by John A. Ryan
Gallia Est
My heart is in Ireland and yet sometimes it longs for the lovely land of France. There, it seems to me, is a happy fusion of old and new, with an assured sense of permanence and stability under that ripening sun. It is fruit and food and an old unique culture.
We may walk a bright busy street which might be in a modern town or city anywhere, except for language and other small differences that we become aware of gradually and that make for a certain style which the French seem able to achieve effortlessly and instinctively. Turn into a narrow, shadowed side-street. An arched doorway, and we are in an ancient church, dim but not gloomy. It is minded, flowered, a pleasant place. A brass tells us it was built for his peasants by a great local landowner, an aristocrat, long swept away in bloody revolution. A good man, in his way, with thought for his people, though we may surmise that it was his people who really paid. Well, so did he, ultimately. The brass speaks in French only. But of course, why should it be otherwise? They are confident in being themselves, in being different.
The street dips towards the river and now under our feet there are huge stone blocks, and we are brought to a stop by seeing at a street-corner the ruts made by Roman chariot-wheels. The building at the corner is made in its lower courses of the same massive shaped stones. We can put a hand on the stone and turn to each other and gossip, just as Roman citizens or soldiers did two thousand years ago. Careful of our toes, of course. We might discuss why they built so heavily, so practically, so grimly, with, it would seem, no ambition towards beauty; and yet in this same great country of so much variety and contrast, I have seen against the sky a thing of air that they created, of arch above arch above arch, built by an inspired plumber, functional indeed, and yet one of the most beautiful buildings I have ever seen.
Peaceful now, this land was not always so. Wars big and small, local or larger, have seldom ceased here, Visigoth, Frank and Hun, Huguenot and Cathar, Plantagenet and Sansculotte, Viking and Gauleiter. The last half-century has been the longest continuous peace they have known.
In a small sanded place with a tree or two for shade, a seat or two, they are playing a game of boules. I know nothing of the game – perhaps they were playing it before the Roman legions marched in through Provence – but I can watch it happily, if not in the flesh, at least in the mind’s eye. I see a black beret snatched off by its wearer and thrown on the ground, but that is the nearest thing to violence. A little money may change hands, no more, I hope, than the price of a glass of wine. Long may they continue to play this, when the other games of the world have been invaded, corrupted and destroyed by money.
James Elroy Flecker, a lover of things Eastern, loved France too. It was he who wrote, ‘I will go to France again and tramp the valley through.’ Nowhere is it more rewarding to tramp the valley through. The vines climb up the hillsides, row on row, vineyard on purple vineyard. They know how to live; they grow wheat and they make bread; they grow the grape. Who else know the grape as they do? Wine-making they learned from the Romans, who learned it from the Etruscans, and that was more than two millenniums ago, however you count it. Newcomers may make good wine and make money by it, but the lore and the love, how could they know that?
The vast forests, oak, pine, walnut, beech and sweet chestnut, with a glittering, sugared Alp showing beyond. Those magnificent rivers. The fields of grain, of fruit, of sunflower and lavender, in the perfumed sunshine. A fertile soil, tended and nurtured, loved and sometimes perhaps hated, by a resilient people, with a skill, care and passion that has outlasted the centuries, that has taken thousands of years of sustenance from the land and left it no poorer.
Tower on its sea-rock, guarded by the crawling tide. Château brooding on ancient glory. Nearer, more intimate things: shuttered noontime windows, café tables, sun-dappled.
Every inch of this country – should that be every centimetre? – is steeped in history, a history that flames in pageantry, in great names: Burgundy, Lorraine, Normandy, Aquitaine; Valois, Guise, Angevin, Bourbon. Names that are more than names because of their associations: Avignon, Chartres, Giverny, Languedoc, Somme, Orleans. Cities whose stories go back into mists beyond our seeing. Monarchs and dynasties. Heroes – and villains. Roland, Charlemagne, Napoleon. Epic triumphs and defeats. Poitiers, Azincourt, Waterloo, Moscow, Sedan and Austerlitz; far echoes of the barricades and fainter whispers of Roncesvalles.
Gallantry and infamy, halls hung with the banners of king and emperor, ‘their chariots, purples and splendours’. But now the many dukedoms, counties and viscounties, kingdoms and principalities that have gone to the making of this republic, having put their rivalries and hostilities aside, stand together at last to form that strong bastion of Europe, entre deux mers, centred on the luminous island on the Seine that shares its name with France.
And still I haven’t mentioned her thinkers and her artists: the troubadours, singers, poets and composers of music; her artisans and craftsmen in stone or clay or fabric; or those whose awareness of line and colour and creative response to that awareness, the beginnings of which are buried in caverns of time before history began, have made Paris pre-eminent and filled the galleries of the world with French art.
It is true that France, more perhaps than any other country, depends on nuclear energy. True also that France has a heavy share of responsibility for the wars that for centuries have torn Europe asunder, as also for an ignoble part in conquest and colonization, and that many of its citizens look across the Mediterranean towards Africa with feelings of regret, or of anger, or it may be, of guilt. The creaking of the tumbrils on the blood-spattered cobbles may still come faintly above the roar of Parisian traffic, or so I imagine, and sadly I know too that France is one among those former imperialists that by their armaments stimulate and maintain wars all over the world. Yes, I know some of the faults, but perhaps at this remove I may be allowed to ignore them, to see the bright colours and forget the shadows.
Ebbed Seas
There was a girl in Umbria whose name was Inachis, meaning Butterfly in some language or other, so she told me. Sanskrit, maybe. I explained to her that I wanted to get to Greece. Surely it ought to be possible to get a place as a helper on an archaeological dig in Greece? If perhaps she knew any archaeologists …? She said plaintively, ‘I thought it was for myself alone that you …?’
‘It was, it is,’ I assured her, ‘but I love Greece too.’
‘You know Hellas of course?’ she asked me. ‘Andreas Hellas?’
‘Of course,’ I said. I found out afterwards that he was the man, professor of classical archaeology in Athens. Or Cairo? I’m not sure if that was his correct name, but something like that.
‘You are a millionaire?’ she pressed.
‘Yes.’
‘Then there is no problem.’
When these details had been seen to, we set out and reached Euthalia, which is a tiny village on a sheltered bay, three sardine boats, but there had been a city there once, a thriving Greek city of a thousand souls.
We had been there only a short time when Inachis took me aside and spoke very seriously. It had begun to strike her that archaeology was not as glamorous as she had hoped, that archaeologists were expected to get down on their knees and actually get their hands dirty. So she spread her dainty wings and departed to more civilized places and pursuits, leaving me broken-hearted. To my surprise, however, my heart mended within a day or two, with considerable help from Peacock. Peacock was an interesting girl, silent for the most part, but able to say plenty with her dark lustrous eyes; when she did speak, it was in a wonderful mixture of demotic Greek (very demotic), what I took to be Persian, and her weird version of New York slang.
When last year I visited Euthalia again, a sentimental journey, I found that one of her phrases was still used by the citizens in times of stress, though none of them seemed to be clear about its meaning, they just liked the sound of it – ‘Chiffeta astoni.’
They certainly didn’t know they were quoting Peacock. I was pretty sure I knew the meaning, but I wanted the local opinion. The innkeeper when questioned remembered the diggers, but could throw no light on the origin or meaning of the words. ‘Ask the harbour-master,’ he advised, ‘he knows everything.’
The harbour-master put on his peaked cap and a face of great seriousness, as befitted his office and reputation. He said, yes, it might have originated with ‘the diggers’. ‘It’s Italian, of course, and has something to do with melons. I am sorry I cannot be of more help – I have matters to attend to.’
To return, however, to my first visit to Euthalia: our director was a Cretan who smoked aromatic Egyptian tobacco in a curvy pipe that complemented the curves of his magnificent moustache. He had been a builder of pyramids, I feel sure, but had come down in the world. No whip now, and instead of Hebrew slaves he had a motley gang that included two boisterous young Italians, both called Tony, which could be confusing at times; a rather surly Bulgarian; three or four Greek girls from the university – Melissa, Penelope, Sybil, names like that; the dark, warm girl whose name was Peacock and who may have been Persian; a young lad from the village and two older men who were employed to do the heavier work. There was also one other, from the outer parts of the world, from ‘where the Atlantic raves outside the western straits’; I felt very much the outlander, but they accepted me, and from them I learned a lot of useful everyday Greek, which was of course the language of the group. I tried my lame Italian on them once, but the two Italian boys hooted with laughter, while the others kept a polite silence. I used English; they shook their heads; I thought I heard the word Byron but it may have been some other word. Then I spoke to them in Irish. They smiled; for one throb of the artery I wondered if some old, old memory had stirred in their collective subconscious, some race-memory from thousands of years past. But no, I could see by their faces that it was all Greek to them.
We trowelled through earth and shards and history, and because our Cretan had mellowed with the years (there were flecks of grey in his moustache), we stopped often to drink from the well, to look out across the blue to where my drowsy ship rode at anchor near the cape, or to swim in the wine-dark sea.
Evenings, from the western rocks, we watched suns sizzle down into the Mediterranean; we drank the tarry wine; some-one played lonesome things on a pipe. We laughed a great deal, and sang, and our Cretan was suspicious of us, though of what exactly he suspected us I don’t know. Perhaps of being young and happy. It was a golden time, every day the sun shone without fail from a clear sky, I was nineteen years of age, and everything was possible.
Rich
He drifted into the yard, where Mam was feeding the hens, and asked for a bit of bread, ‘a stale bit will do, ma’am, and maybe a small drop of milk, and God bless you.’ Mam sized him up with one shrewd glance and said, ‘Go up there and sit on the chair by the kitchen door. I’ll talk to you in a minute.’ Then she looked around for me. I had slipped into the stable to avoid being given a job to do, even though I was curious about the stranger and wanted to know what was going to happen. But of course Mam knew where I was, Mam knew everything. ‘Tom, come out here and look after the hens,’ and then headed for her kitchen. The teapot sizzled as usual at the edge of the fire, so our travelling man got a mug of scalding hot tea with plenty of sugar and milk, and both brown bread and white soda with currants in it, and plenty of butter. ‘He looks hungry,’ Mam said to Aunt Kate and it was Aunt Kate who did the catering while Mam went to talk to him. I heard her asking about his family but he didn’t make her any the wiser.
He was vague about his name – as indeed about most things, especially anything to do with himself – and somehow he finally became known as Rich. Where had he come from? Why? What had he worked at? Had he a wife, a family? We found few answers to these natural questions. The one thing that was not vague about him, as we soon learned, was his love and knowledge of horses, and so it seemed most appropriate that he eventually wound up sleeping in the loft above the stable, where a straw mattress and the proximity of the two big plough-horses helped to provide him with some small comfort.
Naturally, Daddy had to be consulted about this when he came back from the fields. What was to be done about the newcomer? I suppose I knew even then, the way children know such things without being told, that the matter had already been decided, but Daddy had to be asked for his opinion; the conventions had to be observed.
The wanderer showed no inclination to leave, but behaved, with a gentle insistence, as though he thought this was where he was destined to be. He admired the house, and the seat in the sun by the back door, and the cows, and he smiled at the members of the family as they passed into and out of the house. ‘Poor soul,’ said Mam, ‘he looks lost.’ Even Aunt Kate took to him and it was she who suggested the loft over the stable.
He became one of our household, accepted, expected, depended on. He occupied, however, an undefined place, not family, not employee, in a gap between the grown-ups and us youngest ones, Joe, Mollie, me and Dan. He was a grown-up of course, in fact to us he seemed quite old, but unlike the other men he did not spend his days working on the land, and so spent a lot of his time with us. He seemed to enjoy that, and so did we.
Many of our outings took us along the Old Road, which was a lane that had once been the principal road to Town, but was now narrowed by hawthorns and hazels and used only by people on foot or by horses. At the first bridge, we crossed the slopey field to the stream that came down from the mountain. We pushed between the tall hazel rods that separated our fields from the scrubland, and were in a dim sun-dappled place under a grove of fir-trees. At our feet the little stream tumbled over rocks and moss. We made boats, sailed them across Atlantic pools and over Niagarous rapids, made dams and harbours, bridges and mill wheels. Rich sat nearby, that was his part in our play. He had a gift of not imposing himself on a situation, he was interested but not in any way critical. We were glad to know he was there, a happy presence that did not inhibit our fun.
I remember from those times how sparkling clean the air was, and the water in the stream.
Or we might go further along the Old Road to the house where our parents had lived before any of us were born. Others had taken their place; the last member of that family married, the wedding party went on for a week until every scrap of food and drink was gone and every song had been sung, and then the dancing had to stop, they turned the key in the door and went to America, leaving the empty house to fall into ruin. We always went to the doorway and looked in but we were a bit scared of it and of the jackdaws that flew up from the chimney and talked and squabbled. Fascinated, we had to go and see it, but frightened too, and usually very quiet as we went away.
Rich did his best to help around the place, bringing water from the well, or sometimes scuffling the gravel in Aunt Kate’s garden, but she couldn’t trust him to do any weeding. ‘He doesn’t know a flower from a weed,’ she used say indignantly. He was very dependable at making sure all the hens and turkeys were safe at nightfall, in case the fox was on the prowl. He was willing to do any errand, to go to the shop or the post office. In our house, of course, there was no scarcity of messengers unless it was in school-time, so it usually meant that Rich and one or two of us went, and on the way there would be adventures – tadpoles, or chestnuts in the autumn, or hiding in the tree near the school and watching the passers-by, or being chased by Malone’s wicked dog, or building a dam on Whelan’s stream to make the water run out across the field. He didn’t play a very active part, but acted as a look-out and he could be depended on completely if there were secrets to be kept. Although Mam always told us not to delay, we often stopped a while at the cross. We sat on the three big flat stones at the corner and watched who went by, on foot or on carts. I remember how smooth and shiny those three stones were and I realize now why they were like that: it was because they had been polished by the many spectators who had used
them as a grandstand during pitch-and-toss schools, or a bit of hurling or football. After Mass on fine Sundays, people sat there to talk, or smoke their pipes; there was always someone there. It was a meeting place; Rich said it was the centre of the parish.
Once in a while, a policeman used cycle out from town but he could be seen coming along the straight stretch of road, and there was plenty of time for the pitch-and-toss players to scatter, usually up past the graveyard, through the Priest’s field, to the upper road. On one occasion that was long remembered, he outflanked the gamblers by turning up past the forge and coming down unexpectedly on them by way of Nolan’s Lane. Most of them escaped through Lizzie Nolan’s garden, but he captured two, gave them a severe lecture, and worst of all confiscated a penny from each of them. As he was about to remount his bicycle, however, he stopped and called them, handed back their money and said, ‘You’re to put those in the priest’s box on Sunday. Do you hear me now! Without fail! I’ll be talking to Fr Doyle about it.’
That had happened before Rich came into our lives, and when we told him about it, he surprised us when he said, ‘Served them right!’
‘Why, Rich? People always played pitch-and-toss there.’
‘Because it’s illegal.’
‘But why?’
‘It’s an insult to the queen’s image,’ and when he saw that we didn’t understand, he said, ‘Don’t you know the queen’s head is on every coin?’ I suppose we did know that; anyway as none of us had a coin to demonstrate what Rich was telling us, he put two fingers into one of his waistcoat pockets, took out a small string-bag, opened it carefully and shook out into his palm some tiny silver coins. He wouldn’t let us handle them but he let us look at them closely; we had seen threepenny bits before, of course, but there were also tiny silver pennies and two-penny pieces. ‘Look at the queen’s head,’ and then put them with great care back in the bag, tightened the cord and stowed it again in his pocket.