by Eamon Kelly
My father met us with the pony and trap, and when we reached home there was a great welcome for the two heroes. My mother had kept the dinner for us with some roasters (potatoes) sitting on the red embers. We weren’t too hungry after all we ate at the seaside, but we didn’t refuse a slice of the cake we brought home to my mother. She gave a piece of that to everyone.
When the ramblers came in later the table was cleared and we put out the assortment of seashells we had brought home and two roundy stones of a bluish tinge and shaped like duckeggs. My mother thought it was a pity we didn’t hide them until morning and put one of them in an egg cup for my father’s breakfast! All the small people got shells and sweets and we showed the men the big shell I brought and just to please us they listened to the sound of the sea. We had enough sea grass to give everyone a piece. The men chewed and twisted their faces at the bitter taste. The man with the famous spit when he had the grass well chewed sent it flying towards the fire where it landed on a red coal. The coal went black and it was a while before it burned red again. We answered all the questions the men asked us about the sea. They remarked among themselves that sea water was very good for pains in the bones. One old man said he had heard of houses where a person could have a hot sea water bath with plenty of oily seaweed in it. He said that a couple of dippings in a bath like that would loosen the stiffest joints. We told him we hadn’t noticed such houses.
Young Jack was interested in the tide. The coming and going of the tide was one of the three things which the great Aristotle couldn’t understand. The other two things were the work of the honey bees and a woman’s mind. ‘Na mná go deo,’ my mother said (always the women). The storyteller continued, ‘There was a man inside in this parish who had never heard of Aristotle or who had never seen the sea or the coming and going of the tide. The same man, Crowley was his name, suffered greatly from pains in his bones. One night at a wake he heard it said that a dip in the sea would bring great relief. Crowley wanted to know would he have to strip off in public and he was told that he would. A very modest man, he had no notion of doing this so he hit on a plan of going to the seaside and bringing home a quantity to bathe in at home in privacy. He set out for Rossbeigh with the horse and car to bring home a barrel of the brine. When he arrived at the seaside there was a fisherman mending his nets. “Are you in charge of the water?” Crowley said. The fisherman not knowing what to make of the question said that he was. “And how much are you charging for a barrel of it?” Crowley asked. “Seven and six,” the fisherman told him, saying in his own mind, “They’re biting on land today!” Crowley paid him and as the tide was full in he filled the barrel with saltwater and brought it home. He heated a quantity of it over the fire and when night time came he bathed in the barrel. This went on for a week, with Crowley bathing in the barrel every night. True enough it brought relief from the pains in his bones, but as time went on the jizz was going out of the water and he decided to go back to Rossbeigh for another supply. When he arrived at the pier the same fisherman was there. Crowley paid him the seven and six and then looking he saw that the tide was away out. “You’ll have to pull out a lot farther to fill your barrel today,” the fisherman pointed out. “So I see,” says Crowley, “It must be in great demand; ’tis nearly all gone!”’
As we went upstairs to bed I thought of school tomorrow. No doubt the master would ask us to write a composition about our day at the seaside. If he did I would put into it the story Young Jack told. I lay then in the dark thinking about the day’s excursion. When I fell asleep I was in the sea rising and falling with the mighty waves. I was swept away from the shore. Then blessed hour! a huge whale approached me and opened his mouth. I went down into his belly. My shouting as I woke up aroused the house. My mother gave me a drink, saying to my father, ‘The excitement of the day was too much for him!’
THE LIGHT OF THE FIRE
The source of light in our house was the paraffin oil lamp. It hung on the wall and was made of tin, with a mirror at the back to reflect the light. The burner had a wick which went down into a container and soaked up the oil. With a twister the wick could be turned up or down. Some lamps had a double burner which gave a far better light. Our lamp had a glass chimney called a globe, though it didn’t resemble one except where it bulged out around the burner. Each night my mother trimmed the wick and lit the lamp with a spill from the fire. When she put the flame to the wick it blazed up. Then she turned it down very low until you could hardly see the flame and put the chimney on. This done she turned the wick up very gradually and the flame that had been yellow turned white and filled the kitchen with light. She took a hairpin from her hair and straddled it over the glass at the top of the chimney. This was supposed to attract some of the heat and prevent the chimney from cracking. The only other light came from the fire or the candle in a sconce which lit us to bed.
We loved to sit around the fire before the lamp was lit and watch the glow from the burning turf throw our shadows on the wall. My father had shown us how to cast the silhouette of a rabbit’s head and front paws with the fingers of both hands. We often populated the gable and side walls of the kitchen with rabbits and even set them to fight each other. The cat or the small dog, Charlie, loved to sit at the fireside. We used to hold Charlie up and watch his shadow catch a rabbit.
The turf for the fire we cut and saved in Young Jack’s bog, but the oil for the lamp we bought in Eugene the Boer’s shop. Often I brought it in a can when I was seven or eight. Paraffin has a very strong, unpleasant smell and a gallon of it is very heavy. I had to keep shifting it from hand to hand to relieve the pain in my shoulders. In our house we small people were expected to work from an early age – jobs like minding the cow, feeding the hens and pigs and bringing hay into the cow and pony when they were in their houses for the night. We had to draw all the water for use in the house in buckets and cans: the water for washing from the nearby river and the water for drinking and cooking from a well which was in Sullivans’ bohereen a half mile away. The sparkling spring water came out of a spout and the buckets filled quickly. We found that plucking a fan of fern leaf and placing it on top of the bucket kept the water from splashing as we walked. The well was a meeting place for neighbouring women and they sat and talked for a while.
We were nearly always on the go and the seasons brought new work. In mid-summer we helped save the hay when my father bought a field of it at the auction in Danny Mullane’s. When things were slack at home we helped in a neighbour’s meadow and loved when a gallon of tea and piping hot mixed bread with plenty of fresh butter was brought out from the house in the evenings. Tea always tasted better in the open. When we were working in the bog, a fire was started with sticks and turf, and water from the well put boiling in a can. When it was bubbling the tea was added and then the milk and sugar as the can was taken off the fire. You filled your cup by dipping it in the can and as you sat in the heather drinking tea and eating buttered bread you wouldn’t call the king your uncle.
When it came to the time for us to cut a year’s firing my father engaged a group, a meitheal, of men. They brought their own sleáns and turf pikes. We’d set out for Young Jack’s bog, where we had rented turbary, early on the appointed day. From the time when I was very young I would plead to be let go with the men that morning. I joined my father in the pony and car, which brought the food for the meals the men would get. The day before the turf-cutting my mother spent baking bread and boiling bacon. Plates of this bacon and rolls of butter with plenty of sharp knifes were put in a covered basket, and the wheels of mixed and white soda cakes in a white cloth bag.
The turf bank was cleared of its top sod the day before by a man with a hay knife, a spade and a length of line. The cleaning measured about two and a half feet. The turf-cutting implement was like a spade with a piece jutting out at right angles on the left hand side called a horn. This sleán was very sharp and cut through the soft peat to turn a sod of turf say four inches by four and a foot long. The sleánsm
an stood directly over his work and in one fluid movement he cut down straight through the peat, thrusting out and up as he landed the freshly cut sod on the bank. There a pikeman pitched the sod to another pikeman and he to another who laid the sods in a neat row at right angles to the bank. When it came to a second row the head of each sod lay on the tail of the one before. In time at least three sleánsmen would be working on the bank, one behind the other, each succeeding one a foot or so lower as if they were on the steps of a stairs. When they got into full swing there was a lovely rhythm to the work, with the sods leaving the sleán in quick succession and being pitched by the pikemen to join their brothers on the heather on the bank. Some sleánsmen sang as they worked or carried on a conversation with the nearest pikeman. The work was hard and on a hot day the sweat poured off the men. Now and again the whole rhythmic machine would come to a halt to draw breath and go on again. My job was to bring a bucket of water from the well and be ready to hand a tin mugful to the thirsty. I remember one sleánsman taking the bucket and putting it on his head and drinking from it. The first big break from work came for the midday meal.
On the day of the turf-cutting my mother came to Young Jack’s house about twelve o’clock and boiled water. She thought it quicker than building a fire in the bog. Tea was made in a white enamel bucket on which there was a cover. When the men saw her appear in the field below Young Jack’s house a cheer went up. A place was selected in the dry heather of the cois (a lower level from which the turf had been cut away), and a cloth spread to hold the plates of bacon and butter. The bread was cut and buttered and a slice of bacon put between every two pieces. Milk and sugar were added to the white bucket of tea and the men dipped their cups into it and ate away to their heart’s content. There was a rest then as pipes were lit. There were stories and a discussion on whatever were the latest happenings of the world.
My father would not be the first to make a move to return to work. He would leave that to a neighbour who, putting his pipe in the top pocket of his waistcoat would say, ‘This won’t pay the rent. Back to the grindstone!’ In no time the men were in position and the meitheal resumed its rhythmic motion. The black sods tumbled from the sleáns on to the bank and were pitched by the pikemen into place. The intake of food put the men in good humour and a song was heard drowning the sweeter sound of a disturbed lark which rose in little leaps higher and higher until it became a small speck and its song was lost and we were left with the strains of the ballad ‘My Mary of Loughrea’. At four o’clock on the dot my mother would appear again in Young Jack’s field with the white bucket. This time there were two large cakes of currant bread. These were sliced and buttered and washed down with cups of hot tea.
The men worked until the bank was cut and a carpet of black sods covered a good half-acre of bogland. The bank was seven sods high and the bottom sod, the blackest and the best, was spread in the cois. The carpet of turf remained that way for some weeks and when a thin crust formed on the sods they were lifted and made into foots. Footing turf is the hardest work I know. As youngsters our backs used to ache from the constant stooping. If we didn’t keep our heads down and work hard we’d never be done. I used to pick a place ten or fifteen feet in front and vow I wouldn’t lift my head until I had reached that spot. Four sods were put standing by leaning them together and two sods were placed on top. Standing so the drying wind went through the sods and the sun lent a hand in the saving process. From the constant handling of the hard-crusted sods the skin at the tops of my fingers wore thin and began to pierce so that I was driven to take the sod by its under or soft side. The butter-soft peat eased the pain in my fingers but as evening came the blood showed through the skin.
A couple of weeks later the turf was stooked. Three or four foots were put together and a number of sods placed on top. By the dint of drying, the fat sods were now growing thin and shrunk to no more than three quarters of their former size.
Towards the end of the summer the turf was drawn out from the inner bog by the donkey and cart to where there was a metal passageway, and made into a large heap. From here, when the chance came, it was carted home. The turf creel was put on the pony car and Fanny the mare, helped by a neighbouring horse or two, brought the winter’s fuel supply to the house. There the turf sods were built into a neat rick, narrowing as it went up and about nine feet high. When the men rambled in as autumn came, they noticed the new turf burning in the hearth. They took up a sod and passed it around and commented on its quality. It was a good year when turf, hay and oats were got into the haggard. God be praised! The talk would turn from the light of the fire to the light of the lamp, and one night Young Jack spoke of God’s two lamps in the sky. And he told the men about Copernicus, who was the first man to discover that we went around the sun instead of the sun going around us, which was the belief up to then. Always in top gear when having a go at the Church, Young Jack told us that Galileo, who promoted Copernicus’ discovery, was put on trial by the Pope for going against the belief of Ptolemy, which was that the earth was stationary and flat. Galileo was sentenced but because of his age he was confined to his house for the rest of his life. And there are men who still believe the earth is flat, Young Jack maintained, and he told us of a man of the Humphreys who came back from New York. Humphrey, entertaining his neighbours at his father’s fireside, filled them with stories of the wonders of America. He claimed he went so far west in the States that he came to the end of the world where there was a cliff, and looking over it he saw all the suns, moons, and stars that pass overhead thrown there in one great heap. ‘Only that I had no room in my trunk,’ he said, ‘I would have brought some of them home to hang up for the Christmas decorations!’
CHRISTMAS
With the drawing home of the turf the days began to shorten as the sun sank lower in the heavens. The big round cock of hay with a green cap of rushes kept the rick of turf company in the haggard, and a small pile of sheaf oats was stored in the house where the pigs lived during the summer. The hay and oats meant that the cow and the pony were provided for during the winter months. There was turf to keep us warm and with potatoes in the pit, York cabbage in the patch, hanks of onions seasoning over the beam in the workshop and flitches of bacon hanging from the kitchen joists, we humans were sure of our share when the winds blew loud and the rain and the sleet slashed against the window pane. The lamp was lit a little earlier now and the men came earlier to the nightly parliament that was my father’s house.
The news of the day over, the men debated the affairs of the nation. Having our own government and the recent Civil War made politics more immediate. In the old days matters of Irish concern had been lost in the largely British business of the House of Commons. In the springtime, great interest was taken in the budget and when there was a sharp rise in the price of tea, beer, spirits and tobacco, our native rulers came in for some castigation. One man, looking into the empty bowl of his pipe, complained, ‘John Bull wouldn’t have done it to us!’ To which a joker added, ‘He was a better bull than the bull we have now!’
When it came to the time for us small people to go to bed the men might claim our attention for a little while. It made us feel important when they spoke to us and knew us by our names. They asked us about school. Could we spell lynchpin and consanguinity? I don’t know how many times William Murphy told us about the two schoolboys who killed a bull. They lived near Mangerton and one evening on the way home from school they went up the side of the mountain. They continued climbing until they could see their own house, and the cattle in the fields seemed small below them. They came to a place where there was a sizeable round stone balanced on a flag. The stone must be nearly a hundredweight. They kept rocking it on its bed until it rolled off the flag and sped down the mountain. It gathered speed and went by leaps and bounds. Sometimes it jumped as high as a house until it crashed into a farmer’s field and a prize bull looking up from his grazing got the full force of the careering stone between the eyes and he fell down as dead
as a doornail.
They avoided the farmer’s land on the way home. There they told their father what had happened. He was greatly troubled because the owner of the bull was the crossest man in the barony. The father advised the children, if the farmer was before them on the road to school in the morning, to deny all knowledge of the incident. ‘Say you saw no bull,’ their father told them. Sure enough the farmer was outside his house in the morning in a tearing temper. He asked them were they up the hill yesterday. The big boy said nothing and the farmer, thrusting his threatening face into that of the small boy who was only about six, said, ‘Were ye up the hill yesterday?’
‘We were,’ the small boy said, ‘but we killed no bull though!’
We were terrified of bulls and on the way to school we knew the farmers who kept one and we stayed far away from their land. The darkness frightened us too and my brother and I would go out together for company when we had to bring in turf from the rick in the dark moon. We were afraid of the boodyman (bogey man). We were threatened with him when we were smaller. If we weren’t good the boodyman would come with his bag and take us away. The púca we also dreaded. He was supposed to be out at night and according to the men he was a mischievous creature. They described him as a cross between a pony and a hornless goat. He had a flowing beard and big blazing eyes, and with a jerk of his head he could hoist you on his back and gallop off with you through the night. When he came to a black lake he would stop suddenly and send you flying out over his head into the water.
The men used to say with a half-smile and in language we weren’t supposed to understand that a man unfaithful to his wife could meet the púca coming home in the small hours after visiting the lady of his dreams. The púca would lever him up on his back and galloping through furze and briars would never draw rein till he landed in the man’s yard. He would then stop short and the nocturnal Romeo would go sailing over his head into a dark pool of múnlach, a dirty pond of cattle urine and liquid manure. By the time he had dusted himself down all amorous notions would be banished from his mind! The mischievous creature gave a strange laugh when he had done his impish deed. It was a sound something between the neigh of a horse and the bleat of a goat.