Living in the Past: A Northern Irish Memoir (7 page)

I think from my father’s attitude I gathered that nothing was going to happen. A sad feeling came over me and I went to school instead.

Moy, or the Moy, as it is locally known, held its fair on the first Friday of every month and was once known all over Europe, I’ve been told, because of its horse fair. People came from places like Greece to purchase horses for the cavalry.

It is a village about four miles away on the Dungannon–Armagh road and straddles the Blackwater river, the main part being in Tyrone. When we were young we often got off school in order to drive the cattle to Moy fair. We would be up bright and early, breakfast eaten, faces shining and hair well combed, and we would set off about eight o’clock, two in front to run ahead and stand in gateways and at corners to steer the cattle in the right direction. Charlie, or Jim Joe, perhaps, would be behind.

We lads did all the running, which was usually only for the first mile or two as the cattle soon got tired, and we plodded the last couple of miles at a steady walk. When we turned up the final three-quarter mile road to Moy, we always dreaded meeting the fat cattle the drovers were taking to the railway station.

These were beef cattle, mostly bullocks, weighing about ten hundredweight each. I think we only had the misfortune to meet them once. They were just like in the western films, about 100 cattle filling the road and the footpaths and back as far as the eye could see. The drovers used their sticks and voices to keep them going fast so they wouldn’t have time to get into any gateways. They completely ignored approaching farmers with their half dozen calves or maybe just one cow. If a calf was caught up in the drive it would probably end up at the railway station, so we looked for a house or a field with a wide gate or gates set in from the road and got our cattle into the shelter and then made as much noise as the drovers, and tried to head off the herd as it went past.

The square in the Moy was large. The side that we came into was the cattle side and we found a convenient space that was in a good position and just stood there waiting for buyers. The cattle were now tired and gave no trouble.

The horse fair was on the other side of the square and we liked to make a sale early so that we could go and have a look at the horses – we found this much more exciting. We would watch and listen to the bargaining, which involved lots of spitting on hands, walking away then coming back again, and more slapping of hands.

The seller’s assistant would run with the horse on a short rein to show his paces. If they were horse dealers, which they usually were, then the seller would take a piece of ginger that he had been chewing, lift the horse’s tail and push it into the horse’s bum. The horse would suddenly come alive, probably buck in the air and take off at a lively pace, with the other man hanging on to the rein. Whether this impressed the buyer, I don’t know, but if the horse had a dodgy leg, the smarting rectum would take his mind off it at the time as he tried to get away from it. After a lot more spitting and slapping of hands they reached a price and the deal was done – or so we thought, but we hadn’t reckoned on the luck penny.

The luck penny would have been mentioned a few times during the negotiations. If, say the horse seller wanted £20 and the buyer was at £18, then he might walk away and come back and say, ‘I’ll give you nineteen with a pound luck penny.’ That was exactly £18 again but the luck penny would have been settled.

The luck penny, really, was a discount given by the seller and was a tradition – the seller must give the buyer a luck penny. Often, they would fight for ages over the luck penny. Maybe the buyer wanted 10 shillings luck but the seller would only offer 5 shillings luck. It would be stalemate until another man might come along who knew them both. He would drag them together and hold both their hands, slapping them together with his solution.

“Give him the 10 shilling luck and then both of you go to the pub and he’ll buy you a drink.”

The thought of the drink might just settle it as they would both be thirsty and getting ready to finish. Off they would go with their arms around each other and might not emerge for an hour or two. Then they would proceed to tell you that, “This man is the nicest man I have ever met in my life.”

If we sold our cattle it was a great relief because there is nothing so depressing as driving them home again. There is no need now to stand in gates and corners because the cattle will walk home at a good pace and we have to keep up with them. They want to get home and they remember the way.

I heard a funny tale about a couple of cattle dealers called Brian and Peter who were brothers in law, married to two pretty sisters. They travelled to all the fairs and bought perhaps a calf or two in the morning and sold it again in the evening at a profit if they could. It was a job that needed experience and judgement if they weren’t going to be left with cattle at the end of the day, which had to be driven home and put in a field until another day.

On Friday evenings they would meet in a pub in Coalisland and have a few drinks and discuss things. Brian had no family, but Peter had five little girls. Peter was a more humorous type than Brian and was always laughing and telling a joke. On this particular evening, having settled down and had a couple of drinks, the conversation took a more serious turn, when Brian asked Peter why it was that he and his wife had no success with having a family while Peter’s wife seemed to conceive if he smiled at her.

“Well,” said Peter, “You and I are in the cattle trade. I know that cows will not produce milk like they should if they are not well cared for and happy. And neither will they have calves if they are neglected and not in good health. The same rules apply to a woman and she must be cared for and cosseted by us males if we are to have a family.”

“Oh, I think I know how to take care of my wife without having to listen to you,” said Brian.

“Well, maybe you do and maybe you don’t,” said Peter. “But I’ll tell you what to do when you go home tonight and see what you think.”

“Okay, fine. Fire away.”

“First of all, go up to the chemist now and get some nice perfumed bath salts and talc and present it to your wife. Then tonight or tomorrow night when you both have had a nice long soak, you will sit in your dressing gown or negligee and have a glass of your favourite wine and relax. And then, when she is ready, your wife will get into bed and you will plant a loving kiss on her forehead.”

Peter then paused and took a long drink from his glass. Brian waited for him to continue. “Then what?” he said in the end.

“Then,” said Peter, “You send for me.”

I believe Brian wasn’t pleased with the outcome, especially as one or two people had gathered round to listen.

E
ach year tinkers would arrive in the area and stop for a week or a fortnight just over the high bridge on a quiet road that had no traffic. There were very wide grass verges along this road, so they parked their caravans or maybe just one or two tents on the grass verges, and during the day they would sit there, tap tapping away making tin cans, large and small, half pint and one pint tins, jinny lamps, which were always made of tin, and many other kitchen utensils.

Their wives or their children would go around the houses selling these goods and they were very good and didn’t leak. We’d often stand and watch them for a while as we passed by – it was fascinating seeing how deftly they cut and shaped the objects and then gently tap tapped around the edges until it was sealed. They were very skilled.

Then as suddenly as they had arrived, the tinkers would be gone and the grass would be littered with little pieces of tin.

Everything had its season. In the country we didn’t have the parks and swings and amenities that children had in the towns, but we had seasons of country pursuits. In spring it was birds’ nests. After school we went hunting for birds’ nests: along the hedgerows for blackbirds and thrushes, under the thatch for sparrows and starlings, among the heather for larks, which were difficult to find and we mostly stumbled on them by chance, as they laid their eggs on the ground and were well camouflaged.

The first wren’s nest I found impressed me very much. It was so well constructed. It was completely round with a tiny hole just big enough to insert one finger. It was very soft and made of little feathers, hairs and moss, I think. We had to learn not to touch the nests and not visit them often, otherwise the bird would forsake it and build another one elsewhere.

The blackbird’s nest was made of hay, straw and grass, all coiled around and around, and the thrush’s was plastered inside with dried clay just like hard wall. On the ground we might find a curlew’s nest or a peewit or lapwing. I remember bringing tea down to Charlie, who was cutting rushes in the bog, and there was a nest of young curlews, just hatched, and running around all over the place. They were smaller than day old chicks but resembled tiny turkeys covered with black spots on an orange background. That’s how I remember them.

The Brilla was full or corncrakes. My brother Shamey and I would chase them through the meadows and they would lead us a merry dance. We’d hear them croaking right beside us, very loud, and would dash over there but, of course, they wouldn’t be there but would suddenly crake again much further away.

We could find their little runs in the tall meadow grass. Of course, we wanted to find their nests, but we never did. I think they were probably deliberately coming close, calling to us and drawing us away as we were getting too close – the same tactics as those employed by the larks, pretending their wings were broken. We rarely saw a corncrake, as they kept under cover, but we heard them all right. At night they set up such a din, we could hear them in our house.

One night my father came home and said, “Come out and listen to this.” It was a very still summer night and we all went out onto the street to listen. It was like a massive orchestra of corncrakes coming from all directions.

Some nights it would be the frogs coming from what was once a tributary of the Blackwater River, now turned into a swamp containing thousands of frogs, and the noise they made travelled for miles on a still night.

Rats were a great threat around the farm. We didn’t like mice but we hated rats. Every dog and every man hated rats. One rat could destroy more in a barn than a dozen mice because, where the mice would make a small hole in the base of a sack, a rat would rip it apart from top to bottom, and a ten stone sack of flour, or a two hundredweight bag of cow meal would be destroyed.

We had a Wheaten Terrier dog called Jack and he had a brain and could think, as I found out. The street in front of our house was almost twenty metres long, running downhill. Pipes were laid from a sort of well at the top side, running under the street until it emerged at the hayshed about thirty metres away, where the water poured out and ran down the hill.

There was a rat which I think was attracted to the hens’ food in the top garden and Jack had chased it once or twice. But it jumped into the ditch and disappeared into the water pipe under the street and reappeared in safety, way down the hill. Then one evening I heard Jack after the rat and ran up in time to see the rat and Jack drop into the ditch. The rat was making for the escape tunnel and disappeared down the pipe but, instead of Jack sticking his head into the pipe as he had done before, he took off down the street with me at his heels. He flung himself on top of the pipe exit and in seconds out came the rat and wham! that was the end. Dogs have instinct but it took a reasoning brain to work that one out.

Of course, if I told anyone that at the time, no one would really believe it because we all loved to tell a yarn and make it better than it was. So, apart from my family, I told no one.

Another dog which I must mention in despatches is Sport. He was a black and white collie with a few greenish spots as well. When the threshing machine came it was usually a big date for boys and their dogs, for we all knew that underneath those hay ricks the rats would have nested and they all had to be killed. Not one could be left because it would breed and propagate dozens of rats.

As we got almost down to the bottom rows of sheaves which, underneath had dry branches and leaves and rats’ nests, usually there were lots of boys’ dogs around the rick waiting. But I think there was another threshing going on somewhere and we had only our Sport.

Our rick had been placed by someone with foresight about ten to fifteen paces from the ditch, which was just full of stinking black muck. We knew they would soon make a run for it and, suddenly, rats came out in a burst and headed for the ditch. Sport was amongst them in a flash and seemed to kill them instantly and go for another. He killed six before they reached the ditch but they were close then when we saw the seventh. We roared at Sport but he was already in the air and he threw himself on the rat as it went into the ditch. They both disappeared into the thick black muck.

“He missed it,” somebody said. “It’s gone.”

‘“Well, it was impossible,” I said.

Sport started to crawl back up the bank. He was just a thick mass of black sticky slime. We couldn’t see the shape of him; we could only guess where his head was. We got a piece of straw and we wiped what seemed to be his head and cleared his eyes and then his face and there, still in his mouth, was the rat which he deposited on the grass. Job done.

We also had a big grey tom cat that looked just like a tiger cub. It was very useful as it kept mice and rats at bay. My father kept it in the barn loft at night among the bags of cattle feed and nothing dared come in while the cat was in charge. Then one day it committed a great sin of killing a chicken.

The hens and their chicks just wandered around the yard and the fields and were very vulnerable, but the cat had seemed to know that they were to be left alone. Once a cat takes a young chick it would take them all until none were left. You either killed the cat or got rid of it. But who would take it? Not a farmer.

The driver of the lorry that delivered our cattle feed from the wholesaler in Dungannon was having a cup of tea in the house when my mother happened to mention the cat.

“Well,” he said, “we’re having a lot of trouble with rats in the warehouse and if it’s as good as you say I’ll take it with me.”

So he put the cat in a sack and put it in the lorry. The next time he came he said the cat had settled in well and had cleared the rats. He saw it walking along the rafters in the roof hunting sometimes. Everybody fed it and made a fuss of it.

For a while we enquired about Tom, but as the weeks passed we forgot about him. Dungannon is about seven miles from our house and we didn’t expect to see him again until one morning, about six months after we had given him away, he strolled into the byre at milking time and joined the other cats waiting for a drink of milk. We stared in disbelief and ran into the house to tell the news. Everyone came to see and couldn’t believe their eyes. It was like seeing an apparition after all this time.

My mother was in a quandary. It was autumn and there were no chicks about until the spring. So she allowed him back into his usual haunts in the barn loft. When the lorry man next arrived he said the cat had disappeared about a month ago and they thought he may have been killed by a car on the main road outside. When he suggested he take him again my mother told him to rub the cat’s feet with butter which he said he would do.

He later reported that the cat had settled down again and this time he didn’t come back. But one morning a white cat appeared at our hearth when we were getting ready for school. I was putting on my boots by the side of the fire and there it was, almost creamy coloured, sitting washing its face in front of the fire. Of course, we were all excited about the cat. No one had seen it come in and it seemed quite at home. From that time we began to have a lot of good luck and we put it all down to the cat. My sister Elizabeth won a ton of coal in a raffle, I won a pair of short trousers for a ha’penny in a raffle at school. Someone else won the top money prize in the parish raffle and so on. Then the cat disappeared again and the winning streak ended. Of course, we all said it was a magic cat.

Summer is a busy time on a farm, but it had its compensations as meal times, when working in the meadows, were very special, especially for young people who were always hungry. About midday we would start glancing up towards the house which was just visible searching for someone coming with the food. Eventually someone would arrive carrying a big can of tea and a basket of boiled eggs and soda bread, among other things.

We usually sat along the river bank on the hay where we could look at the little waves and ripples and watch the moorhens and ducks go drifting by. Everyone would be famished and the boiled eggs and freshly made butter and soda bread were delicious.

Grasshoppers were a nuisance as there seemed to be hundreds of them around, hopping on the bread and everything. We just flicked them off and carried on. Afterwards, when most of the men lit their cigarettes, we’d just sit and rest for a while. I remember once we had a young man called Mick McCann who was a beautiful singer. My sister, Mary, asked Mick to sing and he didn’t need to be asked twice. He sang a hit song at the time, it was called “Arm in Arm Together” and it was beautiful. Mick became very popular as a guest artist around the dance halls in the parish.

Then it was everybody back to work until evening, when swallows and swifts would start flying over the meadows in their hundreds looking for their evening meals of insects. When we saw them we knew we would soon be going home. It would be a weary bunch of young legs that plodded the mile home and everyone slept soundly that night.

If there was school next morning my mother would have difficulty getting us up and ready. I’m sure that morning we would all be late and it depended on the mood of the Mistress whether we got caned or not. Elizabeth said she would always use the cane if she was wearing her brown shoes. I don’t know how accurate that was.

Halfway to school we always met Jinny, an old lady coming from the school pump with a bucket of water. We would ask Jinny what time it was and she would always say nine o’clock. We always hoped she would say five to nine, but she never did.

Autumn was blackberry season and gathering these fruits was a way of making money. Every afternoon, after school, we would all be out blackberrying. There were lots of brambles about the hedges but there were many pickers and we would often go into fields and find that someone had been there before us. But on good days we would find an abundance and quickly fill our cans. There was a man called Mr. Carberry who called each week. He would hang the can of fruit on his hand held scales and give us about a shilling or whatever it was worth. But first, if he saw the juice at the top of the can, he would pour it off onto the road because pouring water onto the blackberries was a great way to increase the weight.

I remember coming past a house once after Mr. Carberry had been there and the road was a beautiful pink where he had poured what must have been about a gallon of juice and it had run down the brae making it all look like fairyland.

There was one lady who was the nearest to a professional picker in the district. She would be out at dawn every day except Sunday and she was called Ally. If Ally had been there before you there would be nothing left.

The season lasted about two months and like everything else it came to an end. Sometimes, when a gang of us came upon Ally, we used to shout, “Ally, Ally, Ally,” very fast in unison. She would look up and shout, “What are you Allying about? Does Ally owe you anything?”

She lived with her sister, Mary, who was adept at reading tea leaves. If Mary came into anyone’s house it wouldn’t be long until a cup of tea was in her hand. One day she was in the shop and Elizabeth asked her to read her cup. Among other things she said that there was going to be an accident outside, and a few minutes later a boy called Tom McMahon was hit on the face with a stick and was brought in bleeding. This enhanced Mary’s reputation enormously.

People made a living as best they could. The poor families were kept alive and one way or another got enough to eat. Many of the men worked for the peat company. The reclaimed bog around where we lived was called the moss and was dry except for parts where the turf had been extracted every year until it was below the water table. A very large portion of it belonged the peat company. William Robert Abraham was its manager and the men who cut the turf for Abraham, as he was commonly referred to, were on piece work and were paid by the chain which was twenty-two yards long (20.12 metres).

If the turf was cut downwards, across the grain of vegetation that it once was, then it was called cutting turf and a special two-sided spade was used, and each turf was thrown to a capper who caught it and placed it back in a row to dry.