BOYNE WATER AND HOLY WATER
"Since two can't gain in the bargain,
Then who shall bear the loss
When little children are auctioned
As slaves at the Market Cross?
Come to the Cross and the Market,
Where the wares of the world are sold,
And the wares are little children,
Traded for pieces of gold."
--From _Good Bargains_.
My master's name was Bennet--Joe Bennet. He owned a farm of some eighty
acres and kept ten milch cows, two cart-horses, and twenty sheep. He
possessed a spring-cart, but he seldom used it. It had been procured at
one time for taking the family to church, but they were ashamed to put
any of the cart-horses between the shafts, and no wonder. One of the
horses was spavined and the other was covered with angleberries.
He brought me home from Strabane on the old cart drawn by the spavined
horse, and though it was well past midnight when we returned I had to
wash the vehicle before I turned into bed. My supper consisted of
buttermilk and potatoes, which were served up on the table in the
kitchen. The first object that encountered my eye was a large picture of
_King William Crossing the Boyne_, hung from a nail over the fireplace
and almost brown with age. I hated the picture from the moment I set
eyes on it, and though my dislikes are short-lived they are intense
while they last. This picture almost assumed an orange tint before I
left, and many a time I used to spit at it out of pure spite when left
alone in the kitchen.
The household consisted of five persons, Bennet, his father and mother,
and two sisters. He was always quarrelling with his two sisters, who, in
addition to being wasp-waisted and spider-shanked, were peppery-tongued
and salt-tempered, but he never got the best of the argument. The two
hussies could talk the head off a drum. The old father was half-doting,
and he never spoke to anybody but me. He sat all day in the
chimney-corner, rubbing one skinny hand over the other, and kicking the
dog if ever it happened to draw near the fire. When he spoke to me it
was to point out some fault which I had committed at my work.
The woman of the house was bent like the rim of a dish from constant
stooping over her work. She got up in the morning before anyone else and
trudged about in the yard all day, feeding the hens, washing the linen,
weeding the walk or seeing after the cows. I think that she had a liking
for me. One day when I was working beside her in the cabbage patch she
said these words to me:
"It's a pity you're a Papist, Dermod."
I suppose she meant it in good part, but her talk made me angry.
My bedroom was placed on the second floor, and a rickety flight of
stairs connected the apartment with the kitchen. My room was comfortable
enough when the weather was good, but when it was wet the rain often
came in by the roof and soaked through my blankets. But the hard work on
Bennet's farm made me so tired that a wet blanket could not keep me from
sleeping. In the morning I was called at five o'clock and sent out to
wash potatoes in a pond near the house. Afterwards they were boiled in a
pot over the kitchen fire, and when cooked they were eaten by the pigs
and me. I must say that I was allowed to pick the best potatoes for
myself, and I got a bowl of buttermilk to wash them down. The pigs got
buttermilk also. This was my breakfast during the six months. For dinner
I had potatoes and buttermilk, for supper buttermilk and potatoes. I
never got tea in the afternoon. The Bennets took tea themselves, but I
suppose they thought that such a luxury was unnecessary for me.
I always went down on my knees at the bedside to say my prayers. I knew
that young Bennet did not like this, so I always left my door wide open
that he might see me praying as he passed by on the way to his own
bedroom.
From the moment of my arrival I began to realise that the Country beyond
the Mountains, as the people at home call Tyrone, was not the best place
in the world for a man of twelve. Sadder than that it was for me to
learn that I was not worthy of the name of man at all. Many and many a
time did Bennet say that he was paying me a man's wages while I was only
fit for a child's work. Sometimes when carrying burdens with him I would
fall under the weight, and upon seeing this he would discard his own,
run forward, and with arms on hips, wait until I rose from the ground
again.
"Whoever saw such a thing!" he would say and shake his head. "I thought
that I got a man at the hirin'-fair." He drawled out his words slowly as
if each one gave him pleasure in pronouncing it. He affected a certain
weariness in his tones to me by which he meant to imply that he might,
as a wise man, have been prepared for such incompetency on my part. "I
thought that I had a man! I thought that I had a man!" he would keep
repeating until I rose to my feet. Then he would return to his own
burden and wait until my next stumble, when he would repeat the same
performance all over again.
Being a Glenmornan man, I held my tongue between my teeth, but the
eternal persecution was wearing me down. By nature being generous and
impulsive, I looked with kindly wonder on everything and everybody. I
loved my brothers and sisters, honoured my father and mother, liked the
neighbours in my own townland, and they always had a kind word for me,
even when working for them at so much a day. But Bennet was a man whom I
did not understand. To him I was not a human being, a boy with an
appetite and a soul. I was merely a ware purchased in the market-place,
something less valuable than a plough, and of no more account than a
barrow. I felt my position from the first. I, to Bennet, represented
five pounds ten shillings' worth of goods bought at the market-place,
and the buyer wanted, as a business man, to have his money's worth. The
man was, of course, within his rights; everybody wants the worth of
their money, and who was I, a boy bought for less than a spavined horse,
to rail against the little sorrows which Destiny imposed upon me? I was
only an article of exchange, something which represented so much amidst
the implements and beasts of the farm; but having a heart and soul I
felt the position acutely.
I worked hard whenever Bennet remained close by me, but I must admit
that I idled a lot of the time when he was away from my side. Somehow I
could not help it.
Perhaps I was working all alone on the Dooish Mountain, making rikkles
of peat. There were rag-nails on my fingers, I was hungry and my feet
were sore. I seemed to be always hungry. Potatoes and buttermilk do not
make the best meal in the world, and for six of every seven days they
gave me the heartburn. Sometimes I would stand up and bite a rag-nail
off my finger while watching a hare scooting across the brown of the
moor. Afterwards a fox might come into view, showing clear on the
horizon against the blue of the sky. The pain that came into the small
of my back when stooping over the turf-pile would go away. There was
great relief in standing straight, although Bennet said that a man
should never stand at his work. And there was I, who believed myself a
man, standing over my work like a child and watching foxes and hares
while I was biting the rag-nails off my fingers. No sensible man would
be seen doing such things.
At one moment a pack of moor-fowl would rise and chatter wildly over my
head, then drop into the heather again. At another a wisp of snipe would
suddenly shoot across the sky, skimming the whole stretch of bogland
almost as quickly as the eye that followed it. Just when I was on the
point of restarting my work, a cast of hawks might come down from the
highest reach of the mountain and rest immovable for hours in the air
over my head. It strains the neck to gaze up when standing. Naturally I
would lie down on my back and watch the hawks for just one little while
longer. Minutes would slip into hours, and still I would lie there
watching the kindred of the wild as they worked out the problems of
their lives in their several different ways. Meanwhile I kept rubbing
the cold moss over my hacked hands in order to drive the pain out of
them. When Bennet came round in the evening to see my day's work he
would stand for a moment regarding the rikkles of peat with a critical
stare. Then he would look at me with pity in his eyes.
"If yer hands were as eager for work as yer stomach is for food I'd be a
happy master this day," he would say, in a low weary voice. "I once
thought that ye were a man, but such a mistake, such a mistake!"
Ofttime when working by the stream in the bottomlands, I would lay down
my hay-rake or shearing hook and spend an hour or two looking at the
brown trout as they darted over the white sand at the bottom of the
quiet pools. Sometimes I would turn a pin, put a berry on it and throw
it into the water. I have caught trout in that fashion many a time.
Bennet came across me fishing one day and he gave me a blow on the
cheek. I did not hit him back; I felt afraid of him. Although twelve
years of age, I don't think that I was much of a man after all. If
anybody struck Micky's Jim in such a manner he would strike back as
quickly as he could raise his fist. But I could not find courage to
tighten my knuckles and go for my man. When he turned away from me, my
eyes followed his ungainly figure till it was well out of sight. Then I
raised my fist and shook it in his direction.
"I'll give you one yet, my fine fellow, that will do for you!" I cried.
Although I idled when alone in the fields I always kept up my own end of
the stick when working with others. I was a Glenmornan man, and I
couldn't have it said that any man left me behind in the work of the
fields. When I fell under a burden no person felt the pain as much as
myself. A man from my town should never let anything beat him. When he
cannot carry his burden like other men, and better than other men, it
cuts him to the heart, and on almost every occasion when I stumbled and
fell I almost wished that I could die on the bare ground whereon I
stumbled. But every day I felt that I was growing stronger, and when
Lammastide went by I thought that I was almost as strong even as my
master. When alone I would examine the muscles of my arms, press them,
rub them, contract them and wonder if I was really as strong of arm as
Joe Bennet himself. When I worked along with him in the meadowlands and
corn-fields he tried to go ahead of me at the toil; but for all he tried
he could not leave me behind. I was a Glenmornan man, proud of my own
townland, and for its sake and for the sake of my own people and for the
sake of my own name I was unwilling to be left behind by any human
being. "A Glenmornan man can always handspike his own burden," was a
word with the men at home, and as a Glenmornan man I was jealous of my
own town's honour.
'Twas good to be a Glenmornan man. The pride of it pulled me through my
toil when my bleeding hands, my aching back and sore feet well nigh
refused to do their labour, and that same pride put the strength of
twenty-one into the spine of the twelve-year-old man. But God knows that
the labour was hard! The journey upstairs to bed after the day's work
was a monstrous futility, and often I had hard work to restrain from
weeping as I crawled weakly into bed with maybe boots and trousers still
on. Although I had not energy enough remaining to take off my clothes I
always went on my knees and prayed before entering the bed, and once or
twice I read books in my room even. Let me tell you of the book which
interested me. It was a red-covered volume which I picked up from some
rubbish that lay in the corner of the room, and was called the _History
of the Heavens_. I liked the story of the stars, the earth, the sun and
planets, and I sat by the window for three nights reading the book by
the light of the moon, for I never was allowed the use of a candle. In
those nights I often said to myself: "Dermod Flynn, the heavens are
sending you light to read their story."