An Irish Country Childhood. Marie Walsh
it. Being aware of the mystery and might surrounding these creatures and of the consequences of killing one, the men moved the nest further down the ditch. Mother weasel, missing the nest, thought her family had been destroyed. She sneaked into the house where the men’s dinner was being prepared. There were three mugs of milk already poured and seemingly the weasel poisoned them. Going out and finding the nest safe and sound she returned as the men were about to take their places around the table. She jumped up, put her feet on each mug, and tipped the contents onto the table as the bewildered men looked on.
My aunt also said that the mother weasel will protect her young with the tenacity of a bear, and if she feels they are threatened will rally help. Then all the weasels will lie in wait and ambush man or beast. They had once attacked a young girl who used a certain path to and from school. She probably found nesting sites and, being curious, she must have had a peep passing by. The weasels thought it was a threat and lay in wait and attacked, biting her in the back of the neck with their long canine teeth. She was found dead in the field by her parents who went searching for her when she failed to return from school.
Even the owl and the hawk, who are natural enemies of the weasel, may become victims themselves. They swoop on the weasel and grab him with their talons to crush him to death. Sometimes the weasel manages to turn and strangle his enemy in mid-air and they will both fall to the ground. Where the weasel will finish his meal and for vengeance will eat the brains of his adversary.
My great-aunt’s brother, James, was a bachelor and since his death our family had the use of the farm. We supplied Ellen with all her worldly needs and she also had her old-age pension. We would collect this from the local post office. She would tell us to buy sweets, plus whatever shopping she needed. She liked to smoke a pipe, so tobacco was on the list. The shopkeeper would ask who smoked the baccy, knowing full well that it was Ellen. We would be embarrassed as it was unusual in those days for a woman to smoke, except in private.
Ellen was getting feeble by this time and she used to sit by the turf fire on a three-legged stool smoking her clay-pipe, her doodeen as she called it. She would nod off and the pipe would fall from her hands on to the hearth, until there was eventually only a stump of stem left. She would still drag smoke out of this semblance of pipe, making smacking noises with her toothless gums as she puffed away to her heart’s content. She was small and skinny with a smig – a pointed chin – and long grey hair. She wore a long black skirt and shawl and, hunched over the fire, she sometimes resembled a witch. Every chance we would get we would steal a puff out of her doodeen and she would grab her stick and aim for our shins, calling, ‘Bad cess to ye for stealing my baccy’ But we were fleet-footed and were soon out of harm’s way.
We had to be ever watchful of her in case she toppled into the fire. No amount of coaxing would entice her to lie on her bed for a nap. She considered going to bed in the daytime a sin. When she was in humour she was a great story-teller. We pestered her to teach us her old songs; songs from way back. She used to say they were as old as the Connemara Hills.
She was a fluent Irish speaker and would translate for us. She had a woman friend of her own age who used to visit. They would gossip in Irish so fast that we could not understand. Winnie was her friend’s name and she was as tall as Ellen was small. She always wore laced-up boots with hand-knitted baneen (home-spun wool) knee-length stockings, layers of flannelette petticoats and black, long, wide skirts. Coming across the fields she looked like a giantess. Ellen was always referring to her as ‘the mountainy woman’. She came originally from a village near the mountains many miles away. This was Ellen’s way of telling us that Winnie was not a local although she had lived all her married life, maybe fifty years, on the neighbouring farm. People were very clannish then. You were considered different if you were not a local. It might take a lifetime to be accepted.
On summer days we would sit on the banks of the river that flowed by Ellen’s land. We were warned not to go near the water, but it drew us like a magnet. There was a natural harbour in one of the fields where the animals watered and the fishermen, fishing for salmon, always brought their boats in at this point. They would sit on the banks and have a picnic. We were always included in this treat as we often brought the fishermen water from our spring-well or milk for the tea. We would often be rewarded with a sixpence which, to us, was a fortune. We would sit for hours talking with these visitors from England with our feet dangling in the water.
We were not allowed to fish the river, even from our own land. It was the property of a Captain Berry who lived in the big house on the opposite side of the river about a mile downstream. A vast acreage of land, including woods, belonged to this landlord: lands that were taken from the original owners. They were not bought, neither were they given. A stretch of the river was also leased to him for the use of his visitors, who only fished for sport. A water-bailiff, named Paul, was employed by this big landowner, who had business interests in England and who spent most of his time there while a manager looked after his Irish interests.
Paul, the bailiff, was a worthy trustee of his master’s woods and river. He kept an eagle eye out for trespassers and woe betide any poachers caught by him. He always carried a gun and would fill their breeches with buckshot as quick as look at them. He also used to swear like a trooper and we were told to give him a wide berth. But when he rowed the visitors up the river to fish or picnic by or off our land, we would talk to him, and often sat in the boat watching the fishermen with their big, modern fishing rods with those newfangled reels and the different bait they used out of tins.
This was all new to us. We fished the lakes and small rivers around our home with home-made rods and caught live bait to lure the fish. A live frog was great bait for pike. We could show these grown men a few tricks when it came to catching salmon, but we just sat and watched and listened. If our land was used for harbouring the boat, custom was that we were entitled to a salmon from each catch. This was taken home to my mother and the family used to greet the appearance of this fish with exclamations of ‘Oh, no! Not fish again.’ We got fed up with salmon fried, roasted, boiled and steamed. Often we left the fish to rot on the banks of the river rather than drag it the three miles home.
Ellen used to tell us of the people who lost their lives in this river, saying it had an appetite for youngsters. She remembered a tragedy years before when a boat-load of young men and women were rowing across after a dance. Someone threw an apple and everyone rushed to get it. The weight, suddenly shifting, toppled the boat and all were lost.
She also told us of the story of St Patrick who, with his followers, was supposed to have tried to cross from the opposite side to land somewhere near where my great-aunt now lived. The first time, a flood stopped them and so they waited for the water to subside. They made camp for people and animals. The second time the local people stopped him by throwing stones, so he was forced to turn back in mid-stream, but he cursed the stone-throwers and told them they would always be beaten in battle. When they heard this they relented and allowed him passage, all except five people. On seeing this the saint withdrew part of the curse and told them that in all the battles they would be beaten in, they would never lose more than five people.
There was an aura of serenity and peace around Ellen’s dwelling and anyone who spent any time there always remarked on the balming effect they experienced, especially in the field nearest the river. It was as if the ground itself held on to the holiness left behind by this saintly man and shared it out afterwards to anyone lucky enough to walk the same grounds.
Although my great-aunt’s house was isolated, it had not always been so. Her parents lived through the famine years and used to tell her about the families who lived in a little village beside the bog road which she would point out to us in the distance. She would tell us of the seven families who lived there, all bearers of the same name, ‘Barratt’. Not one family survived that terrible famine. It was a terrible time, ‘a gra’, she would say, when people died from the feargortugh, eating grass like the cow. They did not understand that nature had provided the cow with four stomachs. Man’s digestive system could not cope, and so the grass killed him. They lay where they fell with the sky as their shroud, with no-one to dig their graves, and without the Holy Rites of the church. ‘May God rest their souls,’ she would murmur. And we would chorus, ‘Amen’.
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