THE RAT-PIT
PATRICK MACGILL
THE
RAT-PIT
BY
PATRICK
MACGILL
[Illustration: colophon]
NEW YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
Copyright, 1915,
BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
INTRODUCTION
In the city of Glasgow there is a lodging-house for women known as “The
Rat-pit.” Here the vagrant can get a nightly bunk for a few pence, and
no female is refused admittance: the unfortunate, the sick, and
work-weary congregate under the same roof, breathe the same fetid air
and forget the troubles of a miserable existence in strong drink, the
solace of the sorrowful, or in heavy stupor, the slumber of the
toilworn. The underworld, of which I have seen and known such a lot, has
always appeared to me as a Greater Rat-pit, where human beings, pinched
and poverty-stricken and ground down with a weight of oppression, are
hemmed up like the plague-stricken in a pest-house.
It is in this larger sense that I have chosen the name for the title of
Norah Ryan’s story. By committing the “great sin” and subsequently by
allowing the dictates of motherhood to triumph over decrees of society,
she became a pariah eternally doomed to the Greater Rat-pit. Whilst my
former book, “Children of the Dead End,” was on the whole accepted as
giving a picture of the life of the navvy, there were some who refused
to believe that scenes such as I strove to depict could exist in a
country like ours. To them I venture the assurance that “The Rat-pit” is
a transcript from life and that most of the characters are real people,
and the scenes only too poignantly true. Some may think that such things
should not be written about; but public opinion, like the light of day,
is a great purifier, and to hide a sore from the surgeon’s eye out of
miscalled delicacy is surely a supreme folly.
A word about “Children of the Dead End.” I am highly gratified by the
success attained by that book in Britain and abroad. Only in Ireland, my
native country, has the book given offence. Reviewers there spoke
angrily about it, and one went so far as to say that I would end my days
by blowing out my brains with a revolver. The reference to a tyrannical
village priest gave great offence to a number of clergy, but on the
other hand several wrote to me speaking very highly of the book, and I
have been told that a Roman Catholic Bishop sat up all night to read it.
In my own place I am looked upon with suspicion, all because I “wrote a
book, a bad one makin’ fun of the priest,” as an old countryman remarked
to me last summer when I was at home. “You don’t like it, then?” I said.
“Like it! I wouldn’t read it for a hundred pounds, money down,” was the
answer.
PATRICK MACGILL.
London Irish,
St. Albans.
_Feb. 5th, 1915._
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE TURN OF THE TIDE 11
II. AN UNSUCCESSFUL JOURNEY 29
III. ON DOOEY HEAD 37
IV. RESTLESS YOUTH 48
V. GOOD NEWS FROM A FAR COUNTRY 56
VI. SCHOOL LIFE 64
VII. PLUCKING BOG-BINE 70
VIII. THE TRAGEDY 77
IX. THE WAKE 91
X. COFFIN AND COIN 98
XI. THE TRAIN FROM GREENANORE 108
XII. DERRY 119
XIII. A WILD NIGHT 126
XIV. “BEYOND THE WATER” 137
XV. DRUDGERY 147
XVI. LITTLE LOVES 157
XVII. A GAME OF CARDS 162
XVIII. IN THE LANE 170
XIX. THE END OF THE SEASON 179
XX. ORIGINAL SIN 188
XXI. REGRETS 197
XXII. ON THE ROAD 202
XXIII. COMPLICATIONS 213
XXIV. THE RAT-PIT 222
XXV. SHEILA CARROL 230
XXVI. THE PASSING DAYS 240
XXVII. THE NEW-COMER 246
XXVIII. THE RAG-STORE 251
XXIX. DERMOD FLYNN 262
XXX. GROWN UP 272
XXXI. DESPAIR 286
XXXII. CONFESSION 294
XXXIII. ST. JOHN VIII, I-II 303
XXXIV. LONGINGS 309
XXXV. THE FAREWELL MEETING 315
THE RAT-PIT
CHAPTER I
THE TURN OF THE TIDE
I
“Have you your brogues, Norah?”
“They’re tied round my shoulders with a string, mother.”
“And your brown penny for tea and bread in the town, Norah?”
“It’s in the corner of my weasel-skin purse, mother.”
“The tide is long on the turn, so you’d better be off, Norah.”
“I’m off and away, mother.”
Two voices were speaking inside a cabin on the coast of Donegal. The
season was mid-winter; the time an hour before the dawn of a cheerless
morning. Within the hovel there was neither light nor warmth; the
rushlight had gone out and the turf piled on the hearth refused to burn.
Outside a gale was blowing, the door, flimsy and fractured, creaked
complainingly on its leathern hinges, the panes of the foot-square and
only window were broken, the rags that had taken their places had been
blown in during the night, and the sleet carried by the north-west wind
struck heavily on the earthen floor. In the corner of the hut a woman
coughed violently, expending all the breath in her body, then followed a
struggle for air, for renewed life, and a battle against sickness or
death went on in the darkness. There was silence for a moment, then a
voice, speaking in Gaelic, could be heard again.
“Are you away, Norah?”
“I am just going, mother. I am stopping the window to keep the cold away
from you.”
“God bless you, child,” came the answer. “The men are not coming in yet,
are they?”
“I don’t hear their step. Now the window is all right. Are you warm?”
“Middling, Alannah. Did you take the milk for your breakfast?”
“I left some for you in the jug,” came the reply. “Will you take it
now?”
“That is always the way with you, Norah,” said the woman in a querulous
voice. “You never take your meals, but always leave them for somebody
else. And you are getting thinner on it every day. I don’t want
anything, for I am not hungry these days; and maybe it is God Himself
that put the sickness on me so that I would not take away the food of
them that needs it more than I do. Drink the milk, Norah, it will do you
good.”
There was no answer. A pale-faced little girl lifted the latch of the
door and looked timorously out into the cold and the blackness. The gale
caught her and for a moment she almost choked for breath. It was still
intensely dark, no colour of the day was yet in the sky. The wind
whistled shrilly round the corners of the cabin and a storm-swept bird
dropped to the ground in front of the child. She looked back into the
gloomy interior of the cabin and for a moment thought of returning. She
was very hungry, but remembered her father and brother who would
presently come in from the fishing, probably, as they had come in for
days, with empty boats and empty stomachs. Another fit of coughing
seized the mother, and the girl went out, shutting the door carefully
behind her to stay the wrath of the wind which swept violently across
the floor of the house.
The sea was near. The tide, sweeping sullenly away from the shore,
moaned plaintively near the land and swelled into loud discordant wrath,
far out at the bar. All round the house a tremulous gray haze enveloped
everything, and the child stole into its mysterious bosom and towards
the sea. The sleet shot sharply across her body and at times she turned
round to save her face from its stinging lash. She was so small, so
frail, so tender that she might be swept away at any moment as she moved
like a shadow through the greyness, keeping a keen lookout for the
ghosts that peopled the mists and the lonely places. Of these phantoms
she was assured. To her they were as true as her own mother, as her own
self. They were around and above her. They hid in the mists, walked on
the sea, roved in the fields, and she was afraid of them.
Suddenly she called to mind the story of the Lone Woman of the Mist, the
ghost whom all the old people of the locality had met at some time or
another in their lives. Even as she thought, an apparition took form, a
lone woman stood in front of the little girl, barely ten paces away. The
child crossed herself seven times and walked straight ahead, keeping her
eyes fixed on the figure that barred the path. This was the only thing
to be done; under the steady look of the eyes a ghost is powerless. So
her mother had told her, and the girl, knowing this, never lowered her
gaze; but her bare feet got suddenly warm, her heart leapt as if wanting
to leave her body, and the effort to restrain the tremor of her eyelids
caused her pain. The ghost spoke.
“Who is the girsha[A] that is out so early?” came the question.
“It’s me, Norah Ryan,” answered the child in a glad voice. “I thought
that ye were the Lone Woman of the Mist or maybe a beanshee.”[B]
“I’m not the beanshee, I’m the beansho,”[C] the woman replied in a sharp
voice. “D’ye know what that means?”
“It means that ye are the woman I’m not to have the civil word with
because ye’ve committed a great sin.”
“Who said that? Was it yer mother?”
“Then it was,” said the child, “I often heard her say them words.”
“D’ye know me sin then?” enquired the woman, and without waiting for an
answer she went on: “Ye don’t, of course. This is me sin, girsha; this
is me sin. Look at it!”
The woman loosened the shawl which was drawn tightly around her body and
disclosed a little bullet-headed child lying fast asleep in her arms.
The wind caught the sleeper; one tiny hand quivered in mute protest,
then the infant awoke and roared loudly. The mother kissed the wee thing
hastily, fastened the shawl again and strode forward, taking long steps
like a man, towards the sea. She was bare-footed; her feet made a
rustling sound on the snow and two little furrows lay behind her. Norah
Ryan followed and presently the older woman turned round.
“That’s me sin, girsha, that’s me sin,” she said. “That’s a sin that can
never be undone. Mind that and mind it always.... Ye’ll be goin’ into
the town, I suppose?” “That I am,” said the child. “Is the tide full on
the run now?”
“It’s nearly out. See! the sky is clearin’ a bit; and look it! there’s
some stars.”
“I don’t like the stars, good woman, for they’re always so cold
lookin’.”
“Yes, they’re middlin’ like to goodly people,” said the woman. “There,
we’re near the sea and the greyness is risin’ off it.”
The woman lifted her hand and pointed to the rocky shore that skirted
the bay. At first sight it appeared to be completely deserted; nothing
could be seen but the leaden grey sea and the sharp and jagged rocks
protruding through the snow that covered the shore. The tide was nearly
out; the east was clearing, but the wind still lashed furiously against
the legs and faces of the woman and the girl.
“I suppose there’ll be a lot waitin’ for the tide,” said Norah Ryan.
“And a cold wait it’ll be for them too, on this mornin’ of all
mornin’s.”
“It’s God’s will,” said the woman with the child, “God’s will, the
priest’s will, and the will of the yarn seller.” She spoke sharply and
resentfully and again with long strides hurried forward to the shore.
II
How lifeless the scene looked; the hollows white with snow, the
gale-swept edges of the rocks darkly bare! Norah Ryan stepping timidly,
suddenly shrieked as her foot slipped into a wreath of snow. Under her
tread something moved, the snow rose into the air as if to shake itself,
then fell again with a crackling noise. The girl had stepped upon a
sleeping woman, who, now rudely wakened, was afoot and angry.
“Mercy be on you, child!” roared the female in Gaelic, as she shook the
frozen flakes from the old woollen handkerchief that covered her head.
“Can you not take heed of your feet and where you’re putting them?”
“It’s the child that didn’t see ye,” said the beansho, then added by way
of salutation: “It’s cold to be sleepin’ out this mornin’.”
“It’s Norah Ryan, is it?” asked the woman, still shaking the snow from
her head-dress. “And has she been along with you, of all persons in the
world?”
“Is the tide out yet?” asked a voice from the snow.
A face like that of a sheeted corpse peered up into the greyness, and
Norah Ryan looked at it, her face full of a fright that was not unmixed
with childish curiosity. There in the white snow, some asleep and some
staring vacantly into the darkness, lay a score of women, some young,
some old, and all curled up like sleeping dogs. Nothing could be seen
but the faces, coloured ghastly silver in the dim light of the slow
dawn, faces without bodies staring like dead things from the welter of
snow. An old woman asleep, the bones of her face showing plainly through
the sallow wrinkles of the skin, her only tooth protruding like a fang
and her jaw lowered as if hung by a string, suddenly coughed. Her cough
was wheezy, weak with age, and she awoke. In the midst of the heap of
bodies she stood upright and disturbed the other sleepers. In an instant
the hollow was alive, voluble, noisy. Some of the women knelt down and
said their prayers, others shook the snow from their shawls, one was
humming a love song and making the sign of the cross at the end of every
verse.
“I’ve been travelling all night long,” said an old crone who had just
joined the party, “and I thought that I would not be in time to catch
the tide. It is a long way that I have to come for a bundle of
yarn--sixteen miles, and maybe it is that I won’t get it at the end of
my journey.”
The kneeling women rose from their knees and hurried towards the channel
in the bay, now a thin string of water barely three yards in width. The
wind, piercingly cold, no longer carried its burden of sleet, and the
east, icily clear, waited, almost in suspense, for the first tint of the
sun. The soil, black on the foreshore, cracked underfoot and pained the
women as they walked. None wore their shoes, although three or four
carried brogues tied round their necks. Most had mairteens (double thick
stockings) on their feet, and these, though they retained a certain
amount of body heat, kept out no wet. In front the old woman, all skin
and bones and more bones than skin, whom Norah had wakened, led the way,
her breath steaming out into the air and her feet sinking almost to the
knees at every step. From her dull, lifeless look and the weary eyes
that accepted everything with fatalistic calm it was plain that she had
passed the greater part of her years in suffering.
All the women had difficulty with the wet and shifty sand, which, when
they placed their feet heavily on one particular spot, rose in an
instant to their knees. They floundered across, pulling out one foot and
then another, and grunting whenever they did so. Norah Ryan, the child,
had little difficulty; she glided lightly across, her feet barely
sinking to the ankles.
“Who’d have thought that one’s spags could be so troublesome!” said the
beansho. “It almost seems like as if I had no end of feet.”
“Do you hear that woman speaking?” asked the aged female who led the
way. “It’s ill luck that will keep us company when she’s with us: her
with her back-of-the-byre wean!”
“You shouldn’t fault me for me sin,” said the beansho, who overheard the
remark, for there was no effort made to conceal it. “No, but ye should
be thankful that it’s not yourself that carries it.”
The sun was nearing the horizon, and the women, now on the verge of the
channel (dhan, they called it), stood in silence looking at the water.
It was not at its lowest yet; probably they would have to wait for five
minutes, maybe more. And as they waited they came closer and closer to
one another for warmth.
The beansho stood a little apart from the throng. Although tall and
angular, she showed traces of good looks which if they had been tended
might have made her beautiful. But now her lips were drawn in a thin,
hard line and a set, determined expression showed on her face. She was
bare-footed and did not even wear mairteens, and carried no brogues. Her
sole articles of dress were a shawl, which sufficed also for her child,
a thick petticoat made of sackcloth, a chemise and a blouse. The wind
constantly lifted her petticoat and exposed her bare legs above the
knees. Some of the women sniggered on seeing this, but finally the
beansho tightened her petticoat between her legs and thus held it
firmly.
“That’s the way, woman,” said the old crone who led the party. “Hold
your dress tight, tighter. Keep away from the beansho, Norah Ryan.”
The child looked up at the old woman and smiled as a child sometimes
will when it fails to understand the purport of words that are spoken.
Then her teeth chattered and she looked down at her feet, which were
bleeding, and the blood could be seen welling out through the mairteens.
She shivered constantly from the cold and her face was a little drawn, a
little wistful, and her grey eyes, large and soft, were full of a tender
pity. Perhaps the pity was for her mother who was ill at home, maybe for
the beansho whom everyone disliked, or maybe for herself, the little
girl of twelve, who was by far the youngest member of the party.
III
“It’s time that we were tryin’ to face the water in the name of God,”
said one of the women, who supported herself against a neighbour’s
shoulder whilst she took off her mairteens. “There is low tide now.”
All mairteens were taken off, and raising their petticoats well up and
tying them tightly around their waists they entered the water. The old
woman leading the party walked into the icy sea placidly; the others
faltered a moment, then stepped in recklessly and in a second the water
was well up to their thighs. They hurried across shouting carelessly,
gesticulating violently and laughing loudly. Yet every one of them, with
the possible exception of the woman in front, was on the borderland of
tears. If they had spoken not they would have wept.
Norah Ryan, who was the last to enter the water, tucked up her dress and
cast a frightened glance at those in front. No one observed her. She
lifted the dress higher and entered the icy cold stream which chilled
her to the bone. At each successive step the rising water pained her as
a knife driven into the flesh might pain her. She raised her eyes and
noticed a woman looking back; instantly Norah dropped her clothes and
the hem of her petticoat became saturated with water.
“What are ye doin’, Norah Ryan?” the woman shouted. “Ye’ll be wettin’
the dress that’s takin’ ye to the town.”
The child paid no heed. With her clothes trailing in the stream she
walked across breast deep to the other side. Her garments were soaked
when she landed. The old woman, placid fatalist, was pulling on her
mairteens with skinny, warty hands; another was lacing her brogues; a
third tied a rag round her foot, which had been cut by a shell at the
bottom of the channel.
“Why did ye let yer clothes drop into the dhan?” croaked the old woman.
She asked out of mere curiosity; much suffering had driven all feeling
from her soul.
“Why d’ye ask that, Maire a Crick (Mary of the Hill)?” enquired the
beansho. “It’s the modest girl that she is, and that’s why she let her
clothes down. Poor child! she’ll be wet all day now!”
“Her petticoat is full of water,” said Maire a Crick, tying the second
mairteen. “If many’s a one would be always as modest as Norah Ryan
they’d have no burden in their shawls this day.”
“Ye’re a barefaced old heifer, Maire a Crick,” said the beansho angrily.
“Can ye never hold yer cuttin’ tongue quiet? It’s good that ye have me
to be saying the evil word against. If I wasn’t here ye’d be on to some
other body.”
“I’m hearin’ that Norah Ryan is a fine knitter entirely,” someone
interrupted. “She can make a great penny with her needles. Farley
McKeown says that he never gave yarn to a soncier girl.”
“True for ye, Biddy Wor,” said Maire a Crick grudgingly. “It’s funny
that a slip of a girsha like her can do so much. I work meself from dawn
to dusk, and long before and after, and I cannot make near as much as
Norah Ryan.”
“Neither can any of us,” said several women in one breath.
“She only works about fourteen hours every day, too,” said Biddy Wor.
“How much can ye make a day, Norah Ryan?” asked the beansho.
“Three ha’pence a day and nothing less,” said the girl, and a glow of
pride suffused her face.
“Three ha’pence a day!” the beansho ejaculated, stooping down and
pulling out the gritty sand which had collected between her toes. “Just
think of that, and her only a wee slip of a girl!”
“That’s one pound nineteen shillin’s a year,” said Maire a Crick
reflectively. “She’s as good as old Maire a Glan (Mary of the Glen) of
Greenanore, who didn’t miss a stitch in a stockin’ and her givin’ birth
to twins.”
The party set off, some singing plaintively, one or two talking and the
rest buried in moody silence. It was now day, the sun shot up suddenly
and lighted the other side of the bay where the land spread out, bleak,
black, dreary and dismal. In front of the party rose a range of hills
that threw a dark shadow on the sand, and in this shadow the women
walked. Above them on the rising ground could be seen many cabins and
blue wreaths of smoke rising from the chimneys into the air. A cock
crowed loudly and several others joined in chorus. A dog barked at the
heels of a stubborn cow which a ragged, bare-legged boy was driving into
a wet pasture field ... the snow which lay light on the knolls was
rapidly thawing ... the sea, now dark blue in colour, rose in a long
heaving swell, and the wind, blowing in from the horizon, was bitterly
cold.
“When will the tide be out again?” asked Judy Farrel, a thin,
undersized, consumptive woman who coughed loudly as she walked.
“When the sun’s on Dooey Head,” came the answer.
An old, wrinkled stump of a woman now joined the party. She carried a
bundle of stockings, wrapped in a shawl hung across her shoulders. As
she walked she kept telling her beads.
“We were just talkin’ of ye, Maire a Glan,” said Biddy Wor. “How many
stockin’s have ye in that bundle?”
“---- Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our
death, Amen,” said the woman, speaking in Gaelic and drawing her prayer
to a close; then to Biddy Wor: “A dozen long stockings that I have been
working on for a whole fortnight. The thread was bad, bitter bad, as
the old man said, and I could hardly get the mastery of it. And think of
it, good woman, just think of it! Farley McKeown only gives me thirteen
pence for the dozen, and he gives other knitters one and three. He gave
my good man a job building the big warehouse in Greenanore, and then he
took two pence off me in the dozen of stockings.”
“You don’t say so!”
“True as death,” said Maire a Glan. “And Farley is building a big place,
as the old man said. He has well nigh over forty men on the job.”
“And what would he be paying them?”
“Seven shillings a week, without bit or sup. It is a hard job too, for
my man, himself, leaves here at six of the clock in the morning and he
is not back at our own fire till eight of the clock at night.”
“Get away!”
“But that isn’t all, nor the half of it, as the man said,” Maire a Glan
went on. “Himself has to do all the work at home before dawn and after
dusk, so that he has only four hours to sleep in the turn of the sun.”
“Just think of that,” said Maire a Crick.
“That’s not all, nor half of it, as the old man said,” the woman with
the bundle continued. “My man gets one bag of yellow meal from Farley
every fortnight, for we have eight children and not a pratee, thanks be
to God! Farley charges people like yourselves only sixteen shillings a
bag, but he charges us every penny of a gold sovereign on the bags that
we get. If we do not pay at the end of a month he puts on another
sixpence, and at the end of six months he has three extra shillings on
the bag of yellow meal.”
“God be praised, but he’s a sharp one!” said the beansho.
“Is this you?” asked the woman with the bundle, looking at the speaker.
“Have you some stockings in your shawl too?”
“Sorrow the one,” answered the beansho.
“But what have ye there?” asked Maire a Glan; then, as if recollecting,
she exclaimed: “Oh, I know! It is the wean, as the man said.... And is
this yourself, Norah Ryan?”
“It’s myself,” replied the child, and her teeth chattered as she
answered.
“The blush is going from your cheek,” said Maire a Glan. “And your
mother; is she better in health? They’re hard times that are in it now,”
she went on, without waiting for an answer to her question. “There are
only ten creels of potatoes in our townland and these have to be used
for seed. God’s mercy be on us, as the old man said, but it was a bad
year for the crops!”
“It couldn’t have been worse,” said Judy Farrel, clapping her thin hands
to keep them warm. “On our side of the water, old Oiney Dinchy (that’s
the man who has the dog that bit Dermod Flynn) had to dig in the pratee
field for six hours, and at the end of that time he had only
twenty-seven pratees in the basket.”
“If the crows lifted a potato in Glenmornan this minute, all the people
of the Glen would follow the crow for a whole week until they got the
potato back,” said old Maire a Crick. “It’s as bad now as it was in the
year of the famine.”
“Do you mind the famine year?” asked Norah Ryan. The water was streaming
from the girl’s clothes into the roadway, and though she broke into a
run at times in her endeavour to keep pace with the elder women, the
shivering fits did not leave her for an instant. The wind became more
violent and the sleet which had ceased for a while was again falling
from the clouds in white wavy lines.
“I mind the bad times as well as I mind yesterday,” said Maire a Crick.
“My own father, mother, and sister died in one turn of the sun with the
wasting sickness and the hunger. I waked them all alone by myself, for
most of the neighbours had their own sick and their own dead to look
after. But they helped me to carry my people to the grave in the coffin
that had the door with hinges on the bottom. When we came to the grave
the door was opened and the dead were dropped out; then the coffin was
taken back for some other soul.”
“At that time there lived a family named Gorlachs at the foot of Slieve
a Dorras,” said Maire a Glan, taking up the tale; “and they lifted their
child out of the grave on the night after it was buried and ate it in
their own house. Wasn’t that the awful thing, as the old man said?”
“I wouldn’t put it past them, for they were a bad set, the same
Gorlachs,” said Maire a Crick. “But for all that, maybe it is that there
wasn’t a word of truth in the whole story.”
IV
Norah Ryan, who was now lagging in the rear, got suddenly caught by a
heavy gust of wind that blew up from the sea. Her clothes were lifted
over her head; she tried to push them down, and the weasel-skin purse
which she held in her hand dropped on the roadway. The penny jingled
out, the coin which was to procure her bread in Greenanore, and she
clutched at it hurriedly. A sudden dizziness overcame her, her brain
reeled and she fell prostrate to the wet earth. In an instant the
beansho was at her side.
“Norah Ryan, what’s coming over ye?” she cried and knelt down by the
girl. The child’s face was deathly pale, the sleet cut her viciously,
and her hands, lying palm upwards on the mire, were blue and cold. The
beansho tried to raise her but the effort was too much; the child which
the woman carried impeded her movements. Maire a Crick now hurried up
and the rest of the women approached, though in a more leisurely
fashion.
“Mother of God! What’s wrong? What’s wrong?” asked the old woman
anxiously. “What has come over the child atall, atall? She’s starving,”
the old body went on, kneeling on the roadway and pressing her warty
hands on the breast of the young girl. “She’s starving, that’s it. In
her own home she hardly eats one bite at all so that her people may have
the more. So I have heard tell.... Norah Ryan, for God’s sake wake up!”
The girl gave no heed, made no sign. The sleet sang through the air and
the women gathered closer, shielding the little one with their bodies.
“What’s to be done?” asked the beansho. Biddy Wor told how people were
cured of fargortha (hunger) at the time of the famine, but little heed
was paid to her talk. The beansho unloosened her shawl, wrapped her
offspring tightly in it and handed the bundle to one of the women, who
crossed herself as she caught it.
“Now up on my back with the girsha,” said the beansho authoritatively,
stooping on her knees in the roadway and bending her shoulders. “Martin
Eveleen has a house across the rise of the brae and I’ll carry her
there.”
Three of the party lifted Norah and placed her across the beansho’s
shoulders.
“How weighty the girsha is!” one exclaimed; then recollecting said:
“It’s the water in her clothes that’s doing it. Poor girsha! and it’ll
be the hunger that’s causing her the weakness.”
The beansho with her burden on her shoulders hurried forward, her feet
pressing deeply into the mire and the water squirting out between her
toes. The rest of the party following discussed the matter and, being
most of them old cronies, related stories of the hunger that was in it
at the time of the great famine. Again it faired, the sun came out, but
the air was still bitterly cold.
A cabin stood on the crest of the hill and towards this the beansho
hurried. Strong and lank though she was, the burden began to bear
heavily and she panted at every step. At the door of the house she
paused for a moment to collect her strength, then lifted the latch and
pushed the door inwards. A man, shaggy and barefooted, hurried to meet
the woman and stared at her suspiciously.
“What do you want?” he asked in Gaelic.
“It’s Norah Ryan that’s hungry, and she fainted on the road,” explained
the beansho.
“In with her then,” said the man, standing aside. “Maybe the heat of the
fire will take her to. Indeed there’s little else that she can get
here.”
Inside it was warm and a bright fire blazed on the cabin hearth. In a
corner near the door some cows could be heard munching hay, and a dog
came sniffing round the beansho’s legs. A feeling of homeliness pervaded
the place and the smell of the peat was soothing to the nostrils.
“Leave her down here,” said the woman of the house, a pale, sickly
little creature, as she pointed to the dingy bed in the corner of the
room near the fire. Several children dressed in rags who were seated
warming their hands at the blaze rose hurriedly on the entrance of the
strangers and hid behind the cattle near the door.
“Is it the hunger and hardships?” asked the man of the house as he
helped the beansho to place the inert body of the little girl on the
bed.
“The hunger and hardships, that’s it,” said Maire a Crick, who now
entered, followed by the rest of the women.
“Then we’ll try her with this,” said the man, and from behind the
rafters of the roof he drew out a black bottle which he uncorked with
his fingers. “It’s potheen,” he explained, and emptied some of the
contents into a wooden bowl. This he held to the lips of the child who
now, partly from the effects of the heat and partly from the effects of
the shaking she had received on the beansho’s back, awakened and was
staring vacantly around her. The smell of the intoxicant brought her
sharply to her senses.
“What are ye doin’?” she cried. “That’s not right, and me havin’ the
holy pledge against drink!”
The man crossed himself and withdrew the bowl, whereupon the woman of
the house brought some milk from the basin that stood on the dresser,
and this being handed to Norah Ryan, the child drank greedily. The
beansho gave her a piece of bread when the milk was consumed.
“Where is me purse?” asked Norah suddenly. “It’s lyin’ on the road and
the brown penny is in the clabber. Where are we atall?”
“In Martin Eveleen’s house, the house of a decent man,” said the
beansho. “Eat yer bit of bread, child, for ye’re dyin’ of hunger.”
For a moment the child looked earnestly at the bread, then, as if
stifling the impulse to return it, she began to eat almost savagely.
Maire a Crick placed the purse and penny which she had lifted from the
road by the bedside and withdrew to the door, already sorry perhaps for
having wasted so much time on the journey. The beansho found her baby,
kissed a crumb into its mouth, tied it up again in her shawl and, when
Norah had eaten the bread, both went to the door together.
“God be with ye, decent people,” said the child. “Some day I hope to be
able to do a good turn for you.”
“We’re only glad to be of help to a nice girsha,” said the man, taking
down a bottle of holy water from the roof-beam. He made the sign of the
cross, dipped his fingers in the bottle, and shook the holy water over
the visitors.
“God be with yer journey,” he said.
“And God keep guard over your home and everything in it,” Norah and the
beansho made answer in one voice.