Da got up again and lifted a small fiddle from a shelf and handed it to me. He bowed. “Would you do me the honor of playing for us, my lovely colleen?” It was a little game we always played before the music session began in earnest.
I stood up and tucked the fiddle under my chin. “Of course,” I said in my best grown-up voice. “What would you like to hear?”
“How about ‘The Dawning of the Day’?”
I started to play the sad tune, uncertainly at first until I got the feel of it. Then Da and the others joined in. Ma set bottles of porter at the feet of the musicians, who had arranged themselves, each on his favorite stool, around the big fireplace. Even when it was warm outside, we always had a fire going in the kitchen. As the blue smoke from the turf curled up in wisps, I inhaled the familiar pungent smell. A splintered wooden chair stood empty to the left of the hearth, Great-Grandda Hugh’s chair. Ma always set a bottle of porter beside that chair as well, and old Cuchulainn would go over and rest his big head on the chair as if he were being petted by an invisible hand.
When we had finished playing, the men laid their instruments across their knees and lifted their bottles of porter.
“To the woman of the house,” boomed P.J. He held up his bottle toward Ma and then took a long swallow. “No man would ever go thirsty in this house.”
He turned to Da. “I saw John Browne’s cattle grazing beyond in your back fields, Tom. Did you lease him the land?”
Ma’s head turned sharply toward Da. A knot formed in my stomach.
“Och, no,” Da said, looking down at his fiddle. “I sold him a few acres, that’s all. Sure I had more land than I could manage.”
Ma put down the kettle she had just picked up.
“But, Tom, that’s the second parcel you’ve sold off this year.” Her words hovered in the air like smoke. The Music Men fingered their instruments, busying themselves with tuning them. Da looked over at Ma, but she had her back turned to him.
“Will we start with a hornpipe, lads?”
He started a tune on his fiddle, and soon the other men took up their instruments and joined in, following along at the pace set by Da’s fiddle. I clapped my hands, and Lizzie crowed and reached up to Frankie to dance with her. Frankie smiled. He rose and set down the skin-faced drum he had been beating with a stick in time to the music. Da had brought the drum, called a bodhran, home for him, and he played it with a fine intensity. Frankie had wanted to learn to play the fiddle like me, but Da said I was better suited to it. Frankie sulked about that for weeks. He was very competitive, our Frankie.
As Frankie walked Lizzie around the floor on her unsteady feet, Ma busied herself making soda bread. She formed the dough into two round batches and etched the shape of a cross with her thumb on the top of each loaf, then put them in a big iron skillet and thrust them into the middle of the turf fire.
The music session took on its own ritual. Da and P.J. set down their fiddles and Terrence his pipes and nodded to Billy Craig. It was his turn to play a solo. Billy wrapped his plump white fingers around his tin whistle and coaxed a sweet, mournful tune out of it. He called it “The Lonesome Boatman.” I closed my eyes and imagined a boat skimming across Camlough Lake. The man rowing it was sad. Maybe he had lost someone he loved. Billy may have been simple, but he was a genius with the tin whistle. Da said God often made up for things in odd ways. Billy was the only Protestant in the group, but Da said it made no difference, because when it came to music everybody was equal.
Then Terrence Finnegan took up his uilleann pipes. He strapped the bellows around his waist and right arm and laid the pipes across his knees. Using his elbow, he pumped the bellows, sending air into the pipes. He pushed the mellow sound of “The Cregan White Hair” out of them. The sound was sweeter than that of traditional bagpipes, yet a sound as mysterious as the man himself. A dark man, Terrence was taller even than Ma, with gray flecks in his black hair and intense brown eyes. While he played, he looked around, as he always did, fixing his gaze on Frankie. He hardly spoke to Frankie, but he always stared at him when Frankie wasn’t watching. It made me a bit jealous.
Then Fergus, tall and narrow as a stalk, bent over his mandolin and began to play a lovely old air called “The Coolin,” his bony, thin fingers stretched across the strings like a crab’s legs.
I looked around the room and tried, as I always did, to commit the scene to memory. Something in me wanted to hold on to it forever. From the kitchen window, I saw Slieve Gullion wrapping herself in her evening shawl as the light grew dim. Ma lit the paraffin lamps, and their light joined the glow of the firelight to dance a jig on the walls. All around the white-painted walls were shelves on which sat Da’s collection of old musical instruments—uilleann pipes, a banjo, and bodhrans decorated with ancient Celtic designs. There were framed pictures on the walls, too—Ma’s handiwork. She loved to sit outside the house and draw the landscape around us. Da framed the pictures and hung them for her. The colorful hooked rugs on the floor were her work as well, and the bright print curtains that flapped at the windows.
I went over to where Ma bent over the skillet in the fireplace.
“Can I help you, Mammy?”
“Aye, Eileen, get out the plates and the butter.” Her face was red from the heat of the fire, and her long black hair fell down over one shoulder. She straightened up—a tall woman, with a lovely curved figure and long legs. She carried the skillet to the table and took off the lid. The smell of the soda bread made my mouth water. She slid the round loaves onto a wooden tray, took a knife and cut along each spur of the cross, making eight triangles. She slit each wedge in half and buttered it. The butter frothed from the heat and sank into the belly of the bread.
“Here, Eileen, pass these around.”
The men placed their instruments on the floor while they ate and drank.
“Did you hear what those bastards are up to now?” growled P.J. between bites of soda bread.
We all waited. P.J. was a great one for setting up his audience. He took a deep swallow of his porter.
“Those feckers are after forming the Ulster Unionist Council to fight Home Rule. And you can bet your arse they don’t mean to fight by civil means.”
Billy giggled like a big child, and so did Frankie and I. We always giggled when P.J. cursed. Ma shot us a warning look.
“Home Rule doesn’t have a leg to stand on,” Terrence said softly. In contrast with P.J. and his bluster, Terrence never raised his voice, but he commanded attention as powerfully as if he had been roaring from a pulpit. “Those fellows down south have been harping on it for years. England will never agree to let Ireland rule itself, and that’s the truth.”
“Me ma says if Home Rule is ever passed for Ireland, the Protestants here in the north will have the rest of us drawn and quartered.” Fergus peered at my ma with the same alarmed look in his eyes that rabbits had when Frankie pounced on them. “No offense, missus, I’m just saying what me ma says, that’s all.”
Ma smiled. “None taken, Fergus.” Ma had been born a Protestant, but she had turned Catholic after she married Da. She was more devout than any of us.
Terrence looked straight at Ma and then scowled at Fergus. “It’s all just talk,” he said.
“All the same,” boomed P.J. as he drained the last of his porter, “them Unionist bastards are getting ready for a fight. They’ll not stop until they’ve burned us all out of house and home. It will be just like the plantation times all over again—they’ll take everything we own. Sure there’s already been stories of burning up in Belfast. We’ve not heard the last of it, mark my words.”
I shivered as if a sudden draft had entered the room, and I moved closer to Da. I understood some of what they were talking about—Da had spoken of these things often enough. The Catholics in Ireland wanted to be able to rule themselves without interference from the English, but the Protestants were against it, particularly the Protestants in Ulster. They were afraid of the hold the Catholic Church would have
on them if they were trapped inside a free Ireland. They were called Unionists because they wanted to keep the union with England. I had heard all this talk before—but tonight it seemed more urgent and more threatening. A frightening thought entered my head and prowled around like a menacing animal. What if, as P.J. said, the Protestants came and took our house back and drove us out? They had done it in the past, and only for Great-Grandda Hugh we would not be living in it now. I swallowed hard and tried to think of something else.
P.J. brushed the crumbs from his beard and said, as he always did, “Will we play one for the road?”
“I’ll sing Mary’s favorite song,” said Da, “the one I courted her with—‘On the Banks of My Old Lovely Lea.’”
“Good man,” cried P.J.
“Lovely,” shouted Billy.
Da began to sing. His tenor voice was high and clear. The years fell away from his face as he sang. Slowly, the Music Men took up their instruments to accompany him. The song was a sweet and melancholy love song. Da looked straight at Ma as he sang, and Terrence followed Da’s gaze. Ma sat at the table, smiling at Da. Lizzie had crawled into her lap, and Ma sang the words softly into the child’s ear as she rocked her to sleep.
The music ended. The men shuffled to their feet.
“The English took all our land,” Frankie put in suddenly. “We learned about it in school. They just came in and took it and gave it to themselves—acres and acres of it.” His small face was red with fury, and his dark eyes flashed.
“That’s enough, Frank,” Ma said sharply. “It’s time for bed.” Ma always called him Frank when she was annoyed with him.
“The lad’s right just the same,” said Terrence. “It’s a wonder Tom here has any piece of land he can call his own.”
Da nodded. “Well, we have my grandfather Hugh O’Neill to thank for that. There were no flies on that man.”
I tugged at Da’s sleeve. I could no longer hide my anxiety. Frankie had voiced my worst fears.
“Will the Ulstermen come and take our house, Da?” I whispered.
Da stroked my hair. “Of course they won’t, love,” he said.
“But Mr. Browne has already taken some land, and he’s an Ulsterman.”
I was sorry the minute the words were out of my mouth. Poor Da’s face turned pale. He looked over at Ma. She lowered her eyes and said nothing.
“Ah, sure you do your best, Tom,” Terrence said uncertainly. “You do your best.”
“Aye,” said Fergus. He stood up and put on his cap. “Well, I’d best be going. I have to get started on the bleaching early tomorrow. Ma says the rain is coming. She can feel it in her bones. And there’ll be no work to be had when it’s raining. Ma says I need to get the work while I can.”
“Ah, sure if your ma told you the pope was in the backyard, you’d believe her!” said P.J.
Fergus glared at him. There were times when Fergus turned very dark, as if a dark ghost haunted him somewhere down inside. It frightened me to see it.
That night, after the Music Men left, I climbed the stairs to my bedroom and knelt up on the window seat, as I always did, to bid good night to Slieve Gullion. I rested my chin on my hands and stared at her outline in the pale moonlight.
“Please, Mother Gullion,” I whispered. “Please don’t let anybody take away our house.” The ancient mountain gazed back at me in silence. I slipped into bed and pulled the quilt up over my head, shivering as I waited for the ghosts.
THE FIRST TIME Da took Frankie and me to the top of Slieve Gullion to see the house after it was painted, we jumped up and down in delight.
“There it is,” shouted Frankie, “I can see it clear as day!” His brown eyes, usually dark and intense, glowed in his small face. It was a look I had seen only once in a while when he looked at Lizzie. I linked my arm in his, and for once he didn’t shake me off.
“Didn’t I tell you?” cried Da. “Didn’t I say you would be able to see it for miles!”
From the summit of Slieve Gullion, it drew your eye like a magnet. Indeed, it would become known far and wide as the Yellow House. When the sun shone it dazzled like a golden beacon, and even on the grayest of days it glowed through the mist like magic. Neighbor or stranger, everyone smiled when they looked at it. I imagined more merry ghosts had arrived to join Great-Grandda Hugh, and for a while the faceless ghosts left me alone.
That crisp, sunny morning in mid-October 1905, we had taken our time climbing up the mountain, as we always did, Da walking ahead of us carrying his blackthorn stick, Cuchulainn at his heels. Frankie scrambled over the rock face to an outcropping called Calmor’s Rock, which had a cave beneath it. It was a treacherous climb over to it, but Frankie enjoyed showing off. I made my way more slowly, enjoying the sound of my feet squishing through ditches and scraping over the roughness of the rocks. Mother Gullion’s cloak of summer bracken had shredded into tatters, revealing ancient scars and furrows carved from the ice age. A soft breeze rustled the trees, and waterfowl squawked from distant lakes. I breathed in the clean air until I thought my heart would burst.
We stood on the summit at the edge of Lough Berra, which everyone called the Lake of Sorrows on account of some sad story about a young man named Finn who dove in to find a ring for his love and came out—an old man with a gray beard—to find his love gone.
“Aye, Slieve Gullion has seen a lot of sad stories in her time,” Da said, “but she keeps all her anger locked up in that volcano at her heart. She’s beautiful on the outside but troubled deep down.” He sighed. “Just like Ireland.”
Frankie pushed me away and danced around, throwing his arms up in the air.
“Will she ever blow up, Da?” he shouted. “Whoosh! Flames and fire everywhere!”
“Let’s hope not,” whispered Da.
Frankie looked disappointed. He turned to look out over the sweeping landscape below.
“I’m going to own this all someday, Da,” he said.
“Sure you’ve no need to be owning it,” Da said gently, “you can enjoy it as much as the next man just by looking at it.”
Frankie shook his head. “No, Da. You have to own it.”
Da gave Frankie a queer look, and I jumped in to change the subject.
“Tell me about Great-Grandda Hugh again,” I said. “Tell me how he won the Yellow House back.”
Da smiled. He sat on the bank beside the lake and took out his pipe and lit it. He loved being asked to tell stories. He took two long puffs on his pipe and leaned back against a rock.
“Ah, he was a grand man, so he was,” Da began. “He had red hair just like you and me, Eileen, and like the ancient king of Ulster Hugh O’Neill himself. Your great-grandda had green eyes so bright they could light your way on a dark road, and a way with him so convincing he could coax the stars down out of the sky.”
Frankie scowled. He hated it when Da said I looked like Great-Grandda Hugh. Da took another puff from his pipe. Cuchulainn raised his head and twitched his ears as a rabbit scurried past, but he thought better of chasing him and lay down again.
“Did I tell you he was a gambler, too?” Da went on. “And he had great luck, so he did. That’s how he won our house back from the Sheridans.”
We all knew Great-Grandda was a gambler. Da had told us this story a hundred times before. This was his way of having us ask to hear it again.
“Tell us, Da,” I said.
Frankie rolled his eyes and picked up a stick and threw it after the rabbit.
“Edwin Sheridan was from a well-to-do family of Quakers, but he was the black sheep,” Da continued. “He drank, gambled, ran after women, and did all the things Quakers are not supposed to do. It was probably only a matter of time before he would have lost the house anyway. Easy come, easy go, I suppose. His family had the house granted to them by the English king. It was O’Neill land before that. There are still Sheridans living around these parts. They own the big mills over in Queensbrook.”
“Will they ever try and take our house bac
k, Da?” I said.
Da shook his head. “No chance of that, darlin’. But if they try, sure won’t you be the one to drive them off? You’re marked to be an O’Neill warrior, love. Those green eyes make you special. You’re the one to carry on the O’Neill legacy.”
Frankie, who was busy throwing stones into the lake, swung around.
“I’m fiercer than she is, Da,” he shouted. “Why can’t I be the warrior? If the Sheridans ever try to take our house back, I’ll fight them and kill them!”
“Ah, sure you’ll make a fine warrior, too, lad,” Da said. “Isn’t that why we gave you the name Hugh?”
Frankie shrugged. “It’s only my middle name. Why couldn’t it have been my first name?”
Da sighed. “Ah, well, your mother overruled me on that one, son. Said she wouldn’t let me fill your head with all the O’Neill legacy talk. She wanted you to be your own man.”
Frankie rolled his eyes. “I’ll always be my own man,” he said. “And if I want to be a warrior, then that’s what I’ll be. And I’ll carry on the O’Neill legacy better than her,” he said, pointing to me.
He was defiant like that, Frankie. I just smiled at him when he went off on one of his tantrums. I knew that no matter what, I was Da’s favorite. On the other hand, kind and gentle as Ma was with me and Lizzie, she was always hard on Frank. She expected more from him, always quizzing him about school and correcting his manners. I supposed it was because he was a boy and more would be expected of him in the world. I also suspected deep down that Ma pushed him harder because she loved him more. It was a thought I always sent away as quickly as it came.
Looking back on it, I can see that Frankie and I acted the way normal brothers and sisters do with each other. We fought each other at home, but when it came to outsiders we formed a solid union and defended each other. I loved my brother, and I knew that deep down he loved me. We were O’Neills, and no one was going to get the better of us.
Patricia Falvey Page 2