THE LEADING ROAD TO STRABANE
"No more the valley charms me and no more the torrents glisten,
My love is plain and homely and my thoughts are far away;
The great world voice is calling and with throbbing heart I listen,
And I cannot but obey; I cannot but obey."
--From _Songs of the Dead End_.
On the morning of the twenty-ninth of June, 1905, I left Jim
MaCrossan's, and went out to hoe turnips in a field that lay nearly half
a mile away from the farmhouse. I had taken a hoe from a peg on the wall
of the barn, and had thrown it across my shoulder, when MaCrossan came
up to me.
"See an' don't be late comin' in for yer dinner, Dermod," he said.
"Ye'll know the time be the sun."
That was his last speech to me, and I was sorry at leaving him, but for
the life of me I could not tell him of my intended departure. There is
no happiness in leaving those with whom we are happy. I liked MaCrossan
more because of his strength than his kindness. Once he carried an anvil
on his back from Lisnacreight smithy to his own farmhouse, a distance of
four miles. When he brought it home I could not lift it off the ground.
He was a wonderful man, powerful as a giant, good and kindly-spoken. I
liked him so much that I determined to steal away from him. I was more
afraid of his regret than I would be of another man's anger.
I slung the hoe over my shoulder and whistled a wee tune that came into
my head as I plodded down the cart-road that led to the field where the
turnips were. The young bullocks gazed at me over the hedge by the
wayside, and snorted in make-believe anger when I tried to touch their
cold nostrils with my finger-tips. The crows on the sycamore branches
seemed to be very friendly and merry. I could almost have sworn that
they cried, "Good morning, Dermod Flynn," as I passed by.
The lane was alive with rabbits at every turn. I could see them peering
out from their holes under the blossomed hedgerows with wide anxious
eyes. Sometimes they ran across in front of me, their ears acock and
their white tufts of tails stuck up in the air. I never thought once of
flinging a stone at them that morning; I was out on a bigger adventure
than rabbit-chasing.
A little way down I met MaCrossan's half-sister, Bridgid. She had just
taken out the cows and was returning to the house after having fastened
the slip rails on the gap of the pasture field.
"The top o' the mornin' to ye, Dermod," she cried.
"The same to you," I answered.
She walked on, but after she had gone a little way, she called back to
me.
"Will ye be goin' to the dance in McKirdy's barn on Monday come a week?"
"I will, surely," I replied across my shoulder. I did not look around,
but I could hear the soles of her shoes rustling across the dry clabber
as she continued on her journey.
The moment I entered the field I flung the hoe into the ditch, and
crossed to the other side of the turnip drills. I put my hand into the
decayed trunk of a fallen tree, and took out a little bundle of clothes
which was concealed there. I had hidden the clothes when I received Jim
Scanlon's letter. I hung the bundle over my arm, and made for the
high-road leading to Strabane. It was nearly three hours' walk to the
town, and the morning was grand. I cut a hazel rod to keep me company,
and swung it round in my hand after the manner of cattle-drovers. I went
on my way with long swinging strides, thinking all the time, not of
Micky's Jim and the Land Beyond the Water, but of Norah Ryan whom I
would see on 'Derry Pier with the rest of the potato squad.
I could have shouted with pure joy to the people who passed me on the
road. Most of them bade me the time of day with the good-natured
courtesy of the Irish people. The red-faced farmer's boy, who sat on the
jolting cart, stopped his sleepy horse for a minute to ask me where I
was bound for.
"Just to Strabane to buy a new rake," I told him, for grown-up men never
tell their private affairs to other people.
"Troth, it's for an early harvest that same rake will be," he said, and
flicked his horse on the withers with his whip. Then, having satisfied
his curiosity, he passed beyond the call of my voice for ever.
A girl who stood with her back to the roses of a roadside cottage gave
me a bowl of milk when I asked for a drink of water. She was a taking
slip of a girl, with soft dreamy eyes and red cherry lips.
"Where would ye be goin' now?" she asked.
"I'm goin' to Strabane."
"And what would ye be doin' there?"
"My people live there," I said.
"It's ye that has the Donegal tongue, and be the same token ye're a
great liar," said the girl, and I hurried off.
A man gave me a lift on the milk-cart for a mile of the way. "Where are
ye goin'?" he asked me.
"To Strabane to buy a new spade," I told him.
"It's a long distance to go for a spade," he said with a laugh. "D'ye
know what I think ye are?"
"What?" I asked.
"Ye're a cub that has run away from his master," said the man. "If the
pleece get ye ye'll go to jail for brekin' a contract."
I slid out of the cart, pulling my bundle after me, and took to my heels
along the dry road. "Wan cannot see yer back for dust," the man shouted
after me, and he kept roaring aloud for a long while. Soon, however, I
got out of the sound of his voice, and I slowed down and recovered my
wind. About fifteen minutes later I overtook an old withered woman, lean
as a rake, who was talking to herself. I walked with her for a long
distance, but she was so taken up with her own troubles that she had not
a word for me.
"Is it on a day like this," the old body was saying aloud to herself,
"that the birds sing loud on the trees, and the sun shines for all he is
worth in the hollow of the sky, a day when the cruel hand of God strikes
heavy on me heart, and starves the blood in me veins? Who at all would
think that me little Bridgid would go so soon from her own door, and the
fire on her own hearthstone, into the land where the cold of death is
and the darkness? Mother of God! be good to a poor old woman, but it's
bitter that I am, bekase she was tuk away from me, lavin' me alone in me
old age with no wan sib to meself, to sleep under me own roof. Well do I
mind the day when little Bridgid came. That day, my good man Fergus
himself was tuk away from me, but I wasn't as sorry as an old woman
might be for her man, for she was there with the black eyes of her
lookin' into me own and never speakin' a word at all, at all. Then she
grew big, with the gold on her hair, and the redness on her mouth, and
the whiteness of the snow on her teeth. 'Tis often meself would watch
her across the half-door, when she was a-chasin' the geese in the yard,
or pullin' the feathers from the wings of the ducks in the puddle. And
I would say to meself: 'What man will take her away from her old mother
some fine mornin' and lave me lonely be the fire in the evenin'?' And no
man came at all, at all, to take her, and now she's gone. The singin'
birds are in the bushes, and the sun is laughin', the latch of me door
is left loose, but she'll not come back, no matter what I do. So I do be
trampin' about the roads with the sweat on me, and the shivers of cold
on me at the same time, gettin' a handful of meal here, and a goupin of
pratees there, and never at all able to forget that I am lonely without
her."
I left the woman and her talk behind me on the road, and I thought it a
strange thing that anyone could be sorry when I was so happy. In a
little while I forgot all about her, for my eyes caught the chimneys of
Strabane sending up their black smoke into the air, and I heard some
church clock striking out the hour of noon.
It was well on in the day when I got the 'Derry train, but on the moment
I set my foot on the pier by the waterside I found Micky's Jim sitting
on a capstan waiting for me. He was chewing a plug of tobacco, and
spitting into the water.
"Work hasn't done ye much harm, Dermod Flynn, for ye've grown to be a
big, soncy man," was Jim's greeting, and I felt very proud of myself
when he said these words.