Living in the Past: A Northern Irish Memoir

by Arthur Magennis

  Paddy paid his way no matter what cost to himself – he never complained and laughed and sang and told jokes, and who knows what he suffered; an example of patience and fortitude to us all.

  Upstairs in Hughes’ outside barn lived Tom McAtarseny, an old man who climbed up a wooden ladder to the barn every night, and somehow got down again in the morning. He would help out around the place but I never knew the explanation for his presence. He probably just came along one day and stayed. He was simply a quiet old man with whom we chatted occasionally. He had a great love for cats and if he was in the kitchen having his porridge, he would be surrounded by kittens, which he would feed by putting down his milky porridge on the sandstone tiles that had worn away in places to form saucers. When he went out the cats followed and I wouldn’t be surprised if they slept with him.

  Growing up on a farm, children always want to do things that grown-ups do. Milking a cow was one of those things and when the eldest was able to milk, we all wanted to milk but the forearm muscles were not developed enough and we were glad to stop trying very quickly.

  Kathleen was the first to master the art and then she was allocated an easy cow to milk each night. At first, she was pleased and felt very grown up but, alas, the novelty soon wore off and it became a chore.

  There were cows which were easier to milk and we always learned on those. There were also dangerous cows that would kick so we had to be taught how to cope with them. Don’t walk too closely behind the cow, or horse, as it could break your leg or worse with a kick. Also, beware of a side swipe when milking. The best way to do it with a young cow, or a cow you can’t trust, was to put your head against its flank, as this hampers a side swipe. But cows usually settle down to a new milker and will get attached to them.

  In the summer we milked the cows outside, thus saving a lot of work driving them in, cleaning them, putting them out to the field and cleaning the byre. I remember I used to milk a newly calved heifer that was very placid and became a pet. It got so attached to me that when the cows were in the field along the road, it would walk along the hedge when I was going to the shop, mooing at me through the holes in the hedge and, sometimes, waiting to walk back again. I think as its calf was taken away and I took its place, I became a substitute calf.

  Chapter Five

  Ladies delight – first in the morning and last at night.”

  That was the greeting that came from Jack Smith, a travelling salesman who burst into our kitchen while we were having breakfast one morning. He was brandishing a large pink and white chamber pot and there was no doubt that we were gobsmacked for about ten seconds before we saw the humorous side.

  Jack was indeed a character who looked like James Cagney, the film star. He was funny and got on well with everyone. On another morning he came in about the same time and one of us was crying, perhaps Peggy, who was the baby of the family.

  He stood looking at her and said, “Why are you crying? I’m Jack Smith, all the way from Portadown and I haven’t cried yet.”

  We had many travelling salesmen who came our way, especially in the summertime. Some had transport but most of them got off the bus at Tamnamore and walked carrying big suitcases loaded with their wares.

  Each summer there would be Indians, whom we called Darkies, who always had huge cases and would toil up our hill in the hot sunshine carrying their heavy loads. I always felt sorry for them but, I suppose, they were more used to the heat than we.

  They would call in our house and proceed to cover our kitchen with beautiful coloured silks of all hues and sizes.

  “No buy, missus,” they would say.

  My mother would make them a cup of tea and I can’t remember whether she bought anything or not. I suppose she bought something – a silk headscarf, perhaps, as they were quite popular then.

  Then the Darkie would patiently pack everything back again. We called them Darkies as the most convenient term to describe them as they were darker than us. There was no colour bar in Derryvarn and we didn’t think of ourselves as any better or any worse than the Darkies.

  Years later in the 1950s, when I was working in a chemist’s shop in Birmingham, an Indian packman came in and I invited him into the dispensary where he displayed his wares. I had no interest in his silks but I bought an eternity ring from him, as I was recently married and I thought my wife would like it. However, she wasn’t very taken with it so I put it in the shop window and sold it. The Indian had a cup of tea and off he went. I suppose he was quite pleased with his sale and probably with his reception.

  When I was very young, an old man lived across the road from our shop called Peter Gartland. He had a nice little farm which he and his brother, Larry, worked. He was a bit of a character and was forever giving my father the benefit of his theories on economics.

  “What, what, what?” he would say. “You feed a hen for a penny a day and she will lay an egg for a penny a day. Where is the profit? Where is the profit? What, what, what?”

  A small farmer’s life in the 1930s was not easy. Hay sheds, those large structures with rounded roofs, built from corrugated zinc which are a common site at every farm today, would not been seen in the late 1920s and early 1930s, except in large farms.

  Farms in Ireland were owned by the farmers, not like in England where they were leased from huge estates. The hay, when it was drawn home in the autumn would be built in hay stacks called packs in the haggard, or hay yard. These packs were shaped like the cocks of hay in the meadow and it took about ten cocks of hay, I think, to make one pack.

  Peter Hughes was a remarkable cock and pack builder for his age. He could stand at the top putting little bits of hay under his feet with the end of a rake which he held in one hand and would tramp, tramp, tramp with his feet and pat, pat, pat with the butt end of his rake until there was only room at the top for his two feet. Then, rake in hand, he would slide to the ground like a young man but probably more gracefully.

  At harvest time Peter, of course, built the packs and to see that old man up there with two men pitching the hay to him with long forks, was worth watching. As the packs got higher, the pitchers would have to climb ladders to reach up to the builder. That wasn’t easy and after a first day of pitching hay the muscles would be groaning next morning.

  The pack of hay would be as tall as some of the trees around it. The trees were planted there to provide shelter when the gales would blow in the winter, and the packs would be roped with grass rope, which we sold in the shop. The grass rope would be put over the top and a brick tied to the bottom on each side. Then another grass rope would be put about three feet from the first and so on around the pack.

  The reason the grass ropes were not tied to the pack was because as the hay was pulled from the pack every morning and evening to feed the cattle and horses, the pack shrunk and during the winter months the grass rope would have become loose and the first gale would have lifted the hay and blown it away. But the bricks kept the ropes taut.

  When a farmer got up in the morning, his first job was to feed the stock. He would boil a kettle for his tea and in the press he would find a large griddle-sized soda bread. He would tear off a piece and sit down with his tea and that would keep him going until breakfast. Soda bread would fill him and he wouldn’t be hungry, whereas, if he had a slice of white bread from a loaf, he would be starving in a short time.

  As soon as the livestock heard his feet they set up a chorus – cows, young calves and horses all at the same time. He would start pulling hay from the pack and carrying it into the byre, as large an armful as he could carry between each pair of cows in the byre, because each stall held two animals. Then he would fill the horses’ manger. Next he would start the milking because the creamery man would come later with his horse and cart to pick up his milk churns, and then he would have his breakfast.

  The packs of hay were measured by leaning against the pack while facing it with outstretched arms and going around the pack and counting how many stretches were needed to circum
navigate the pack. A pitchfork was first placed at the spot you started so you counted until you reached the pitchfork when you came round again. This was called a faddam, which I suppose meant a fathom.

  Jemmy Hat used to buy hay and one day when he came to measure the pack, or faddam, as he would say, he placed his fork against the pack and started to faddam. When he came round again to where he had started he stood looking for a while at the man who was selling the hay. The man had been standing where Jemmy had placed the pitchfork, and the Hat had a turn in his eye so it was difficult to tell if he was looking at the man or over his shoulder.

  Eventually, he said, “Buh, buh. I’ll faddam it again and this time you come with me to make sure I’m not cheating.” A very subtle way of informing the man that he didn’t trust him and thought that the pitch fork may have been moved. The Hat was an old hand and he could estimate roughly how much hay was in the pack just by observation.

  One hot summer day, Peter Gartland, our neighbour across the road, was drawing home the hay and building it in packs in the yard for the winter feed. When the job was finished, as was the custom, he sent down to the pub for whiskey to treat the men. Whiskey was quite a luxury then as not many people could afford the price. In a short time the men were all more or less drunk and they just stretched out on the grass along the roadside, and most of them fell asleep in the sun.

  A travelling salesman who was coming to our shop and who was new to the district saw one of them lying in the grass and he asked him where Magennis’s shop was. As he related to my father later, the man muttered, “Hup, hup,” still talking to his horse, so the rep continued on his way until he came to another man lying in the grass and he asked him the same question. This man was lying on his side with one hand tucked into his trouser pocket and, without opening his eyes he pointed with his leg in the right direction and snored away. The traveller was disgusted.

  “That is the laziest act I have ever seen. If you can show me a lazier act than that I’ll give you a shilling,” he said.

  The man rolled a bit further over and raised his hand slightly to leave a space in his pocket and said, “Just drop it in there.” I think the traveller paid up.

  Peter Gartland had a black collie dog called Kruger after the South African general in the Boer war. This would be in the early thirties, so the Boer war would still be remembered. Peter died while I was very young. When somebody dies, the corpse is usually laid out on the bed in the room for two days and people call in to pay their respects. Peter was the first dead person I had seen and I remember it as quite a shock.

  When we came home from school, myself and my sisters were sent to the burial house, as it was called, and we were told to go to the bedside, kneel down and pray for the repose of his soul, which we dutifully did, but I think I just stared at the yellowish sallow face and bony hands with the rosary beads entwined round the fingers.

  All day long people came and went and then in the evening mostly men would come to the wake. Everyone would be offered refreshments: tea, whiskey, cigarettes. The corpse was not hidden away in a funeral parlour like it is now.

  Another death I remember was Felix, the Alsatian, which belonged to Captain and Mrs. Carson, for whom Eileen Hughes worked. He was very old and very much valued by them, as he had apparently saved the Captain’s life in China.

  One night when I went into Hughes’ there was a huge dog lying on his side on blankets in front of the fire. He was just skin and bones and Eileen was wiping away the phlegm from his mouth. The Carsons were on their summer vacation and Eileen was nursing the dog.

  This dog got everything, including spoonfuls of brandy, and all sorts of medicines were provided, but he didn’t last very long. Eileen looked after him like a child while regaling the ceilidhers with tales of his bravery.

  The following spring a large mobile kennel arrived in Hughes’ garden. It was placed facing the road with iron bars in the front and in it were four Alsatian pups. Eileen was now equipped with a new bicycle and a leather coat and all the accessories required by a dog handler. As the pups grew up they could see the road, and the noise they set up every time anyone went past was very bad. We used to bend down and tiptoe past, but it never worked. They were thoroughbreds for showing and had names like Ajax of Brushwood, which amazed me as I had never heard names like that for a dog.

  One wet afternoon, Eileen went past our house in her leather coat and on her new shiny bicycle with four pups on leads. How she ever got on the bike, I don’t know, but she came off into the hedge at our house. Nothing serious, but that was the last we saw of the bike.

  The dogs remained until the Carsons returned in the autumn and Eileen was given the largest of the litter, called Derry – a beautiful dog with a beautiful nature, but huge. She was also given a mini white smooth fox terrier bitch called Judy, who was about nine inches tall. The two pups were inseparable and looked so very funny running together, but the road became quiet and peaceful once more.

  Derry, as in the name Derrytresk, comes from the Irish word for oak, because that part of Ireland was once covered by forests of mostly oak and fir. This accounts for the number of fir tree and black oak roots found in the moss. Now that the land is drained this causes some inconvenience to the farmers who, if they wish to cultivate the land, must run the gauntlet of having a plough get stuck into a great root, damaging the agricultural implement and, maybe, the horse or, later on, the tractors.

  Some farmers got over this obstacle by using a piece of stick cut from the hedge to connect the plough to the horse or tractor, instead of the usual iron pin. When the sock of the plough struck a stump of the root, the wooden pin would break but the sock would get no harm.

  This procedure was all explained to my sister, Elizabeth, who was in charge of the shop one rainy night about eleven o’clock, when a woman called Susan McCann arrived with her little girl on a donkey and cart for supplies. She had come a long way from the lough shore and was very wet when Elizabeth opened the shop for her. She told her that she was so late because they had been finishing the ploughing and had been held up by the oak stumps.

  When she had her supplies in the cart she bought a bap and gave it to the little girl, saying, “Give that to him.”

  Elizabeth went to the window to look at who was outside as she hadn’t seen anybody else before. The little girl went out with the bap and gave it to the donkey, which appeared very pleased and ate it all happily. The donkey was part of the family, it seemed.

  Farmers were always trying to reclaim the land by removing the stumps altogether. This was very hard work but was made even more worthwhile by the value of the fir, which was much sought after as firelighters, as it contained a flammable resin. There were special fir axes made for splitting these roots into small pieces, which was also back-breaking work. On Saturday mornings, donkey and horse carts could be seen on the way to Coalisland to sell little bundles of fir firelighters around the houses in the towns.

  It was quite easy to expose the fir and oak stumps, as the moss was soft and easily dug back to strip the roots of the stumps, which were several yards long and, maybe, running in different directions. They probably weighed about a ton but, as they were in the soft moss, a horse or tractor could not be used to haul the stumps out of the way.

  On a number of occasions on the land adjacent to the school, the owner would borrow the children at lunchtime or just after school, to come down and pull on a long tether attached to the stumps. About twenty or thirty big lads and lasses would remove the log easily and pull it to a prepared spot. Anything that broke the monotony of school was enjoyable, especially if the tether slipped or broke and we’d all collapse laughing on top of each other.

  Chapter Six

  My 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 t
urkey. 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.