by Leon Uris
I remember May Day bonfires and Midsummer's Night revelry where everyone strained for the voice of the cuckoo which would foretell a good corn harvest and Halloween, the grandest of them all, for the potatoes were up, the rent was paid and the whole countryside was alive with banshees and fairies and ghosts and headless horsemen.
And then winter would come again.
*
Of all the things I remember of Ballyutogue, nothing warms my heart more than an annual event that came into being because of the famine. In those blue months of midsummer when we waited for the first harvest, it was quite possible to go hungry. After the famine Kilty Larkin made a successful negotiation with the Hubbles for some of the wrack rights in the lough.
The entire village — men, women and children — moved down to the coast and set up primitive housing in an abandoned fishing village along the shore.
Daddo Friel told us that before the famine the seaweed harvesters would work naked, which was both practical and comfortable. However, the good priests took over blessing this enterprise and naturally we had to preserve our morals, so the only thing bare any more was our feet.
As Conor and I grew older we were allowed to use the knives, scythes and specially sharpened hoes. Yards upon yards of coiled rope were readied on the shore. When low tide came we moved out in curraghs to the offshore kelp beds towing a raft behind every two boats.
As they had worked their fields side by side all their lives, Tomas and Fergus labored in adjoining curraghs to cut loose and pile kelp on the raft. Colm worked with Daddy, and Liam, Conor and me did a man-size job between the three of us alongside Tomas. Soon the rafts would be running back and forth to be beached. The piles of seaweed were tied, then dragged by hand over the soft sand to firmer ground where the cart wheels wouldn't sink under the weight. Carts and ass creels were loaded and the weed carried to a long stone wall to be shaken out and laid over to dry. Before Kilty became infirm, he was in charge of that part of the operation. Kilty and the older villagers rummaged through the drying kelp, picking out thousands of trapped cockles and mussels, and separated the seaweed by its variety and use.
At the same time my ma and Finola and Brigid went out into waist-deep water to harvest kelp that had been tossed up by the storms, cutting it loose and carrying it back and forth with all they could hold in their arms.
If low tide came during the night, everyone worked by lantern light. When the shoreside harvest was completed and the sea calm, we'd go out with our daddies as part of sixteen-curragh teams into the deeper water and cut loose an entire bed and drag it ashore like a waterlogged whale.
Part of the wrack rights included taking shellfish. Throughout the night, parties of boys and girls dug for clams and scallops and oysters and chipped mussels off the rocks. This was the part Conor and I liked best because we'd choose our girls weeks in advance. There was Alanna one year, she was the first I ever kissed, and Lissy . . . we did more than that. There was Brendt O'Malley, who did about everything, so I even shared her with Conor. Father Lynch and Father Cluny tried to watch the clam digs but we had perfected ingenious methods of decoying them up blind alleys. As they observed us, we observed them and had so refined our bird call signals, you couldn't tell most of us from a robin. The digs were the best part of the wracking but confessions went on afterward for weeks.
Separating the kelp was a great and messy chore. Some of it was used for animal fodder, some for making iodine and some for fertilizer. There was edible seaweed that my ma mixed with potatoes and another type that could be jellied to thicken the milk and butter.
Oily fires smoked along the coast to burn the weed down and boil it for use in making soap and bleach, and yet other kelp was watered down to preserve the shellfish. Shells were crushed and made into whitewash. A few weeks after the wracking was done our cottages gleamed with new coats.
After clam digging with the girls the feasting was best Those who had survived the famine still had the bitter taste of seaweed and shellfish in their mouths. Loathing famine food was traditional and remained with us all our lives but in the blue months it was the difference between a full or empty belly. Besides, not having lived through the famine, I wouldn't mind dying with the smell filling my nostrils that came from the great cauldrons of boiling cockles.
The kelp was slimy and the water dirty and sticky and the stink from the burning as bad as rotting flax. It was the lowest kind of croppy work, yet recalling the nights under the lanterns and sleeping on the sand with the girls, it was also our first step into the world of men and women in love.
We did so many things together in Ballyutogue. We prayed together and farmed together. The joy at birth, the tears of weddings and the wailings of anguish at death were all a communal affair. But nothing again in my life was as dear as the harvesting of the wrack.
I wrote a lot of this to my brother Ed. I know he had experienced it all when he was a kid, but seeing as he had been in America so long, he may have forgotten and I thought he might like to remember.
CHAPTER SEVEN
My brother Ed wrote he was very happy to receive my letter and proud I was getting an education. He said it was very important, particularly if I ever intended emigrating. Ed asked me for more letters and in the last paragraph offered to send me books from America. Well, that was like putting poteen before the village drunk because books were scarce as winter sun.
Conor and I discussed the matter heavily because receiving the kind of books we hungered after wouldn't be all that easy. As soon as a package arrived from America everyone in the village knew about it. It would take about ten minutes for Father Lynch to come nosing around. In my case he would demand to see the books, take them, burn them and preach a damnation on Sunday.
Conor and I, therefore, devised a desperate plan. Conor didn't exactly like the idea but decided to go along with me because the bait of books was too tempting.
He visited with Mr. Ingram regularly once a fortnight and had already read some of the early Irish writers like Edmund Burke on the French Revolution and Oliver Goldsmith and Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels. In fact, Conor could just about out read anyone except Mr. Ingram.
We went to the school at a time we knew he would be there alone and sure enough he was in his office correcting papers. He smiled and said, "Hello, lads," and shoved his work aside. "What's the occasion?"
"An extremely important matter, sir," I answered, handing him the letter from Ed. "Concerning the last paragraph."
"Well, well, books from America. That is exciting. You'll be coming into great wealth, Seamus."
"Aye, and we'll be needing your help to suggest what he ought to send," I said.
"I'll be happy."
"However, there's a slight problem," I said. "If I get a package, Father Lynch will be knocking at the door no sooner than it arrives."
"There's almost nothing we're allowed to read," Conor said.
"I see. Well then, we'd better figure out a way to get around that," Mr. Ingram said, smiling, ". . . unless you've already thought of something."
Both of us shifted about, scratching our heads sincerely, trying to make the best of our limited abilities as liars. "Can't imagine how," I said.
"Well now, let me see. How about if Ed sends the books to me?"
Conor and I beamed on cue. "Oh, that's a grand idea, why didn't I think of it?" I said. "But we wouldn't want you to get into any trouble," I added quickly.
"What kind of trouble could I get into?" he asked.
"Father Lynch will go into a fury if he ever finds out," Conor said.
"Seems I've alienated every Protestant minister in the district. I might as well make it unanimous," he said.
Conor was acting strange all the way down to the school and I had a feeling he was going to botch things up. "No, we can't do it," he said. "If Father Lynch finds out he'll never let another kid come to the school again and we can't be responsible for something like that."
"I have to disagree with you,
Conor," Mr. Ingram answered. "If he does that it's his responsibility and not yours."
"Nae, it would be wrong," Conor said.
"The only thing wrong is submitting to tyranny. You've a right to inquire into anything you want to."
"No, I don't."
"You do. You were born with it, now don't surrender it that easily."
"There's another problem," Conor said. "If the Orangemen find out, they'll turn you out of here."
"Seems like we have an awful lot of problems," Andrew Ingram answered. "Fortunately they don't have the slightest idea of what exists inside of a book cover. I suspect you want books on Ireland."
Conor and I exchanged glances. "As a matter of fact . . ." I said, with my voice squealing clear off the track.
He just sort of leaned back in his chair, grinning. "You boys wouldn't be thinking in terms of a little insurrectionist literature?"
"Oh no, sir, no, sir, not at all, sir," I said.
"That's exactly what we want," Conor corrected.
"Done," Mr. Ingram said.
I guess we must have just stood there gawking. Mr. Ingram returned to correcting his papers, then looked up at us. "Is there anything else?" he asked.
We shook our heads.
"Then kindly draw the door to on your way out."
Entering into a dire conspiracy with us, Mr. Ingram personally wrote to Ed, and in late spring four treasured books arrived from America, including the autobiography of Theobald Wolfe Tone, as well as The Rising of the Moon, a volume of revolutionary songs and readings.
*
Tomas had had a small streak of bad luck with crops and several litters of pigs pinching the family finances so that Conor's job at the forge was all the more important. Nonetheless, his concern over Conor's drifting from the land and the home deepened. Liam was doing almost all of his chores now, so that between the forge and keeping his face in a book, breaking his eyes by candlelight, Conor was becoming like a stranger in the house. It was traditional that the youngest son (being Liam) go up into the mountains to shepherd during the summer while the oldest worked with the father. A problem was in the making and I was there the night Tomas reached his decision.
"I'm keeping Liam on the farm with me," he announced abruptly. "Conor, you're to go up to the booley house with the livestock."
Conor was stunned. "But why!"
"Because you've proved yourself less than useless around here."
"But, Daddy, what about my job at the forge!"
"I've spoken to Mr. Lambe. He'll take you back on a part-time basis provided you come down from the pasture remembering you're a farmer first. Otherwise, forget about being a blacksmith altogether."
Oh, Tomas was being hard like I'd never seen him. It was obvious that Conor was being sent to purgatory as punishment. There could be no doubt at all that his daddy's words were final. He just stood there pale, his world all crashed down on him with the threat of losing his job as well. Tomas had calculated it was frightening enough to snap him back into line.
"Is it all clear, Conor?"
"Aye," he said, pushing his way from the table and leaving the cottage.
I caught him down the road and spun him around. "Let me go," he snapped.
"Don't you see it!" I cried.
"I see it all right. I see what he's trying to do."
"Oh, Conor, my God, sometimes I think you're stupid as an Orangeman. Look, man, here we are with four new books plus the pickings of Mr. Ingram's entire library and a whole summer up at the booley house by ourselves. We can read our arses off with nobody to bother us and no secret hiding places!"
"Oh, Jaysus, runt, I never thought about that!" He flung his arms around me, nearly knocking my head to the ground. "Let's get down to Mr. Ingram in the morning and pick the rest of the books!"
We were the happiest two kids on Inishowen when we packed the ass cart with provisions, pretending to be sad and making certain our books were well hidden, for Tomas would be seeing us up to the booley house.
Conor and Tomas rode the nags out of Ballyutogue, droving the sheep and cows with the dogs scampering about in a tight circle. I brought up the rear in the cart. We moved inland, due west, past the thick belt of high bogs in country that changed from rolling hills to mountains. It would take us three days if all went well.
I don't believe Tomas and Conor exchanged a dozen words till the third day when we skirted the foothills of Crocknamaddy and began to rise toward the booley house, which sat in a saddle between Slieve Sneigh and Slieve Main at a height of fifteen hundred feet. Our party climbed under the watchful escort of circling sparrow hawks and golden eagles.
The booley house rested in the shade of a fine grove of larch before a stream which found its way down from Slieve Sneigh. It was a wee circular affair, about eighteen feet in diameter, built in the beehive manner by stacking corbeled stones without mortar and covered by a sod roof. A souterrain adjoined the booley house for storage.
We chased out the nesting bats, then unloaded bedding, pots and pans, a churn, tools, some traps and fishing gear, candles, some sacks of potatoes, dried beans and oats. There was always enough turf left from the previous year to get a new fire started and keep it smoored until we could clamp and dry another batch.
While Tomas made the fire, Conor and I paced off a hundred and seventy-four paces parallel to the stream, which led into a thick growth of gorse, and we shoveled to uncover a cache of arms. All the weapons were found clean and dry, well wrapped and greased. I selected a shotgun and Conor, who was the better marksman, chose a small-caliber rifle. We rewrapped the rest of the arms with great care and set them back into the hiding place. As it turned dark we hobbled the horses, cleaned up our weapons, ate, and bedded down weary.
In the morning Tomas inspected the meadow with us. The bent grass was thick and mixed with wildflowers. Along the stream clumps of bracken, gorse and young heather would be fine for feeding the sheep. A number of still ponds which had been dug by hand and renewed each year seemed to be running full with fish.
A dozen or more dilapidated buildings were interspersed about the meadow. When we were wee wanes Daddo Friel told us these were homes of fairies who had been angels once and were evicted from heaven for their pranks. Later, when we were growing, he told us it was most likely an encampment of Finn MacCool and later yet he identified them as ruins from Viking invasions. More than likely they were nothing but old booley houses of our ancestors.
Our booley house was in fine condition, needing but a few days' work, mostly sod scraws for the roof. Conor and I went to a small surface bog nearby and examined it. It was very soggy so we reckoned our first major chore after repairing the booley house would be to clamp the summer's turf for drying.
When we returned, Tomas had the horses tethered behind the ass cart ready to return to Ballyutogue. As we went to say good-by to him, we could see his face straining in leashed anger. All our books, the four from America and four from Mr. Ingram, were in plain sight inside the cart. We stared at them in horror!
"Did you think that after fifty years as a farmer I couldn't tell the weight of a sack of beans?" he said, revealing their biding place. The both of us were too scared to defend our shattered world for the moment.
"Why did you try to do this behind my back?"
Conor became calm as he always did when the ground got muddy. "I thought you wouldn't understand," he said.
"I understand that your head's out there in the stars when there's enough troubles right down here."
"Maybe out there is the only place to find the answers," he said.
"Where do you think this road is going to carry you, Conor? It never took any of us any place but to the hanging tree. You're digging with the wrong foot, boy, and you're making yourself a hell on earth. You'd better spend your time up here thinking about a lot of things before you come back."
Tomas stepped up to the cart seat, slapped the donkey on the rump and it rolled. Conor dashed around and grabbed the bridle. "Whe
n you get home, you be sending Liam back here because I’ll be gone!"
Tomas was down in an instant. The back of his hand slammed into Conor's face, knocking him sprawling to the ground. I ran to Conor and laid over him so he wouldn't be hit again with Tomas towering over us raging and Conor looking up, his mouth and nose spurting blood. I swear that one was just as fearful as the other. Tomas Larkin broke first. He walked back to the cart, stood a full three minutes, then reached in and threw the books out to the ground.
"Daddy!" Conor cried, running to his father and flinging his arms around him. Only this time it was Tomas who stood like stone, taking his son's arms away from him and getting into the cart.
"Make sure you've got a kill before you shoot. Don't use up all your ammunition the first week. I'll see you in the autumn."
And then he was gone.
CHAPTER EIGHT
After repairing the booley house and clamping turf, we set in our food supply. There would be a never ending supply of fresh milk from the herd, which we could sour or churn to mix with potatoes as well as a crude cheese made from sheep's milk. We foraged like stone age settlers, gathering sacks of mushrooms which grew wild in the damp earth beneath the conifer stands. Three or four different varieties of heath berries were worth eating when mixed with cream, and thousands of edible snails inhabited the edges of the ponds. After picking beans from the gorse pods, we tried the luck of the fish. Trout and roach were hitting up to two feet long. Our first catches were filleted and salted for the days when they wouldn't be biting and the bones and guts were left in the sun to draw maggots for bait.
Conor set snares for hare and red squirrel which we also hunted by gun with some luck. With the souterrain stocking up, we settled down with our books in the company of jackdaws, magpies and ravens happily scavenging the camp, keeping it clean and getting friendlier every day so's they'd soon be eating out of our hands.
