Living in the Past: A Northern Irish Memoir (6 page)

M
y mother’s hen turkey, which provided her with the eggs for hatching and rearing for Christmas, was the most cunning of birds. Like most hens, it wanted to lay its eggs somewhere very secluded. It would start disappearing in the spring and my mother would set me the task of following the turkey. At first I was baffled because the turkey would head east across a field followed by me at a discreet distance. It was in no hurry and would stop and peck and eat and then it would pass through a hedge into the next field and, if I couldn’t get through quickly, it would disappear on the other side. Gradually, I discovered if the turkey headed east, then the nest was probably due west and it would walk half a mile in the wrong direction before doing a quick turn when it got into the next field. A smart walk along the hedge and another turn would find it on its way back to its nest.

Once I found its nest, if it was in a safe place, I would leave it alone until it brought its flock of day old turkeys back to mix with the other fowl.

When I was about ten years old, my mother hurt her leg badly on a zinc bucket. It left a huge gash and the doctor advised her that she must not stand on her leg for weeks, otherwise it would never heal. She devised a means of getting around the kitchen and up and down to the bedroom by kneeling on a cushion on a chair with her bad leg and shuffling around. This seemed to work all right and I was kept at home from school, wonder of wonders, to do her running for her. Frances was there to do the heavier work and milk the cows, while I looked after the hens, gathered the eggs and fed the turkeys. I recall they were nearly fully grown, so it must have been about September.

There were tea chests turned upside down in the garden and the tall turkeys could reach up to eat the food that I would prepare for them and place on the top of each one. It was always made of ‘Feed All’, which was really turkey cornflakes, on which I poured boiling water and mixed up in a bucket into a turkey mash.

The turkeys loved it but, then, so did the hens. When I placed it on the top of the tea chest, the turkeys gathered around it and it was just the right height for them. But I had a few tea chests to attend to and those cheeky hens would fly up onto one of the tea chests when my back was turned and gobble up the turkeys’ cornflakes. I would rush at one and dive at another but I was outnumbered. Then I decided I would punish each hen I caught by making an example of it in front of its friends.

There was a huge pot of rainwater about two feet in diameter with a lid. I would grab the offending hen, push her into the pot and put the lid on it. Then I would count slowly to impress the audience – I don’t remember how long – then take off the lid and extract the bedraggled hen and put her down amongst the others. The poor thing must have been very nearly choked. I don’t know how long I had been punishing the hens – perhaps, I had just started – but on the morning in question I looked up and there stood Frances on the road beside me, looking over the hedge, and quickly observing the whole drama.

Well, I was called many things that morning by my mother and Frances, asking, “How could I be so stupid?” which hurt as I thought I was truly inspired. Worse still, I was threatened with being sent back to school the next day. But this sentence was commuted to staying at home and being closely watched. I really enjoyed that time at home. I think it was because I was fully occupied all day – hens, eggs, turkeys, running up to the shop, bringing in a turnip or a cabbage from the field – and everything was done at the speed of light. It was great to be young.

While I’m on the subject of turkeys, there was a gentleman draper from Coalisland who would ride out on his bicycle in the spring and summer evenings and call on likely houses to see if he could measure a client for a new suit.

My father, who was always busy, didn’t like him coming as he would stay for tea and my father would feel obliged to sit and talk with him when he would rather be getting on with one of his jobs.

One evening he called on my mother’s sister, Aunt Maggie, also a farmer’s wife, who looked out of the window and exclaimed to her daughter Mary, “Here comes the tailor. I don’t want anything from him so I’ll hide down the room. Tell him I’m out and get rid of him.”

So Mary received him but it wasn’t so easy getting rid of him and he lingered and talked in his slow way and asked, “How is Daddy and how is Mammy?”

Maggie, in the meantime, was in the bedroom, looking out of the window at her young turkeys, thinking how well they were doing when, suddenly, a cat appeared and grabbed one of them. Maggie pushed up the window and put her head out waving her arms and shouting, “Scat,” and “Be off,” and anything that came to mind. Then the window dropped onto her neck pinning her down so she couldn’t move. All she could do was shout for help. She was overheard by Mary and released by none other than the suit man.

“Ah, how on earth have you got yourself in this predicament?”

Maggie was embarrassed, of course, but later she thought there might be a silver lining and maybe he wouldn’t be in a hurry to come back again.

There was a lot of work to do around the farm and plenty to keep my mother and Frances occupied in the house. The milk churning, for example, took place every fortnight, I think. Two big crocks of milk would be left in the scullery to go sour. They were fitted with big wooden lids with handles. In the wintertime they would be brought into the kitchen and placed at the side of the fire, especially if the weather was frosty.

Churning day was a bit like washday because my mother and Frances would be busy and we didn’t get our usual attention. The churn would be placed in the middle of the floor in the scullery, or in the kitchen in the wintertime, and the two crocks of thick sour milk emptied into it. Then the churn staff was put in and the lid put on the churn. The lid had a hole in the centre, through which the churn staff was pushed. At the bottom the churn staff had a round wooden platform about a foot wide which was full of round holes. The churner stood and lifted it up and down in a steady rhythm. It was hard work, but if it was lifted up and down from the waist, not just with shoulders, it was a lot easier. Of course, children couldn’t do it and Frances and my mother took turns.

If a neighbour came in it was the custom to give you a “brash”, that is about five minutes on the churn staff. When the milk broke, as it was called, we could tell by the sound, which became softer, then we might get a turn at gathering the butter. This was achieved by putting a turf under one side of the churn and gently rocking it from side to side. When the lid was taken off, the butter would be floating in one solid piece in the middle of the buttermilk. My mother would take it out with two wooden butter bats and finally it would be finished with a fancy design on it and it was delicious. As well as that, the fresh buttermilk was beautiful and we all loved to drink it if we were thirsty.

It was the routine of farm life that kept it running smoothly. The cows were taken down to the bog every day to graze. Of course, it was no longer a bog but once a name is given it sticks. In the summer holidays I loved taking them, especially on those hot sunny mornings. There was still a low lying piece of moss with many ponds and waterways in it and here we met the dragon flies, or devil’s needles as we called them; hundreds of them darting here and there and everywhere. Some were a beautiful dark shiny blue, others red or green. Their colours were magnificent but when I was small I was scared of them as they would fly up in front of my face and then stop dead as if they were daring me to move.

When the cows entered the bog and I had closed the gate again, I was then free to go to the blayberry patch just along the top of our bog. It was a dry bank and it was covered with blayberries. I sat in there and ate all I could hold, and they were beautiful. Then maybe I would lie on my back and look at the sun for a long time until it would turn into a black ball. I think that’s maybe why I finished up with glaucoma, as one should never look directly at the sun – but I did.

We had lots of larks nesting in the heathery moss banks and they would take off with a burst of song and rise straight up until one lost sight of them. I would lie on my back in order to follow them, but eventually they would become a dot in the blue.

If they were disturbed on the nest they would run off at a tangent, trailing what I thought, at first, was a broken wing, but later discovered that this was a trick to lure me away from the nest. They were beautiful singing birds and we had lots of them. I had a bird cage and tried to cage them but, of course, they died.

In the summer months, Peter Hughes and I would go fishing on a Sunday morning. Straight across the meadows there was the style meadow along the river and this was supposed to be the best spot for catching fish. We occasionally caught a fish or two but we were not very successful. Peter would tell me that the weather was not favourable or something similar.

Then one morning we set off and Peter remarked that the wind was in the south and fish might bite. And, sure enough, they did. The river was full of bream, a big fish shaped like a saucer. Before this we had only been catching tench. We couldn’t bait our hooks fast enough, and after about half an hour the biting stopped as suddenly as it had started. Peter caught twelve lovely bream and I caught eight. What a morning – and they tasted like fish should taste.

Another fishing morning I remember was once when there was no biting and a young lad can get very bored just sitting. We were fishing with our worm about twelve inches below the surface but nothing was happening. So I pulled mine out and put it about two feet deep. Then I had to do something different again, so I put my bait as deep as it would go, until it was probably lying on the bottom. Suddenly my cork bobbed up and down then disappeared under the water and I snatched my rod up and flicked it back onto the bank and there was a black snake, as I thought, wriggling through the grass.

I jumped up and ran but Peter shouted, “Holy boots, you’ve caught an eel.”

It was about two feet long. It was my first taste of eel and was certainly worth waiting for. We skinned it and then hung the skin in the crook of the fire because when it was dry it could be used as a strap around the wrist or leg if anyone had a sprain. However, if this didn’t make it better, you could always go to someone for ‘the charm’.

In Ireland there are people who have a charm for a certain disease. This charm has been handed down through the generations. It is frowned upon by the Catholic Church but it goes back a long long way and people with a charm are very sincere about it. They do not accept any reward and if you gave them a reward then the charm would not work.

The first charm we came in contact with was when we were very young and got a stye, which we used to do quite often. My mother would send us down to Mrs. Hughes who had the charm for a stye. When we got there Mrs. Hughes would send us out to the gooseberry bushes to break off nine prickles and bring them to her. Then she would take the prickles and point each one in turn at the stye then throw each one over her shoulder and the job was done. I suppose the stye would have got better anyhow.

Once when I was playing football I went over on my ankle and it came up like a small loaf. I couldn’t put my foot to the ground and my mother said to go down to Jane Donaghy who had the charm for a sprain. Having nothing else to do except sit in the house with my foot up, I was glad of the break. I must admit that I was an unbeliever but down I went to Jane, walking on a stick which took all the weight on that side. Jane got a potato, which she cut into a number of pieces, and then she rubbed each piece gently on my foot and put them back again on the table. She then gently caressed my ankle with her cool hands and, I must say, it was soothing.

“There,” she said, “It will be better soon,” so off I hobbled again. I had to pass Hughes’ about fifty yards up the road and when I reached it I stopped to look up their street at I don’t remember what, but it must have been interesting because I forgot about my foot and when I looked down I had my toes on the ground. As I walked home I was able to put a little weight on my toes. When I told my mother about it she just said, “I told you Jane would fix it for you.”

“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio.” Shakespeare said that, I think, meaning we don’t know it all.

R
eligion played a big part in our lives when we were young. When I sat on my mother’s knee being dressed every morning I had my face washed and my hair combed. Then I had to say my prayers which were, “Mother Mary, Queen most sweet, Lead us safe to Jesus feet.”

Then one morning I said, “I can say it, Mammy.”

“All right, you say it,” she said.

And I said, “Mother Mary, Queen most sweet, Lay an egg at Jesus feet,” which shows the influence that hens already had on my life.

Hens wandered all over the farm until we eventually erected a pen. They would even sneak into the bedroom and lay an egg on the bed. Often we got a shock in the bedroom when suddenly we became aware of a beady eye watching us from the bed.

At school, when we were about seven years old, we prepared to make our First Communion. We rehearsed everything but first we had to go to confession and confess our sins to the priest. But we had to think of our sins ourselves.

So Saturday morning we all arrived at the church to go to confession. I don’t remember anything about mine, but after we had all finished and were waiting to go home, one girl called Mary Ellen suddenly got up and marched back in again. She had forgotten a sin. Shock waves passed through us. Afterwards, although we had been told not to tell each other what we had confessed, some just couldn’t keep it a secret. So the teacher’s son Patsy told us that his sins were, “I fought with Tilly, I fought with Sean and I broke the leg of Biddy’s duck.” I don’t think the Lord will ever forgive him for that.

Missionary preachers came about every two years to give us a couple of weeks hard praying and hard preaching. It seems we needed to have our fervour recharged. They had a good cop – bad cop routine. One would preach gently and softly and tell us God loved us all and we just must do our best to please Him. And the following evening his colleague would come thundering hell fire and damnation. He had a huge voice and he scared the living daylights out of me, as I took religion seriously at that time.

When we came out of the church the men usually stood around the entrance smoking. I used to be amazed that some people were not the slightest bit scared by it all. But I was.

One night the ‘bad cop’ had been preaching about impure thoughts. He meant those of a sexual nature, of course. He said the thought occurred in three stages and you were to get rid of it at the first stage, but certainly no further than the second. Afterwards, I was standing next to a man called Alec, just lighting up a cigarette, who was very witty. A pretty girl walked past him.

He turned to me and said, “That was close, Arthur. I was just in the second stage of a bad thought.” I laughed and suddenly it wasn’t so much doom and gloom as before.

Before the missions started one of the priests told us that they would endeavour to visit each house, and to facilitate this he asked people not to offer them tea or drinks as they did not have enough time for that. Then he told us a story which is worth repeating.

A priest in County Cork was giving a mission once and, like all Irishmen, he would have taken a wee dram occasionally. He had instructed the congregation that he did not have time to accept cups of tea and would they please not offer them. That evening he was out doing his rounds and the weather was dreadful, with freezing wind and rain lashing down. The housewives couldn’t help offering something hot and the first one he visited said, “Oh, Father, you must be frozen, have a nice cup of hot tea.”

“No tea,” said the priest and proceeded to do what he had to do.

The second house he visited the lady offered him hot chocolate.

“No chocolate,” he said firmly.

On the third visit the sympathetic lady welcomed him with, “Father, you must be frozen. Will you have a glass of whiskey and water?”

“No water,” he said.

Whiskey was the drink of choice but most people could not afford it. When young men and women wanted to celebrate they would go to a potin (pronounced potchin) maker who always had a few bottles ready for sale. They kept it well hidden but, if they knew you were coming, it would usually be in the thatch. The police were always on the lookout for distillers and fines were heavy and even jail sentences were severe, so a lot of energy went into evading police and many original hideouts were invented.

Shamey and I were one day in Hughes’ moss, just playing, I think, when we noticed a string running along the ground into a well. We pulled it and it was attached to a copper worm which was part of the still. The worm was a copper pipe rolled into concentric circles, through which the steaming alcohol passes and condenses.

We had an idea what it was so we let it drop back again into the well and covered up the string. We never mentioned it again – we were learning fast not to talk.

A new sergeant, Coogan, I think, came to the barracks in Coalisland, determined to stop the illicit distillations. Previously, sometimes the potin men would hide their potin in someone else’s haystack or turf stack. Then when the police realised that they hadn’t got the bootlegger they would be very frustrated, indeed.

A new law was made that if the potin was discovered on one’s land, then that person was guilty. This was very unfair and caused a lot of ill feeling between the police and the people, as a man would be sent to prison who did not know anything about the potin. After that, the distillers discontinued the practice but it was always a running battle with the police, finding a safe hiding place for the product. The smoke from the distilling fires was always a giveaway but as people would come down to work their turf they would sometimes light fires in the moss to make tea and that lessened the suspicion a trail of smoke would make.

Potin is still made to this day and some people would still tell you where you can get a good drop. One man kept his wash in a creamery can, along with those for his milk. The cans were laid out for the creamery man to collect each morning to take to Cookstown creamery. There were about six or eight cans, but he had forgotten to move the potin can the night before and, when he awoke in the morning, the creamery lorry had gone. He hastily dressed and drove to Cookstown, which was some miles away, and he was relieved to see his lorry still in the queue about third from the front. The faulty can was extracted and all was well. I’ve often wondered how the creamery would have explained hundreds of gallons of alcoholic milk.

As well as the missionary priests, religion of a different hue played a part in our lives. As the days of summer lengthened and school holidays beckoned, the sound of the Lambeg drums could be heard each evening coming from the Inn Corner just across the river. The practising would commence probably in June, in preparation for the Orange men’s marching season, and the sound would echo across the countryside and could be heard for miles.

The Orange marches which take place around twelfth July, to celebrate the victory of Protestant King Billy over the Catholic King James at the Battle of the Boyne, are a paradox because King Billy was an ally of the Pope and the Battle of the Boyne had nothing to do with religion. King Billy brought with him a papal blessing and a banner proclaiming the support of the Pope. The Pope welcomed the victory of King Billy and a pontifical high mass was celebrated in Rome in thanksgiving.

The Pope, who was a temporal prince in Italy as well as spiritual, and King Billy were united in opposition to Catholic Louis XIV of France, who had occupied part of Holland and northern Spain and was an ally of King James. So the poor old Pope has taken a bashing every July from the Orange men when he was really a friend on their side and probably contributed men and money to the defeat of King James. (This can all be confirmed on the internet.)

The Lambeg drums were not ordinary drums, but huge drums that measured about four or five feet in diameter. It took a well-built strong man to beat them and great pride was taken in the execution of this task.

The straps of the drum were placed around the drummer’s shoulders when the drum was lifted up, just like the big drum in the marching band. The drummer beat both sides of the drum with two sticks and the noise it made was deafening if you were near.

I remember being there when they marched down Thomas Street in Portadown, which was quite a narrow street and the sound was indeed loud. I imagine the drummer’s ears had a short shelf life because I had to back off pretty quickly. As the drummer moved at a snail’s pace along the street, three or four men, whom I presumed to be relief drummers, walked backwards about one or two yards in front of him and seemed to be listening intently to the drum beats. All these men were of stocky build and would need a lot of strength to carry this heavy piece of equipment and beat a very fast drum roll, as well.

It was fascinating to watch. They were very skilled and dedicated to the job in hand, even though the real purpose was to scare the life out of the Catholics. Listening to the drums on a summer evening as we went about our work became quite hypnotic in the end.

On twelfth July the marching bands set out for their different venues, all dressed up in their finery. A lot of drinking would be done, of course, and then they would go to the field set aside for the speeches which would be given, mostly, by the politicians. And the theme for day was a repeat of every other day over the years, which was “Down with the Catholics”. A politician who could think up a good bigoted, memorable phrase was well on the way to being elected.

The method was used to create a siege mentality among the proletariat and make them think the Catholics were going to take over if they didn’t turn out and vote. This scenario was pure fantasy, as the Catholics could never have a majority under the gerrymandered rules of the time. Anyway, the politicians whipped the people into a frenzy and they duly delivered them their majority. I remember the first time I was able to read the newspaper, apart from Curly Wee cartoons, I was amazed to read phrases like “A Protestant parliament for a Protestant people” coming from the minister of home affairs.

Of course, when a politician became an MP or a minister, he had to get on with the business of governing the country and all that hype was forgotten. It all seems very familiar.

My mother, who came from a more mixed Protestant and Catholic area, said everyone got on very well until election time. I suppose this was because we were all cut from the same cloth, as it were, as I remember reading a history of the British Isles by Trevellyn and discovered that in the very early times Ireland had been invaded from the south by a tribe called the Scots who settled there and also invaded Scotland, hence the name Scotland.

Arthur’s mother, Teresa, in the garden

So when my mother was a young girl during election times, her Protestant friends would be embarrassed by the bigotry of their politicians when they met their Catholic neighbours on the road and would stare at the ground rather than meet their eyes. The elections were like measles, which caused a high temperature and were no good to anyone, except the politicians who were obviously the virus.

Another annual summer event was when Eileen’s employers went off on holiday and one year she arrived home, not with Alsatians, but with a little child called Robert, the son and heir of Captain Carson and his wife. Robert was about three years old, I suppose, and we soon got used to his presence. Eileen was Nanny, Peter was Nanny’s Daddy and Jim Joe was Uncle Jim.

At the beginning, the school children would shout probably rude things at him as they passed, but Nanny told him they were just naughty boys and that’s the term he used dismissively when they were going past.

Of course, in a week or two Robert became part of Hughes’ household and was accepted, just like the donkey called Daisy, which also arrived and was installed in the front garden, presumably for Robert to ride.

We presumed wrong, however, because Daisy was in foal and one day the most beautiful little foal called Rosemarie appeared in the garden and mother and daughter became an attraction for passersby to admire.

I loved donkeys and tried to ride Daisy, but she just kicked up her heels and I went flying over her head.

When I was very young I had a craze about these pretty animals. I wanted a donkey and was told I couldn’t have one, as children have a new ‘want’ all the time and they usually pass as something else catches their eye. But my donkey longing persisted and if anyone came to the house I usually asked them if they had a donkey.

Gradually people got to know about me and would tell me stories about their donkeys. Dr. Girvan was a regular visitor with all our children’s ailments and he told me he had a blue donkey and he would surely bring it in the car next time he came.

Adults treated children like that then – promising things that would never happen. When the doctor was coming I would be out watching for the blue donkey but, of course, there would be an excuse that he forgot and that he would bring it next time, for sure.

Then I started asking Jim Joe about a donkey and he said he and I would go to the next Moy fair, which was a monthly fair in the town of Moy, and buy a donkey. Nobody told me that this would never happen so, on Moy fair morning, I was up early getting ready, not to go to school but to the fair. As I waited, and there was no sign of Jim Joe, who was going to drive us there, I went down to Hughes’ to see if he was ready. He told me his horse had thrown a shoe and he suggested that I go back and ask Daddy if he could borrow Roger’s mare.