Books from the Attic, page 5
Growing up surrounded by trees coloured our lives. My father was a planter of trees and as nature at the time was given free rein, it provided them naturally as well: some of the trees and hedges self-seeded along the ditches that were then the farm boundaries and supported a multiplicity of trees, bushes and briars. The birds also dropped their undigested seeds at random and little seedlings sprang up in unexpected places. In spreading seeds the birds were providing their future homes in the resulting rich habitat. This was the balance of nature in action. We became even more aware of it with this lesson at school.
Little by Little
‘Little by Little,’ an acorn said,
As it slowly sank in its mossy bed,
‘I am improving every day,
Hidden deep in the earth away.’
Little by little, each day it grew,
Little by little, it sipped the dew,
Downward it sent out a thread-like root;
Up in the air sprung a tiny shoot.
Day after day, and year after year,
Little by little the leaves appear;
And the little branches spread far and wide,
Till the mighty oak is the forest’s pride.
‘Little by little,’ said the thoughtful boy,
‘Each precious moment I will employ,
And always this rule in my mind shall dwell:
Whatever I do, I’ll do it well.
‘Little by little, I’ll learn to know
The treasured wisdom of long ago;
And sometime, perhaps, the world will be
Happier and better because of me.’
Anonymous
Going to school through the fields taught us many lessons. My father was constantly chanting the refrain ‘Wrong nature and we will pay a terrible price’, and it is only now that I realise what he meant. We have neglected the planting of trees and we have built on bogs and flood-plains, damaging our natural habitat and affecting our bird life. Great trees are the lungs of the earth, cleansing the air and drinking surplus water, and while doing all this are still majestic and beautiful. Is there anything more awe-inspiring than a great tree in the centre of a large field? Any time I notice one I am reminded of this poem from my school days, and it makes me much more appreciative.
Poem Lovely as a Tree
I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.
A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast;
A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;
A tree that may in Summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;
Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.
Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.
Joyce Kilmer
Here the creator and creation dance together. It was a great poem for rural children growing up surrounded by trees and nature. My father instilled a deep respect for trees in us, telling us that it takes a tree many, many years to grow, but a fool can cut it down in five minutes. He also believed that a person who planted a tree was far less likely to chop one down.
Those lessons that we learned in school at a very early age became imprinted on our young minds, never to be forgotten. Years later they came alive when certain scenes floated before us and awakened long-forgotten lines of poetry. When writing the following poem the poet was dancing with the delights of trees in autumn.
October’s Party
October gave a party;
The leaves by hundreds came–
The Chestnuts, Oaks, and Maples,
The leaves of every name.
The sunshine spread a carpet,
And everything was grand,
Miss Weather led the dancing,
Professor Wind the band.
The Chestnuts came in Yellow,
The Oaks in crimson dressed;
The lovely Misses Maple
In scarlet looked their best.
All balanced to their partners,
And gaily fluttered by,
The sight was like a rainbow
New fallen from the sky.
George Cooper
Is there anything more beautiful than the woods in autumn? In Innishannon we are so lucky to be living in the wooded valley along the banks of the river Bandon, which stretches from the town of Bandon to Kinsale harbour. We owe a debt of gratitude to the people who went before us who had the foresight to leave such a rich heritage of trees. To drive along this valley is lovely at any time of the year but in the autumn the woods along this road are spectacular and their memory would sustain you through the bareness of winter.
Our primary school in the home place was also surrounded by fields and woods, so poems about trees at any time of year came alive around us, though more so in autumn. Here’s one I particularly loved, possible because the ‘children’ refused initially to play their expected part. In this poem the parent tree is trying to put the children to bed, but like all children they want to hang on for a little bit longer.
How the Leaves Came Down
I’ll tell you how the leaves came down:
The great Tree to his children said,
‘You’re getting sleepy, Yellow and Brown,
Yes, very sleepy, little Red;
It is quite time to go to bed.’
‘Ah!’ begged each silly, pouting leaf,
‘Let us a little longer stay;
Dear Father Tree, behold our grief!
’Tis such a very pleasant day,
We do not want to go away.’
So, just for one more merry day
To the great Tree the leaflets clung,
Frolicked and danced and had their way,
Upon the autumn breezes swung,
Whispering all their sports among.
‘Perhaps the great Tree will forget
And let us stay until the spring,
If we all beg and coax and fret.’
But the great Tree did no such thing;
He smiled to hear their whispering.
‘Come, children all, to bed,’ he cried;
And ere the leaves could urge their prayer,
He shook his head, and far and wide,
Fluttering and rustling everywhere,
Down sped the leaflets through the air.
Anonymous
Also hurrying the leaves down was the wind that began as a whisper in autumn but later turned into howling winter storms. These winds whirled through the leaves, loosening their grip, and, as they floated down, sped them on their way. As the whispering wind whirled around the trees he also whispered through our farmhouse, and at night when it whistled along the rafters we could imagine the Whisper-Whisper Man tossing the leaves about in the groves around the house.
The Whisper-Whisper Man
The whisper-whisper man
Makes all the wind in the world.
He has a gown as brown as brown;
His hair is long and curled.
In the stormy winter-time
He taps at your window-pane,
And all the night, until it’s light
He whispers through the rain.
If you peeped through a Fairy Ring
You’d see him, little and brown;
You’d hear the beat of his clackety feet,
Scampering through the town.
But when the whispering autumn wind turned into a raging winter storm we listened in awe as it howled through the trees and rattled the windows and doors of the house. When the trees groaned in protest my father worried that one would be uprooted and come down on top of us. But it never happened because our house was in the sheltered corner of a south-facing hill. But as a child, with no such adult worry about the danger of storms, it was lovely to listen to the wind tossing the trees about and whistling through the house. In those days, with no insulation of windows and doors, the wind had free access to us.
The Wind
Why does the wind so want to be
Here in my little room with me?
He’s all the world to blow about,
But just because I keep him out
He cannot be a moment still
But frets upon my window-sill,
And sometimes brings a noisy rain
To help him batter at the pane.
Upon my door he comes to knock.
He rattles, rattles at the lock
And lifts the latch and stirs the key–
Then waits a moment breathlessly,
And soon, more fiercely than before,
He shakes my little trembling door,
And though ‘Come in, Come in!’ I say,
He neither comes nor goes away.
Elizabeth Rendall
It was lovely to cuddle up in a warm bed listening to the wind howling around the house, rattling the windows and doors and sometimes blowing out the candle, and with their words the poets painted these images on the canvas of our minds and created scenes that remained with us for the rest of our lives.
Chapter 8
Tick-tock!
There is something very comforting about the ticking of a clock. I have a few ticking clocks and when I forget to wind them I soon miss the tick-tock. Each of my ticking clocks has its own story. One was the post-office clock in the village when I came here in 1961. Uncle Jacky and Aunty Peg, who ran the post office, were given it when they got married in 1932 by the Valley Rovers, the local GAA club with which Jacky was involved all his life. Over the years it has got a few life-saving overhauls by understanding clock repairers, whose correct title I have learned is ‘horologist’. Uncle Jacky’s clock has a calming tick-tock and a lovely, soothing chime. It now has pride of place on Aunty Peg’s old sideboard in my front room. Another clock I have was rescued came from a dump and it now hangs over the fireplace in the Seomra Ciúin. When its many coats of dead paint were stripped off, a beautiful inlaid mahogany surface was uncovered. This is an ancient eight-day clock that needs winding only once a week. These eight-day clocks need to be perfectly balanced to keep going and keep the correct time. The first step in achieving this is a wall whose contours suit the clock, because while a clock may happily tick away on one wall it could stubbornly and silently refuse to keep going on another. Once the wall and the clock are compatible, the clock then needs to be hung in a manner that keeps the pendulum swinging back and forth in perfect balance. Ascertaining this balance may take time and constant checking that the pendulum is hanging properly off the hook high up in the interior of the clock. This hook is not visible from the outside so the horologist has to be guided by touch-and-feel control. This is a skill acquired through years of experience. Once perfect location and pendulum balance are achieved, the wall beside it may then be marked by pencil and were the clock ever to be moved from its desired moorings the pencil mark guarantees perfect relocation. This is a simple method learnt from my father many years ago when we had a similar clock hanging in our kitchen. These clocks, even though common in Ireland at the time of my childhood, were made in America, but bought locally after a lot of serious consideration because they were quite expensive and a big family investment. On the farm they were almost looked on as an additional pleasant piece of furniture rather than time-keepers because people reared on the land had developed a natural ability while out in the fields of telling the time of day by the location of the sun. One old man who worked with us always said that on standing in the centre of a field at any time of the year he could know the month of the year, the day of the week and the exact time of day. He then added that the introduction of the clock destroyed this ability.
My father had a big silver watch in its own case that hung from a chain in his waistcoat pocket which he consulted when Big Ben pealed out from the BBC. As a child I thought that he was checking if Big Ben was right! My mother had a little gold wristwatch that she had got when getting married, but she seldom wore it, which was not surprising because time-keeping did not intrude into my mother’s world. For us children watches were away above and beyond our aspirations and we were astute enough not to have one on our wants list – but that did not stop us from dreaming. I remember looking longingly at a watch in the window of a small shop in town and was so overpowered by my desire for acquisition that I tentatively mentioned the possibility of acquiring it to my father, who lost no time in telling me that it was way outside the bounds of possibility. So, early in life we were introduced to the word ‘No’, or as my grandmother put it ‘mastering the art of the do-without’, which probably later fostered a deep sense of appreciation and anticipation in us. When an older sister decided to go into nursing, the acquisition of a watch with a second hand was the cause of great wonder and made for delightful inspection by us younger ones. My grandmother had a weights and chains clock, which to me was intriguing, and at night I watched with fascination as she pulled down the chains, which bore the weights upwards to begin their descent again. Our neighbour Bill had a tall, elegant window clock, the winding of which was a major undertaking and if we happened to be present he had an appreciative audience.
So maybe it is not surprising that I inherited a fascination with clocks, though not necessarily for their time-keeping ability. Over the Aga in the kitchen is my favourite clock from which the Big Ben chimes peal forth every quarter-hour, and on the hour it gives the appropriate full toll. In childhood these chimes boomed forth daily on our battery radio as my father waited to be informed by the BBC as to how the world was managing its affairs.
Another clock, given to my daughter on her twenty-first birthday by our cousin Con (custodian of some of these old books), sits on the piano. I am the caretaker of this clock until her little ones can resist the temptation to investigate its inner mechanisms. Another eight-day clock in the kitchen was purchased by Con at an antique fair many years ago. This venerable oak model has only the tick-tock voice as the hourly chiming voice has ceased to function, which is just as well as it was rasp rather than a chime. Down the corridor, lying on its back in a spare room, is another eight-day clock, waiting to have its life restored by my brilliant horologist, who has retired but keeps all his neighbours’ clocks ticking. Currently he is engaged in breathing life into a grandfather clock that Gabriel and I purchased to mark the arrival of the new millennium. In case you think that this grandfather clock is a magnificent creation in mahogany, forget it! It’s a battered old boy made of oak that has to be balanced with a few books to keep it level – and ticking. But we happened on it in a second-hand furniture shop when the country was alive with millennium mania and decided that it was a good way to mark the passage of time. Over the last twenty years it has become a friendly presence standing in the corner of the front room. At the moment its innards have gone for an overhaul and I am looking forward to their return. You miss the presence of a clock that has been a companion for a long period.
In case you think from all of this meandering on about clocks that I am a good time-keeper, not at all! Each clock has a different story and it’s all about the story! Here’s a song we learned as children, which was part of our home and school, as all of us loved it and sang it a lot!
My Grandfather’s Clock
My grandfather’s clock was too large for the shelf,
So it stood ninety years on the floor.
It was taller by half than the old man himself,
Though it weighed not a pennyweight more.
It was bought on the morn of the day that he was born,
And was always his treasure and pride;
But it stopped short – never to go again –
When the old man died.
Ninety years without slumbering
(tick, tock, tick, tock),
His life’s seconds numbering,
(tick, tock, tick, tock),
It stopped short – never to go again –
When the old man died.
In watching its pendulum swing to and fro,
Many hours had he spent while a boy;
And in childhood and manhood the clock seemed to know
And to share both his grief and his joy.
For it struck twenty-four when he entered at the door
With a blooming and beautiful bride;
But it stopped short – never to go again –
When the old man died.
My grandfather said that of those he could hire,
Not a servant so faithful he found,
For it wasted no time, and had but one desire –
At the close of each week to be wound.
And it kept in its place – not a frown upon its face,
And its hands never hung by its side,
But it stopped short – never to go again –
When the old man died.
It rang an alarm in the dead of the night –
An alarm that for years had been dumb;
And we knew that his spirit was pluming for flight –
That his hour of departure had come.
Still the clock kept the time, with a soft and muffled chime,
As we silently stood by his side;
But it stopped short – never to go again –
When the old man died.
The winding of our clock took place every Saturday night at half-past ten, carried out by my father on his way to bed. It was part of his departing ritual from downstairs where my mother was just beginning to get going on her usual late-night burst of delayed activities, which he acknowledged with his departing words as he put his foot on the first step of the stairs: ‘See you before morning, Missus.’ My mother’s name was Lena, and when they were singing from the same hymn sheet that became Len, but when they were swimming in different directions it changed to Missus. He was an early bird and she was a night owl, and ne’er the twain did meet.
