by Charles Egan
‘Pat!’ Eleanor exclaimed. ‘We weren’t expecting you so soon again.’
‘And it’s just as well you weren’t,’ Pat answered. ‘’Tisn’t ye I’m visiting at all.’
‘Well who else would you be visiting?’ Michael asked.
‘Who else indeed,’ Winnie said. ‘Surely ye can all work that out.’
Pat smiled. ‘’Tis quick you are, Winnie.’
Eleanor slapped her forehead. ‘Of course, why didn’t I think of it?’
‘What are ye all on about?’ Michael asked.
‘You tell him,’ Eleanor said to Winnie.
‘Westport,’ Winnie replied. ‘Isn’t that it, Pat? A visit to young Sarah?’
Pat leant on the table. ‘It is. And I’d have thought you’d have worked that one out, father.’
‘Arra, hell,’ said Michael.
‘Now if ye’d all excuse me, I’ve got a horse to put away.’
‘A horse?’ Michael asked.
‘The Union lent it to me. Sure they knew I wouldn’t get to Westport otherwise. I’ve still got to be back Monday morning.’
When he was finished with the horse, he came in again, carrying corn in his pack. He sat with the family, just finishing their meal of potatoes and yellow meal, but no meat.
‘Where did you get this?’ he asked.
‘Winnie got it up at Dillon’s,’ Eleanor said. ‘Will I cook you some?’
‘No, I’ve eaten already.’ He took a pinch of meal from Michael’s plate, and sniffed it.
‘We’ve had a lot of trouble with this in the Workhouse. It gets rotten quick. Not that the merchants seem to mind.’
‘You needn’t worry about that,’ Winnie said, ‘I smelt it before I bought it. It’s fine.’
Next morning, he rose very early. Only Winnie was awake. She prepared him a breakfast of yellow meal.
‘Isn’t it great about Luke,’ Pat said.
‘It is,’ Winnie said, ‘but I’m wondering how long it will be ’till I get to America?’
‘Yes,’ Pat answered, ‘it could be a long time yet.’
As he rose to go, Winnie kissed him on the cheek. ‘Now, you’re to tell Sarah we were all asking for her. And don’t forget.’
‘Would I ever?’
He rode through Kilduff and reached Castlebar just before sunrise.
Ballymacrath. Pheasanthill. Islandeady.
At Keeloges three men rushed from a boreen beside the road. One tried to grasp the reins, but Pat pulled away. Another grabbed at his leg, but he kicked back hard. He whipped the horse into a gallop. The men ran after him, trying to catch him. One took up a stone and threw it after him. It hit the horse on the withers. The horse whinnied, but did not stop.
Kilbree. Knockbrack. Sheeane.
When he reached Westport Workhouse there was a big crowd around the gate. It was drizzling. He saw mounted soldiers.
Once again, he recognised the uniform of the Thirteenth Light Dragoons, but the lieutenant was not there. The crowd did not move. He kept edging the horse forward, shouting ‘clear the way, clear the way.’
At length he reached the dragoons.
‘Union business,’ he said to one of them. He nodded and let Pat forward. The gate was opened.
Leaving his horse with one of the inmates, he passed through the breakers yard. There were hundreds of men breaking stones. He stood by as two carts trundled past. On the other side he saw the fever sheds and he thought of Sarah’s mother. And what of Sarah? Did she ever work in the sheds?
He went to the offices of the Clerk of Union. The Clerk looked up at him.
‘Mr. Ryan, isn’t it?’
‘That’s right.’
Sarah spun around, and ran over to him.
‘Pat! You’re drenched.’
‘Arra, what of it. Only a little.’
‘Come over here and sit by the fire at least.’ She hugged him.
The Clerk walked over. ‘Well, what business brings you here? Looking for more men for England, are you?’
‘Not yet,’ Pat replied. ‘I don’t know they’ve call for men in England just now. It’s Sarah I came over to see.’
The Clerk laughed. ‘Yes, yes’ he said, ‘I’d thought she was spoken for right enough.’
Sarah excused herself and brought Pat down to the refectory. It was still half full, but they sat at the other end from the crowd at a table close to a large open fire. One of the inmates brought them two cups of buttermilk.
‘We can’t afford tea in the Workhouse anymore,’ Sarah said.
Pat drank a good part of it. ‘Sure wasn’t I brought up on this, I’ve no complaints. But enough of that. We hardly got a chance to talk to each other the last time.’
‘Not with your cousin around that time,’ Sarah said.
‘No,’ Pat said, ‘I’m sorry I had to come with Murtybeg. This thing of taking inmates from the Workhouses to England, I don’t know that we should be doing it.’
‘Is there any other way?’ Sarah asked.
‘I don’t know that there is,’ Pat said. ‘But I’ll tell you this, Danny’s a rough employer. Sure, he feeds them, but ye’re doing that here.’
‘No, we’re not,’ Sarah said. ‘We’re hardly feeding a tenth of the people that need it around Westport. Sending men to England lets us take more in, lets us feed more.’
‘Yes’ Pat said, ‘but even so, I wouldn’t like to be working with Danny. Oh God, if it wasn’t for the potatoes…’
‘Sure wasn’t the last harvest a good one…’
‘If they’d planted enough it would have been.’
‘But this year’s harvest, they’ll plant enough and there’ll be plenty for everyone.’
‘Will there? I hope you’re right. But enough of that, tell me about yourself. How are you finding things here?’
‘Well enough,’ Sarah replied. ‘Dougal’s not bad to work for, I’ll say that. He’s a hard worker too, and he has me working all the hours God sends. Not that I’m complaining.’
‘I’ll help with the figures after so,’ Pat said.
‘That would be good of you.’
He thought of the sheds.
‘What of your mother?’ He saw the fright in her eyes.
‘I’d hoped you wouldn’t ask me that,’ she replied. ‘Every time she goes to the sheds, I worry about her. At least the fever is less than last year, we’ve none in the dormitories now. Even so, what happens if she catches it? I just don’t know.’
‘Surely she had it as a child…?’
‘No, and that’s the thing. If she catches it now she could well die.’
Pat put his hand on hers. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘but what of you?’
‘I had it as a child,’ she said. ‘I’m one of the ones who lived. But even so, don’t you be worrying about it. Mother won’t let me near the fever sheds any longer.’
There were tears in her eyes.
Now he put both hands on hers. ‘Sarah…’
For some time, she said nothing, then she took her hands away and wiped her eyes.
‘Do you know, Pat, when I first met you, you were such a young gossoon, and you trying to court me. The cheek of it! But I’ll tell you one thing, you’ve changed.’
‘Sure why not,’ Pat said, ‘that was a year ago if it was a day.’
‘No,’ she said, ‘it’s not just a matter of time. We’ve been through hard times, all of us have. It’s enough to make a man out of any young fellow. I could see it in the way you dealt with your cousin, well able for him, you are, and anything hard times might throw at you.’
They went back to the office.
Pat spent the remainder of the afternoon and evening working alongside Sarah by the light of a candle.
‘These figures are terrible,’ he said.
‘Don’t I know it?’
‘There must be great hunger around here?’
‘And evictions too,’ Sarah said. ‘It was a dreadful time they had out in Torán.’
‘Tor�
�n?’
‘No one’s heard of it,’ Sarah said. ‘It’s out the far end of Erris, down by Blacksod Bay. On the edge of the Atlantic. Some fellow called Walshe, evicted the lot of them.’
‘Walshe!’
‘I know what you’re about to say,’ Sarah said. ‘Yes, a good Catholic name. Evicting his own. And then what did he expect of them? To walk all the way to Ballina, that’s what. The nearest Workhouse for Erris, and it miles away. Some came here, the rest kept walking. God knows where they thought they were going.’
‘But…a Catholic!’
‘That doesn’t mean he should be holier than anyone else. I’m sure he couldn’t have been thinking of the Lord Jesus when he gave them a Christmas surprise like that, throwing them out in the cold and rain.’
‘Did they not fight back?’
‘Sure what point was there in that, when they had the soldiers guarding the depot?’
‘Yes,’ Pat said, ‘I’d heard about the soldiers. Though God alone knows what they’d need an army for out in Erris. Army or no army, no one out that way would be able to attack a depot.’
The Clerk looked up from his papers.
‘They might be better able than you think. When men are desperate, they’ll do desperate things. Sure isn’t there piracy out at Blacksod now?’
‘Piracy?’
‘It’s been going on around Erris this long time, well before the evictions even. There was a ship going from Limerick to Glasgow there before Christmas carrying oats, boarded off Blacksod Bay. They say fifty or a hundred fellows jumped the ship off Torán, and took twenty tonnes of grain. And that wasn’t the first attempt either.’
‘What in the name of God were they carrying grain for?’ Pat asked. ‘Didn’t the fellows in Limerick need it? What kind of people are they that send grain out at a time like this?’
‘You don’t seem to be too worried about the piracy?’ the Clerk said.
‘Arra what,’ Pat replied. ‘If they weren’t sending the grain out, there’d be no need to be jumping ships like that.’
‘I don’t know I should agree with you there. I very well might, but I wouldn’t go around giving out opinions like that.’
‘Fair enough,’ Pat said, ‘but what are they going to do about it?’
‘Naval cutters, that’s what,’ the Clerk replied. ‘They’re bringing in the Navy to protect our merchant marine from the starving people of Erris. Where’s Admiral Nelson now we need him? No heroes today, eh?’
He pushed his chair back and stood. ‘Time for dinner,’ he said, ‘and don’t tell anyone I said all of that.’
At dinner, Pat met with Sarah’s mother.
‘What business brings you over this way?’ she asked.
‘Just visiting, Mrs. Cronin,’ Pat said quickly.
‘And he expects us to believe that too,’ the Clerk said. ‘The question is, who?’
‘Ah yes,’ she said, ‘that is the question.’
She went on eating. Mostly corn, Pat noticed. Only one potato each. No meat.
‘So how’s Knockanure now?’ Mrs. Cronin asked him.
‘Just the same as all the Unions in Mayo, I’d guess.’ Pat said. ‘Pushed to the limit, never enough money, never enough room in the Workhouse. And the merchants don’t help.’
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘it’s the same all over.’
After dinner, Pat stood with Sarah in the hallway, talking quietly.
‘So what does your mother think now?’
‘She thinks well of you now. But like your own mother, I think, she’s worried about the future of the Workhouses.’
‘Do you think she thinks I might lose my job?’
‘She does,’ said Sarah. ‘And let’s be honest, it might happen. And I could lose mine too.’
‘But at least your mother won’t lose hers?’
‘Not in the same way,’ she said. ‘But there’s other ways someone can lose a job. Do you know why she got this position in Westport? Well I’ll tell you – it was because the last matron died. Died of fever. And they couldn’t get anyone wanting to replace her.’
‘Oh God…’
‘And she wasn’t the only one. Dr. Flaherty, he died. Four of the inmates nursing in the sheds, they died too. And as for the patients, the dying never stops.’
Chapter 22
Telegraph & Connaught Ranger, February 1848:
Bryan Solan, Mary Solan and Eileen Stanton died of starvation in Ballintubber this week. Their bodies are still unburied for want of coffins. There are three others in the same village whose deaths are hourly expected from hunger. These creatures were on the relief list, but being unable to attend the calling of the roll, as they lived some miles from the work, they were struck off, and were thus left a whole week without a morsel of food.
Pat left Westport and rode directly to Carrigard. He stabled the horse and entered the house. Michael was sitting by the fire, poking at the turf.
‘Well, Pat, what news?’
‘The Workhouses are desperate,’ Pat replied. ‘Little food, and less cash, but they seem to be spending enough on the military, that’s for sure. All the big towns, especially Castlebar, and now they’ve dragoons out in Erris…’
‘Erris?’ Eleanor exclaimed. ‘Sure Erris is in a terrible way, from all accounts. They’re all starving out that way. Why should they want soldiers?’
‘They’re pirating the ships, and that worries the Government. That’s why.’
‘Pirating?’ Winnie asked.
‘There’s terrible hunger out there. When they see ships with corn going from Ireland, what do you think they’d do? What in the name of God can they do, except steal it?’
He stayed overnight. He was up early the next morning.
‘Where’s father?’ he asked Eleanor.
‘Up the quarry, I think.’
‘On a Sunday!’
‘It’s no differ to him what day it is,’ Eleanor said.
Pat left the house, and went up the fields looking. He heard the rhythmic crash of the sledgehammer in the quarry. He went to the edge and looked down. It looked very different to the previous year. It was far deeper than it had been two years previous. But now the Famine Relief Works were over, and the quarry was empty except for his father. Last year there had been dozens of men, women and children working slowly with picks, hammers and shovels. No more. He wondered where they had all gone. Emigrated? Or dead?
Already, there were many heaps of broken stone, and Pat wondered if more were necessary. Perhaps his father was working off his frustration of the times. Pat knew the family had enough potatoes, but even so, there might have been doubt. They could still rot, even inside the house.
His father had spotted him.
Pat joined him beside the heap of larger stones. He noticed a scar on one side of his father’s face, running down from just above his eye to under his chin. He said nothing. Without a word he took the hammer from Michael and started to swing it. Michael smiled at him.
‘Still able for it, I see.’
‘I don’t know,’ Pat said, ‘I might need some practice yet. Swinging a pen isn’t quite the same.’
It had begun to rain. A fine drizzling rain, penetrating. Pat could still see the Mountain, with Nephin in the distance, but they too had clouds of grey rain moving across them. Michael took his arm, and they walked over to the whin bush at the side of the quarry, where they sheltered under Michael’s greatcoat.
‘You’re working hard,’ Pat said.
‘And why not?’
‘I don’t know,’ Pat said. ‘I just thought with the Relief Works being over, there wouldn’t have been such call for it.’
‘Damned if I know,’ Michael answered. ‘But now with Bensons gone, we’ve two quarries.’
‘Of course.’
‘And that means we’re sharing two contracts with Burke.’
‘Good takings so?’
‘Not now. With the way things are, they’re stopping everything. And it’s not just the Relie
f Works. They’re all gone this long time. But the County can’t even afford road maintenance. The Barony neither.’
‘But the contract…?’
‘Sure what’s the use of a contract if there’s no money?’
Pat pulled the greatcoat further over his head.
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I haven’t heard any of this.’
‘No? I thought you might have.’
Neither Nephin nor the Mountain were visible now.
Pat looked around to Michael, hunched close beside him under the greatcoat. ‘You should be more careful of yourself,’ he said.
‘Why’s that?’ Michael asked.
‘That scar. What were you doing that brought that upon you?’
‘I was hoping you wouldn’t ask me that. Didn’t your mother tell you?’
‘Not yet, she didn’t. Maybe she didn’t want to, is that it?’
Michael fingered the scar. ‘It wasn’t myself that caused it,’ he said. ‘It was the Molly Maguire gang.’
‘The Molly Maguires…?’
‘Isn’t that what I’m saying?’
Pat was thinking. He knew a lot about the Molly Maguires, or rather, on reflection, he thought he did. A criminal gang, that was certain. Or was it? They claimed to be rebels, fighting for the Irish cause. Not that Pat had ever believed that. He had always reckoned that was only a cover for robbery and murder. But anything else he knew was uncertain.
The landlords and the gentry certainly feared the Molly Maguire gang because they claimed to be a revolutionary organisation dedicated to overthrowing the landlords and anyone else they saw as being too wealthy.
But Pat felt that too was only a bluff. Their activities hit the small farmers harder. They demanded that no rent should be paid to the landlords, but for most that would only result in eviction. What was worse, Pat thought, was the demand for the Molly Maguires’ rent. Since the farmers were not to pay rent to the landlords, the Molly Maguires demanded it instead. Now, in the middle of a famine and fever epidemic, the poor were expected to pay two rents, when they could not pay anything at all. Was that fair?
The consequences of non-payment, Pat knew, could be worse than eviction. There were many stories of men being killed by the Molly Maguires when they resisted payment. Not potatoes or vegetables or turf – these were too hard to carry. Cash was always demanded. Families without cash lost their livestock instead. Cattle from the better-off farmers, and pigs from those who did not have cattle. These were sold at livestock fairs by men who were law-abiding by day and masked criminals by night.
