I
The strange childer must have come to Clochranbeg a good while before
young Dan Mulrane the man-trapper’s emigration, for at that time they
were quite settled in the place. That is to say, they were so in fact,
though by a sort of convention it was always assumed that they were
only temporary sojourners. Upon their first arrival this had promised
to be really the case, as the elderly vagrant with whom they were
travelling intended to pass but one night in the village, and did
actually make an even shorter stay there, for the people who tried to
awaken him next morning found that he had set off again some hours
earlier. Whence he had come seemed, to Clochranbeg, a more unanswerable
question than whither he had gone, nor could the small girl and smaller
boy, who were left behind, throw much light upon his past. Their
recollections, which might be supposed to reach back a couple of years
or so, were of nothing except tramping about with “Himself,” otherwise
“the man,” and they could give no account either of their relationship
to him or to each other, or of how he had become their guardian. They
called one another “Min” and “Atty,” which was all they knew about
names; so that there were not enough to go round the three of them, as
Mr Heany the schoolmaster remarked in the course of a discussion about
funeral arrangements.
It was lucky that nobody’s feelings would be hurt by this stranger’s
coming on the rates, for burial at the expense of the Union seemed
inevitably to await him. But there was a general opinion that he should
not be allowed to go to the pauper’s corner of Kilanure burying-ground
unprovided with at least a name; and it appeared as if that much could
easily be done for him by a simple invention, until Dermot Cassidy,
who had a turn for raising difficulties, started a question about the
impropriety of “as good as puttin’ a lie in the poor man’s mouth, and
he on the way to his grave.” For it was fifty chances to one, Dermot
argued, against their guessing a name for him that would be even an
offer at his own. It might, for anything they knew, said Dermot, be
cast up to the _crathur_ where he was going. This speculation appealed
to fears and fantasies that were always rife among Dermot’s hearers,
and it was a relief when the schoolmaster recommended what could
be approved of as a safe and blameless step by those who felt most
strongly that you cannot take too many precautions when dealing with
matters of such mysterious moment.
“It’s liker than not,” Mr Heany said, “that he had the one Christian
name with the little gossoon, if he was the grandfather, as the chances
are. And if you add to that just ‘Mann’--I seen the name now and again
meself, spelt with the two n’s--you’ll be saying no more of him than
you might of any mother’s son of us all. ‘A Mann’ or ‘Art Mann’--no
fear but that’s a right guess anyway.”
This suggestion being accepted in all seriousness, and an inquest being
deemed unnecessary, the death of A. Mann was officially registered,
while the surname became less formally a property of that forlorn
little pair, who were thenceforth known collectively as “the strange
childer,” but individually as Min and Atty Mann.
Since their late guardian had transmitted to them nothing else except
a walking-stick, and a red cotton bundle, containing a few rags, some
crusts, and fourpence-halfpenny in coppers, it seemed evident that
the workhouse would have to provide for them also; and the Relieving
Officer’s deputy did, in fact, propose to convey them thither in the
old man’s hearse. But Mrs O’Hagan, with whom they were meanwhile
lodging, so vehemently protested against the unluckiness of such a
plan, and was so strongly backed up by all her cronies, that he agreed
to leave them where they were until the next time he had business in
the neighbourhood. And when before long this did happen, he was met on
her very threshold by Mrs O’Hagan with a flat refusal to hand him over
Atty and Min. She gave him impudence, he said, and asked if himself
wasn’t the sensible man to be thinking to take children driving ten or
a dozen miles in a draughty ould covered van, and they choking with
the whooping-cough that mortal minute. Faix then, he might catch them
himself, if he wanted to, she couldn’t tell where they were playing
outside down along the road. Whereupon Mrs Daly next door had poked
out her head, and peremptorily troubled him not to be drawing up his
ould workhouse yoke in front of _her_ place. Poor Alec Hanlon reported
these affronts with not a little resentment, but without obtaining much
redress from the authorities. The truth was that they were by no means
eager to make themselves responsible for the support of the derelict
children, and were more than willing to be relieved of it by anybody
else. So they instructed him to leave the woman alone; if she had a
fancy to keep the children, well and good; she’d be sure to let them
know plenty soon enough whenever she got tired of it; trust her for
that. It was perhaps a rather unofficial and irregular line of action,
but it satisfied all the persons concerned, except Alec Hanlon, who
could have wished to be charged with some alarming reprimand for the
over-awing of _impident_ Mrs O’Hagan and abusive Mrs Daly.
The strange childer themselves acquiesced in their new situation
quite contentedly. They continued to lodge with Mrs O’Hagan, who,
living her lone, had room to spare, and they boarded dispersedly among
the neighbours, who never failed to produce at least a sufficiency
of potatoes. It could not be said that either of them did credit to
their ungrudged fare, as they both remained thin and peaky-faced. In
appearance they resembled one another, though Min’s hair was dark
chestnut and Art’s a brownish hay-colour, and though the sun that had
tanned his face had sprinkled hers with constellations of freckles
of the first magnitude. In disposition there was less likeness, yet
more than showed on the surface, the difference between them lying in
development rather than in character. It was, however, noticed that two
peculiarities were equally shared by each of them. Both feared horribly
policemen and all kinds of officials, and both were most reluctant to
set foot anywhere except along the road. Evidently the main precepts
of their moral law had been: _Thou shalt keep out of the way of the
pólis_, and _Thou shalt not stravade about_; while its sanctions had
comprised shutting up in gaols and workhouses, and getting lost and
starved. Several weeks passed after their arrival before the little
Clochranbegians could persuade them to venture out upon the bog,
and for many a day did Min and Atty cast dismayed and mistrustful
glances at good-natured Andy M‘Evoy, who happened to be wearing an old
postman’s cap. Although, as time went on, familiarity and the force of
example undermined the authority of these fears, they never wholly
lost their influence.
It was furthermore discovered that the strange childer were both
endowed with the gift of song, possessing voices unexpectedly powerful
for persons of their age and growth. Min, whose years were estimated
at six or seven, had obviously formed her style upon that of various
street-singers, and in a high treble reproduced the quavers and
flourishes with more exactness, happily, than the words of their
ditties, which in her version had at least the grace of complete
unintelligibility. Atty, her junior by some twelve-month, owned the
clear pipe of a blackbird, and appeared to be an improviser into the
bargain, the stock piece in his repertoire showing all the signs of
an original composition. A simple and artless lay enough, it became
exceedingly popular at Clochranbeg, and was so repeatedly demanded by
audiences of both young and old that its strains might often be heard
rising from some out-of-door playground in the daytime, and after dark
from some flickering fireside.
“_I would I were a mountain pig,
I would indeed bedad_;”
it ran to a monotonous, mournful sort of chant,
“_I would I were a mountain pig
A-walking in the lane_;”
and it continued thus indefinitely, varying only with respect to the
occupation of the mountain pig. Perhaps the very monotony of its music
may have been found soothing, or possibly the charm lay in the perfect
senselessness of the words; undoubtedly it somehow hit the fancy of the
neighbours, and it is probably chanted to this day upon the bog-lands
of Meenaclochran.
One summer morning, when they had been a couple of months in the place,
Min and Atty wandered down towards the beach with a number of other
children, and near the end of a sandy boreen halted in a convenient
hollow, where Atty was called upon for his song. Seated under a
gold-flecked furze bush, he was chanting to a well-satisfied audience,
when a young fisherman came along up from the shore, and paused to
listen. He had a dark melancholy face, which did not look at all
amused, though he presently remarked: “That’s a comical lilt you have,
sonny, entirely.” His voice sounded gruff, and, as it were, rusty, but
in no way menacing, yet several of the children immediately in warning
tones bade Atty “whist,” while the eldest girl pulled him up by the
hand, and rushed off with him out of sight among the banks and bushes,
all the others stampeding after her. Little Tim Nolan, looking back as
they scampered, and seeing that the young man had turned away, threw
a small pebble slightly in his direction, as if to symbolise their
sentiments.
“Who was yon thin?” said Min. “Has he anythin’ to say to the pólis?”
“Sure not at all,” she was informed. “Pat Mulrane he is, one of the
man-trappers, that’s livin’ down below on the strand round the corner
there, along wid th’ ould mother of them. Quare and cruel bad they are.
One time they took and drownded the ould grandfather they had, in a big
black hole in the middle of Slughnatraigh, and they’d be apt to do the
same on anybody they got scramblin’ about the rocks near their house.
You’d a right to keep out of it.”
The warning impressed Min and Atty all the more because it came from
contemporaries of their own, and thenceforward to their list of perils
to be avoided were added the man-trappers, and the man-trappers’ home.
Before very long, Atty’s mind began to be harassed by yet another
anxiety, and this was the conduct of Min. Ever since Min could remember
she had walked literally in a prescribed track, from which she dared
not deviate, controlled by a will not to be, even in imagination,
gainsaid. And now that she found herself in a state of unprecedented
freedom, her long-repressed energies tended to run riot. Within the
limits imposed by her abiding fear of getting locked up, on the one
hand, and lost, on the other, she waxed rather wild and venturesome.
Foolhardy she appeared to Atty, whose spirits, less elastic, had
not rebounded as vigorously as hers, and whose further-seeing mind
foreboded evil from her exploits. Often did he watch her proceedings
with scared and scandalised eyes, and often did she turn a deaf ear
to a low whisper admonishing her: “They’ll put us out of it, Min, if
you do be going’ on that-a way.” Many a time, as he gave by request a
recital of his _Mountain Pig_, his thoughts were all the while full of
apprehensions about the pranks which he surmised her to be playing, and
the calamitous consequences which they might entail. As things turned
out, he might have seemed entitled to say: “Wasn’t I after tellin’
you?” Yet it may be doubted whether Min’s misdeeds had in reality much
to do with the event. Her habit of hunting the neighbours’ poultry,
and of “rising rows” among their children, did, it is true, cause some
annoyance, but would hardly have produced such an effect unaided by
other circumstances.
These other circumstances, however, arose a year or so after the
arrival of Min and Atty. A spell of exceptionally hard times set
in at Meenaclochran. Disastrous weather on land and sea, wreck of
crops, failure of fishing, took heavy toll from lives that had no
superfluities to renounce. The cheapest of yellow meal began to be
reckoned a luxury; nay, at last there was a demand outrunning the
supply even for the savourless “salt leaves,” gathered off the rocks
to be boiled into the sorriest pretence of a dinner. Everybody was
pinched, and nobody could tell how long the trouble might continue,
since the wisest person knew hardly more than little Jim Daly, who
drummed on his soon-empty saucer in vain desire for a re-fill, or old
Bridey Ahern, who said hopefully: “Plase goodness there might be a
pitaty in it to-morra,” to console herself over her dismal sea-weedy
repast.
And when matters were at the worst, nothing would suit Miss Mann but
she must needs go meddle with Mrs O’Hagan’s hens and the Fottrells’
goat. She had incited a number of the children to join with her in
building a very elaborate sand-house under a bent-matted bank on
the north strand, which was all well and good, keeping them quite
harmlessly employed. But her proceedings ceased to wear this blameless
aspect one unlucky afternoon when, in the absence of her older comrades
at school, she took it into her head that the new structure would make
a grand shed for live stock. Whereupon she had captured Mrs O’Hagan’s
four best hens, and the Fottrells’ grey goat, and conveying them
severally to the sand-house, had stuffed into it the whole reluctant
party. Grave results ensued, for in struggling to get free Nannie broke
through the crumbling roof, which dropped in heavy lumps upon the hens,
killing one of them outright, and giving the others a shock which they
“weren’t the better of to their last day,” while the terrified goat
rushed away, and was lost on the bog for the best part of a week,
during which the little Fottrells had to forego their drop of milk, a
very serious privation.
Certainly this piece of mischief happened most inopportunely, at a
time when, as Mrs Fottrell next morning observed, “It would be hard
enough to find feedin’ for an extry chucken, let alone a couple of
growin’ childer. And they destroyin’ all before them,” she added
severely. She was talking in the kitchen of Mrs O’Hagan, the strange
childer’s especial patroness, having called upon her early to report
the continued disappearance of Nannie the goat.
“’Deed yes, ma’am,” Mrs O’Hagan replied, “I’m thinkin’ this while back
we maybe had a right to let them two go into the House. ’Twould be
better for the crathurs after all than runnin’ wild here, and comin’
short as like as not. They’d be kep’ under rules there, anyway, but
it’s too ould I am meself for trapesin’ after them to hinder them of
doin’ mischief on other people, that aren’t well able to afford to be
at the loss of anythin’ at all.”
“Bedad they are not, ma’am,” Mrs Fottrell said very promptly.
“Clochranbeg does be a poor place these times. Most whiles there’d be
no need for grudgin’ the likes of them their bit of food among the
whole of us. But the Union van’s to be at Dunskeagh to-morra, and
Himself’s goin’ over to Ballylough this evenin’, and could lave word
wid them to send it on here, and pick up the strange childer on the way
back.”
“I wouldn’t say but it might be the best plan,” Mrs O’Hagan said
doubtfully.
“Then that’s what I’ll do,” Mrs Fottrell said with decision. “Bad luck
to it, I wonder where they’re after hurooshin’ the misfortunate goat
to--she’s a terrible loss.”
Now this conversation was overheard by Min and Atty, hidden behind a
turf creel in the corner, whither they had guiltily fled upon Mrs
Fottrell’s entrance; and horror-stricken eavesdroppers they were. In
fact Min seemed to Atty so nearly on the point of betraying them by
breaking forth into loud lamentations, that he dragged her out unseen
through the back door; and then they both ran wildly until they reached
the border of the widest bog.
“Don’t you be stoppin’,” Min said, tugging Atty on in her turn. “It’s
away we must get the furthest ever we can contrive, before they come
after us wid their dirty ould van.”
“Where are we goin’ to?” said Atty.
“Och, how should I know? anywheres at all,” said Min.
“It’s starved and lost we’ll be,” said Atty, hanging back, and looking
distrustfully over the lonely black land, that swept out a great
circle, rounded off far away among the dim-white November mists.
“If we are itself, I’d liefer get lost than to be shut up in the hijjis
ould House all the days of our lives’ ends,” said Min.
“I wisht to goodness, then, you didn’t take and fryken th’ ould goat on
them,” Atty said querulously. “That’s the raison why she’s so mad, and
they’re puttin’ us out of it,” and he sat down under a clump of broom,
looking as if he intended to stay there.
“I wisht I was drownded in the middle of a bog-hole,” Min said with
sudden desperation, which caused Atty to clutch her frantically
crying: “Och, Min, honey, never mind. What’s to become of us at all?”
“Maybe we might find th’ ould goat some time,” Min suggested with a
reactionary gleam of hope. “And then they’d be apt to let us stop.
’Twas that they thought so bad of; worser a dale than Mrs O’Hagan’s
hin. We’d have a great chance if we found her.”
“Let’s go look,” said Atty, jumping up. “Och, Min, I declare to
goodness there she is just over yonder.”
“It’s the moral of herself bedad,” Min said joyfully, and they both
hied off across the bog towards a boulder glimmering greyly among some
rushy tussocks.