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  ‘And your mother’s people,’ I asked, ‘were they here for generations as well?’

  ‘No, my mother was a stranger,’ Ciss said. ‘She was Nancy Nan Gallagher from across the bay.’ Ciss pointed across the water. ‘But that’s just across the water!’ I protested. ‘Didn’t matter, she was not from the island and for that reason she would be considered a stranger.’

  ‘And how did she fit in?’ I queried. ‘She never tried to,’ Ciss said. ‘She always held herself a little distant from them because that was the way she was. But as the years went by they realised what a great woman she was and began to treat her with the height of respect. She grew carrots, turnips, parsnips, onions and all kinds of vegetables, and she grew two kinds of potatoes – Kerr’s Pinks for the table and Arran Banners for the animals. She boiled the Arran Banners and mixed them with seaweed and fed it to the pigs.’ Ciss pointed to a field behind the house, further away from the sea. ‘That was where we grew the vegetables and potatoes and when we were planting the potatoes we used the animal manure and over it we put a bed of seaweed and placed the seed potato on it. The seaweed was great to grow everything. We cut it off the rocks, which was freezing cold work and very hard on the hands – and there were no rubber gloves then. We drew it up to the house in the donkey creel.’

  As Ciss talked we climbed down the little grassy slope from the ruin onto the stony seafront that was strewn with seaweed. The sea was practically at the front door.

  ‘When we lived here the sea was further back,’ Ciss explained, ‘but since then it has eaten into the land. We call this the cluid.’ She pointed to a sheltered inlet and then along the beach, remembering where the different animals were housed, and I realised that we were standing in the centre of what had once been their farmyard.

  ‘We had a donkey, four cows, two pigs, a flock of about twelve geese and a lot of hens. And when we took out the hot ashes from the fire we put them under the perches in the henhouse to keep them warm. Our animals were very close to us and my mother kept everything spotlessly clean, which was not easy with no water in the house and no electricity.

  ‘We had a pig for selling and a pig for the house. When they were young a ring was put in their noses to prevent them from rooting up the garden. The night before the pig for selling went to the fair he was well washed. At the fair he was sold to the highest bidder. A replacement was bought as a bonham the following spring. When the other pig was killed a piece of fresh pork was given to the neighbours and the remainder was salted for six days in a wooden tub of coarse salt and then taken out and hung from the rafters, which were not very high. All the neighbours who had a pig did the same thing, but no two pigs were killed at the same time so there was fresh pork available for a longer time. As children we loved the pigs, who became our pets, and they loved nothing better than to lie down for somebody to scratch their belly. Fish were also salted for when food was scarce. The goose feathers and down were used to fill the ticks and pillows for our beds and, of course, the sheep fleece was wonderful.’

  Then Ciss stooped down and picked up what to me looked like green lichen that was growing off the rock. The spongy little plant was a soft delicate shade of green. ‘This is what my mother used to dye the sheep’s wool and she also used the yellow whin, onion skins and different pieces of tree bark for a mixture of colours. But first the sheep’s fleece was washed and rewashed in a big timber tub, and because the seawater did not suit the wool, that meant drawing fresh water to the tubs. We children danced on the wool until it was snow white and then my mother raked and combed the fleece and teased it into threads. She knit socks and jumpers and used the loom to weave materials of different colours. When she was spinning she would have her own dyed wool in various colours beside her and she would add in little bits of different colours as she spun, making her own flecked thread.’

  Then Ciss turned and looked out to sea, before continuing, ‘My father loved music and was always whistling a tune. As soon as he could afford it, he bought fiddles with the potato-picking money and taught my brothers how to play. Strange thing was that he could not play himself, but he could whistle any tune perfectly and gradually the lads picked it up. The fiddles were hung along the wall over the hearth to keep them safe and dry. On fine evenings they practised on their fiddles sitting outside the house. When they were playing for a little while the seals near the shore began to make a whistling sound, calling to the others further out, and then they would all swim in right up to the edge of the water listening to the music, and when the boys stopped playing they swam away.’

  She pointed to a headland that curved inwards at the edge of the bay. ‘Out there is the Gob, and that was where the Scottish boat docked when they came to pick up the potato pickers, or the “tattie hokers” as we called them. All the young boys and girls on the island went tattie hoking. Some of them were very young – children really – when they went. The currachs took them out to the big boat. They left early in the year and came back before Christmas with the money they had earned. It was hard. But that was the way it was. In Scotland they worked long hours and slept in big sheds called “bothies”, the girls at one end and the lads at the other, with a division in between. It was in one of those sheds that the fire happened in ’37 when the ten young lads from the island died. One of the stoves took fire and the bosses had locked the shed on the outside and the lads couldn’t get out.’ Listening to Ciss you could still feel the sadness that accompanied all those partings and the terrible memories of the fire.

  ‘Sometimes when the currachs went out to the big boat some of the locals who were not going to Scotland went out to have a look at the boat. Then they came back in when the currach returned for more passengers. When all the workers were finally on board the steamer made its way down the channel. The families left behind would follow along the headland, waving their loved ones goodbye, until the steamer was gone from view. I remember well the black and red funnels belching out smoke and steam and the lonely sound of the horn as it passed through the narrow channel and then disappeared from view.’ As we left the headland I felt that the history of a whole tribe was woven into that cluid.

  Later that evening back at the house, we sat around the table and Ciss talked about other island customs. ‘Many of the weddings were the result of matchmaking and in some cases the bride and groom met for the first time in the church. Sometimes the bride and groom would travel together to and from the church in a car, but it was mostly bicycles, and there was always a competition to see who would be first home from the church as the winner would get two big mugs of porter – everyone else got one in the first round of drinks. Wedding presents were unheard of then. There would be a dance in the wedding house, with tea and bread and jam in a neighbour’s house. Jam was a big treat in the war years unless you made your own. The dance went on all night or until the porter ran out. There was only one man on the island who could tap a barrel of porter properly and he was invited to every wedding. Music was by local musicians and that time there were people in every house who could sing or play the fiddle or melodeon.

  ‘Back then it was a terrible shame for a girl to have a baby outside of marriage and that shame was felt by the whole family. I remember once when it happened the priest “read” the poor girl from the altar, which was very upsetting for the family.’

  ‘What happened to the girls? Did they go into mother and baby homes to have their babies?’ I asked.

  ‘Not usually. The girls stayed at home with the family though they seldom came out during the nine months and usually the family or a sister reared the child. In Achill we looked after our own.’

  Then Ciss began the story of her own family. ‘There were eight of us in all, five boys and three girls. I was the youngest and the boy before me died at the age of two and it took my mother a long time to get over that. Our two eldest brothers went first to Scotland and then to England and in time got jobs for the other brothers and brought them over. In those years almost all the husba
nds worked overseas and came home for Christmas. Then they stayed to set the crops and cut the turf and when that was done they went away again to work.’

  ‘You never emigrated?’ I asked Ciss.

  ‘Once, but only for a very short time because I found that I couldn’t live without the sea on my doorstep. And as well as that, someone had to stay with my mother. At that time there was a preparatory exam for a scholarship to a teacher-training college. The teacher felt that I could pass this exam and asked me to do it, and when I refused he visited my parents to put pressure on me, but I still refused. I felt that I would not pass it. Maybe if I was not the only one doing it I might have given in, but to do the exam I would have had to go to Achill Sound, which was seven and a half miles away. I would have had to walk or cycle and I thought that it was too far. I did not tell the teacher or my parents that all I really wanted to do was to learn to dance! They were all mad with me. The day following my refusal my eldest brother, Tom, started to make a small creel with sally rods and when I was foolish enough to ask him what it was for I was told, “This is what you’ll have on your back for the rest of your life.” No further questions asked!

  ‘The same Tom was the most stubborn man that God ever made. He married an island girl and before the wedding my mother told her so. They went to England and on the next visit home she was pregnant and decided that she wanted to stay at home with her mother and have her baby on Achill. But Tom was against that and told her that if she stayed he would not send one penny home to her, and that was exactly what happened. But he continued to send the usual money home to my mother and every week my mother went across the island and gave the money to his wife. My other three brothers, Michael, Martin and Con, never married and every Christmas came home from England. They were so good to us. They brought clothes and shoes and anything we wanted. After the war we could not get tea on account of the rationing and they would smuggle it home in the tubes of their bicycles.

  ‘It was wonderful when everyone came home for Christmas, and we were all so happy to be together again. But when the time came to go back a gloom descended on the island. Husbands, fathers, sons, uncles and often daughters and sisters too were going away. A big van came to pick them all up and take them to the boat. At that time there was practically no traffic so we heard the van almost as soon as it came on the island – the sound of its engine travelled all over the place. Eventually it came to the bottom of our hill. We listened as it stopped at the first house and then at the different houses up along. Slowly it came nearer and nearer, and then we knew we were next.

  ‘My sisters Sarah and Maggie went to Scotland potato picking and then later to England, like all the other girls on the island. Maggie was fourth in the family and she came back and married a man from Belmullet, where they lived. They had seven children and when the youngest was a baby Maggie was diagnosed with terminal cancer, with a very short time to live. She was thirty-eight. Sarah and I went to Belmullet, which was a long way away then as there were no cars. Maggie didn’t know that she was dying and her husband asked me to tell her. It was the hardest thing that I ever had to do. But I somehow got it said the best way that I could and assured her that we would look after the children. I asked her did she want to come back to Achill to be buried. She said that she would stay in Belmullet to be near the children because no matter where they went they would probably eventually come back to Belmullet. She died that night. The day after the funeral a nurse in the hospital gave me a little brown purse. In it was one pound note, one shilling and her wedding ring.

  ‘Three of the children came to me, two went to Sarah and two stayed with the granny in Belmullet, who was a pure saint of a woman. She had thought that she could manage them all, but because she was up in years that was not possible. The youngest, who was only sixteen months, could not settle away from his granny, so he went back to her. Little Mary, who was only three, would often help me lay the table and remind me that “This was the way Mammy did it.” I found that so sad. It was the worse period of my whole life. My heart bled for the children and I lost weight and my hair fell out. A local tonic was stout heated by a hot tongs – I drank it once but hated it so much that I couldn’t take it again. But gradually I recovered, and being near the sea helped. There is healing in the sea, sitting beside it and listening to it. It healed me. I kept the little brown purse safely on top of the press in the kitchen and one day when one of her boys was a teenager he came across it and stopped dead in his tracks. ‘That’s Mammy’s,’ he said slowly and I wondered what memories it ploughed up in his mind. ‘Would you like to have it?’ I asked, and he nodded. And when Mary was getting married I gave her her mother’s wedding ring.’

  ‘You must have had a great husband,’ I said.

  ‘The best,’ she smiled. ‘He was the kindest of men and a great husband. Both of my children were born at home, and when Nancy was born my sister Sarah came home from England to be with me. Because she had emigrated when she was very young, Sarah had missed out on a lot of what my mother had told me. So when Nancy was born with a caul over her face Sarah was very upset because she had never heard of it. She was shocked when she saw this sheer veil with scalloped edges covering the baby’s face and head. The veil was so delicate that she could see the baby’s face clearly through it. She thought how terrible if the child has to go through life wearing this veil! But the doctor knew what it was and gently lifted it up and slipped it over the baby’s head, much to Sarah’s relief. The neighbours all came to look in on the child, and when Máire Mhór, an old islander who had delivered many babies in her time, saw the baby her words were, “Bhuel, ní raibh fearg ar on Athair shiorraí nuair a chum Sé í seo” (Well, the Good Lord wasn’t vexed when He created this little one). The lucky caul is very rare and occurs only once in 180,000 births. The story goes too that captains of ships would pay good money to have one on board because it is believed that any ship with a lucky caul on board would never sink.’

  Ciss had told me her story with no embellishments and absolute honesty. She had had a hard life, but it had not made her hard; instead it had woven a warm woman full of textured memories. This woman, who had struggled, cried, laughed and loved here on the island, had not only survived all that life had thrown at her but is a goldmine of rich remembrances and the much-treasured heart of her family.

  That night a violent storm raged around Achill and as the wind pounded the windows I wondered what it must have been like years ago living in that little stone house facing out to sea with no heating, no double glazing, no insulation and the wild Atlantic belting in on top of them.

  Chapter 15

  Behind Closed Doors

  An awareness of the existence of the Poor Clare nuns came into my life at an early age. When I was six, my younger brother Connie, aged four, died in the Bon Secours hospital in Cork. The hospital was next door to the Poor Clare monastery on College Road. My mother must have made contact at the time with the Poor Clares because an awareness of their existence, and also the sense that they were a source of comfort to her, filtered through to me. Later, when I spent a week having my tonsils removed at the age of twelve in the same Bons, the children’s ward overlooked the monastery of the Poor Clares. Through the open window we could hear their bell tolling regularly calling them to prayer. I wondered what was going on behind those closed doors.

  At the time my father had a young nephew in the Franciscans, Brother Matthew, who arrived every summer to our farm wearing a flowing brown habit and strapped sandals, and doled out holy pictures, scapulars and medals. He was happy and cheerful, and I had a vague idea that there was some connection between the Franciscans and the Poor Clares. Over the years I became aware that many people wrote to the Poor Clares in times of stress and anguish in their lives. This led me to the belief that when you were in financial straits you went to the bank, when you were in dodgy health territory you went to the doctor, but when you were in dire straits in any other department you called in the Poor Clares. They
were the God bank! Their praying presence seemed to bring untold comfort to all who made contact with them. Once when a critical friend of mine demanded, ‘What are those women doing locked up praying when they could be out in the world doing some good?’ I lost the cool. ‘Don’t you think that there are enough of us out in the world and when you look around at the world, we’re not doing such a great job, are we?’ I had become a defender of the Poor Clares.

  The Poor Clare Order, inspired by St Francis, was founded by St Clare of Assisi in 1212. It was a monastic order of enclosed contemplative life with sisters taking vows of chastity, poverty, obedience and enclosure. Their vow of enclosure is the one that perplexes most people. The order spread around the world and came to Cork in 1912 when a local merchant prince, Walter Dwyer, decided to build a monastery for them on College Road. His motivation was not entirely without self-interest as his favourite daughter had entered a Poor Clare monastery in Belgium and he wanted to have her near him. He had the money to build the monastery, but he would need the bishop’s permission to bring in the order as well as Poor Clare sisters who would be willing to help set up the foundation in Cork. He turned for help to an old and trusted friend of his, a Jesuit priest, Fr Willie Doyle. Fr Willie approached the Carlow Poor Clare abbess, who gladly sent a band of five sisters. After a lengthy process the bishop’s permission was granted and the way forward was cleared for Dwyer’s dream to come true – and so the building began on College Road. Ultimately his beloved daughter returned to Cork and the official opening of the Poor Clare monastery in Cork was celebrated with Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve 1914. Down through the years they have become a font of comfort and prayer to the people of Cork and further afield.