West, in the Foggy Valley

by Tadhg O'Rabhartaigh

  She got up sluggishly and went to the door. She was the full of the door.

  “God protect us.” she said; “that grievous cold will go to the heart of the poor old man who is out in it. Many the hard day he worked for Mac Alastair, and it is a shame to see him like this at the end of his life. Walking on a frosty night to see Mac Alaistir in his little mansion, in the days of Christmas. That lad sitting comfortably in his easy chair will have little respect for him. It is well I know that he listens to no excuse whatever. As bad as he was before the land league was formed, he is a devil altogether ever since. He didn’t give a day’s grace to anyone in Gleann Ceo from that day to this.

  “Isn’t it a wonder that the hangman was not shot in the time of the Land League,” Feargal said, warming himself over the fire. Peadar was sitting on one hob and Una on the other. Triona was knitting away at the window.

  “Shoot him is it?” the old woman said. “Maise he wasn’t. There were plenty of men from the Gleann in the League and they dying to put manners on Mac Alastair but alas it was Mac Alastair who put manners on them. All he did was to close that mine over there; and he refused to open it until an end was put to the League in the Gleann. The Gleann men were left without work for six months that time. Nobody had a red penny left. The tax day was approaching and Mac Alastair threatening eviction on a good few of them; and Eoin an Droighead whinging about debt. They had to give in to Mac Alastair and ask him to open the mine again. He got the promises that he wanted; and he put an end to the Land League in the Gleann. Mac Alastair is laughing at them from that day to this”.

  “I believe that is the reason why he will not let the land dues out of his grasp. Of course he can get the full of his fist of gold for four or five years unless he sells it.” Triona said.

  “Mac Alastair has said a million times that he will keep a tight grip on the Gleann and all that is in it for as long as he has a breath in him.” the old woman said. “The man doesn’t want money; and even if he did, he would rather be master of the Gleann and the mine for what it is worth than all the gold in Ireland. That’s the kind of person he is.”

  “I’m afraid he won’t give us space until St. Eoin’s Eve.” Triona said.

  “I’m not expecting he will, pet,” she said, returning to the fire humped with the cold. “He is too stubborn for that. I believe we will have to part with the boys sheep which their dead father left to them.”

  She leaned in over the fire and she began to cry. The two boys looked at each other, but neither of them spoke a word. They also felt like crying, but they didn’t allow their sorrow to show. They kept their eyes buried in the fire. The two girls also bowed their heads in depression. There wasn’t a sound to be heard in that house.

  Triona was the first who got the heart to speak.

  “Feargal, brother,” she said, “you have colm to tramp, and turf to bring in, and the night is drawing close”

  She was about to remind them that they had to look at the sheep too but her heart would not allow her to mention them.

  The two boys got up and they set about their chores. They mixed the colm and the blue dab together behind the house. They filled a bucket with it and they brought it into the house. There was a fairly good fire in the grate, and the boys began to make balls with their hands, and to pile them on the coals, until they had a nice pile on the fire. It would be a great fire by the time they were back from the mountain with two creels of turf, and having seen the sheep. Every single ball would be red hot.

  When the two were filling the creels at the mouth of the stack on the mountain, each of them was thinking that it was better for them to contribute towards this tax that was like a black cloud over their heads. The two sheep were grazing together, here and there in the rough heather near them.

  “Do you think we will have to sell them?” Peadar said.

  “We will.” Feargal answered.

  “Who to, do you think?”

  “To Eoin and Droighead, I believe.”

  “Maise, we won’t sell. Devil a grip will that red eyed son ever get on my sheep.”

  “Isn’t it better to do that, bad and all as it is, than to allow Mac Alastair put us out of house and home?”

  “What then?”

  “What about this?“ Feargal said, knowing well what it was about.

  “The hoard.”

  “I was waiting for you to say it out straight. Isn’t it better for us to admit to it all than to lose the sheep?”

  “Do you think?”

  “We will tell them now, when the money is so badly needed. It will be a pleasant surprise. I’d say.”

  “On my word you said the truth. How much is owed to Mac Alastair?”

  “Five pound.”

  “Five pound.”

  “And how much have we between us now?”

  “We have five pounds, seven and sixpence; but we won’t let on that we have that much. Grandfather would know then that we are at this work for a year. He would be grieved. You know yourself that he swore that neither of us would go working in the mines until we were sixteen years old. Isn’t it a wonder that he hasn’t heard a word about it yet?”

  Don’t you know that Seimin Ban will not tell on us when we are working cheaply for him? I believe that Seimin should be paying us a lot more. I am almost certain that he is getting twice that much pay for us from Mac Alastair and that he is putting it down in his own pocket.”

  “I don’t think that Seimin Ban would do a thing like that. He is too honest.”

  “It is difficult to say. The same Seimin is a little bit too pleasant. I suppose it would be better to say that these two boys are working in the mine three or four nights a week unknown to their family for the past year.”

  The local boys had a habit of meeting at the Droighead/Bridge, almost every night. Some of them were at Eoin’s shop, some at the Greasai Rua’s shop, and the rest inside the mine. Seimin Ban was managing the mine, and as long as the boys were behaving themselves he passed no heed of them at all. Seimin was a small little courteous man. He didn’t stop until he coaxed a handful of them into the mine, and he put them drawing the hutches in the passages that were not high enough for the men. A year earlier when Seimin met Feargal and Peadar in the mine one night, they asked him for permission to draw, and were afraid that he would refuse them. They were foolish. Seimin was only too anxious to give them the work. In fact it appeared to the boys that he was delighted that they had asked for work.

  “Certainly, certainly, certainly, my fine fellows!” he said. “If my boys want to work we will have to let them. I’m delighted that you asked me lads, because right now there is the nicest little passage you ever saw out there in front of you. Two miners are shovelling in it tonight and they have no one to draw. I have the smallest and easiest pushed hutch in the pit for you. No sooner will the two of you get behind it than it is gone like a sledge on ice. And the passage is as smooth as a board; not a hump or a hallow in it. It will be only pastime for the two of you for a few hours every second night.”

  The result of this conversation was that the two boys went behind one hutch, bringing the coal out from the brushers, through a narrow little passage that was two hundred yards from the coalface to the prime passage, a mile or more under the mountain. The hutch was on wheels, and they put four hundred/cwt into it between coal and colm. They filled it with short handled little shovels, while they were lying on their backs inside the low walls of the coal seam. The two of them were in there on their backs, shovelling and filling, working and coughing, sliding and falling; wounding their skulls against the big rocks overhead; sitting down on the passage now and again to draw their breaths; and working in darkness at times when the candle blew out.

  They were at that work for a year, every night that Seimin Ban needed them. They worked four nights one week and three nights the next week; and a week would come when there was no work for them. Seimin Ban gave them a Toistiun/a four-penny piece, per hutch on payday. They worked for a few hour
s every single night and were able to draw three or four hutches out in that time.

  Of course they were afraid of their lives that their family would hear about them. The old pair blamed the mine for the death of their son. He went there, drawing, when he was only twelve years old. When he grew up he was neither as strong nor as healthy as he should have been; and in the end the poor man died, and left them in the state already mentioned. The old pair blamed themselves for letting him into the mine at such a young age, and vowed that they wouldn’t let either of the two boys ‘put a hand in their own deaths, as their poor father had done.’ On that account the two boys made Seimin Ban promise faithfully that he would not talk about them to anyone outside the mine. And if the grandfather was asking about them, Seimin promised that he wouldn’t tell on them. They had old clothes in the engine house, which they put on going to work; and when they had their few hours done, they washed themselves carefully, and went drinking in the Greasai Rua’s house, or to Seimin Ban’s house. They saved most of the money they earned, and they had it hidden in a tin box in the loft of the house.

  The two boys came down the mountain so excited that they did not notice the weight of the creels on their backs. They would have raced but the ice was deadly slippery. It was difficult enough to walk not to mention running.

  “I bet the big slopes are icy enough tonight to put the dray on it.” Peadar said.

  “It should be,” Feargal said; “this slope is slippery enough.”

  “Here comes Paul an Greasai.” Peadar said, when they got down as far as the road. Paul was younger than Feargal, and the three of them were always together, at school and outside the school. Paul knew about their work in the mine, and he guarded their secret well.

  “We are going to put the dray on the big slopes tonight Paul,” Feargal said, and he walking carefully on the road.

  “Steering will be hard, Paul,” Feargal said, “there are a few miners picks in our house and we can stick them in the snow when we need to. One man can sit at the back of the dray, and the other two be ready to use the picks when we are going too fast.”

  They reached the house. Twilight was falling, and it was so cold that it would go to the quick of the toughest person ever. Feargal went up in the loft in the house to get the old mining picks – one belonging to his father and one belonging to his grandfather. It was dark up in the loft, and no one noticed him putting his hand up under the rafter and taking down the tin box very carefully, and putting it in his pocket. He stole down to the small room under the loft, and he bolted the door. He took twelve pound out of the box, and put the box in his pocket.

  “Triona,” he said, taking the bolt off the door.

  She scooted down to him and she pulled the door after her.

  When the two of them came back into the kitchen they were in a great mood. You could see with the light of the fire how delighted she was as she left something on the dresser. Peadar knew that it was money she left there; and in his heart he was glad that he had helped to delight her so much. Both he and Feargal would do anything for Triona. Poor Triona! Working from dawn to dusk, non-stop, the longest day of the year, and you wouldn’t hear her in the house. No one ever heard her saying that she was tired washing, sewing, or knitting, or doing any other work. She was so kind natured. He loved Triona, and so did every one else.

  A VISIT TO INIS COLMAN

  Big Conor set off down the Gleann, taking his steps carefully in places where the road was slippery. He passed the houses of old miners who had spent most of their lives mining with him. There was a time when he would have visited them to light his pipe, and to chat. But this evening he just passed by, without as much as turning his head to look at their closed doors; because he had a heavy heart and the desire for visiting and conversation were drained from him.

  Finally he arrived at the crossroads, at the bottom of the Gleann. He leaned on his stick at the crossroad and rested for a minute. He had only a half a mile more to travel to reach the Loch and Inis Colman. There was a road facing south here from crossroads, along the top of the Loch, across the Shannon, as far as Droim Duilliur, a little village situated under Sliabh an Iarann. There was another road facing east at the foot of the Bradshleibhe leading to Cill Ronan, and from there east again to Ballinashee, another little village which was situated behind the Bradshleibhe. Looking east from here to Ballinashee, he noticed a horse and carriage coming towards him. He waited until it reached him. It was Martin coming from Ballinashee, with a carriage full of Christmas things. Martin was a middle -aged man from the lower Gleann, and both he and his father before him worked as stewards for Mac Alaistir. He lived with his family in a house above Inis Colman. He was responsible for the work on Mac Alastair’s big farm on the Loch shore, as well as the work on the island which was also owned by MacAlastair, his chores also included going to fairs and markets.

  “Maise Conor,” he said, “it is not right for you to be walking on a night like this.”

  Conor noticed that Martin had been drinking.

  “Maybe you could make place for me at your side Martan, I am going into Inis Colman.”

  “Up you get, sir,” Martin said. “Sit on that barrel. Keep your shoes away from the bottles; in case they break. Damn it but there is an edge on the night.”

  “He took a pint bottle from inside his big coat. It was almost half full.

  “I got that bottle in Ballinashee,” he said; “and if it wasn’t for the odd slug I took from it on the way, there is no part of me but would be frozen. You know yourself that I was never very fond of it, Conor; but I assure you that there is nothing like it when one is sitting on a horse-drawn carriage on a day like this. It is cold enough for a blizzard.”

  He took a long drink from the bottle and then he passed it over to the old man. There was more than a noggin in it.

  “Throw it back, Conor,” he said. “It didn’t cost me a penny, you know. Christmas time Conor, Christmas time! On my word I have enough beer, and stout, and spirits, and bottles of wine here, Conor, as would leave every person in Gleann Ceo drunk. And it is not the cheapest stuff I have either, you know. There’s every choice of drink in them barrels, bottles, and boxes. You won’t be thirsty in Mac Alastair’s house at Christmas, believe me. You won’t be hungry either, brother. You should see the slaughter of animals and birds that was done there before I left this morning.

  “I’ll bet there was!” Conor said, as he felt the effects of the spirits warming his body right down to his toes.

  “Don’t be talking,” Martan said, “The snow was left red with blood.”

  “It was.” Conor said.

  “On my soul it was! Martin said. “I’m sorry you didn’t see the fine sheep that was fleeced there, Conor. Talk about sheep! And as for birds, there was about a dozen and a half, between geese, turkeys and fowl. And you should see all the different kinds of fish that I have here in that box, brother! And I brought another load from Droim Duilliur yesterday, you know. Devil the likes of Christmas cakes! Coffee, tea, a sack of sugar, a box of the best biscuits, Conor! And as if that wasn’t enough he had to get a full box of bacon; and we after taking a pig of our own out of the salt, only last week.”

  “It is mighty altogether the fine life that God left out for some of the people,” the old man said.” remembering the few dry potatoes he had eaten before he left the house.

  “You said it, sir.” Martin said. “A smart man, who does not know what he will do with all the his wealth, and he having only one son. He is at home now from some University in Scotland, and he is a mining engineer. He told me himself that he had spent some time learning in the mines there, and that he will be managing this mine here after Christmas.”

  “I believe he is a big man now,” the old man said. “I don’t remember seeing him since the day his mother was buried; and that must be seven years ago.”

  “He was only a youngster then. You should see him now! But you will see him when you go inside. He is not much more than twenty yea
rs old, but he is as sensible as a man of forty. He spends a lot of time chatting with old Nabla, and writing down songs from her. He told me that he sends the songs to some Irish/ as Gaeilge, newspaper in Dublin.”

  “A Paper in Irish!” Conor Mor said. “This is the very first time I ever heard mention of a Paper in Irish.”

  “On my soul there is; and I heard Marcus himself reading a piece from it to old Nabla in the kitchen, the other night. He said he would have to get out through the Gleann soon, so that he could get plenty or songs and stories from the old people.”

  “Who would believe that Mac Alastair would raise such a son?” the old man said.

  “You could say that.” Martin said. “There is a huge difference between the father and the son. I could tell you stories that would shock you, but we have arrived, Conor. You will come in to warm yourself and to drink a mug of tea. I am going in on the island after that, and you can be out and back with me. I am afraid we will have trouble breaking the ice from here to the island in the morning again. It gave us enough to do this morning, you know; and it is freezing very hard this evening.”

  It was twilight when Conor and Martin landed at Inis Colman. They crossed in a little fishing boat and there was a bigger boat behind them, which was carrying the load that Martin had brought from Ballinashee. As well as the tea, Conor was given another measure of whiskey before they went on the Loch. Martin was a happy man that night.

  “Throw it back, man!” he said. “It will give you courage going into Mac Alastair.”

  Poor Conor was worried as he stole up the avenue among the trees. On every side of him the bare branches were bending to the ground with the weight of the frozen snow. This avenue took them to a big lawn in the middle of which stood the large stately house. It seemed to Conor that the house gave him an evil look when he walked out from the trees. He thought the windows looked weird, and walking up the steps to the door he thought the door gave him an accusing look. He knocked on the door timidly, and a young girl about fifteen years old opened it to him.