Books from the Attic, page 6
First having listened to the News and then the Hospitals’ Sweepstakes programme, when Bart Bastable assured us ‘makes no difference where you are, you can wish upon a star’, my father went to the clock and, easing back its glass front door, he opened the smaller door beneath it and reached his fingers down into its interiors to fish out a brass key, which he then edged, in turn, into each side of the clock face and wound it slowly in regular circular turns. Then he replaced the key inside the little glass door at the bottom and closed the circular door at the front, and the clock ticked away happily for another week. Because my father held our clock in such reverence we children were under pain of extinction were we to touch it, but occasionally he would remove the cover of his own pocket-watch and show us its amazingly complex interior. The whole world of time-keeping was an absolute wonder to me. No surprise then that to me ‘The Watchmaker’s Shop’ in our schoolbook was an Aladdin’s cave of mystery.
The Watchmaker’s Shop
A street in our town
Has a queer little shop
With tumble-down walls
And a thatch on the top;
And all the wee windows
With crookedy panes
Are shining and winking
With watches and chains.
(All sorts and all sizes
In silver and gold,
And brass ones and tin ones
And new ones and old;
And clocks for the kitchen
And clocks for the hall,
High ones and low ones
And wag-at-the-wall.)
The watchmaker sits
On a long-legged seat
And bids you the time
Of the day when you meet;
And round and about him
There’s ticketty-tock
From the tiniest watch
To the grandfather clock.
I wonder he doesn’t
Get tired of the chime
And all the clocks ticking
And telling the time;
But there he goes winding
Lest any should stop,
This queer little man
In the watchmaker’s shop.
There is something fascinating about a shop such as the above and they are now a rare presence on any street. But there is one (although admittedly a much posher one than in the poem) along a street in Cork and it is difficult to pass by without peering through the window or popping in to have a look and a listen. In there is an incredible collection of grandfather clocks – and of course the grandfather clock is the crème de la crème of clocks. It is lovely to loiter around looking at the interesting faces and waiting to hear the different chiming and tolling of the hours. Every clock is in perfect nick and each is busy going about its business, but of course it is the grandfathers who are the top brass, smiling down on all the others.
The Grandfather Clock
Our clock has such a merry face,
And from his corner in the hall
He watches me go in and out,
Upstairs and down I hear his call.
He tells me when ’tis time to rise,
He rings so loudly when it’s eight,
And, oh, I’m sure he looks at me
When I come down to breakfast late.
And even if I wake at night,
All in the lonely dark, I hear
The dear old clock who never sleeps,
And feel as if a friend is near.
Lucy Diamond
An amusing little story in one of our schoolbooks brought the grandfather clock to life for me. I could perfectly understand how Michael the mouse was so upset when the clock stopped because if our kitchen clock came to a standstill my father lost his head – to be honest it did not always require such a rare event as the stopped clock to trigger off this reaction! But, maybe with an easy-going wife and seven children who were forever upsetting the balance of his life, and helpers who did not always get his instructions on first hearing, to my father the clock was a calm, dependable, regular rhythm in his sometimes chaotic household. Not that he ever depended on it to tell the time as he had an innate sense of that from his long years of working on the land, but to my father the clock represented a certain sense of dependability and law and order, and, like Michael the mouse, when it stopped his balance was upset. So to me, in this story Michael and my father became one.
When the Clock Stopped
One night, when everyone in the house was asleep, the big clock in the hall stopped.
Michael the mouse wondered what was wrong, so he came out from his hole and said:
‘This will never do. Why have you stopped, Mr. Clock? I am so used to your tick-tock, tick-tock that I feel quite lonely without it.’
‘Don’t blame me,’ said the clock. ‘It is all the Big Hand’s fault.’
‘What is wrong, Big Hand?’ asked Michael. ‘Why have you stopped?’
‘I’m tired,’ said the Big Hand, ‘and I don’t see why I should have to travel so much faster than the Hour Hand. So I’m taking a rest to myself.’
Now Michael was a very wise little mouse. He thought for a moment, and then he said:
‘I am sorry for you, Big Hand, tomorrow you will be cast into the box under the stairs, and a bright new hand will take your place. You are old and worn-out.’
‘How dare you speak to me like that!’ said the Big Hand. ‘I am neither old nor worn-out. Believe me, my long-tailed friend, I am as young as ever I was.’
‘If you hadn’t stopped,’ went on Michael, ‘I fully believe the Hour Hand would have overtaken you.’
‘That is nonsense,’ said the Big Hand. ‘Watch! I can still travel as fast as ever.’
The Big Hand went off at such a rate that he soon made up for the time he had lost.
‘Now who was right?’ he asked Michael.
‘You are working well now,’ said Michael, ‘but I know well that you will grow tired again in a little while.’
‘Not I!’ said the Big Hand. ‘I have never felt better in my life. I have years and years of ticking in me.’
‘I am very glad to hear it,’ said Michael. ‘I felt very lonely when your tick-tock stopped.
‘By the way,’ he went on then, ‘have you seen the cat lately?’
‘I think she is asleep on the mat outside the hall door,’ said the Big Hand.
‘Good!’ said Michael the mouse. ‘I think I’ll go down to the pantry to get some cheese.’
Some clocks have a lovely chime and there is something very pleasant about that sound. Perhaps electric ones are better time-keepers, but life is not all about time-keeping. Timothy knew that at a very young age and so did we, and we could identify with every step that Timothy took on his way to and from school because his journey, like ours, was full of distractions from the destination that he and we should have had in mind. But if we did not take the time to check the eggs in the birds’ nest that had little cracks on them the day before, we might miss the arrival of the baby chicks. Also, on the way to school we were on the constant lookout for bulls that might hurry us to our final end, and sometimes made long circuits to avoid what were probably harmless cows. Watching the water hens in the river and catching tadpoles were far more interesting activities than anything we might learn in school. So I could understand Timothy’s dilemma very well and I was on his side.
Lost Time
Timothy took his time to school,
Plenty of time he took;
But some he lost in the tadpole pool,
And some in the stickle-back brook.
Ever so much in the linnet’s nest,
And more on the five-barred gate –
Timothy took his time to school
But he lost it all and was late.
Timothy has a lot to do –
How shall it all be done?
Why, he never got home till close on two,
Though he might have been home by one.
There’s sums, and writing and spelling too,
And an apple tree to climb.
Timothy has a lot to do –
How shall he find the time?
Timothy sought it high and low;
He looked in the tadpole pool,
To see if they’d taken the time to grow,
That he lost on the way to school.
He found the nest, and he found the tree,
And he found the gate he’d crossed
But Timothy never shall find (ah me!)
The time that Timothy lost.
Ffrida Wolfe
Didn’t Timothy have a wonderful time as he journeyed to school? And there was another little boy in our schoolbook – Johnny – who was not too worried about time either. He was a bit like my friend Denny. Denny lived along our valley so we all journeyed together back and forth to school. Denny loved looking at the sky and would often get us all to lie down on the warm grass to look up and admire the clouds. All these extra-curricular activities did not lend themselves to punctuality, but as we approached the school gate an awareness of lateness asserted itself, and we opened the classroom door with a certain amount of apprehension because if we had overrun a particular deadline and were marked absent on the massive tome known as the Roll Book that would be the cause of serious concern. To whom it might cause concern, I am not quite sure, but in our world the Master who called the rolls was the nearest thing to God. There was a small, shiny alarm clock on the window of the classroom, but the Master had a long, silver watch-chain draping out of his pocket and when he withdrew this as you arrived in class and peered down at it disapprovingly, you sensed that you had broken one of the Ten Commandments, which was a big deal in our world. So, in order not to offend God, we were aware that a certain amount of speed was sometimes advisable. But all our sympathies were with Johnny and in spirit we wanted to issue words of caution as he approached the river. We also had a river on our way to school and it too was the source of endless distractions, so we understood Johnny’s dilemma very well.
Johnny
As he trudged along to school,
It was always Johnny’s rule
To be looking at the sky
And the clouds that floated by;
But what just before him lay
In his way,
Johnny never thought about;
So that everyone cried out:
‘Look at little Johnny there,
Little Johnny head-in-air!’
Running just in Johnny’s way,
Came a little dog one day;
Johnny eyes were still astray
Up on high,
In the sky
And he never heard them cry
‘Johnny, mind, the dog is nigh!’
Once, with head as high as ever,
Johnny walked beside the river.
Johnny watched the swallows trying
Which was cleverest at flying.
Oh! what fun!
Johnny watched the bright round sun
Coming in and coming out;
This was all he thought about.
So he strode on, only think!
To the river’s very brink
Where the bank was high and steep
And the water very deep;
And the fishes, in a row,
Stared to see him coming so.
One step more! Oh, sad to tell!
Headlong in poor Johnny fell,
And the fishes in dismay
Wagged their tails and swam away.
There lay Johnny on his face,
With his nice red writing case;
But, as they were passing by,
Two strong men had heard him cry;
And with sticks, these two strong men
Hooked poor Johnny out again.
Oh! you should have seen him shiver
When they pulled him from the river.
He was in a sorry plight!
Dripping wet, and such a fright!
Wet all over, everywhere,
Clothes, and arms, and face, and hair.
Johnny never will forget
What it is to be so wet.
And the fishes, one, two, three,
Are come back again, you see;
Up they come the moment after
To enjoy the fun and laughter.
Each popped out his little head
And to tease poor Johnny said:
‘Silly little Johnny, look,
You have lost your writing book!’
T.H. Hoffman
I thought that it was so mean of the fish to be laughing at poor Johnny because in many ways Johnny was us. Did we learn anything from Johnny’s tardiness? Not really! I just loved him and was full of sympathy and understanding for both Johnny and Timothy. They were our soulmates!
Chapter 9
Farm Friends
Like every farmer’s wife of the time my mother was a great fowl woman. She kept hens, guinea hens, ducks, geese, and eventually turkeys when they arrived in rural Ireland. At first the turkey was regarded as a step above the goose, but now roast goose is deemed to be a greater speciality. The male turkeys and geese were aggressive in defence of their young, which is why we children preferred the ducks. The drake was far more kindly and this gave us a chance to handle the baby ducks, who were gorgeous fluffy little bundles. We loved the ducks and of course this poem in our schoolbook was a firm favourite.
Michael Met a White Duck
Michael met a white duck
Walking on the green,
‘How are you?’ said Michael,
‘How fine the weather’s been!
Blue sky and sunshine
All through the day;
Not a single raindrop
Came to spoil our play.’
But the sad white duck said,
‘I myself want rain,
I’d like to see the brooklets
And the streams fill up again.
Now I can’t go swimming,
It really makes me cry
To see the little duckponds
Look so very dry.’
J. Dupuy
When we learned this lesson in our schoolbook the biggest duck in our flock was immediately christened Michael. But our ducks, unlike Michael’s white duck, had no shortage of water because it constantly tumbled down from a glen in the fields behind the house. That flow of water was not quite a river, but it was quite a robust stream; it was referred to as a ‘glaishe’, the Irish word for ‘stream’. We had many such glaishes around the farm and all eventually found their way down to the river that flowed along the valley below us, which formed the boundary with the neighbouring farm. It was lovely to watch the ducks enjoying themselves in the water.
Ducks’ Ditty
All along the backwater,
Through the rushes tall,
Ducks are a-dabbling,
Up tails all!
Ducks’ tails, drakes’ tails,
Yellow feet a-quiver,
Yellow bills all out of sight
Busy in the river!
Slushy green undergrowth
Where the roach swim –
Here we keep our larder
Cool and full and dim!
Everyone for what he likes!
We like to be
Heads down, tails up,
Dabbling free!
High in the blue above
Swift whirl and call –
We are down a-dabbling,
Up tails all!
Kenneth Grahame
Unfortunately geese and ducks are not very hygiene conscious and my father had big questions about their over-use of the glaishes and river as he worried that they would pollute the water. A keen fisherman, he would walk along the river bank and check the quality of the water coming into it off the land. The river was a source of constant delight for us. In summer we swam in it and caught ‘collies’ in jampots. It was full of brown trout which my father brought home on Sunday evenings after an afternoon fishing. We knew that salmon came up there to spawn and this lesson in our schoolbook filled us in on the details.
The Salmon
The sea is the salmon’s home, but the river is its nursery. Not that young salmon get much nursing; indeed from babyhood they have to look after themselves.
When the mother salmon wants to lay her eggs she leaves the sea and goes up a river.
In the sandy river bed she scoops a hole with her tail, and in it she lays a few hundred smooth round eggs. Moving on to another place, she does the same again.
She continues this work for three or four days. Then she and her mate, leaving the eggs to hatch, drift lazily down the river back to the sea.
Many of the eggs are devoured by greedy brown trout and black eels. Those that escape hatch out in a few months into tiny fish.
The baby salmon is less than an inch long and as clear as glass. Under his chin is a little sack, like a horse’s nose-bag, which holds enough food to keep him alive for some weeks.
He hides in a dark corner under a stone till his food is used up and hunger drives him out to look for more.
His early days are full of danger. He has many enemies – caddis worms, dragon-fly grubs with their cruel pincers, newts, water-beetles, and, of course, fish much bigger and stronger than himself.
But if he is lucky enough to live he soon becomes quite a handsome young fellow, some ten inches long, with a beautiful white waistcoat and a dark green mottled suit of scales.
By the time he is two years old he is nearly ten inches long and has got a new suit, this time of shining silver and blue.
And now he becomes very restless. He is no longer contented in the dark weedy river pools with the brown redspotted trout for company. He swims to and fro uneasily.
