JULIA CAHILL'S CURSE
In '95 I was agent of the Irish Industrial Society, and I spent three
days with Father O'Hara making arrangements for the establishment of
looms, for the weaving of homespuns and for acquiring plots of ground
whereon to build schools where the village girls could practice
lace-making.
The priest was one of the chief supporters of our movement. He was a
wise and tactful man, who succeeded not only in living on terms of
friendship with one of the worst landlords in Ireland, but in obtaining
many concessions from him. When he came to live in Culloch the landlord
had said to him that what he would like to do would be to run the
ploughshare through the town, and to turn "Culloch" into Bullock. But
before many years had passed Father O'Hara had persuaded this man to
use his influence to get a sufficient capital to start a bacon factory.
And the town of Culloch possessed no other advantages except an
energetic and foreseeing parish priest. It was not a railway terminus,
nor was it a seaport.
But, perhaps because of his many admirable qualities, Father O'Hara is
not the subject of this story. We find stories in the lives of the weak
and the foolish, and the improvident, and his name occurs here because
he is typical of not a few priests I have met in Ireland.
I left him early one Sunday morning, and he saying that twenty odd
miles lay before me, and my first stopping place would be
Ballygliesane. I could hear Mass there at Father Madden's chapel, and
after Mass I could call upon him, and that when I had explained the
objects of our Society I could drive to Rathowen, where there was a
great gathering of the clergy. All the priests within ten miles round
would be there for the consecration of the new church.
On an outside car one divides one's time in moralising on the state of
the country or in chatting with the driver, and as the driver seemed
somewhat taciturn I examined the fields as we passed them. They were
scanty fields, drifting from thin grass into bog, and from bog into
thin grass again, and in the distance there was a rim of melancholy
mountains, and the peasants I saw along the road seemed a counterpart
of the landscape. "The land has made them," I said, "according to its
own image and likeness," and I tried to find words to define the
yearning that I read in their eyes as we drove past. But I could find
no words that satisfied me.
"Only music can express their yearning, and they have written it
themselves in their folk tunes."
My driver's eyes were the eyes that one meets everywhere in Ireland,
pale, wandering eyes that the land seems to create, and I wondered if
his character corresponded to his eyes; and with a view to finding if
it did I asked him some questions about Father Madden. He seemed
unwilling to talk, but I soon began to see that his silence was the
result of shyness rather than dislike of conversation. He was a gentle,
shy lad, and I told him that Father O'Hara had said I would see the
loneliest parish in Ireland.
"It's true for him," he answered, and again there was silence. At the
end of a mile I asked him if the land in Father Madden's parish was
poor, and he said no, it was the best land in the country, and then I
was certain that there was some mystery attached to Father Madden.
"The road over there is the mearing."
And soon after passing this road I noticed that although the land was
certainly better than the land about Culloch, there seemed to be very
few people on it; and what was more significant than the untilled
fields were the ruins, for they were not the cold ruins of twenty, or
thirty, or forty years ago when the people were evicted and their
tillage turned into pasture, but the ruins of cabins that had been
lately abandoned. Some of the roof trees were still unbroken, and I
said that the inhabitants must have left voluntarily.
"Sure they did. Arn't we all going to America."
"Then it was not the landlord?"
"Ah, it's the landlord who'd have them back if he could."
"And the priest? How does he get his dues?"
"Those on the other side are always sending their money to their
friends and they pay the priest. Sure why should we be staying? Isn't
the most of us over there already. It's more like going home than
leaving home."
I told him we hoped to establish new looms in the country, and that
Father O'Hara had promised to help us.
"Father O'Hara is a great man," he said.
"Well, don't you think that with the revival of industries the people
might be induced to stay at home?"
"Sorra stay," said he.
I could see that he was not so convinced about the depopulation of
Father O'Hara's parish as he was about Father Madden's, and I tried to
induce him to speak his mind.
"Well, your honour, there's many that think there's a curse on the
parish."
"A curse! And who put the curse on the parish?"
"Isn't that the bell ringing for Mass, your honour?"
And listening I could head a doleful pealing in the grey sky.
"Does Father Madden know of this curse?"
"Indeed he does; none better."
"And does he believe in it?"
"There's many who will tell you that he has been saying Masses for the
last ten years, that the curse may be taken off the parish."
We could now hear the bell tolling quite distinctly, and the driver
pointed with his whip, and I could see the cross above the fir-trees.
"And there," he said, "is Bridget Coyne," and I saw a blind woman being
led along the road. At the moment I supposed he had pointed the woman
out because she was blind, though this did not seem a sufficient reason
for the note of wonder in his voice; but we were within a few yards of
the chapel and there was no time to ask him who Bridget Coyne was. I
had to speak to him about finding stabling for the horse. That, he
said, was not necessary, he would let the horse graze in the
chapel-yard while he himself knelt by the door, so that he could hear
Mass and keep an eye on his horse. "I shall want you half an hour after
Mass is over." Half an hour, I thought, would suffice to explain the
general scope of our movement to Father Madden. I had found that the
best way was to explain to each priest in turn the general scope of the
movement, and then to pay a second visit a few weeks later. The priest
would have considered the ideas that I had put into his head, he would
have had time to assimilate them in the interval, and I could generally
tell in the second visit if I should find in him a friend, an enemy, or
an indifferent.
There was something extraordinary in the appearance of Father Madden's
church, a few peasants crouched here and there, and among them I saw
the blind woman that the driver had pointed out on the road. She did
not move during Mass; she knelt or crouched with her shawl drawn over
her head, and it was not until the acolyte rang the communion bell that
she dared to lift herself up. That day she was the only communicant,
and the acolyte did not turn the altar cloth over the rails, he gave
her a little bit of the cloth to hold, and, holding it firmly in her
fingers, she lifted up her blind face, and when the priest placed the
Host on her tongue she sank back overcome.
"This blind woman," I said to myself, "will be the priest's last
parishioner," and I saw the priest saying Mass in a waste church for
the blind woman, everyone else dead or gone.
All her days I said are spent by the cabin fire hearing of people going
to America, her relations, her brothers and sisters had gone, and every
seventh day she is led to hear Mass, to receive the Host, and to sink
back. To-day and to-morrow and the next day will be spent brooding over
her happiness, and in the middle of the week she will begin to look
forward to the seventh day.
The blind woman seemed strangely symbolical and the parish, the priest
too. A short, thick-set man, with a large bald head and a fringe of
reddish hair; his hands were fat and short, the nails were bitten, the
nose was fleshy and the eyes were small, and when he turned towards the
people and said "Pax Vobiscum" there was a note of command in his
voice. The religion he preached was one of fear. His sermon was filled
with flames and gridirons, and ovens and devils with pitchforks, and
his parishioners groaned and shook their heads and beat their breasts.
I did not like Father Madden or his sermon. I remembered that there
were few young people left in his parish, and it seemed waste of time
to appeal to him for help in establishing industries; but it was my
business to seek the co-operation of every priest, and I could not
permit myself such a licence as the passing over of any priest. What
reason could I give? that I did not like his sermon or his bald head?
And after Mass I went round to see him in the sacristy.
The sacristy was a narrow passage, and there were two acolytes in it,
and the priest was taking off his vestments, and people were knocking
constantly at the door, and the priest had to tell the acolyte what
answer to give. I had only proposed to myself to sketch the objects of
our organisation in a general outline to the priest, but it was
impossible even to do this, so numerous were the interruptions. When I
came to unfold our system of payments, the priest said:--
"It is impossible for me to listen to you here. You had better come
round with me to my house."
The invitation was not quite in accordance with the idea I had formed
of the man, and while walking across the fields he asked me if I would
have a cup of tea with him, and we spoke of the new church at Rathowen.
It seemed legitimate to deplore the building of new churches, and I
mentioned that while the churches were increasing the people were
decreasing, and I ventured to regret that only two ideas seemed to
obtain in Ireland, the idea of the religious vocation and the idea of
emigration.
"I see," said Father Madden, "you are imbued with all the new ideas."
"But," I said, "you don't wish the country to disappear."
"I do not wish it to disappear," he said, "but if it intends to
disappear we can do nothing to prevent it from disappearing. Everyone
is opposed to emigration now, but I remember when everyone was
advocating it. Teach them English and emigrate them was the cure. Now,"
he said, "you wish them to learn Irish and to stay at home. And you are
quite certain that this time you have found out the true way. I live
very quiet down here, but I hear all the new doctrines. Besides
teaching Paddy Durkin to feed his pig, I hear you are going to revive
the Gothic. Music and literature are to follow, and among these
resurrections there is a good deal of talk about pagan Ireland."
We entered a comfortable, well-furnished cottage, with a good carpet on
the floor, and the walls lined with books, and on either side of the
fireplace there were easy chairs, and I thought of the people "on the
other side."
He took a pot of tea from the hob, and said:--
"Now let me pour you out a cup of tea, and you shall tell me about the
looms."
"But," I said, "Father Madden, you don't believe much in the future of
Ireland, you don't take very kindly to new ideas."
"New ideas! Every ten years there is a new set. If I had said teach
them Irish ten years ago I should have been called a fool, and now if I
say teach them English and let them go to America I am called a
reactionist. You have come from Father O'Hara;" I could see from the
way he said the name that the priests were not friends; "and he has
told you a great many of my people have gone to America. And perhaps
you heard him say that they have not gone to America for the sake of
better wages but because my rule is too severe, because I put down
cross-road dances. Father O'Hara and I think differently, and I have no
doubt he thinks he is quite right."
While we breakfasted Father Madden said some severe things about Father
O'Hara, about the church he had built, and the debt that was still upon
it. I suppose my face told Father Madden of the interest I took in his
opinions, for during breakfast he continued to speak his mind very
frankly on all the subjects I wished to hear him speak on, and when
breakfast was over I offered him a cigar and proposed that we should go
for a walk on his lawn.
"Yes," he said, "there are people who think I am a reactionist because
I put down the ball-alley."
"The ball-alley!"
"There used to be a ball-alley by the church, but the boys wouldn't
stop playing ball during Mass, so I put it down. But you will excuse me
a moment." The priest darted off, and I saw him climb down the wall
into the road; he ran a little way along the road calling at the top of
his voice, and when I got to the wall I saw him coming back. "Let me
help you," I said. I pulled him up and we continued our walk; and as
soon as he had recovered his breath he told me that he had caught sight
of a boy and girl loitering.
"And I hunted them home."
I asked him why, knowing well the reason, and he said:--
"Young people should not loiter along the roads. I don't want bastards
in my parish."
It seemed to me that perhaps bastards were better than no children at
all, even from a religious point of view--one can't have religion
without life, and bastards may be saints.
"In every country," I said, "boys and girls walk together, and the only
idealism that comes into the lives of peasants is between the ages of
eighteen and twenty, when young people meet in the lanes and linger by
the stiles. Afterwards hard work in the fields kills aspiration."
"The idealism of the Irish people does not go into sex, it goes into
religion."
"But religion does not help to continue the race, and we're anxious to
preserve the race, otherwise there will be no religion, or a different
religion in Ireland."
"That is not certain."
Later on I asked him if the people still believed in fairies. He said
that traces of such beliefs survived among the mountain folk.
"There is a great deal of Paganism in the language they wish to revive,
though it may be as free from Protestantism as Father O'Hara says it
is."
For some reason or other I could see that folk-lore was distasteful to
him, and he mentioned causally that he had put a stop to the telling of
fairy-tales round the fire in the evening, and the conversation came to
a pause.
"Now I won't detain you much longer, Father Madden. My horse and car
are waiting for me. You will think over the establishment of looms. You
don't want the country to disappear."
"No, I don't! And though I do not think the establishment of work-rooms
an unmixed blessing I will help you. You must not believe all Father
O'Hara says."
The horse began to trot, and I to think. He had said that the idealism
of the Irish peasant goes into other things than sex.
"If this be true, the peasant is doomed," I said to myself, and I
remembered that Father Madden would not admit that religion is
dependent on life, and I pondered. In this country religion is hunting
life to the death. In other countries religion has managed to come to
terms with Life. In the South men and women indulge their flesh and
turn the key on religious inquiry; in the North men and women find
sufficient interest in the interpretation of the Bible and the founding
of new religious sects. One can have faith or morals, both together
seem impossible. Remembering how the priest had chased the lovers, I
turned to the driver and asked if there was no courting in the country.
"There used to be courting," he said, "but now it is not the custom of
the country any longer."
"How do you make up your marriages?"
"The marriages are made by the parents, and I've often seen it that the
young couple did not see each other until the evening before the
wedding--sometimes not until the very morning of the wedding. Many a
marriage I've seen broken off for a half a sovereign--well," he said,
"if not for half a sovereign, for a sovereign. One party will give
forty-nine pounds and the other party wants fifty, and they haggle over
that pound, and then the boy's father will say, "Well, if you won't
give the pound you can keep the girl."
"But do none of you ever want to walk out with a young girl?" I said.
"We're like other people, sir. We would like it well enough, but it
isn't the custom of the country, and if we did it we would be talked
about."
I began to like my young carman, and his answer to my question pleased
me as much as any answer he had yet given me, and I told him that
Father Madden objected to the looms because they entailed meetings,
etc., and if he were not present the boys would talk on subjects they
should not talk about.
"Now, do you think it is right for a priest to prevent men from meeting
to discuss their business?" I said, turning to the driver, determined
to force him into an expression of opinion.
"It isn't because he thinks the men would talk about things they should
not talk about that he is against an organization. Didn't he tell your
honour that things would have to take their course. That is why he will
do nothing, because he knows well enough that everyone in the parish
will have to leave it, that every house will have to fall. Only the
chapel will remain standing, and the day will come when Father Tom will
say Mass to the blind woman and to no one else. Did you see the blind
woman to-day at Mass, sir, in the right-hand corner, with the shawl
over her head?"
"Yes," I said, "I saw her. If any one is a saint, that woman seems to
be one."
"Yes, sir, she is a very pious woman, and her piety is so well known
that she is the only one who dared to brave Father Madden; she was the
only one who dared to take Julia Cahill to live with her. It was Julia
who put the curse on the parish."
"A curse! But you are joking."
"No, your honour, there was no joke in it. I was only telling you what
must come. She put her curse on the village twenty years ago, and every
year a roof has fallen in and a family has gone away."
"And you believe that all this happens on account of Julia's curse?"
"To be sure I do," he said. He flicked his horse pensively with the
whip, and my disbelief seemed to disincline him for further
conversation.
"But," I said, "who is Julia Cahill, and how did she get the power to
lay a curse upon the village? Was she a young woman or an old one?"
"A young one, sir."
"How did she get the power?"
"Didn't she go every night into the mountains? She was seen one night
over yonder, and the mountains are ten miles off, and whom would she
have gone to see except the fairies? And who could have given her the
power to curse the village?"
"But who saw her in the mountains? She would never walk so far in one
evening."
"A shepherd saw her, sir."
"But he may have been mistaken."
"He saw her speaking to some one, and nobody for the last two years
that she was in this village dared to speak to her but the fairies and
the old woman you saw at Mass to-day, sir."
"Now, tell me about Julia Cahill; what did she do?"
"It is said, sir, she was the finest girl in these parts. I was only a
gossoon at the time, about eight or nine, but I remember that she was
tall, sir, nearly as tall as you are, and she was as straight as one of
those poplar-trees," he said, pointing to three trees that stood
against the sky. "She walked with a little swing in her walk, so that
all the boys, I have heard, who were grown up used to look after her,
and she had fine black eyes, sir, and she was nearly always laughing.
This was the time when Father Madden came to the parish. There was
courting in it then, and every young man and every young woman made
their own marriages, and their marriages were made at the cross-road
dancing, and in the summer evenings under the hedges. There was no
dancer like Julia; they used to gather about to see her dance, and
whoever walked with her under the hedges in the summer, could never
think about another woman. The village was fairly mad about her, many a
fight there was over her, so I suppose the priest was right. He had to
get rid of her; but I think he might not have been so hard upon her as
he was. It is said that he went down to her house one evening; Julia's
people were well-to-do people; they kept a shop; you might have seen it
as we came along the road, just outside of the village it is. And when
he came in there was one of the richest farmers in the country who was
trying to get Julia for his wife. Instead of going to Julia, he had
gone to the father. There are two counters in the shop, and Julia was
at the other, and she had made many a good pound for her parents in
that shop; and he said to the father: 'Now, what fortune are you going
to give with Julia?' And the father said there was many a man who would
take her without any, and Julia was listening quietly all the while at
the opposite counter. The man who had come to marry her did not know
what a spirited girl she was, and he went on till he got the father to
say that he would give L70, and, thinking he had got him so far, he
said, 'Julia will never cross my doorway unless you give her L80.'
Julia said never a word, she just sat there listening, and it was then
that the priest came in. He listened for awhile, and then he went over
to Julia and said, 'Are you not proud to hear that you will have such a
fine fortune?' And he said, 'I shall be glad to see you married. I
would marry you for nothing, for I cannot have any more of your
goings-on in my parish. You're the beginning of the dancing and
courting here; the ball-alley, too--I am going to put all that down.'
Julia did not answer a single word to him, and he went over to them
that were disputing about the L80, and he said, 'Now, why not make it
L75,' and the father agreed to that, since the priest said it, and the
three men thought the marriage was settled. And Father Tom thought that
he would get not less than L10 for the marrying of her. They did not
even think to ask her, and little did they think what she was going to
say, and what she said was that she would not marry any one until it
pleased herself, and that she would pick a man out of this parish or
out of the next that pleased her. Her husband should marry her, and not
so many pounds to be paid when they signed the book or when the first
baby was born. This is how marriages are settled now. Well, sir, the
priest went wild when he heard Julia speak like this; he had only just
come to the parish, and did not know how self-minded Julia was. Her
father did, though, and he said nothing; he let Julia and the priest
fight it out, and he said to the man who had come to marry her, 'My
good man, you can go your way; you will never get her, I can tell
that.' And the priest was heard saying, 'Do you think I am going to let
you go on turning the head of every boy in the parish? Do you think I
am going to see fighting and quarrelling for you? Do you think I am
going to see you first with one boy and then with the other? Do you
think I am going to hear stories like I heard last week about poor
Peter Carey, who they say, has gone out of his mind on account of your
treatment? No,' he said, 'I will have no more of you; I will have you
out of my parish, or I will have you married.' Julia tossed her head,
and her father got frightened. He promised the priest that she should
walk no more with the young men in the evenings, for he thought he
could keep her at home; but he might just as well have promised the
priest to tie up the winds. Julia was out the same evening with a young
man, and the priest saw her; and next evening she was out with another,
and the priest saw her; and not a bit minded was she at the end of the
month to marry any of them. It is said that he went down to speak to
her a second time, and again a third time; it is said that she laughed
at him. After that there was nothing for him to do but to speak against
her from the altar. The old people say there were some terrible things
in the sermon. I have heard it said that the priest called her the evil
spirit that sets men mad. I don't suppose Father Madden intended to say
so much, but once he is started the words come pouring out. The people
did not understand half of what he said, but they were very much
frightened, and I think more frightened at what they did not understand
than at what they did. Soon after that the neighbours began to be
afraid to go to buy anything in Cahill's shop; even the boys who were
most mad after Julia were afraid to speak to her, and her own father
put her out. No one in the parish would speak to her; they were all
afraid of Father Madden. If it had not been for the blind woman you saw
in the chapel to-day, sir, she would have had to go to the poor-house.
The blind woman has a little cabin at the edge of the bog, and there
Julia lived. She remained for nearly two years, and had hardly any
clothes on her back, but she was beautiful for all that, and the boys,
as they came back, sir, from the market used to look towards the little
cabin in the hopes of catching sight of her. They only looked when they
thought they were not watched, for the priest still spoke against her.
He tried to turn the blind woman against Julia, but he could not do
that; the blind woman kept her until money came from America. Some say
that she went to America; some say that she joined the fairies. But one
morning she surely left the parish. One morning Pat Quinn heard
somebody knocking at his window, somebody asking if he would lend his
cart to take somebody to the railway station. It was five o'clock in
the morning, and Pat was a heavy sleeper, and he would not get up, and
it is said that she walked barefooted all the way to the station, and
that is a good ten miles."
"But you said something about a curse."
"Yes, sir, a man who was taking some sheep to the fair saw her: there
was a fair that day. He saw her standing at the top of the road. The
sun was just above the hill, and looking back she cursed the village,
raising both hands, sir, up to the sun, and since that curse was
spoken, every year a roof has fallen in."
There was no doubt that the boy believed what he had told me; I could
see that he liked to believe the story, that it was natural and
sympathetic to him to believe in it; and for the moment I, too,
believed in a dancing girl becoming the evil spirit of a village that
would not accept her delight.
"He has sent away Life," I said to myself, "and now they are following
Life. It is Life they are seeking."
"It is said, your honour, that she's been seen in America, and I am
going there this autumn. You may be sure I will keep a look out for
her."
"But all this is twenty years ago. You will not know her. A woman
changes a good deal in twenty years."
"There will be no change in her, your honour. She has been with the
fairies. But, sir, we shall be just in time to see the clergy come out
of the cathedral after the consecration," he said, and he pointed to
the town.
It stood in the middle of a flat country, and as we approached it the
great wall of the cathedral rose above dirty and broken cottages, and
great masses of masonry extended from the cathedral into the town; and
these were the nunnery, its schools and laundry; altogether they seemed
like one great cloud.
When, I said, will a ray from the antique sun break forth and light up
this country again?