The Plain Irish People

THE clouds hang low over Ireland, turning it to a land of horrors; days of labor in the midst of fighting and sudden death; sleepless, watchful nights, when every knock upon the door sounds an answering knock of dread upon the hearts of those who hear. The young and bold again are falling like grain before the scythe; the old are left again to gather the harvest, of grief. Even the face of the land is torn and stricken; burned shells of houses stare with window-frames like eyeless sockets upon broken roads, rude, dusty gaps where bridges were, great trees flung outstretched across every lane and boreen. And old Ireland, holy Ireland, Ireland of faith, of peace, of kindliness, hospitality, ready laughter, generous tears, song and prayer and the dancing — is it then gone forever? Or is it still there, hidden somewhere under all the ruin? A while ago I said to myself, ‘ I shall go and see. If it is there I can find it.’

I have only sunny recollections of Ireland. My earliest ones go back many years to my childhood, when I saw it for the first time. I am often reminded that, ‘that was an awful year entirely — sure, it rained rivers every day — hardly ever we got the harvest in — ‘t was the year, indeed, when the InnisBoffin boat was wrecked below on the strand and the three drownded!’ Yet when I open the door of the gallery in my memory where the pictures of that first summer hang, I see only sundrenched canvasses that show glimpses of glorious mornings — Pool-a-Sogarth,¹ and white little bodies, Ellen and Rose Honnie and Bridget and Mary, churning its cool green depths to hissing foam; shining, blue afternoons, and a race with the shouting wind across lush meadows, hair streaming, long legs leaping ditch and dyke like a colt’s; lilac evenings, and tales about the Sheoques, or the black dog of Sikeen; bed, long before the dark curtain of the night had shut out the last rosy light of day.

One or two of my canvasses, to be sure, have little, little shadows that have grown very light with the years: the day I had to wear shoes because ‘the lady Gibbonses,’ visiting from Castlebar, ‘would remark’; days when I left the sea and the races with the singing wind, to sit quiet at strange fireplaces, in other villages, where Grandmother-from-America was making duty calls; the dreadful day of M’ria’s wedding, when I let Tommy fall into the big flash, dragging him out, with all his red calico finery muddied to a deep black, just in time to meet the arriving side-cars of the groom’s party. Now that I take another peep, I see that Tommy, at three, was quite a shadow in himself. He followed us, Bridget and me. He told things: who skimmed the cream off the big jug in the chest; who, playing doctor, mixed the horrid dose that made poor Rose so ill; how often Biddy took the wrong turn at the bridge and so arrived at Pool-a-Sogarth instead of at school; and that the long white cotton garments which modest Grandmother-inIreland always insisted upon for bathing suits were wet from soaking in a near-by pool, not from legitimate use. Yes, Tommy was rather a dark spot in those days. I had forgotten it, perhaps because even at three there had begun to shine through, the earnest, honest, cheery, fine spirit that has since made him seem golden.

I was eighteen when I visited Ireland again. Tommy was ten — a thin, awkward, freckled, eager youngster, who dragged me away from pleasanter pursuits to see a birdeen’s nest, or the coves where the ‘wather-dogs’ had their beds. He had two books, begged or borrowed from someone, which were his treasure. One was an Irish history, the other a collection of Irish poems. ‘Wait yet now, Mary,’ he would say, waving his book of poems at me. ‘Wait yet now, till I sing you this wan.’ Then, in a hoarse, harsh, tuneless voice, stumbling over unfamiliar words, he would sing about Dark Rosaleen, and the Rapparees, and Rury on the Hill, and ‘There’s men can strike for Erin yet, sez Paudge O’Donoughue!' He read constantly from his history, muttering to himself as he crouched on the hob by the firelight. If the tide of victory were swinging to his beloved Irish, he would rise half out of his place, eyes flashing, one hand clenched high above his head. But if, alas, success were on the side of the ‘Sassenach’ (the English), he would shrink into the shadows of his corner, thumping the clenched fist on the bitter page before him. How often we laughed at him — Biddy, his older brothers, and I — who, admiring them for their size and their steps in the dance, was still too young to know that he, not they, was Ireland. Long after they had settled themselves as good American citizens he was to translate into deeds the patriotic fervor of his poems.

Those were golden times, during that second visit, golden with the light of the fire around which we gathered every evening. The days were negligible, to be passed, somehow, until the night fell. At night the young people gathered in our house. They always lingered half an hour or more around the gable end outside, their suppressed chuckling and whispering audible above the furtive scraping of their heavy boots on the cobbled pathway, before they summoned courage to come in. Then they burst in, all together, and hurried with downcast eyes and low greetings of ‘God save all here!’ to accustomed places, on the hobs, the meal-box, or the window sills — for chairs were very few. They were shy young people, much in awe of their elders, sadly lacking in initiative and self-possession. Not even close relationship with ‘herself,’ Grandmother-in-Ireland, who was Aunt M’ria to most of them, or nightly visits, could give them courage to come in boldly and singly. When their shyness had worn off, someone usually produced a violin and the dancing began. Such dancing! jigs, reels, sets, horn-pipes, slip-jigs, the Waves of Tory, the Walls o’ Limerick, the White Cockade; such ringing of nailed boots on the cement floor; such hearty swinging by the boys of their rosy-faced partners; such a breathless rousing finish to every set! When I was thirty-four, I touched with tender fingers the little hollow in the floor, near the hearthstone, that my eighteen-year-old dancing feet had worn there. Sometimes we sang. Often we told fairy tales, true stories, ‘for I know thim it happened to.’ Then we drew in close to the hearth for company’s sake, deserting the darker corners in the big kitchen, where the rafters were dim and black above, and the firelight made strange flickering shadows on the low white walls. The story-teller usually prefaced his tale with a cautious glance around, and a ‘God bechune us and harm!’ for who knew but that, outside in the purple dark where the wind sighed through the rustling thatch and the sea moaned on the strand, ‘thimselves’ were listening.

Grandada, gone hours before to bed, but not to sleep, usually broke up the gatherings with a call from his room to Michael. Michael, with seven years of college behind him, had failed of becoming a priest. Since then he had not fitted exactly into the life of the village. He hunted, fished, rode, read, but never labored in the fields, in the bog, or at the kelp. Consequently the day began for him whenever he chose to rise.

‘Michael-O,’ Grandada would say, ‘what, time do ye get up in the morning?’

‘Oh anny time, sir,’ would come Michael’s unfailing and truthful answer.

' Well,’ Grandada would return, ' anny man that gets up at that time, ‘t is time for him to be going to bed now.’

Whereupon the boys and girls would stir and rise, preparatory to going. They seldom escaped Aunt M’ria, however, without the rosary. ‘T is late! Ye’ll have it missed now at home,’ she would say. ‘ Let ye kneel down here now, in the Name of God.’ So that most of our evenings of dancing and singing and story-telling ended with all of us, great and small, young and old, kneeling together on the rough cement floor.

I thought then that the Sunday afternoon walks, the jolly evenings in the big kitchen, the moonlit dances on the crossroads, the quay, or the bridge, the shy love-making and the drollery wore what made the days and nights so bright. I know now it was kindliness, unity, lack of envy, simple faith, and clean hearts. Those days were carried in my memory untarnished for fifteen years. Fugitive gleams from them have since lighted many days that were dark.

To lose forever the Ireland for which those memories stood would have been a grievous loss indeed. And I seemed to have lost it in those years when, reading accounts of ‘cowards refusing conscription,’ ‘traitors, who stab in the back,’ ‘gunmen,’ and ‘murder-clubs,’ I tried to fit these things to the small boys, now grown, whom I had known — to Geoffrey and James, to Ritchie and Patrick and Tommy. Tommy who sang so lustily — and so tunelessly — of Owen Roe and Rury on the Hill, and who could not still be sitting on the hob among his dreams if the youth of Ireland were stirring in her name! Much more did it seem to be lost during this last year, when I read of worse things: of brother fighting brother, of mother against son, of ambush and execution. Yet, though Ireland might seem full of death, bitterness, and fear, somehow I believed that the Ireland I knew still lived in the hearts of the young.

So I went seeking it. Leaving the pier at Holyhead I closed my eyes, figuratively speaking, — for the senses often deceive us, but the heart never, — and opened them again when the side-car reached the top of Pat Durkan’s brae. From there the Village can first be seen. There are eleven houses in the Village, sprawled on the top and down the sides of a steep, barren, treeless brae, all low-walled, whitewashed, thatch-roofed, each as like the other, inside and out, as peas in a pod. They overlook the small green fields and brown bog on three sides, the restless sea on the fourth. The doors stand open all day long. At night, when they are closed, they are not locked. There is no need for lock or bolt where every one is welcome to whatever is within. Each family has for the other food in the famine-time, help in the harvest-time, tears for their grief and smiles for their joy. No house lacks fire, food, or wine while they are to he found in any other house. It is a humble, poor little village, with no beauty save that of the wild lovely world about it, and the spirit of understanding and compassion that hovers over it.

Within the house on the top of the brae, built by my great-grandfather more than a century and a quarter ago, I stood upon the hearthstone where I had known so many happy hours, and looked about me. Everything was the same; new windows in that, side of the house away from the sea, to be sure; the old loft in the kitchen closed up; a new fashion of putting ‘a bit o’ distimper’ in the whitewash to make the walls of’ the room above’ a pretty pink; the old-fashioned canopy beds in ‘the room below’ replaced by modern brass ones. There was, too, a deep-bosomed, calm-eyed young woman raising a new brood in the old nest. Otherwise, it was all the same. The light of the single lamp shone on the old red dresser with its rows and rows of brown and blue delft ; on the rafters richly brown with smoke from the fire that had burned without ceasing for a hundred and twenty-five years; on the busy black kettle that had hung from the same crane for almost as long; best of all, on the smiling faces of the entire Village, come to offer me the old greeting, ‘Cead mille failte home again!'

Not only that night, but every night, the friends gathered in. Sometimes we danced — the old dances; jigs, reels, sets, the Waves o’ Tory, the Walls o’ Limerick, the Lancers — in the old way, with a hearty swinging of partners, a ringing of nailed boots on cement floor, a breathless, laughing finish to every set. Sometimes we sang the old songs, the Foggy Dew, Slieve-namon, the Snowy-breasted Pearl. And Tommy, clear Tommy, grown tall and straight and hardy, with his hair as red, his face as freckled, his smile as engaging, as ever, sang lustily-and tunelessly — of Rury on the Hill! The boys flattered me, with the same merry twinkle, as slyly as their brothers had a score of years before. ‘Ah, well now! How well ye did n’t take ye’re time growin’ up.’ —‘It would be time enough for you to be eighteen now.’ ‘Would n’t, it be a grand thing altogether for us, now, if there was one lassie itself about, like you.’ — ‘Sure, every lad within in this village is breakin’ two commandments, the first and the ninth!'

On my birthday we had a celebration which began at noon with ‘a whole lamb ‘n’ all the trimmin’s,’ and ended with a dance in the barn that lasted until morning. In the barn Uncle Joe had hung four lanterns — three borrowed, of course. When he speculated gravely as to whether ‘ T will be enough, I dunno?' one of the boys assured him, ‘Arrah, damn it, man! One candle’d do, and that one to blow out!’ They all brought me gifts; a teapot, four pounds of tea, an autograph book, a pair of gloves. The last I cherish, because they meant all the spending-money for weeks to come of a youngster who, long ago, had used to grumble because I, a young lady Yank, was given his seat upon the side-car, while he, being only a boyeen, had to walk four miles to mass.

The days were joyous, too, passed as they were, in walking, riding along shining miles of yellow strand, visiting again the coves where the water dogs have their beds. The girls — a new Honnie, another Rose, a second Bridget, come to take the place of the others— took no account of the years between us, but ran in every day to bring me out for a race with the winds down the steep banks above Sikeen, or a chilly splash in the cold green waters of Pool-a-Sogarth.

Not all the nights were passed with dance and song. There was much talk. All Ireland sat in that kitchen at night. There was Mary Lannon, more than eighty-five years, with her delicate, fine old face, her wide blue eyes still merry, her thin sweet voice still lifted often in the songs of her country. There, too, was Richard, her son, perhaps fifty, his long, ungainly body stretched out on the meal-box, his dark sharp face half hidden in the shadows. And, leaning their six feet two of manhood on either side of the dresser, to the imminent peril of the blue-and-brown delft, there were his young sons, Richie and James Peter. About the hearth, playing, or helping with the Irish, which they themselves learned every day at school, the older boys who were acquiring it laboriously three nights a week at the schoolhouse, were the four small sons of the house.

Here, I say, was all Ireland — Ireland of the Famine, and later the Fenians; Ireland of the Land League and the Parliamentarians; Ireland of Easter Week, 1916, and the great and bitter days since then; Ireland about, to be. They were all eager, intelligent, fairly well informed. They had opinions about their country, her triumphs, her disappointments, her leaders on either side in the present, struggle, her hopes for the future.

What were those opinions? Where did they stand, these people who are Ireland? Ah, well, what does it matter? That is another story for other pens. As for me, I had come to see if, under the seeming changes the years of strife had wrought in them, I could yet find the people I had known, simple, wise, and sane. And there they were, the plain, common, everyday people of Ireland, living their plain, common everyday lives as they had always done, wholesomely and usefully. Bridges were blown up, roads were broken, there were no markets for their produce. Very well, then, they could keep their produce at home. The eggs, butter, mutton, bacon, fowl that had graced foreign tables went to build the magnificent specimens of manhood who were as different, physically and mentally, from their brothers of those years ago as if they were a different race.

No markets meant very little money. Very well, then, while they had food and fire and a roof, they could manage with little money. The small boys and girls went out to school every day, warmly clad in garments and stockings made from wool sheared from their own sheep, carded, spun, dyed, knitted, or woven in their own kitchens. It is many years since that has been so before.

The whole country, to quote the press, foreign and domestic, was in a state of chaos with nowhere authority capable of enforcing law and order. Very well, then, they could keep the law themselves. There were no police, civic guards or other, within a radius of a hundred miles around the Village, which, by the way, is in the wild west. Nor were there any soldiers except a few — no matter of which army — in a town fifteen miles away, to which town they kept close. Yet, in the two months I was there, there was not a single case of depredation, or disorder, or even drunkenness, not to speak of crime.

In our village and the next there were fifty-four boys. Such boys! Cleareyed, straight-limbed, self-possessed young giants, whose training of the past years was observable in every movement of their splendid bodies. They had, until recently, all been on the same side. Now they had differences of opinion which some of them at least were actively supporting. But there was neither bitterness between them, nor harsh judgment of each other. They are not being stampeded or terrorized into anything, correspondents to the contrary notwithstanding. Nor will they be. They will fight, if they decide that that is right, on the side they think is right. Until they so decide, they will live each day as usefully and happily as the circumstances permit; they will pursue the old path of hard work by day, cheerful recreation together by night. They will read and listen — but they will think for themselves. They will make their own decision. What that will be, I do not presume to foretell. (Every traveler who has spent ten days in Ireland recently, and many people who have never set foot on her shores, can tell you ‘what ninety-five per cent of the Irish people want.’ These are larger claims than I, who am of the Irish people, flesh of their flesh and bone of their bone, may make.) I know only this, that they have those gifts of the humble, — understanding and compassion, —both of which will enter into their final judgment. When they truly speak, there will be no confusion nor any misunderstanding of their voice. And it is quite as impossible for that final judgment to be wrong as for the sun, which often hides behind dark clouds for long days, not to shine again.