Do You Remember?, page 2
In the evening the small table became the school desk as we sat around it to do our lessons. Then my mother covered it with newspapers to absorb ink spills and to avoid calculations and impromptu drawings being made on its white wooden face. The main table was usually covered with an oilcloth, but this smaller one was bare-faced and had to be scrubbed white every week, together with the collection of wooden súgán chairs from around the kitchen. In winter they were scrubbed in the kitchen using a bucket of warm water and a scrubbing brush with carbolic soap or a little block of red brick which was a hard dry block made from the dust remaining after the making of red fire bricks; in summer the chairs were carried to a water spout at the end of the yard for scrubbing. These chairs had occasionally to be re-súgáned which was a specialised job, and if the man of the house did not have the required skill the local thatcher came to the rescue. The súgán was made of ropes of twisted straw saved from the threshing and these were interwoven to make a comfortable seat. Usually accompanying the chairs to cope with an overflow of sitters was a long timber stool known as the ‘form’ (or as we pronounced it ‘forum’), which could seat four to six people depending on their circumference. The children were seated on a form that was usually lined up between the table and the wall – in there they had their backs to the wall, so if a scuffle broke out they were less likely to topple head first onto the hard floor.
For the annual threshing the two tables were brought into action to seat the meitheal of neighbours who gathered to get the harvest in. That night the kitchen became a dancehall when the annual threshing dance was held and hob-nailed boots cracked sparks off the floor as neighbours lined up to do the Siege of Ennis, the Haymaker’s Jig and Shoe the Donkey to the beat of a local musician who played on a fiddle or accordion for jigs, reels and sets.
The Station mass, which rotated between the farmhouses in each townland, necessitated a huge clean-up when it came around. Then the kitchen became a chapel. The large kitchen table was hoisted up and had two súgán chairs slipped under each end, which raised it up to resemble an altar and make it a comfortable height on which to say Mass. Then it was draped in the best white linen tablecloth of the house and two brass candlesticks were placed at either end. At the far end of it or on a small side table, on another white cloth, was a cup and saucer, spoon, a salt cellar, a sprig of palm and a little white linen finger cloth to dry the hands of the priest. That night the kitchen became a concert venue as the family and neighbours tested their performance skills in an impromptu concert.
When the pig was killed the kitchen became a temporary butcher’s shop as the meat was cut up and salted on the tables before being plunged into a barrel of brine in the back kitchen, which was cooler than the kitchen. Before the meat was placed in the brine an egg was put in to test that there was enough salt to preserve the bacon. If the egg stayed afloat it was the go-ahead signal for the meat to go in, and if it sank an indication that more salt was required. The bacon was both fatty and salty, which in today’s world would be a nutritionist’s nightmare; possibly the hard labour that was part of life then counteracted any ill effects. Later the kitchen became a smoke-house as pieces of bacon were hung off iron hooks in the ceiling to be seasoned by the fire while the hams disappeared up the chimney to be smoked for Christmas.
The most important timepiece in every house hung in the kitchen too and this was the clock that guided all our lives. As well as telling the time, these clocks were also an elegant piece of furniture, with a brass pendulum swinging behind a little glass door at the lower end of its oak or mahogany case. Ours was an eight-day clock that struck on the hour and could be heard all over the house. It had to be wound up once a week and in our house this was done every Saturday night. These clocks had come in from America and my father told us that ours was bought by his mother in a local shop around 1915 for five pounds.
The other important piece of furniture in the kitchen was the radio, which kept us informed of how the world outside our world was carrying on, and on summer Sundays the voice of Micheál O’Hehir brought the excitement of Croke Park into the kitchen. My father was a BBC listener and my mother a Radio Éireann woman, but every afternoon she tuned into the BBC for ‘Woman’s Hour’ and ‘Mrs Dale’s Diary’. We left school at three o’clock and should have been home through the fields in half an hour, but there were so many distractions on the way that often we had to run across the last few fields to make it in time to listen to Mrs Dale’s exploits. Later, before the supper at six forty-five, we gathered around the radio again to listen to ‘Dick Barton Special Agent’, which filled us with wonder at the exploits of the three detectives, Dick, Snowy and Jock. Later they were replaced by ‘The Archers’, a farming family whose method of farming was definitely more sophisticated than ours. ‘Paul Temple’ was another detective series that we found fascinating, and we listened to every play on both stations. We loved ‘Question Time’ with Joe Linnane and pitted our brains against each other and the radio teams. ‘Take the Floor’ with Din Joe had us practising our skill in Irish dancing and ‘Around The Fire’ with Seán Ó Síocháin was a mixture of songs and music, and we each had our own favourite singers. My father was a news addict and had a thirst to know what was happening all over the world, and he also listened to every weather forecast, which was not surprising as farming was so weather dependent, but his avid listening to the shipping forecast was, in our opinion, a bit outside his need-to-know zone. After all, high seas were pretty far removed from the hills of North Cork. The last programme at night was the ‘Irish Hospitals Sweepstake’ when Bart Bastable told us ‘it makes no difference where you are, you can wish upon a star.’
This radio was kept on a high shelf to keep it safe from little fingers or else it was put on the deep window sill. It was a sizeable piece of solid furniture to which two weighty glass batteries were attached, one of which had to be charged regularly or else the voice inside took a vow of silence. Listening time therefore had to be rationed to avoid over-use of this battery. In order to restore the voice, the battery had to be carried to a garage – but in our case a pub in the nearby town – where it was plugged into a big apparatus which built up its lost vocal chords, and then we were back in business. If the creamery cart was making its daily journey to town with the milk, the battery was carried along, but if this was not the case the weighty battery had to be borne by hand, which was a tough, muscle-straining exercise.
Usually the only picture to grace the walls of the kitchen was of the Sacred Heart, who kept a paternal eye over all our activities, and after supper each night his hour came when we knelt around him to say the Rosary.
I Remember, I Remember
Thomas Hood
I remember, I remember
The house where I was born
The little window where the sun
Came peeping in at morn;
He never came a wink too soon
Nor brought too long a day;
But now, I often wish the night
Had borne my breath away.
I remember, I remember
The roses, red and white,
The violets, and the lily-cups
Those flowers made of light!
The lilacs where the robin built,
And where my brother set
The laburnum on his birth-day,
The tree is living yet!
I remember, I remember
Where I used to swing,
And thought the air must rush as fresh
To swallows on the wing;
My spirit flew in feathers then
That is so heavy now,
And summer pools could hardly cool
The fever on my brow.
I remember, I remember
The fir trees dark and high;
I used to think their slender tops
Were close against the sky;
It was childish ignorance,
But now ’tis little joy
To know I’m farther off from Heaven
Than when I was a boy.
Chapter 3
The Picture that Told a Story
Before modern art found its way onto the walls of Irish farmhouses the pictures were mostly of the heavenly variety or at least told a story that did not require mental dexterity to interpret the mind of the artist. Our minds were not challenged by the penetrative skills necessary to interpret what was being said by different shades of grey on canvas; Bacon was something we had for our dinner and a Knuttel face never challenged our concept of facial contours. Many houses had a print from Paul Henry’s series ‘The Potato Diggers’, showing farmers digging the fields or, heads bent, stopping to say the Angelus, and even though they were dressed in a totally different garb to ours, these people were still of our world. But mostly, our walls had holy pictures on show.
My grandmother had agonised faces of unknown saints peering down at us and a flying Jesus disappearing into the clouds of heaven who bore us all in that direction. From the wall above my bed a beautiful Saint Teresa poured a shower of roses down over me. She looked serene and very detached from the hard work of farm life. In her flowing Carmelite habit she projected an image of inner peace and the tranquility of monastic life. This, I decided, was the life for me! No hens to be fed or windows to be cleaned. Besides, would I not look gorgeous in those flowing robes? Days spent meandering in meditation around a walled garden picking roses was an enticing idea. So beguiling was the prospect that one evening at the age of ten I presented myself at the door of our local convent and informed a surprised Reverend Mother that I was ready to join her flock. She gently encouraged me to come back later. Later, somehow, never happened.
Saint Francis was the other icon of our formative years. The fact that we had a saintly cousin in the Franciscans who came annually shedding holy pictures like confetti fostered that interest. The picture of Francis surrounded by our feathered friends added greatly to his appeal.
But one picture stood out from all the others. It was the picture of a familiar face that cast a caring eye over us all. On the wall of almost every farm kitchen – and indeed town ones as well – was the familiar picture of the Sacred Heart. Each new bride began her life with a new picture. My grandmother gave one to my mother when she got married, and my mother gave one to me when I set up my new home, and a few years ago, when my daughter got married, her mother-in-law gave her the traditional mother-daughter picture, which was a symbolic welcome into the female line of her new family.
Each picture began life with the names of the young couple and the date of their marriage. When and if children arrived, their full baptismal names were added. It gave visitors an instant list of the residents and was also a record for the future. At the base of the picture was the name of the priest who consecrated the house to the Sacred Heart, when he blessed both home and family. Unfortunately, however, one omission was the birth dates, which would have made it a very valuable family record.
The picture itself was of a benign-faced, long-haired Jesus, who smiled gently down on us. He belied the fire-and-thunder image projected of him by the Church at the time. Maybe the women introducing him to their daughter’s new home had the right thinking and saw real religion as being all about heart and love. To the right of his smiling face was the message: ‘I will bless the house in which the image of My Sacred Heart shall be exposed and honoured’, and at the other side: ‘I will give peace in their families.’ Was it any wonder, then, that the woman of the house wanted this peaceful man on board?
The picture began life as a bright vivid image probably purchased at a mission or in the local shop, where the Sacred Heart, Our Lady and the current Pope rested on high shelves above the general mêlée beneath them. The shopkeeper may have felt that divine intervention from above would improve business. Over the years the glossy picture would become muted and mellowed by smoke from the fire, and in our case by smoke from my father’s and the neighbours’ pipes too as they sat around the open fire and puffed smoke over all and sundry, including the Sacred Heart. This screen of smoke was swished off him weekly with the swirl of an oil-soaked newspaper. Over the years, however, smoke and family living blended the shiny picture and frame into its surroundings. He became one of us and sometimes the family rosary beads hung off his shoulder. Prayers of desperation were flung at him during exams or at times of crisis. But he was never polluted with the commercialism of our daily lives, and the creamery book and bills were tucked instead into the banisters of the stairs. He was a comforting presence in the midst of family chaos and his picture was part of our lives. Did we expect him to perform miracles? Not really! But a bit like my mother, his image was calming when the going got tough. He was strategically placed to be visible from all corners of the large kitchen and sited as he was on the wall opposite the kitchen window he caught your eye as you walked past on your way home and almost seemed to say: Welcome back, I am still here. He was part of the familiar face of home.
Beneath him was his own little beacon of light, and covering the shelf under the lamp was a little lace or hand-crocheted white cloth that draped down around its edges. Perched on this small shelf was a miniature pot-bellied oil lamp and soaking in the oil was a circular wick up through which the oil was fed into a little burner that had at its side a tiny serrated knob to raise the wick as it burnt down. On top of the lamp, kept in place by little brass pods, was a small, jaunty red globe. The Sacred Heart lamp was filled weekly with oil. Then the globe and burner were removed, a tiny funnel inserted into the neck of the lamp and oil poured gingerly from the oil can used to fill the large household lamps. Great care had to be exercised as this lamp was miniature and an overflow resulted in an undesirable smell of oil around the kitchen. Back in action, it glowed red day and night. It was the eternal flame of the home.
The flowers beneath the Sacred Heart picture told the record of the seasons. At Christmas it glowed with red-berried holly and the first flower to peep above the ground in spring was picked to appear in front of him. He went from snowdrops to daffodils to bluebells, to sprigs of palm on Palm Sunday, to roses, to wild woodbine and so on until he arrived back to holly, which as well as appearing in front of him formed a ‘Julius Caesar’ wreath around his head. The Sacred Heart picture graced the walls of convents, monasteries and other institutions, but it was essentially the picture of the home.
A little magazine called The Sacred Heart Messenger, with a bright red cover to match the lamp brought Jesuit words of wisdom into Irish homes for over eighty years. My grandmother read it, my mother read it and now I read it. Over the years it has brought comfort and enlightenment into homes all over Ireland. People write letters of thanksgiving for favours received from the Sacred Heart – pages are lined with them – so the recipients of the blessings of the Sacred Heart are not an unappreciative lot. Being a gardening enthusiast, one of my favourite articles in it is the monthly gardening instructions from Helen Dillon. And the editorial is always full of food for thought. The Sacred Heart picture of my childhood cast a happy glow throughout our young lives and while his picture may have been evicted out of many homes, the Messenger travels on.
A Soft Day
Winifred M Letts
A soft day, thank God!
A wind from the south
With a honey’d mouth;
A scent of drenching leaves,
Briar and beech and lime,
White elderflower and thyme;
And the soaking grass smells sweet,
Crushed by my two bare feet,
While the rain drips,
Drips, drips, drips from the eaves.
A soft day, thank God!
The hills wear a shroud
Of silver cloud;
The web the spider weaves
Is a glittering net;
The woodland path is wet
And the soaking earth smells sweet
Under my two bare feet,
And the rain drips,
Drips, drips, drips from the leaves.
Chapter 4
Don’t Call the Doctor
Early on Saturday mornings, when she felt that the need had arisen and before we had a chance to get out of bed to escape, my mother arrived with enamel mugs steaming with abominable, evil-smelling senna pods – the sickly, putrid smell assailed our nostrils as she sailed in the door bearing this concoction. The pods had been immersed in boiling water to draw forth their eradicating propensities. The brew smelt like something that had been fermenting in a bad drain for a long time. The faster you drank it, the better for your state of mind. Yeats once said that too long a suffering makes a stone of the heart, and too long a contemplation of my mother’s senna pods definitely played havoc with your state of mind. The prospect of drinking it got worse by the minute and the cooler you allowed it to become the more disgusting it became. Lady Macbeth’s advice held good here: ‘If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well it were done quickly.’ But when, finally, in desperation – and with plenty of gagging – you scoffed it down, that was not the end of the story. Oh no! In actual fact, it was only the beginning. The cleansing process would last a whole day.
