The Women Page 10

  ‘What about Dad’s father. Who was he?’ Susan asked. ‘We were never quite sure and she never told us,’ Aunt Mary said. ‘She had gone to work on a neighbouring big farm and we thought that it might have been the son of the house.’ ‘I wish we had known,’ Suzanne said sadly. ‘I loved Aunt Susan, but it would have meant a lot to have known that she was actually my grandmother.’ ‘That man who was our grandfather cannot have been up to much,’ Rose declared bitterly.

  Having told their story, the girls looked at me hopefully for some guidance as to how to unlock their family secret. But this secret had long roots stretching back over many years. It could not be dug up overnight. It would take time and patience to get to the root of it and the girls had neither. They were flying back home the following day. They had checked school and church records with no success. My suggestion was to come back at a later date and spend time on the family farm and get to know the old neighbours. No doubt somebody back there knew. In Ireland there is always somebody who knows and the key is to discover who that is.

  When they were gone I thought of all the hidden babies of Ireland now coming home, mostly from America, to find their roots. I wondered if the little girl whom Eileen had been asked to take to America ever came back. It is part of the human psyche to know who we are and where we come from. Our harsh society of that time did those babies and their mothers a huge injustice.

  Chapter 13

  The Salt of the Earth

  The family plot just beyond ours in the local graveyard had always looked a little forlorn. It should not have been so because it was the grave of a man who, for the best part of his life, had been the local schoolteacher. He was remembered with great respect and fondness. But his grave did not reflect that. He had no children and there were no close relatives living locally, so there was nobody directly responsible for the grave. And though he had taught many in the parish, none of us felt it was our responsibility to look after it. It was probably a case of everyone’s job being nobody’s job, and that included me. The teacher had been a great gardener and when I first came to the parish he would bring me gifts of free-range eggs and a head of his first lettuce every Easter. But in this instance, I’m afraid, it was a case of eaten bread being soon forgotten.

  Then, one day, the grave was transformed. It was totally cleaned up and had fresh flowers. It looked cared for and loved. As I stood admiring it, Ann, a local woman whom I knew well, came and stood beside me. ‘Was it all right to do that, I wonder?’ she asked. ‘Would anybody mind, do you think?’ ‘Would anybody mind! Why the hell should they?’ I answered incredulously. ‘You never know,’ she said nervously. ‘But who did it?’ I asked. ‘We did it,’ she told me, referring to herself and her husband. ‘It seemed such a shame that after him teaching most of the parish his grave was not well looked after.’ I came home feeling that a community that had people like Ann in it was not such a bad place after all.

  She is one of those people who quietly makes the world a better place. Not talking about it, she just does it. One of a large family, she looked after her elderly mother, who was blind for many years. Her mother was lovingly cared for and died at home in her own bed, a rare blessing in today’s world. Ann runs the family farm with the help of her two saintly brothers, whom she treats with loving kindness. Her husband, who runs his own business, is her staunch supporter and partakes in all her activities. Ann hides her light under a bushel, but, just like the neglected grave, when anything is suddenly done – quietly, without any fuss – one’s thoughts immediately turn to her.

  The only time that she was persuaded to step into the limelight was some years ago when it was decided that owing to the shrinking number of priests we needed to fill the gap with a morning prayer service, as our priest was overstretched with daily Mass in two churches. We once had two priests in the parish, but now like many other places we have just one. So, things had to change. It was decided to try to assemble six teams of two lay people in each to come in one morning in the week to do the service. Your team’s turn would only come around once every six weeks, so it was not a huge commitment. It was a good idea, but who would do it? Not many, it seemed! Amongst a few others, Ann and her husband came to the rescue. She is always very reluctant to come forward in any circumstances but so few were willing she was prepared to go beyond her comfort zone.

  Our church is cleaned by voluntary groups that we call the ‘Clean Team’, and we have six teams, so again your turn comes around every six weeks. Ann is on one of the Clean Teams, of course. And around the church is the graveyard. It is now like an extended garden. But it was not always so! At one time the side ditches were smothered in briars and so were the graves beside them. A group came weekly to attend to their own family plots and from that evolved the Graveyard Team. They began to come weekly to cut the grass and then eventually to attend to the entire graveyard. The team attends to any graves that are forgotten by families. Ann is one of the team who comes weekly to keep our graveyard a place of which we can all be proud.

  Then the seats in the front of the church were a bit battered and neglected – until one morning they had a new, fresh look. You did not need to ask who had worked the transformation. Around some forgotten graves in the centre of the graveyard are fine old railings that had rusted over the years. Recently they donned a black glossy coat that will enhance them and extend their life. No need to ask who wielded the paintbrushes.

  We hear a lot in today’s world about how busy we all are with no time to spare for voluntary organisations. And yet it is often the busiest people who get involved. People like Ann keep kindness and caring flowing through the veins of our world.

  Chapter 14

  The Island Woman

  Like many other students of the 1950s I was introduced to Peig of the Blasket Islands when studying Irish. It created a deep curiosity about the isolation of island living and dependence on the whims of the sea. Island women had to stand alone while their menfolk were out wresting a living from the sea. Later, reading Patrick MacGill, I learnt about the potato picking in Scotland where the men from the west coast of Ireland had to go away to bring back hard-earned money. Islands like Achill were annually drained of their men and young people for months on end when they made the annual pilgrimage to Scotland. These island women had to rear the children and eke a living from the barren fields between the rocks while their husbands were away. I wondered what did this kind of life do to these island women. What was life like on islands like Achill? Then I did an interview about my book Do You Remember? on The Tommy Marren Show on Midwest Radio and the fallout from the interview finally put me on the road to Achill. ‘A woman rang in very anxious to talk to you,’ Sean, the interviewer told me. I thought this sounded interesting so I called the number he gave me. It was a woman called Nancy who told me that her mother was a great fan of mine and would love to talk to me. ‘Her name is Ciss Flynn,’ she told me and she gave me the number. I am of the age that if I do not do things straight away they could slip into a deep, impenetrable hole called ‘Forgotten’, and also I am a believer in the Lady Macbeth policy: ‘If it were done when ’twere done, then ’twere well it were done quickly.’ Well, sometimes anyway!

  So I rang the number. A rich warm voice poured over me. ‘Alice, a grá, I can’t believe it! Aren’t you great to ring. I am ninety-four years and have lived on Achill all my life.’ ‘You live on Achill Island?’ I said delightedly. ‘All my life, a grá,’ she told me. ‘Once ever I left to go to England but had to come back after five weeks because I missed the sea so much. I could not live without the sea. I have lived here all my life and seen many changes.’ ‘I have never been to Achill,’ I told her.

  ‘Ah, you must come to Achill,’ she said. ‘I grew up here one of eight. Every home in Achill then had about eight children. We did not have much, but my mother was a great provider. She grew all kinds of vegetables and the sea fed us too. I love the sea. My mother had geese and sometimes when they went into the sea they swam way ou
t. When she saw that they were gone out too far she would send our sheepdog, Happy, out after them in case they got caught in the strong currents and carried away. He would swim away out beyond them and turn them back, and swimming behind and around them guide them back in to shore where my mother would be waiting to house them for the night.’

  I was fascinated. I came off the phone with the wonderful image of an Achill sheepdog swimming out to sea and shepherding the geese home. When I was a child on our farm, every morning and evening the sheepdog rounded up the cows to bring them home for milking. But I never knew that the unit of dog and master helped survival on the sea as well as on the land! By a strange coincidence I was already working on a book in which I was hoping to capture the essence of women like Ciss, women who have moulded the soul of Ireland. Now it was almost as if Ciss had walked onto the pages of the book. When I told her about it she said she’d love to be part of it. ‘I am ninety-four years old,’ she said. ‘I want to tell my story before I die.’

  It is about a five-hour drive from Cork to Achill, but it was a beautiful day as my son Gearóid and I drove up through lovely countryside. On a long drive an amiable travelling companion is a great plus as it shortens the road: the Gobán Saor knew what he was talking about! We planned to stay overnight on Achill and drive home the following day.

  For some reason I had anticipated travelling over a long arched bridge into Achill but in reality the connecting bridge covers such a short span that you are almost unaware you have left the mainland and are on the island. But the mountains tell the story as they rise up around you like a reception committee. For the first time I fully appreciated Paul Henry’s paintings and could see why artists are fascinated by the light of Achill. The mountains roll down to the sea and then rear back leaving craggy inlets, or cluids to use an Achill term.

  There was little trace of Ciss’s longevity in her lively stance and bubbly, warm personality. She was born in 1920, christened Kathleen, but this was soon changed to Ciss by her brothers. Here was a woman full of enthusiasm for life. After a welcoming cup of tea we went for a drive around Ciss’s beloved island. We came to Slievemore, where she pointed out the deserted village, a row of little ruined stone cottages along the base of the mountain. ‘During the famine the people left those little houses and moved down to the sea that could feed them.’ There was something incredibly sad about the rows of abandoned, roofless ruins that told the story of a terrible period in Irish history.

  Then an elegantly designed small stone church graced the mountainside and Ciss’s daughter Nancy took up the story. ‘That Protestant church was part of the Achill Mission set up by the Revd Edward Nangle. He came to Achill on a charity mission when the island was in deep trouble. English Protestants gave him money to help the islanders and he leased land from the landlord, Sir Richard O’Donnell, at the swampy lower slopes of Slievemore. He built the “Colony”, and in it was a church, a hospital, a kitchen, a printing press, an orphanage, post office, dispensary, corn mill and farm buildings, all surrounded by fields reclaimed from the wet mountain slopes. There were two substantial dwellings for two clergymen, a steward’s house and thirty cottages. They fed the people during the Great Famine in the 1840s but only if they converted to their religion. This created a terrible dilemma for the starving population and started a bitter religious conflict that divided the people. Those who converted and got fed were known locally as the “Soupers”.’

  Then we passed a well-kept graveyard and Ciss said quietly, ‘That’s the fire graveyard. Ten young lads from here who were potato picking in Scotland in 1937 died in a big fire when the shed where they were sleeping went on fire. The shed was locked on the outside by the employers and they couldn’t get out when the fire started. Their bodies were brought back to Achill. Even after all these years I can still remember the heart-breaking scene of ten coffins being carried on the shoulders of the island men across the bridge from the station to the church.’

  Then we reached Ciss’s present home, which was built in 1932 by her father, who was a stonemason, and her brothers with the help of a government grant of one hundred pounds. Nestled further along from that house and facing out to sea was the roofless stone ruin of the house where she, the youngest of the family, was born in 1920. Part of the gable end and one tiny room remain. Long soft grass grew inside. As we stood looking in the door of what was left of her childhood home, Ciss told the story of what had been. It is interesting that in many cases when a new house was built the old ruin was left beside it to tell the story of what went before.

  ‘We had two small bedrooms, one for the boys and one for the girls and one big room. Now, the big room was the kitchen and in the corner nearest the fire was the caileach, which was the place for my parents’ bed. It was surrounded by rich drapes and these came from Scotland or were bought at the fair that was held on the last Friday of every month on the island. On either side of the fire were two butter boxes, with lids, and each box had a cushion on top, covered with different crocheted patterns of wool. These were comfortable seats and one box contained clean socks and the other socks to be washed. Our table was about six foot long with a bench on either side – a ‘form’ as they were called – and a chair at each end. The dresser had pride of place in our kitchen, with sets of china, plates of all shapes and sizes, and jugs, all of which came from Scotland. On the shelves my mother had floral shelf-paper with scalloped edges. For special times of the year she dressed the shelves with lace, handmade by her niece Maggie Joyce, who taught lace-making and needlework on the island. Maggie had learned these skills from the nuns in Galway.

  ‘My mother baked brown and white soda bread and the flour for this was bought by the hundredweight. The bread and sugar were stored in the bottom of the dresser and the tea in tin tea caddies on the mantelpiece over the fire. Twice a week she made a churn of butter, sterilising the churn beforehand by washing it out with boiling water, replacing it with cold and then dropping a limestone she had reddened in the fire into the churn, replacing the dash and top and allowing it to fizz up to sterilise it. There was a chest inside the door for storing the milk and butter, and this was sterilised in the same way.

  ‘Our houses then were built with stones bound together with lime plaster and this was got from the limestone that was burned in the kilns, the remains of which are still around the island. In my grandparents’ time if you happened to gather some fine large stones for your building the landlord’s agent could come and take them off you for their own use, and if they needed workers you were supposed to drop what you were doing and go with them. For your day’s work you got a meal of salted herrings and buttermilk.’

  ‘I’m surprised to hear that there was a landlord on Achill,’ I interjected.

  ‘Oh yes indeed,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘Once they tried to evict my grandparents, Sally Rua and John McTigue, from this little house. The agent had wanted my grandfather, who was also a stonemason, to drop what he was doing and go with them to do a job, but my grandmother, who was called Sally Rua on account of her red hair, would not allow him go, so the landlord put on a rent which he knew they could not pay. Then the landlord’s agent threatened to evict them. But when news of the eviction got out, the island people gathered, with the priests, who stood with them. They came from all over the island and brought every container that they had, filled with cow’s urine, and each time that the agents charged the door they were showered with buckets of it. Now, the law at the time was that an eviction had to take place before three o’clock, and if it had not taken place by that time it had to be abandoned. Luckily it was high tide and some of the neighbours wrestled the crowbar off the agent and threw it as far out into the tide as they could, and as the deadline passed they prevented the agent from knocking off the cornerstone and so saved the house. This was a fairly regular occurrence for people who were courageous enough to stand up to the injustices and bullying of the landlords and their agents. Another thing that could happen at the time was that i
f you had a good cow it could be taken off you by the landlord. You had no redress because the landlord was the law.’

  ‘Did the islanders always stick together?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh they often had fierce rows,’ Ciss said, smiling, ‘but even if they had a falling out and were not talking to each other they still came together for the meitheal to pick the potatoes and cut the turf. The turf took a lot of work, from cutting to footing to drawing it home with the donkey and creel.’

  ‘And how long had your father’s family lived here?’ I asked.

  ‘For generations,’ she said. ‘As I said, my father was a stonemason, using mostly dry stone and even now, after more than one hundred years, examples of his work, including houses and bridges, can be seen in many parts of the island. He loved to fish, mostly from a rock known as Conal’s Rock, and what he caught he gutted and cleaned before bringing it home, and if he caught a lot he shared it with the neighbours. He recited the rosary every night in Irish and each of us said our decade – and it could be a lengthy exercise as he had a lot of trimmings and often prayed for neighbours and their problems and even for the animals. As a youngster I could not understand why the animals had to be included in our prayers, not realising the vital part they played in our lives. When his children began to go out at night he always said the rosary before we went. He died suddenly in 1931 aged sixty-six, and in those days on the island the coffins were made in the house of the deceased by a local man who was good at carpentry, and after being waked for two nights the coffin was brought by horse and cart or tied to the roof of a car and brought directly from the house to the graveyard.’