Eamon Kelly

by Eamon Kelly

  But our schoolboy war came to an end when we were brought face to face with the real thing. One day when we were out to play, two Republican soldiers, young Mick Sullivan and Dinny Connor, passed by the school. I can still see their gaitered legs, the rifles slung from their shoulders and the bandoliers about their breasts. One wore a hat and the other a cap. They didn’t slope along. They walked as if they were marching to music. The big boys out of fifth and sixth classes walked along with them, chatting all the while. ‘We heard shots,’ the big boys said. ‘The military are somewhere near.’ ‘That firing,’ one of the men replied, ‘is as far away as Millstreet.’ We watched them as they passed by Jer Leary’s house until they were out of sight around the bend towards Fordes’ cottage.

  Playtime over, the bell rang for us to go back to the classroom. Some time afterwards we heard gunfire, then the sound of lorries. Standing on a desk and looking out, one of the boys said there were soldiers everywhere. It seems when the two Republicans had got around the bend out of our view they looked down into the village of Knockanes and saw that the place was full of military. They decided to engage them and fired into the village. If the soldiers advanced they could easily retreat. They were local men and knew the countryside. Advance the soldiers did, and some say that, hiding behind fences, they put their caps on the tops of their rifles to draw the Irregulars’ fire, while others fanned out to encircle the two men. Realising that they could soon be trapped, Connor and Sullivan split up and made a dash for it. In the getaway Mick Sullivan was wounded in the arm. Dinny Connor made his escape and Sullivan barely made it to Jer Leary’s house. The Free State advance party was there as soon. Because of his wounded arm Mick Sullivan couldn’t use his gun. The soldiers burst into the kitchen. Sullivan surrendered but despite the protests of Jer Leary and his wife they dragged Mick Sullivan outside the front door and shot him dead.

  When news came to the school that he was shot, the school missus and her daughter, later Mrs Spillane, were overcome with grief. We, seeing the anguish in their faces, tried to hold back the tears, and the big girls in the upper classes cried openly. It was then I saw my first Free State soldier. He came into the classroom and stood under the clock. He was a doctor. He wore a white coat which was open at the front and we could see his uniform and his Sam Browne belt. He spoke to Mrs O’Leary very quietly. As far as we could make out he said there was no need to be afraid, that the fighting was over. When he went out we heard the lorries going away. We knelt down and prayed for the soul of the young man lying dead two doors away. In a while’s time, as no one could settle down to work again, the school was closed and we went home.

  There was no stone-throwing on the road that afternoon. We went quietly and told our parents of the dreadful happening. ‘You are too young,’ my mother said, ‘to be a witness to such terrible things.’ I was put to bed early that night and when I came down in the morning there on the window-sill I saw a clay pipe and I knew that my father had spent the night at young Mick Sullivan’s wake. The men sitting at our fireside talked the next night and for many a night about the shooting and the refusal of the parish priest to come and give the last rites to the man who died.

  Other nights brought other stories. Young Republicans in Kenmare climbed a lean-to roof in the night time, entered a bedroom and shot dead two Free State soldiers as they slept. They were brothers, killed in their father’s house when they were home on furlough. Stories of horror vied with each other for our attention: the blowing up of Republican prisoners at Ballyseedy, and forever etched in our minds remains the image of Dave Nelligan, a military officer, taking off his cap and combing his hair as he walked down Fair Hill in Killarney at the head of his troops after they had blown to pieces young Republicans on a mined barricade at the Countess Bridge.

  The Civil War was a black time. It blackened the people’s minds. Neighbours disagreed as they followed their different loyalties. Old feuds, long dead, were reopened and hatred was the prevailing emotion. Men in Tralee who were being given back the dead body of a Republican by the regular army refused to accept the remains in a Free State coffin. They went down the town and brought a new one, and with hatchets smashed to pieces the coffin in which he had lain.

  Our parish priest, who had refused the last rites to Mick Sullivan, preached continually against the Irregular soldiers. One Sunday he lit the church with language. So fiery was his condemnation of what he called looters and murderers that men of the same way of thinking as Mick Sullivan and Dinny Connor rose from their seats in the body of the church and walked out. A loose heeltip went clanging at every second step on the tiles of the aisle, as if in protest against the reviling of the Republican cause.

  GOING AWAY AND STAYING AT HOME

  When I was very small I walked down Bohar Vass with my father, out under the railway bridge and along the road leading to the Iron Mills. We were hand in hand, my chubby fist holding on to his little finger. He was in his good clothes. It was Sunday and it was the first time I remember being alone with him outside the workshop. The signal pole gleaming white on the railway line attracted my attention. He explained how it worked. The red arm up to stop the train, and down when the way was free of danger. At night when the arm was up there was a red light and when it was down the light was green. Every night Jackie Ryan put a lighting lantern inside the glass.

  A train came. Quite suddenly it appeared and the loud whistle frightened me. Smoke puffed from its chimney and steam hissed from all over the engine like the kettle boiling over the fire. In the blinking of an eye it flew past with a loud rattle and disappeared under an arch over the railway.

  My father, with a piece of stick, drew in the sandy roadside the map of Ireland. There was no England or Europe, just Ireland with the sea all round it. With the point of the stick he indicated the towns and cities he could remember and he drew lines between the towns where the train ran. I watched the train many times before I was old enough to board it. I watched the train with Jer Daniels when his brother Dan, and other young men were going to America. We stood in the same place where my father drew the map and watched the train as it went slowly up hill on its way to Cork and Queenstown. Dan lowered the window and waved to us and we waved to him. We said goodbye and he shouted to us but we couldn’t make out what he said because of the noise of the train. Jer Daniels cried after his brother. He had his big dog Shep with him and the dog, excited by Jer’s crying, jumped up and put his paws on Jer’s shoulders. With Jer’s arms around him they both fell to the ground, Jer roaring crying and the dog licking the tears from his face.

  The night before had been the American wake. Those going away and their friends came to one house where there was music, dancing and songs, sad and merry. I had learned a song from a gramophone that had come to Murphys’ from America; a victrola the Yanks called the gramophone. That night, young as I was, I sang the song which opened with the line ‘From this valley they say you are going’. When the music struck up the young emigrants danced with spirit, pounding the flags as if to vent the sorrow of parting on the kitchen floor, while the light from the oil lamp cast their dancing shadows around the whitewashed walls. By the fire the older people sat, fathers and mothers of those going away. The red glow from the fire lit their features as they kept time to the music with their feet. A mother, watching her fine son stepping it out, suddenly turned her face to the fire and watched the dancing flames as his young life up to that moment unfolded before her eyes.

  Some emigrants danced throughout the night until it was time to go to the railway station in the morning. A line of horse-drawn cars, traps and sidecars then set out in time for people to have a drink in town and so that the mothers could buy a present for a departing son or daughter. It was usual to give a crown piece as a keepsake or a half-sovereign, and happy would be the one who got a golden guinea. As well as that, a present of wearables, gloves or the like, would be given to the girls, and the men got a silk handkerchief. It was sometimes thrown at the wall and if it clung
to the mortar it was the genuine article. Those handkerchiefs waved from the train as it disappeared under the Countess Bridge.

  Emigrants were lonesome leaving their own house and Paddy Murphy went back and opened the door and had one last look inside. I was old enough to be allowed go to the railway station that day. The train from Tralee ran out the Cork line and then reversed into the platform, where the young people going away were surrounded by their friends. It took eight to ten days to get to America in rickety old ships. You could feel the motion of the waves under your feet. A young man landing in New York had to work hard to put the passage money together to bring out his brother. That’s how it was done. John brought out Tim and Tim brought out Mary. Maybe then the young man would get married and have responsibilities so when again would he have the money to come back over the great hump of the ocean? Now he stood for the last time among his relations. He started saying goodbye at the outside of the circle to his neighbours, his uncles, aunts and cousins, full of gab for everyone. But as he came to the centre the flow of words deserted him and it was only with a whispering of names that he said farewell to his brothers and sisters. His father held his hand, not wanting to let it go, and his mother, whom he had left until last, threw her arms around him, a thing she hadn’t done since he was a small boy going to school, and gave vent to a cry that was taken up by the other women along the platform.

  Oh, it was a terrifying thing for one as young as me to hear, and that cry used to have an effect even on older people. Nora Kissane told me she once saw a man race down the platform after the departing train so demented that he shook his fist at the engine and shouted, ‘Bad luck to you oul’ smoky hole taking away my fine daughter from me!’ When those who were leaving boarded the train and put down the windows, their dear ones still held on to them, and when the train pulled out they were dragged along the platform until they had to let go. Some mothers collapsed on their knees under the great weight of loneliness and had to be helped to their feet, but the train gathered speed and the silk handkerchiefs waving from the windows was the last sight of them we saw.

  They travelled on for fifteen miles

  By the banks of the River Lee.

  Spike Island soon came into view,

  And the convicts they did see.

  They all put up in Mackey’s Hotel

  Nine dozen of them and more,

  And they sang and danced the whole night long,

  As they did the night before.

  In the morning they went out in the tender to the waiting ship and sailed away. The first letters to come from them came from mid-Atlantic. It seems that east- and west-bound liners drew alongside and mail was exchanged. The letters told of their night’s stay in Queenstown and of their first days at sea. They were poor sailors and try as they might they couldn’t keep the food down. Their time was spent at the ship’s rail retching emptily into the sea. The half-circle of white foam at the base of Sceilig Mhichíl was their last glimpse of Ireland. They promised to write when they had settled in America and when they got work they would send some money.

  At home many families were reduced by half. But life went on. The tasks had to be done. Cows had to be milked, calves fed and the eggs brought in from the rogue hen’s nest. The seasons brought different work to the community that lived around us and the first activity of the year was the setting of the potato garden. A large field went with our house. My father ran a wire fence through it, north to south. One part was known as East the Wire and the other as West the Wire. East the Wire was the smaller of the divisions, and here in the spring, if it had been under grass the year before, ridges were formed. These ridges my father, and maybe a helper, made with a spade. The spade was the implement of the strolling labourers of old. Eoghan Ruadh the poet worked with one and ridged a garden as he composed his songs, as far away from home as Cork and Limerick. The spade, made originally by the smith and later at Scott’s foundry in Cork, had a sharp edge and a long handle and a treader. The operator cut the sod and turned it over, grassy side down, leaving a furrow as he worked along.

  The ridges when completed with the spade looked a neat piece of handiwork and a furrow between each two ridges ran the entire length of the allotment. My father ‘threw his eye’ along the furrow and said with some satisfaction, ‘As straight as a dye!’ Each eye in a potato will sprout a shoot and as all that was needed was one stalk, the potato was cut into pieces, each piece holding at least one eye. The work of cutting the potatoes was done by women. They came to each other’s houses and worked together, sitting on chairs in the kitchen. They talked, ribbed each other about their men, told stories and were high good company. My job as a child was keeping them supplied with whole potatoes and taking away the eyeless waste pieces which were boiled and given to the pigs. The precious small piece holding an eye and maybe a young shoot was called a sciollán. There were many things in our district for which there was no English word and that was one. Fresh lime was shaken on the sciolláns to keep them from bleeding.

  The planting on the ridges was done with the spade. His foot on the treader, the sower drove the spade deep into the ridge. Then, thrusting it forward and releasing it, he left a gaping hole. Into this the sciollán was flung from a home-made jute satchel which the sower wore around his shoulders. Each ridge carried three rows. I had the choice of two jobs when I was strong enough to be of help. One was to hold the satchel and shoot a sciollán into the hole as my father made it. The other was to strike down the sod on the gaping holes. I often ended up doing both.

  There was a manure heap in the yard outside the cowshed on which the droppings of the animals were piled. To this, refuse from the kitchen was added. The manure was drawn out in the pony cart or in a creel basket and spread on the ridges. There was bag manure shaken on top called guano. This was the excrement of sea birds which came from the islands off Peru. I laughed to think that the droppings of colourful birds from South America mingling with the droppings of our hens and those of the cow and the pony helped grow our potatoes. With the spade we dug the earth in the furrows and with a shovel this earth was used to cover the manure on the ridges. Later on, when the stalks appeared and grew a few inches, the furrows were dug again and the soil, called second earthing, was distributed between the stalks.

  It was an anxious time when the stalks were at this tender stage. A late frost could burn them up and all our work was gone for nothing. If the frost came my father was up before the dawn and with a piece of broom or a bunch of ferns or heather he would brush the frost crystals from the stalk leaves before the sun shone on them. The potato was an important item of food – king of the menu as one poet said – and the progress of the gardens was a topic of conversation in our rambling house at night. The men talked about the varieties of potato and the preference of different varieties for different soils. The Champion, all agreed, liked boggy ground. Potatoes from this type of soil were so clean when dug that they could be put in the pot without washing them.

  Another anxiety for the people was the potato blight, which left the potatoes rotten in the fields in Black ’47. When the stalks were high and closing in over the furrows, humid weather brought this dreaded disease. To guard against it the crop was sprayed. That day was a big day for me. I was kept in from school to help my father. We tackled the pony, a recent acquisition called Fanny, to the car and brought water from the river in an old wine barrel of which there was a few in every house. A second barrel was on the headland and the water in the barrel in the pony car was transferred to it. Bluestone and washing soda in certain proportions were put steeping the night before and when melted down were added to the barrel of water on the headland to make a bluish-green liquid. The back-board of the butt was placed on the barrel, not covering it fully, and the knapsack spraying machine rested on it.

  This machine, to my young eyes, was an absolute marvel. It belonged to the shopkeeper who sold the bluestone and washing soda and was given free to his customers. It was about twenty inches squa
re and about eight inches deep. The cover at the top had a rubber seal and with a little lever it clamped down tight when the tank was full. There was a handle at the right hand side and at the left a length of hose attached to a pipe, at the end of which was a rose head like that on a watering can. The sprayer was hollowed on one side to fit on the operator’s back. When the tank had its quota of green-blue liquid and the cover was secured tightly, my father put his back to it and adjusted the straps that came over his shoulders. First he worked the handle at the right hand side up and down with a vigorous motion, pumping air into the liquid, and when he felt he had a good head up he released the tap on the pipe in his left hand and out shot a spray, making a sizzling sound. It was so concentrated that, as it came from the rose head, it turned into a cloud of vapour. He walked through a furrow, spraying a ridge at each side of him and as the spray dried on the stalks the dark green garden turned a bluish-green under the heat of the sun. When he returned with an empty tank I filled it with an old saucepan. Indeed my father could have done this himself but he liked company when he was working out of doors. We didn’t talk very much but we enjoyed being together. Before he finished, with the tank just a quarter full, he let me put it on my back. Even at a quarter full the weight nearly knocked me down, but I struggled on, and working the handle I pumped in the air and released the spray. I got a great kick out of the feeling of power I had over the thing as I walked the furrow, my head barely above the stalks.

  New potatoes were a special delicacy. The first meal was always on a Sunday in late summer. I loved the very small ones so clean and white they didn’t need to be peeled. I put a knob of butter on top which melted and ran down the sides like lava down the sides of Vesuvius as the potato made its way from the plate to my mouth. It was a special day and as we made the sign of the cross we prayed that we all might be alive this time the next year. We thanked God for the crop and for the fact that there was no repeat of Black ’47.