by Charles Egan
Chapter Thirty One
Tyrawly Herald, July 1847:
Belmullet it would appear is a doomed town. As matters stand at present, fever is committing dreadful havoc amongst the inhabitants of this small town, and the fame of its diseased state is quite sufficient to deter strangers from entering within its dread precincts. Remote and isolated to a certain extent as this town is, we cannot but apprehend that the most fearful consequences must have to be recorded in that locality.
Mr. Luke RyanC/o Pennsylvania Railroad
CarrigardMarket Street
KilduffHarrisburg
Co. MayoPennsylvania
IrelandUnited States of America
June 21, 1847
My Dear Luke,
I thought it better to write to you again following my last letter, though I have received no answer from you since. I know the post takes long enough though. Since I wrote, we have received further news from fellows coming here from Ireland, and I felt I had to pass it on to you, should you decide to come to America.
It now appears that many of the American ports are closed to ships coming from Ireland. This has made things harder for families crossing the Atlantic. Many ships sail direct to Canadian ports, the most for Quebec. We have all heard terrible stories of Quebec, and all here would like to see you arrive alive. I understand that fever rages in that city, and so my advice would be to get out of it as soon as you can.
It may be hard for you to travel down to the United States in the winter though. There are some fellows from Crossmolina here working with us who travelled down that way. They reckon your best plan would be to work some months in the Canadian forests.
The winter is the season for cutting, and if you are still as strong as I remember you, you will be able to make good money there. They tell me there are many logging camps on the Bonnechere river, and there is good employment to be had there. The Bonnechere forests are owned by a Galway man of the name of John Egan. Many of the fellows here worked for him before they came down to Pennsylvania. From all we hear, he is a tough man. He is held to be the richest man in Canada, and he did not come to that through being easy on his workers. You will find though that by working in the forests you will make enough money to come south, since you will have nothing to spend it on all winter.
In the spring or summer, they say you should be able to travel down the Champlain river, perhaps travelling with the logs to earn pay. Lake Champlain is where the border with the United States lies. Then you will follow the Champlain canal to the Hudson river and so down to New York. From there you can take a train down to Philadelphia and on out to Harrisburg.
You may already have decided not to come to America, and if not, you might pass this letter on to anyone else who may be thinking of it,
Your old friend,
Martin Farrelly
‘Isn’t it great that he can tell you everything,’ Eleanor said over dinner.
‘It is,’ Luke said, ‘and he not even knowing whether I was coming or not.’
‘He’ll know soon enough,’ Michael said. ‘Your letter will be there by now, I’d say.’
‘He didn’t know which way I was going to go either. But he tells us all about Quebec in the letter. It was as if he knew what we were thinking.’
‘It only says what we know already,’ Michael said. ‘Quebec is the only way in. He knows that as well as we do.’
Winnie glanced up from her plate, concerned. ‘But working the winter in Canada,’ she said. ‘It’s awful cold, from what I hear.’
Luke winced, thinking of other cold places. Lisnadee, Croghancoe. Don’t be silly, he told himself. That was hunger, this is about tough men working hard in logging camps. Not the same thing.
‘Arra, he’ll have no problem,’ Michael said. ‘He’s a tough fellow, and hard work never killed any man. It’ll keep him warm too.’
‘But he’s talking about months,’ Eleanor said.
‘Yes,’ Luke said, ‘but what of it? In fact, the timing might be very nice. When is our baby to be born?’
‘Sometime in the Spring,’ Winnie answered. ‘It’s hard to say.’
‘Aye, and you’ll need another month or two to settle down. By then the winter storms will be over, and I’ll be well down to Pennsylvania and working hard for good money. June or July will be the time to travel. Don’t worry about it my love, it will all work out.’
Yes, he thought. If Philadelphia is letting in the Irish ships by then. What if they don’t? Bring Winnie and the baby in by Quebec and down the logging rivers? To hell with it, we’ll think about that when we have to.
‘How will we stand it,’ she asked him that night. ‘We said we’d never be apart, and now…’
‘It’s like we said, a ghrá. There’s no other way.’
‘I know, I know, but I still won’t be able to rest easy until we’re together again.’
‘Don’t worry. That day will be soon enough coming.’
It was late morning on Sunday when Pat arrived. He had come from Knockanure with a horse and cart, and Eleanor was startled to see that there was someone else in the cart.
‘Sarah!’ Winnie said. ‘It’s Sarah.’ She turned to Eleanor, whispering. ‘Didn’t I tell you there was something between them.’
Pat jumped down from the cart. He led the horse into the haggard, and tied it to the wooden bar outside the cowshed. He held his hand out for Sarah. They both walked into the kitchen.
‘I’m sorry taking you by surprise like this, Mother.’
‘And so you should be,’ Winnie said. ‘If we had known there was quality coming, we’d have been more prepared.’
‘Would you go on out of that,’ Pat said. ‘Quality indeed. I’d like you to meet Sarah. She works with me in the office. She knows Luke, she wanted to meet him again before he goes.’
Eleanor was recovering her composure. ‘And that’s the only reason you brought her over, I suppose?’
‘Well, yes, I mean no. I thought you’d like to meet her anyhow.’
‘Of course I would,’ Eleanor said. ‘You’re very welcome to our little cottage,’ she said to Sarah. ‘Not quite what you’re used to, I’m sure, but we do the best we can.’
‘I’m happy to meet you,’ Sarah said.
‘Yes, yes. Well, sit down here, and we’ll see what we can get you. Winnie – do we have any of that tea left?’
As Winnie started to busy herself with brown bread and very expensive tea, Eleanor went behind the blanket, and led Brigid in by the hand. The child looked into Sarah’s face, puzzled at first.
‘That’s Sarah, Brigid,’ Winnie said. Eleanor waited. Then Brigid held her arms up.
Sarah lifted her onto her knee. ‘My goodness, aren’t you the big girl.’
Brigid put her hand up to Sarah’s face, feeling her nose and cheek and mouth.
‘Sarah,’ she said.
Eleanor was pouring the tea. ‘Come on now,’ she said to Pat. ‘Aren’t you going to tell us about Sarah.’
‘Oh yes…Sarah here knew Luke well, she used to meet him whenever he came through Knockanure. She’d heard about him going to America, so when I told her I was going over, she wanted to come too.’
Eleanor glanced over at Winnie, who winked back at her.
‘Isn’t it very kind of her,’ Eleanor said. ‘I’m sure Luke would be delighted to see you.’
‘And talking of Luke, where is he?’ Pat asked.
‘They’re up the top field,’ Winnie answered. ‘Good drying, they’ve been out since early.’
‘Hadn’t you better go up and see them,’ Eleanor said.
‘I thought I’d better stay here with Sarah.’
‘Would you go on out of that,’ Eleanor said. ‘What are you worried about, do you think we’re going to eat her?’
‘Well, no, but…’
> ‘Go on, and stop worrying.’
He left.
Sarah was not worried. She was still playing with the child in her lap. One thing that was clear was that Brigid was well fed and well dressed. It was clear too that no-one else in the room had eaten enough over the past year, but Brigid had. This was something she had seen in children before, even in the Workhouse. Especially in the Workhouse. Parents coming in, half-starved themselves, brought in children who were far better fed than themselves. Not that that lasted very long once they were inside.
She remembered that Pat had mentioned about a cousin of his dying in childbirth, and that his mother was rearing the child. But as they told her about Sabina and Kitty too, she was beginning to realise that it was not only Eleanor who was rearing Brigid.
Later, when they told her of their plans for Brigid, she was taken aback. Neither her mother or father had any such ambitions for her. Yet here she was in a tiny cottage, in the midst of the worst famine the country had ever known, and these women were talking about education, teaching colleges and other ambitions for a child who was not two years old.
‘But how will ye do this?’ she asked. ‘Where will all the money come from? Most people have enough trouble feeding, let alone be thinking of teaching girls to be teachers.’
Eleanor changed the subject. The subject of money was something Sarah could work out herself.
‘What do you think of Luke going?’ she asked. ‘Did it surprise you?’
‘It did,’ Sarah answered. ‘I could never understand it, I still can’t. I thought he was going to be a farmer. What reason would he have for leaving?’
‘There were a lot of reasons,’ Eleanor replied. ‘In one way, Luke was lucky enough. He didn’t have to work here for very long before he went to Knockanure and Brockagh. Mind you, the few days he worked on the Works here – from here to the bridge below – were long enough. He was working on the Selection for the first day, taking on some people, refusing others, his own friends and cousins. It was a very bitter time. So when he was told he was needed in Knockanure, it was a relief to him, he thought he would be better getting out of the way for a while.’
‘I can understand that,’ Sarah said.
‘Yes,’ Eleanor said. ‘But from all we hear, it was worse around Brockagh. Winnie has been telling us all about it. Luke won’t say a word, I don’t know why, but the winter must have been terrible.’
‘It was,’ Sarah said. ‘It was bad in the Workhouse, but Pat – he told me what Luke had told him about the mountains – I couldn’t believe it at first.’
Eleanor started taking potatoes over to the basin and washing them. Sarah joined her.
‘There’s no need for that, child.’
‘Sure I’m well used to it in the Workhouse.’
Winnie went out for water, filled the pot, and swung it out over the fire to boil.
‘So tell me the rest of it,’ Sarah asked. ‘What happened when he came home?’
‘Well, it all seemed alright for a while after. There were a lot of people around that wouldn’t speak to him nor to Winnie neither. But then, there were the Clanowen evictions in Gort na Móna, you knew about that?’
‘Of course I did,’ Sarah replied. ‘Didn’t I see it in the Workhouse myself. Hundreds of them. It was a terrible thing.’
‘It was,’ Winnie said. ‘There was a lot of bitterness about Gort na Móna. It was the one of the main things that decided Luke to go to America.’
‘But why? Surely he wasn’t afraid of being evicted?’
‘No, no, it wasn’t that at all,’ Winnie said. ‘You see, we had Ellen Morrisroe and her three children staying with us, after they’d all been evicted. Then Luke took her to Knockanure, and afterwards she went to the Workhouse. She’s dead now, I believe. But while she was staying with us, she wouldn’t even talk to him. She held that he had killed her husband.’
‘How could he have done that?’
‘Well, he didn’t, of course,’ Eleanor said, before Winnie could reply. ‘What he did do was to refuse her husband for the Relief Works. There was a rule that a man had to have four children before he could work on Relief around Carrigard. Luke had to refuse him. He had no choice, but Ellen could never see it that way. All she saw was that her man had been refused, and when he went home, he’d caught the fever.’
‘But that was fever, not hunger. Wouldn’t he have got fever anyhow.’
‘I don’t know about that,’ Eleanor said. ‘Some say the hunger brings the fever, I just don’t know.’
‘But to blame Luke…’
‘Yes, it’s unfair. But we never know how people think. You see, we’re proud people here. Too proud. A man is ashamed if he can’t feed his own children. And to have to beg, whether for work or for soup, that’s worse, much worse. But to stoop to begging and to be refused, that’s enough to break any man. No, I understand the bitterness, I understand it too well.’
‘And what do you think?’ Sarah asked. ‘Was Luke right in what he did?’
‘Like I say, the decision wasn’t his. There just wasn’t the work or the food for everyone. But Luke was always a good lad. He didn’t have to stay back – he could have earned three times the wages on the railways in England, but he wouldn’t do that. He wanted to stay here in Mayo. They needed men like him on the Works. He reckoned it was his duty, and now he’s paying the price for it.’
‘Yes,’ Sarah said, thoughtfully. ‘And he won’t be the only one. Most of the people who helped on Relief or the Soup Kitchens, they’re going now. The clerks, the gangers, the supervisors, the women cooking the soup. They couldn’t do enough, no one could, but they’re being blamed for what they couldn’t do. I’m not saying they’re all saints, but one way or another they’ll all be blamed for the sins of the few – the preachers and the gombeen men. And all because they couldn’t get the food to feed the people.’
Winnie had been thinking of what Luke had told her about the Battle of Lord Sligo’s wall. Glorious for some, shaming for others. Killing a man. There were other reasons why Luke wanted to leave, and neither Eleanor nor Sarah knew about them. It was as well to leave it that way.
‘If the Government had spent enough on food, there’d have been no need for hunger,’ she said. ‘Or emigration. Or evictions.’
‘That’s true,’ Eleanor said, surprised at the anger in Winnie’s voice.
‘And what about Father Reilly,’ Winnie said. ‘Many say he was wrong in what he did that day in Gort na Móna.’
‘He might have been,’ Eleanor said, ‘though it took courage to walk down between lines of pitchforks and sabres.’
‘But there were only six sabres,’ Winnie said. ‘They could have set them running soon enough.’
‘That’s as may be,’ Eleanor said, ‘but if they did, there’d be a hundred sabres back the next day. No, for me, what Father Reilly did was right. There’s no point in bloodshed when there’s nothing we can do about it. It’s not just a matter of right and wrong. It’s a matter of power and weakness too. When we can’t win, we have to wait. The law had its way that day, next time we’ll see justice instead.’
‘But when?’ asked Winnie.
‘You’re young yet. Be patient. The time will come.’
They said nothing for some time. Sarah was thinking of Winnie. Tougher than Luke, Pat had said. Perhaps.
Winnie put the potatoes into the pot. She took the turnips off the boil, and started to mash them. ‘You didn’t come over for no reason,’ she said to Sarah.
‘I came to see Luke off. Or don’t you believe me?’
‘Or perhaps Pat asked you, was that it?’
‘Maybe.’
‘It’s that he wanted you to meet all of us, isn’t that it?’
Eleanor was washing the cabbage, saying nothing.
‘Yes,’ Sarah said at length. ‘He wanted me to meet you
all. And you especially,’ she said to Eleanor. ‘He wanted to see how the two of us would get on. He reckoned it important now that Luke is leaving.’
Eleanor turned around. ‘But – you and Pat? Is that it?’
‘It is,’ Sarah said. ‘Or at least it will be. Give it a year or two, but yes, it will be the two of us then. Did Pat not tell you?’
‘Pat never tells us anything.’ She took the cabbage out of the basin, and put it in the pot beside her.
‘But the question is where? Isn’t that it?’ Winnie asked.
Eleanor looked across at her, surprised again.
‘Surely there’s no doubt about that,’ she said. ‘Hasn’t he got a good job in the Union?’
‘He has,’ Sarah said. ‘At least for now. But how long it will last, I don’t know. It hasn’t been confirmed yet, and even if it is, I’m not sure that he wants to stay working in the Workhouse. Me neither.’
‘But isn’t it your home,’ Eleanor asked.
‘It is for now. But I don’t think I can put up with that for the rest of my life.’
‘Why not, child?’
‘Never mind.’
‘You can tell us, surely.’
‘Later. I’ll tell you later.’
Eleanor said nothing. So that’s it, she thought. It’s just as Winnie told me. Pat and Sarah. So what now? Danny and Murtybeg gone. Murty and Aileen gone. Luke going, Winnie and her baby too, and they won’t be coming back, whatever Luke might think or promise. And Pat? She thought he would come back to the farm. But thirty five pounds a year. Now Sarah too. A grand girl, but you could never expect her to live the life of a farmer’s wife, whatever she might say about the Workhouse. So what about us? Two old people, getting older, waiting for the letters with the money every month. And what of the farm? Two farms now with Forde’s, and no-one to farm either of them. Oh God.
The men came in.
‘Ye took your time,’ Eleanor said.
‘We did,’ Michael said. ‘We thought we might as well make use of Pat here while we had him. We brought him back down by the bog – wouldn’t want him to forget how to use a sleán.’
‘Indeed,’ Eleanor said. ‘Now enough of that. This is Sarah, she came over from Knockanure to see us all.’
