by Colin Murphy
A group of men ascended the platform, among them the unmistakable figure of Parnell, who gave a brief wave before taking his seat, unsmiling, austere; a man intent on business. A rising cheer swept across the crowd like a wave.
Owen looked up at Parnell and wondered if a trembling fear was gripping his gut at the prospect of addressing such a passionate and in many ways volatile throng. He’d read that the man harboured a terror of public speaking and in his early days in the House of Commons had spoken in a tremulous voice with little projection, hardly the sign of a man bound for leadership of a nation. But through sheer force of will, Parnell had mastered the art of oration, though he had to mentally steel himself before every speech, and he’d pulled himself to the pinnacle of Irish and British political life. He’d already achieved what many considered impossible: not the defeat of the common enemy, the English, but a much more stubborn and complex adversary, the divisiveness of Irish politics. Now, for once, diverse strands of opinion – revolutionary and parliamentarian – stood largely side-by-side. As a result of his organisational brilliance, the Home Rule Party had won sixty-three seats in the recent British election and held the balance of power at Westminster. The British establishment, Prime Minister Gladstone included, now viewed him with fear and admiration in equal measure.
Parnell himself was said to be remarkably aloof: he had few personal friends, didn’t suffer the company of fools, and was an autocrat who regarded his own supporters as tools with which he could fashion an end. And if a particular tool was not performing he would discard it as a farmer might a broken shovel. Yet his supporters worshipped the ground on which he trod, principally because he passionately believed in Irish freedom from British misrule and was prepared to sacrifice himself to achieve that end – one of the key factors, it was said, in securing the hearts of the more radical or violent elements of Irish politics. And yet, for all his and Davitt’s tactical brilliance, millions still remained trapped in an existence of near-subsistence. Change seemed to come at the pace of a pallbearer’s step and there remained a substantial body of men who believed that the only way of altering British vacillation and indifference was to put a gun to their collective heads and, if need be, pull the trigger.
Owen craned his neck as one of the top-hatted dignitaries stepped to the wooden rail surrounding the platform. He recognised the man known as ‘The O’Gorman Mahon’, an impressive octogenarian who had once enjoyed a reputation as an adventurer and duellist but now served as MP for Clare. Sporting a beard of grey, scraggly hair and a red rose in the lapel, he yet retained some of the bearing of his swashbuckling youth and spoke in a voice that denied his eight decades, swollen with enthusiasm and pride. The crowd hushed to an anticipative silence.
‘Men of Ireland, it is my great honour to introduce the Leader of the Home Rule Party, Member of Parliament for Cork City…’ Mahon’s voice rose an octave, ‘…and President of the Irish Land League…Mr Charles Stewart Parnell!’
The roar that greeted Parnell’s name was simply cacophonous: upraised fists punched the air, hats were waved aloft, throats screamed to hoarseness.
Just thirty-four years of age, Parnell somehow managed to convey the charisma of a veteran statesman. Tall and slim, with a full beard of dark hair and the prickly sharp eyes of one possessed of a singular passion, his handsome face was stern and unflinching, and he held himself proudly erect yet not stiff. He placed both hands on the wooden rail and allowed his eyes to travel the crowd in a measured, panoramic sweep.
‘My fellow Irish men and women…for seven hundred years we have endured the misery that has been by turns English tyranny, misrule, incompetence and injustice. But the dawn of the day is at hand when we can put that black night of English oppression behind us and walk together in the light of freedom…’
Parnell’s voice was calm, deliberate, without passion, yet the words were as sharp as a cold blade. His English accent carried across the silent throng, but it was evident that not one among them doubted that this man was Irish to the blood and marrow.
‘My friends, you have endured the injustice of landlordism for years without measure. Your fathers and grandfathers the same. Many of them worked to the grave by the landlords’ greed, millions were lost to the famine or to the enforced tragedy of emigration. Yet I must ask you to endure a little longer yet. Depend on it that the measure of the Land Bill next session will be the measure of your activity and energy this winter. It will be a measure of your determination to keep a firm grip on your homesteads…’
A unified cheer rose as Parnell continued:
‘It will be the measure of your determination not to bid for farms from which others have been evicted and to use the strong force of public opinion to deter any unjust men amongst yourselves – and there are many such – from bidding for such farms.’
As shouts of ‘hear! hear!’ echoed around him, Owen sighed. For all its steely intensity, much of what Parnell had said was the same rhetoric he’d heard before, suffused with hope and aspiration but lacking in the specific means of bringing about change.
‘If you refuse to pay unjust rents, if you refuse to take farms from which others have been evicted, the land question will be settled, and settled in a way that will be satisfactory to you…’ Parnell paused and looked slowly around the sea of faces.
‘Now, what are you to do to a tenant who bids for a farm from which another tenant has been evicted?’
There were several impassioned yells of ‘shoot him!’ and ‘string him up!’
Parnell clasped his hands behind his back and shook his head slowly until the clamour subsided. ‘I think I heard somebody say “shoot him”.’
Fists punched the air to cheers of encouragement. Parnell waited until the voices ebbed away. His face was calm, his demeanour unruffled.
‘I wish to point out to you a much better way – a more Christian and charitable way, which will give the lost man an opportunity of repenting.’
The crowd fell to silence; questioning glances were exchanged.
Parnell’s resumed, his voice infused with zeal, his eyes filled with determination and an unwavering belief in his cause.
‘When a man takes a farm from which another has been evicted, you must shun him on the roadside when you meet him – you must shun him in the streets of the town – you must shun him in the shop – you must shun him in the fair and in the market place, and even in the place of worship, by leaving him alone, by putting him into a moral Coventry, by isolating him from the rest of his country as if he were a leper of old – you must show him your detestation of the crime he has committed.’
Fr O’Malley glanced back at Owen, his eyes bright with energy and excitement.
‘If you do this, you may depend on it that there will be no man so full of avarice – so lost to shame – as to dare the public opinion of all the right-thinking men in the country and transgress your unwritten code of laws.’
A huge cheer soared into the blue Clare sky.
‘The feudal system of land tenure has been tried in almost every European country and it had been found wanting everywhere; but nowhere has it brought more exile, produced more suffering, crime and destitution than in Ireland. It was abolished in Prussia by transferring the land from the landlords to the occupying tenants. The landlords were given government paper as compensation. Let the English Government give the landlords their paper tomorrow as compensation!’ A loud peal of laughter. ‘If the landlords continue obdurate and refuse all just concessions, we shall be obliged to tell the people of Ireland to strike against rent until this question has been settled! And if the five hundred thousand tenant farmers of Ireland struck against the ten thousand landlords, I would like to see where they would get police and soldiers enough to make them pay!’
A surge of cheering bodies lifted Owen and the others and they found themselves carried forward then back, almost losing their footing before calm descended again.
‘I must take my leave of you, but I ask you to
resist the injustice of landlordism by these means, and not to resort to the gun or the knife. I tell you this, whatever burden you must bear these coming months, I would willingly bear it for you were it in my power, and I stand by each and every man who shuns the evil of landlordism!’
Parnell waved and turned away as a clamour of adulation rose and echoed off the walls of the square, bouncing away along the streets of Ennis. Owen himself felt his spirit rise with the cheer and had to suppress a swell of emotion within his own heart at the unity of purpose, the impassioned solidarity that Parnell had evoked.
Fr O’Malley forced his way to Owen and Tadhg, his face a picture of excitement.
‘Are you all right, Father?’ They had to shout to make themselves heard.
‘I am, Owen, I am. By God I am! You heard what he said, didn’t you?’
‘About shunning blackleg farmers? Great idea. But unfortunately I’ll have to lose my farm first before we can put it into action.’
‘Oh Owen, you took him too literally. Why just shun farmers when we can shun the agents who give them the farms? Tell me, what man is the most singularly deserving of being shunned in the county of Mayo?’
Owen paused for the briefest of moments, glancing up at Parnell one last time as he disappeared from sight. Then he looked back to the priest.
‘Boycott,’ he said.
CHAPTER 13
About four hundred of the most destitute families have crawled to Ballinrobe every Friday for the last month, seeking admission to the workhouse or out-door relief, and yet, though they remained each day until night, standing in wet and cold at the workhouse door, craving for admission, they have got no relief.
–Letter from The Reverend Mr Phew to the Poor Law Commissioners, 1848
In Ballinrobe the workhouse is in the most awfully deplorable state, pestilence having attacked paupers, officers, and all. In fact, this building is one horrible charnel house, the unfortunate paupers being nearly all the victims of a fearful fever, the dying and the dead huddled together. The master has become the victim of this dread disease; the clerks have been added to the victims; the matron, too, is dead; and the esteemed physician has fallen before the ravages of pestilence. This is the position of the Ballinrobe house, every officer swept away, while the unfortunate inmates, if they escape the epidemic, will survive only to be the subjects of a lingering death by starvation.
–The Mayo Constitution, 23 March 1847
NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 1848
The day had dawned cold and bright, with a razor wind at their backs that stung at their ears and sought to invade their clothes. The small convoy trundled along at pace, motivated by the wish to see their task done and sit by a blazing fire.
Owen was seated on the leading cart, sacks of oats stacked high behind him, a rough-looking Irishman holding the reins. His hands and feet were bound before him, dispelling any notions of escape. Once or twice Captain Ackroyd had trotted up alongside him, inquiring of his background and experiences, but Owen had been muted in his responses. He found it difficult to fathom the Englishman’s interest. It was as though the captain was striving to dissect him, maybe even to understand what he himself was doing in Ireland.
The captain had also told him that if he didn’t remain in the workhouse, the police would be informed that he was a thief who’d gone on the run and justice would take its inevitable course. And while the workhouse walls might not hold him, the fact that he’d starve to death outside them should. When he considered it, the man was probably right. In just three days he’d collapsed near to death, been robbed, had almost frozen to death, and managed to get himself captured. He wasn’t even a competent thief. The fact was that, alone, he was as vulnerable to the world’s cruel vagaries as a newborn lamb. Grim and shameful as the prospect sounded, the workhouse was probably his best hope of survival.
They passed more people on the road now as the tracks and boreens converged on Ballinrobe. Without exception, they all appeared utterly destitute and dejected. Unlike Westport, this town offered no potential escape over the ocean. With pleading eyes, they watched the food-laden carts trundle by, but the soldiers’ weapons gave pause to any notion they might have of approaching them.
A call from one of the soldiers at the front made him lift his head and he was amazed to see a tower rising high above the trees in the distance, absolutely the tallest structure he’d ever seen, the height of maybe seven cottages stacked upon one another.
‘What is that?’ he asked the driver.
The man glanced up. ‘The flour mill,’ he grunted.
They passed a Catholic church on their left, around which were gathered perhaps a hundred people, some kneeling and praying, many more languishing under shelters of branches and rags.
‘They’re begging alms from the church,’ his gruff driver muttered with a sneer. ‘Too proud to go to the workhouse.’ He nodded towards the adjacent graveyard. ‘That’s the only place they’re going.’
A crowd began to drift towards the convoy, begging for food. Their numbers made the soldiers uneasy and one or two of the men used the butts of their rifles to push people back. The captain forced his way to the front.
‘Get back, I warn you, back!’ he roared repeatedly at the fifty or so bedraggled wretches crowding round the wagons, all of them imploring with outstretched arms.
‘Clear a path there, I say! Clear a path!’ the captain was yelling ineffectively. The next moment everyone was startled by the thunderous noise of a gunshot as he fired his pistol in the air. ‘Hear me now! If any of you molest this transport, you will be shot!’
This had the desired effect and the people reluctantly fell away to the roadside. As the captain’s horse sauntered near to his cart, Owen fixed him with a reproachful stare.
‘Give them one sack for pity’s sake. Whoever owns the oats could afford at least that.’
‘I will not,’ Ackroyd uttered curtly and passed on.
Five minutes later they entered the town of Ballinrobe, its terraced buildings reminding Owen of Westport. On his right rose the curving walls of the infantry barracks. Immediately the gates opened and about fifty soldiers trotted out and formed an escort either side of the carts. They set off along what Owen saw to be Bridge Street; indeed, up ahead he could hear the unmistakable sound of rushing water.
The captain appeared at his side. ‘Do you give me your word that you will not try to escape?’
Owen nodded and the captain used a knife to cut his bonds in two swift, practised movements. ‘In case there is any trouble,’ he added.
People lined the streets watching as they passed, stares fixed on the oats. Owen felt perversely ashamed, as though he was one of those responsible for depriving them, a traitor. They crossed the River Robe, for which the town was named, and to his left he was granted a closer view of the high mill tower. From his elevated position he could see down into the river, its waters deep and brown, long stringy weeds swaying with the rhythms of the current. Owen noted that where the river passed the mill it ran fast and white, tumbling over submerged rocks, but when it emerged from beneath the bridge to his right, it flowed placidly away with barely a bubble breaking its surface.
‘Bastards!’ someone called out and a piece of dung struck one of the infantrymen. Instinctively the man levelled his rifle, but a yell from a superior stilled him before he might fire.
They went up a short rise and turned right into Market Street, the town’s main, though narrow, thoroughfare. Some of the buildings were three floors high, occupied at ground level by shops and taverns. A raised footpath on the either side of the street was lined with people, but Owen considered it was hardly a mob to merit the presence of so many soldiers.
‘Go home, ye Sassenach filth!’ a woman’s voice screamed from one of the windows above. Many people began to whistle in unison, a piercing cacophony that made Owen wince. Halfway along the thoroughfare he saw a rather striking house set back from the street, a wide lawn stretching up to the two-storey, ivy-cove
red building, and he wondered if the oats they now conveyed were destined to further enrich its occupants.
A few more insults were cast in their direction, occasionally accompanied by a handful of horse shit, but in general the threat seemed minimal.
Owen turned to his driver. ‘It’s hardly a riot, is it? All these soldiers. Are they always this scared of a handful of Irishmen and old women.’
The man uttered a derisory laugh. ‘It not these they’re scared of.’
At the end of Market Street they swung left, passing a road going south out of town with a stone marker indicating the village of Neale at some five miles, the road narrowing into the distant countryside to be swallowed by a falling mist.
He was suddenly aware of a swell of voices and odours, and realised that the broad, triangular-shaped space called Corn Market was awash with the starving masses. Hundreds of sunken eyes stared up at them, ragged wretches rising from the ground all around to implore them for charity. Men, women and children crawled from filthy shanties, constructed of wood and turf and dung, pleading for a share of their cargo. The soldiers raised their guns and a way was cleared, but not before many were beaten back or brushed aside by the horses’ bulk. The stench was almost unbearable, as was the incessant, clamorous keening. Ireland in her death throes, Owen thought.
‘Why are these people here? Why aren’t they in the workhouse?’
The driver mocked him again with a snicker, then spat on the road. ‘They say it was built for eight hundred and there’s already two thousand inside. These will only get in when those inside come out feet first. But they’ll all get their turn. A hundred croak it a week, is what I hear. In one door upright, out the other on their backs.’ He guffawed.
Owen rounded on the man in a rage. ‘How can you mock your own kind? It’s only by God’s grace you’re not one of them yourself, you ignorant bastard!’
The man snarled contemptuously, then spat in Owen’s face. ‘Listen, ye little shit. As ye’ll soon find out, God only helps those who help themselves. He doesn’t give a fuck about those starving dogs. And the reason I’m here instead of out there is that I don’t give a fuck either. I’m the only one I look out for. Do the same if ye want to live, not that I give a shit what becomes of ye.’