they nice people?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, Mother, they were lovely. They were just the same as you and me.’

  I don’t know what impression Daniel had of our Protestant neighbours, but he was very impressed with this particular family called the Boyds when he met them out on the Cope van. I suppose in those times there was no real contact between Protestants and Catholics in the area. Both sides of the religious divide kept to themselves. So that was a good experience for Daniel, to realize that, black or white, Catholic or Protestant, we are all the same.

  The Cope employed Daniel part-time throughout his school days, and he really blossomed there. It wasn’t hard labour, of course, which suited my Daniel.

  Today, he would tell you that one of the chores he hated as a child was working in the bog, when the family set off to cut turf for the fire. He didn’t like the labour involved, and there were always midges that would sting. The only part of that day he enjoyed was the lift on the tractor and the lemonade and sandwiches.

  At school Daniel was a bright child. I always got good reports about him from his teachers. When he went on to secondary school, I had high hopes of him doing well and going on to get a proper job in life. He often talked about becoming an accountant, which I was delighted about. But I never put any pressure on him to go in a particular direction. I did know, however, that whatever the job would be, it certainly wasn’t going to be manual. He couldn’t turn his hand to anything manual.

  Daniel came home one day and told me that his teacher in woodwork class, a man by the name of Cundy, wasn’t too impressed with his handiwork.

  ‘What did you do wrong?’ I asked.

  ‘I made a dove-tail joint,’ Daniel said.

  ‘And what was wrong with that?’

  ‘I thought it was good myself, but Cundy didn’t think so.’

  ‘What did he say?’ I wondered.

  ‘Well, when I asked him what I should do with it, he told me to throw it in the fire,’ Daniel sighed.

  Poor Daniel. He would often say in jest, ‘I might as well not have been born with hands – they’re only there to finish off my arms.’

  While I always allowed my children to find their own feet in the world and didn’t push them in any particular direction career-wise, there was great concern among some of our neighbours about what was going to become of Daniel. One local woman, in particular, who fretted over his future was Nora Dan, who lived up beside the graveyard about 2 miles from our home. Nora was a very good-natured person and very hospitable. There were always callers to her home – and not always of the human species. Her hens would wander into the house as well and jump up on the table when you were having your tea. ‘Shush! Who invited you,’ she’d say, sweeping them out the door with her hands. Nora used to come up to the shop every Friday to get her pension, and then she’d come to me for her dinner and her tea.

  One day the conversation came round to Daniel’s future. Nora was desperately trying to come up with a job that might suit him.

  ‘Maybe he’ll go to the bank?’ Kathleen suggested.

  Nora shook her head, instantly dismissing that notion. ‘Sure you wouldn’t be able to afford laces for your shoes till you were a bank manager. And there are so few bank managers. You’d be working as a clerk, and sure what they’re paid isn’t worth talking about.’ Nora paced up and down her kitchen, shushing the hens out the door again. ‘Do you think would he make a good Garda?’ she thought out loud.

  Before Kathleen could offer an opinion, Nora answered herself. ‘No, no. You need good sight to be a policeman, and Daniel has anything but good sight in one of his eyes. If there was a robbery in the village, he might have to read the getaway car from a distance, and sure with his bad eyesight he’d be a dead loss. No, the Garda’s not for him.’

  Nora gave up. ‘What’s going to become of him?’ she sighed as she flopped back onto a wooden chair by the fire. As far as she was concerned, Daniel was going to have his work cut out to make it in life. Little did any of us know what lay ahead for him.

  chapter ten

  * * *

  My Lovely Island Home

  I WAS AT home in Kincasslagh, looking out over the sea, as I pondered on Owey’s fate. Daniel was due in from school, and as I cooked his dinner the tears were rolling down my cheeks.

  There had been a dark cloud hanging over me all morning. It was the day that the remaining islanders were packing their belongings and leaving Owey for good. For the first time ever, there would be no light and no footsteps on Owey. The island that had reared so many families would no longer echo with the sound of children playing. There would be no music and dancing echoing from the hooleys in the hall.

  Owey had been made redundant as people left for the comfort of mainland life. You couldn’t blame them, but I was heartbroken to think that the island was going to be deserted and the remaining cottages left to fall to ruin.

  Of course, by this time my own family had gone from the island. My father, God rest him, passed away on 28 January 1963. He was 86 years of age, which seemed old to me at the time. Now that I’m writing this book at the age of 86 going on 87, it doesn’t feel that old at all. It’s funny how the older you get the younger people become. Now I would say that he was only 86 when he passed away.

  My father had been a fit and healthy man right into his final years. Even at the age of 80 he was up on the roof of our little island home, doing insulation work on it.

  There was one time when he was suffering from a cold on the chest. He had the doctor check it out. The doctor told him that treacle was very good for a chest complaint. So my father got the treacle and rubbed it on his chest.

  ‘You know, this is a shocking bad treatment. Sure the clothes are sticking to my chest,’ he told me.

  ‘How would they be sticking to your chest?’

  ‘Sure that treacle is terrible sticky stuff.’

  ‘And what did you do with it?’

  ‘I rubbed it on my chest,’ he said, pulling at the clothing on the upper part of his body.

  I laughed. ‘Sure that’s not where it goes at all. You’re supposed to eat it,’ I explained.

  ‘Oh,’ he nodded. ‘Sure the doctor never told me that.’

  Then he laughed at the thought of his own foolishness.

  To me, my father was one of the greatest men that ever lived, and I was heartbroken when he died. A neighbour, Pa Logue, who ran a local shop and bar, came up to the house to tell me that he was sick. There were no phones at that time. The Cope store would deliver messages over to the island. It was through the Cope that word came back to Pa that my father had taken a turn. By the time I reached Owey, I could see that he was close to death.

  Up to that moment, my father had always been afraid of dying. There was many a time growing up on the island when I heard my father say that he would be afraid to die. But when the time came, he was at peace with it. The local priest came over and anointed him, and my father said he wasn’t one bit afraid of going to meet his maker. After seeing the priest, he was happy. On his death bed, he announced, ‘I’m going to die now and I haven’t one thing to be afraid of. I’ve done nothing to nobody, and I’m going to die now real happy.’

  My father’s greatest fear during his lifetime was that my mother would die before him. He just couldn’t face being in this world without her. They were such a united couple. They were very happy together. I’m sure they had their bad days like everyone else, but people in those times made their marriages work and were much happier for it. They didn’t move on to somebody else when the going got tough, like they do in modern times. I can honestly say, though, that I never heard a cross word passing between my mother and father.

  It was the end of an era when my father took his last breath. As fate would have it, I wasn’t there when he passed away. I had gone back to my home in Kincasslagh to get the family sorted out. I had just crossed over to the mainland in the currach when he died, and it was the following morning before I
got back.

  Then a storm blew up, and on the day of the funeral it caused a lot of problems on the crossing from the island to the mainland. The currach carrying the coffin had to go way off the normal course to find a calm spot to land. In those times there were no cars and no hearse, so the coffin had to be carried from the seashore to the church, which was a long trek from where the currach had landed. There were six men at a time taking turns to carry the coffin on their shoulders to the church and, after the funeral Mass, to the graveyard in Cruit for burial. It was a long, sad journey for all of us, particularly for our mother. At the age of 85, she had lost her life-long partner. It would be eight years before they’d be reunited in the next world.

  *

  After my father was buried, I took my mother over to Kincasslagh to live with us. She would return to Owey for a short visit in the summer for many years afterwards, but she spent the rest of the time with me. She never got over my father’s death. She pined for him right to the end of her own life. I recall reminding my mother five years after his passing that it was Daddy’s anniversary that day. ‘Indeed I know, and five long years it’s been,’ she replied. They had been like two peas in a pod. Every Sunday evening during the summer they always went for a walk together to see how the crops were growing. When they came back home it was time to say the rosary, so we all went down on our knees and joined in.

  Despite her great age, my mother continued to be an industrious person. You’d always find her sitting in a corner of our house, knitting socks. There was a man called Whoriskey who used to place orders with women in the locality who were interested in making a bit of money from knitting; my mother was one of his team of knitters. He then exported the socks. He’d call to the house to collect the ones she’d finished and give her more wool for the next batch. It gave my mother a sense of financial independence and a daily purpose in life. Knitting kept her occupied right up to the end of her days.

  In her final years, my mother suffered from arthritis in her knees, but otherwise she enjoyed good health. One day the two of us were sitting each side of the fire, and both of us were knitting. Suddenly my mother’s knitting fell to the floor, and when I looked over at her I knew by her face that she’d had some kind of a turn. I caught her two hands and stuttered in a panic, ‘What’s wrong with you?’

  She didn’t answer, but I knew she was bad. I quickly put her in a comfortable seat and ran to ask my neighbour, Biddy Tague, to come over quickly and stay with her. Then I raced to the village to get the doctor and the priest.

  The doctor was the first to arrive, followed shortly afterwards by the priest. After the priest anointed my mother, a strange thing happened. She picked up the sock she was knitting for Whoriskey and finished the toe on it. It was her last knitting job. She’d suffered a stroke.

  My mother was 93 years old when she died on 15 July 1971. I minded her in her final days and prayed that I wouldn’t get sick with flu because then she’d have to go to hospital. I wanted to be with my mother till she passed away, and I’m so glad that I got my wish. She had been one of the oldest surviving islanders, so a lot of history went with her when she died.

  Mother really loved Owey, and even at the age of 90 she went back to the island and spent a week living in the old homestead. She put on a pair of men’s wellies and stepped into the currach which was to take her across from the mainland. I contacted the local paper to write a wee bit about her visit to the island on that occasion because she was 90 years old and it was quite an achievement. She got cross with us for going to the paper, but I knew she was secretly delighted.

  Although my father and mother were now gone, I still couldn’t bear to think of Owey being completely deserted. On its final day as a home to families, I finished making Daniel’s dinner and left it simmering in the pan for him. I wiped tears from my face with my apron as I thought about all the good times I’d had on Owey. Time does play tricks with your mind, because the bad times never seem so bad with distance.

  As the memories took me back to my young days, I thought how it was odd that nobody had ever written the story of Owey Island. Priests had come from the island, and nuns and teachers. But not one of them had ever written anything about it. And as I pondered on this, the words of a poem started going around in my mind. I got a pen and in a flash I wrote the following:

  As I sit here sadly thinking

  How the years go swiftly past

  My thoughts go back to my childhood days

  When I was but a lass

  And we a happy family

  Gathered around our turf fire bright

  And the fairy tales our parents told

  On the cold, dark winter nights

  My brothers they are married now

  With families of their own

  My sister lives in the USA

  In her grand Long Island home

  She pays a visit now and then

  To greet us one and all

  Still our thoughts roll back to those happy days

  In our home in Donegal

  But our island home lies empty now

  The clock hangs on the wall

  The fireside chair it still sits there

  There’s a padlock on the door

  The raging seas and the wintry winds

  And the seagulls weary cry

  No fire burns bright in our hearth tonight

  As it did in days gone by

  So fare thee well my island home

  Where we spent many happy days

  And fare thee well to my friends so dear

  Across the ocean wave

  May God protect and bless you all

  Wherever you may roam

  For Owey was like heaven to us

  In our happy island homes.

  To this day that poem is etched in my memory. I don’t need to write it down to remember it. It’s there, and I can recite it at the drop of a hat. I called it, ‘My Lovely Island Home’.

  When Daniel came through the door that day, I said, ‘Come here, Daniel. Wait till I recite this to you.’

  Afterwards, he said, ‘Mammy, you didn’t write that.’

  ‘I did, Daniel,’ I said.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘you should get that published in a paper.’

  So I sent it to our local paper, the Donegal Democrat, where it was very well received. There wasn’t a Democrat left on the news-stand on the day it came out in the locality. When the local teacher, Master O’Donnell, went down to the shop to get his Democrat, the paper had been sold out. People were buying it to send the poem to their families abroad.

  *

  Now Daniel has turned that poem into a song, and it’s on his album, Until the Next Time, which was released in October 2006. I was very proud that he should see fit to record it and to keep Owey’s memory alive. The CD has been bought by Daniel’s fans all around the world, so our lovely wee island is now world-famous.

  Sadly, our island home is derelict; nature has been slowly chipping away at it, and the house is overgrown with weeds. It was always a lovely house to me. I used to have the interior walls as white as snow with brown borders on the bottom.

  The last time I saw my dear old homestead was in a video my daughter Margaret made for one of her songs. I didn’t recognize it because it was in a bad state. If I’d known Margaret was going to put it in a video I would have had it painted. The video was lovely, but the old home that held so many happy memories for me was a sorry, empty, decaying shell. I was very sad to see it in such a state; it brought tears to my eyes.

  chapter eleven

  * * *

  A Star is Born

  DURING HIS SCHOOL days I became aware that Daniel had a great love of people. I didn’t know then just how far his popularity with folk would spread. But I recall one incident that made me realize I had a very special boy.

  Daniel would travel by public bus to and from secondary school in Dungloe. One day, after shopping in the town, I returned on the same bus with him. As we w
aited to board, the driver said: ‘Let all the schoolchildren stand back now while the adults get on and get seated.’

  Daniel said, ‘Mammy, you go on and if you see everybody seated keep a seat beside you for me.’

  So I went away up to the middle of the bus and found myself a seat, with a spare one beside me for Daniel. I heard some people behind me saying, ‘Danny’s not getting on.’ I thought they were talking about one of their own. I glanced round and it was a man and a woman, an elderly couple who were neatly dressed, well groomed and both had beaming, friendly faces.

  Then my Daniel appeared at the door of the bus, and I heard the lady saying in an excited tone, ‘Oh, Danny’s on.’ And Daniel came down the aisle of the bus wheeling a trolley. I thought to myself, where in the name of God did he get the trolley? He came down to where I was sitting, and then he left the trolley standing alongside the couple behind me.

  Daniel sat down beside me and the lady said to him, ‘You’re not sitting beside your girlfriend today.’

  And I said, without looking back, ‘Oh, but he is sitting beside his girlfriend.’

  The lady asked, ‘Do you know Danny?’

  ‘Well, a good right I should have to know him,’ I said.

  She asked, ‘Do you live near him?’

  I told her I did.

  ‘Don’t tell me,’ she said in an excited state, ‘you’re not his mother by any chance?’

  ‘I am, that’s who I am,’ I replied.

  ‘Well, do you know this, you must be the proudest mother in Ireland today,’ she said. And she told me their story and the difference that Daniel had made to their lives.

  ‘We came down from County Down in the North because we were afraid of the Troubles. We bought a little house down here. Every so often we go up with this trolley to the supermarket in Dungloe for our groceries. Before Daniel came to that school up there, some of the youngsters used to kick the trolley in front of them in a stampede. Sometimes it would tumble over onto the road and the groceries would all be tossed out. Since the day Danny first saw us, he took the trolley off us and made us go on and get a seat on the bus. Then he would take the trolley on and leave it beside our seat. And when he would be getting out at Kincasslagh, he would take the trolley to the door of the bus to leave it handy for us when we were getting off at our stop. He is such a lovely, considerate young boy, we absolutely love him. Now that’s my story about Danny.’