by Eamon Kelly
I banish all hunger to the land of the Turks
For a year and a day and every day
From here to eternity!
The feast of the Epiphany was the last night on which the candles were lit. It was believed that water was turned into wine on that night. My father always put a white enamel bucket of water standing outside the door, but the miracle never happened. Small Christmas, the Epiphany was called, and after the supper neighbouring women visited my mother. A portion of Christmas cake was kept for this occasion, and the wine which came in the Christmas box. After a while they would adjourn to another house and it would be late when my mother came home. Next morning the holly and ivy decorations were taken down, the mottoes were put away for another year and what was left of the long candles stored to light us to bed in the long nights ahead. Candle grease droppings clung to the candles and to the sides of the crocks which held them. We collected the grease and when we worked it between our palms it became soft and pliable. Sitting by the fire we made it into different shapes, little animals and small houses. When we got tired of this, by putting a piece of cord in the middle, we fashioned the lumps of grease into small candles. These we lit in the windows and the tiny light they made revived for us the delight we felt when the tall white candles were first lit twelve days before.
Christmas was gone!
THE APPRENTICE
I left school at fourteen and began my apprenticeship as a carpenter to my father. I was no stranger to the bench. I had been helping him during school holidays for the past few years. Jack Brosnahan was getting out of his time as an apprentice when I started and I was given his place at the bench. At first my time was spent tending my father, holding the board he was sawing or keeping the car shaft in place as it was forced on the body laths, and painting the spoke tenons before they were driven into the wheel stock.
My instinct was to watch how the tradesman did the job and to store up the knowledge against the time when I would be experienced enough to do it myself. There was advice from my father when I came to use the handsaw and the jack plane. I soon learned that to rush the situation gave poor results. The implement had to be given its time to work. There was a rhythm in the movement and sound of the saw or plane when used properly. The correct actions of a craftsman sawing, planing or mortising with the chisel were as fluid as those of an expert hurler on the playing field. In my first year I did much of the easy preliminary work, like removing the proud wood from a wheel spoke with a drawing knife in the fashion of a sculptor’s apprentice chiselling away the surplus stone and leaving it to the artist to finish the work.
Now that I was engaged in a man’s job it was time for me to get into long trousers. My mother got the suit length in Hilliard’s drapery, and I took it to Con the tailor and he measured me for the new suit. A week later I went for a fitting. He put on the sleeveless jacket and with a wedge of white chalk marked where it should be taken in or let out and the positions of the buttons and the pockets. I tried on the basted trousers and felt a little surge of pride as I saw them extended to my feet, covering my knees for the first time since I was born. A week later I went to collect the new suit with the money, as they say, in the heel of my fist to pay Con. The next day was Sunday and I wore the suit going to Mass, and the new cloth cap which I got to go with it. Everyone I knew took notice of me with words of greeting like, ‘Well wear!’ or ‘You’re a man now!’ Well, I wasn’t a man yet. My face was as smooth as the palm of my hand. Next I got a navy blue overalls the same as my father’s. They didn’t have my size in the shop but my mother cut one down that was many sizes too big for me. In the right trousers leg there was a long slender pocket into which I slid my two-foot rule. At the front there were three pockets for holding nails and the sturdy carpenter’s pencil.
Sometimes our work took us away from the bench. This was when my father had the contract of doing the timber work for a new house. There were incentives now to improve rural housing in the form of grants and loans from the new government. If the work was nearby we crossed the fields in the early morning carrying our tools. I ran the leg of the auger through the handle of the handsaw and put it over my shoulder, and carried a bag in the other hand. My father slung a sack on his back with the jack plane, hammers, mallet, chisels and the sharpening stone.
At the farmer’s house our first job was to make a temporary bench in the barn or hayshed. Door and window frames had to be ready for the masons to stand in position. Four stonemasons worked together, two outside the wall and two inside as they built against each other. The farmer and his sons tended the masons, mixing lime and mortar and drawing it and building stones to the workplace. The stones were normally found in the farmer’s land. Fires were lit on big boulders – you’d see them burning in the night time. The intense heat split the rock right through in several places. By inserting a crowbar in the cracks the men prised the pieces away and broke them into portable sizes with a sledge. When you saw the irregular, jagged shapes thrown at the site you’d wonder how the stonemasons ever built a wall from such unpromising material. The tradesman, casting his eye over the heap, would pick a stone. He knew where the grain lay and by hitting a blow with the sledge on the right place he would split the stone open, revealing two fair faces. Then it was a matter of squaring a bed on the stone and levelling the top and he had two fine building stones. The stone sat on its bed on a layer of mortar with the face plumb at the front and touching the builder’s line. The mason took great care when dressing the stone that the top horizontal side never sloped in. This would draw the rain. No tradesman worth his salt built a damp house and even before the joints were pointed with mortar, his work, as he might say to himself, was as dry as paper.
The cornerstone had two faces as near to right angles as didn’t matter. They were faced, bedded, placed in position and tested with the plumb-board – as I heard one verbose mason remark, to ascertain their perpendicularity! A line marking the inside and the outside of the wall ran from one gable to the other. The masons built to the lines and from time to time put in a through bond, a stone extending right across the wall which bound the structure together.
About eleven o’clock the men fell out for a smoke. My father and I sat with them, pipes were cleaned out with penknives and the dottle put in the cover. If a pipe didn’t pull, a blade of strong grass was run through the stem to free it. Wedges of tobacco were cut from the half-quarter of plug and broken with the thumb and first finger in the left palm. When it was ground to the satisfaction of the smoker he chased stray pieces from between his fingers into the middle of his palm. Then cupping the bowl of the pipe towards the little heap he coaxed the tobacco into the bowl with the first finger of his right hand and pressed it down, but not too hard. Last of all he put the dottle and the ashes in the cover on top, levelled it with his thumb and now he was ready to put a match to it. He drew in the white blue smoke and puffed it out and when he was sure the pipe was properly alight he put on the cover and sat back to enjoy the smoke.
Brian the men called me, thinking that I was called after my grandfather, who was well known to the older men. On the job a young apprentice is at the beck and call of the tradesmen. When they were thirsty I was sent to the farmer’s old house for a canteen of spring water. There was a custom among the men of taking advantage of the apprentice on his first day by sending him on ridiculous errands such as to bring the round square and the glass hammer. My father had me primed in this regard and when I was asked to bring the glass hammer I enquired of the mason if the American screwdriver would do? The Americans were reputed to be so anxious to get the work done quickly that they drove screws home with a hammer. An apprentice who was asked to bring a round square went to the public house and got six bottles of stout on tick in the mason’s name. Placing the drink in front of the mason he said, ‘There’s the round, you can square it yourself.’
The men rested for as long as it took to smoke a pipeful. They talked about the trade and about the men with whom they
worked down the years. Some of them had been born into the trade and the signs of lime mortar had been on the boots of the menfolk in their families for generations. They talked of the masons being a thirsty tribe. ‘Put a pint in a mason’s hand,’ one man said, ‘and with the first swig he’ll drive it below the tops of the church windows!’ They blamed St Patrick for this state of affairs. It seems the saint came across a group of masons building a house on a Sunday morning and asked them why they weren’t coming to Mass. They were Christians now and should observe the Sabbath. Their shoes were bad, they told him, and covered in mortar and not fit to be seen in church. St Patrick gave them money to buy new shoes, which they could do on Sunday morning for the shopkeepers were the last to be converted. ‘I’ll delay the bell,’ he said, ‘so that ye’ll be in time for Mass.’ When St Patrick turned on the altar to give the sermon he looked round the congregation but there was no trace of the masons. Later, coming up the street, the saint heard the sound of singing coming from a certain establishment. Going over, he looked into the public house, and there were the masons inside paralytic on the price of the shoes. ‘I’ll say nothing,’ St Patrick said, lifting his eyes to heaven, ‘I’ll leave them to God!’ ‘And that’s why,’ one man said as he eyed his own footwear, ‘you’ll never see a good shoe on a mason. And another thing: there never was a man of them yet but wouldn’t drink Lough Erne dry!’ Two of the men working on that house would go on what was termed ‘a tear’ on Saturday night and wouldn’t be seen again until Tuesday morning.
Back at the bench in the hayshed I helped my father. When we had the front and back door frames made, complete with fanlights, we turned our hands to making window frames. In that style of house, and it was the same style that was being built everywhere, there were five windows at the front and five at the back. Window sashes had to be made to fit the frames and a panel door for the front. The back had a plain boarded and ledged door. The old farmhouse was long and low and thatched and sat snugly in a hollow about half a field away. It had two rooms and a loft reached by a ladder from an enormous kitchen. When I got older and developed an eye for the fitness of things, I realised how much better the old house looked hugged by the hillside than the new one bleak and alone on the higher ground. I realised too that the farmer didn’t want to go to the trouble of rethatching the old house every couple of years and good thatchers were getting scarcer as the years went by. The farmer and his wife wanted to get away from the yard where the cowhouse, piggery and stable were clapped up to their front door. The manure heap was under their noses. They wanted more space and a view from the front door. A parlour, too, was in the fashion and an upstairs, and all that glass of ten windows was a great attraction. I often thought that if the government grant and loan were given to add a new room to the existing house, to alter the entrances to the out offices so that the animals and the manure were kept away from the front door, and train new thatchers, how much better the countryside would look.
The turkeys, some say, put an end to the thatched house. As geese were falling out of favour for the Christmas dinner large flocks of turkeys were being kept by the farmer’s wife. They were well fed to put up the poundage on the Christmas scales. When the turkeys got the full power of their wings to rise in the world was their sole ambition. The roof of the house was as high as they could go, where they scratched and scraped to their hearts’ content, damaging the thatch and letting the drop down into the farmer. Men who couldn’t afford new houses covered the thatch with corrugated iron. My father was an expert at this operation. Many is the time I helped him place the rafters over the existing thatch, bind them with laths to the old roof, nail on the purlins and stretch the sheets of zinc on them. When finished, the house didn’t look as well as when it had its amber coat of new thatch, but because of the situation and the way it blended with its surroundings it looked better than the new one. Leaving on the old thatch ensured that the house was warm and snug and the rain couldn’t be heard pelting on the corrugated iron. In a few years’ time when the zinc was painted tile-red, the house sat in harmony with the outbuildings and the hayshed.
In the hayshed where my father and I worked on our first day, the sun was now high in the heavens and our tummy clocks told us that it must be near dinnertime. The woman of the house came to the door and cohooed and beckoned in our direction. The dinner was ready. I ran to tell the masons and we all trooped into the huge kitchen of the house.
The deal table was in the centre of the floor, and the four masons, my father and I and the farmer and his son sat around it. Like the last supper it was an all male affair. There was a bageen cloth on the table. This was a couple of flour bags opened out, sewn together and washed and ironed, but the brand of the flour was still plain to be seen. ‘Pride of Erin. 120 lbs.’ The keeling over of a pot of potatoes soon covered the brand. The stray Champions which rolled off the table we caught in our laps and added them to the mound of laughing goodness from which steam ascended to the black roof. The farmer’s wife and good looking daughter saw to our needs. Theirs was a friendly welcome and a friendly word for each one. Plates of home-cured bacon almost sweet to the taste were placed before us with lashings of white cabbage. Because there was only one fire the bacon and cabbage were cooked in the same pot. The bacon greased the cabbage so that it glistened when the light fell on it in the plate. The meal would be the same tomorrow and the day after except that now and again turnips replaced the cabbage as a vegetable.
There was a bowl of milk before each man, buttermilk which the men loved, or skimmed milk which had thickened almost to the consistency of jelly. As they drank this it left white moustaches on the men’s faces. I often meant to count the number of potatoes a working man would eat. It wouldn’t rest at a half dozen. A spud was selected from the heap, peeled with the knife and halved on the plate before it found its way to the mouth and thence to the digestive department. All the men blessed themselves before eating but some kept their hats on during the meal. First the men talked about the potatoes they were eating, and there were remarks like, ‘They’re good everywhere this year.’ They knew that this particular variety had come off boggy ground because of the clean white skin. They knew by their shape that they were Champions. They spoke of other varieties, of Irish Queens, British Queens, Epicures, and a new kind making its appearance called Golden Wonders. They discussed the methods of cultivation, the difference between drills and ridges, first and second earthing and spraying against the blight. Then they turned their attention to the bacon. A tasty bit was the verdict. The man of the house told them he had added a dust of saltpetre to the common salt when curing, which gave it an extra flavour. The cabbage escaped comment except that one man wanted to know if it was York.
By the fire sat an old lady I took to be the farmer’s mother. She wore a coloured shoulder shawl held with a brooch at the front. She had a white apron and on her head a lace affair with a starched linen front, a little like a nun’s wimple, what my mother used to call a dandy cap. By her side she had a black walking stick with a crook. She reminded me of the bishop as he sat on the altar the day I was confirmed. She was very shy of the strange men the first day. She saluted each one courteously as he went to shake her hand. But as the days went by she blossomed out and in the end held her own in our mealtime conversation. She talked to the older men about the days when she was young, about the hardship when but a young girl she worked as a servant for a big farmer. Up at cock-crow and milking her share of eighteen cows. She helped the farmer’s wife with the housework, the butter-making and the boiling of food for the animals. She drew water from the well in huge buckets until her arms were nearly pulled out of their shoulder sockets. She had to do the work of a man in the fields, and watch herself from the amorous advances of the farmer when they got out of sight of the house. She worked for a whole year for a ten pound note. Of course she had her board and she slept in the loft over the stable. At night she used to pull up the ladder after her so as to be out of reach of her boss and
the servant boy. Some of the men took these accounts to be a form of bravado because I saw them winking at my father.
Despite the hardship of the few years she gave in service she wouldn’t exchange her young life for that of Queen Victoria. She relished the memory of her days at school. Her mistress was a real lady and her father used to doff his hat to her the same as if she was the priest. Her youthful days before she went out working were all sunshine. Strolling by the river bank, gathering hurts (whortleberries) in Merry’s wood in October or courting on the grassy slopes of the railway on a Sunday evening fair; Sunday nights too at the dances in a neighbour’s kitchen. The tapping on the flagged floor to the music of the Kerry slide and the mad wheel at the end of the hornpipe. She was back in those days again as she lilted or sang a verse of one of the songs which used to punctuate the set dances:
When the roses bloom again down by the willow,
and a robin redbreast sings his sweet refrain,
For the sake of auld lang syne,
I’ll be with you sweetheart mine,
I’ll be with you when the roses bloom again.
When her brother married in his small farm the dowry his wife brought him came to her and enabled her to marry into this house, where she met a lovable man, God be good to him, and where she never saw a hungry day.
When I looked around the old kitchen it reminded me of the house where my grandfather was born in Gallaun. The same small window in a wall that seemed three feet thick. The open door to allow in the light, and the closed half-door to keep the small animals and the fowl out. Two hens and a cock perched on the half-door as we were eating on the first day and seemed to complain bitterly that they were hungry and why weren’t they getting something. With a ‘hurnish’ from the woman of the house and a flapping of wings they were gone. About three feet out from the fire wall and at a person’s height there was a round beam, the thickness of a telegraph pole, extending from side wall to side wall. Over the fire and resting on the beam there was a six-foot wide wickerwork canopy tapering up to the chimney outlet. It was plastered over and whitewashed like the beam and the walls of the kitchen. At each side of the canopy the beam was boarded into the fire wall so that there was a place to store things. On one side was the donkey’s tackling and on the other side the harness for the horse. The door to the bedroom was at the side of the fire and at the other end of the kitchen in the middle of the wall was the door to the second room very often used as a dairy. High up on the same wall was another door reached by a ladder, to the loft where the son slept.
