Читать книгу The Country of Our Dreams - Mary O'Connell - Страница 16

I feel obliged to state one or two truths which seem to be lost sight of in this country. The Irish are now in danger of famine again…

The position taken by the Government and the landlords is that nothing can alter the landlord’s right to the whole of his customary rent… if that rent is not paid, the military will eject the people from their holdings and seize their money and stock.

Consequently those who do not pay their rent will have to die by the roadside, but those who do pay will have the privilege of dying under a roof… exactly what took place thirty-two years ago, during the most calamitous Famine ever known.

Letter of Anna Parnell to the New York Tribune, 29 November 1879

St Brigid’s Day/ Imbolg, 1 Feb 1880, Straide , Co Mayo

It is said by the country people that on her own special day, Brigid puts her finger in the icy waters and declares an end to the winter, breaking its spell with her great powers. But not until his day, six weeks later, when Patrick puts two fingers in the water, then that is the certainty of spring, and the seed potatoes can be safely planted.

On the eve of Brigid’s Day, Davitt’s mother, like her mother and grandmother before her, would put out the little piece of cloth, the brat Brigid, the cloth of Brigid, on the hawthorn hedgerows. Then they waited for the saint to spiritually traverse the entire land on her special night, imbuing women’s cloths across the country with her healing power. They would use that cloth throughout the year, for consolation and curing, for birthing women and cattle, and to ease the pains of the dying. Each small cloth representing, no, more than representing, actually being part of the miraculous cloak of great Brigid. The sacred fabric of Ireland.

Superstition, modern men said now, but Davitt knew how strong his mother was in her faith, how strong she was still, living within the old traditions, the old language, the songs and the stories. She had brought them with her to England, had carried them onto America. But she didn’t place any cloth outside overnight in Lancashire or in New York on Brigid’s Eve. Even his mother didn’t feel Brigid had come with the Irish to their new lands. Christ had, and Our Lady had, but not Brigid. She had somehow stayed behind, with the land, with the hawthorn and the wild flowers.

‘Come Bee,’ he said to his cousin, tucking her arm into his left one, ‘let’s see if the little stream I remember is still hereabouts.’

He sounded quite lighthearted, as he moved with his usual quick energetic step, but as she moved closer beside him, Bee Walshe could feel the tensions in Davitt’s thin body. Perhaps their holding the Land League meeting in Straide was not such a good idea.

They were building the speakers platform over the very ground that Davitt had identified as his family home, his place of birth, and boyhood. Before the landlord’s crowbars had wrecked and swept away his parents’ cabin. Their few precious furnishings thrown without regard onto the road, as the landlord’s agents set fire to the thatch of the roof.

Davitt knew his memory of that terrible day was aided by his parents’ frequent telling and retelling of the story, as all the Famine stories were retold in Lancashire, and London, and New York, in Melbourne and Sydney and Vancouver. But he also clearly recalled the impressions, the powerful shock of that day, especially the sounds of eviction.

The shouts of men, the cracking of whips, as horses startled at the fire and smoke. Baby Sabina in his mother’s arms crying in all the confusion, and then the women neighbours joining his mother in wailing cries of protest and despair as the roof fell in a fiery tumble. His older sisters Mary and Anne clinging to Catherine Davitt’s skirts - white faced, shocked.

But no woman’s keening or child’s cry could soften the heart of those heartless wolves, the landlords. Those vampires had sucked the lifeblood out of an innocent people. Well by God, this time the people of Mayo – all the people of the West – would trample on the ruins of Irish landlordism before allowing themselves to be broken again. This time they would be organised in their resistance.

They were walking so rapidly across the hard frosted earth, Bee was glad to be wearing her strong walking boots. It was gallant of Davitt to have offered his left arm but she could not really lean on him, could not risk dragging him off balance. If she brought him back wet or muddied, she would have to face the wrath of the men who looked out for him. Matthew Harris, Big James Daly, editor of the Connaught Telegraph, and her own brother John, they’d speak very harshly to her if she let Michael Davitt come to any harm.

Perhaps all of them, men and women, felt such fierce protectiveness around Davitt because he resolutely refused any special treatment, or help, or money. He would accept payment for his writings and his public talks, he said, but he would not accept charity.

Bee knew that James Daly would be glad of any excuse to rebuke her. Daly didn’t like women getting involved in politics. He said it was the duty of men to protect women and children from harm, and Irishmen would be the joke of the world if they were seen to be lacking the power to do so. But Davitt said that women and children suffered from injustice as much as men, and had as much right to resist the landlords and military – to resist starvation and exile and death. Besides, he said, everyone was needed in the struggle against the landlords. Everyone.

And so James Daly had had to give way, because they needed Davitt, and they trusted him. Davitt was everywhere it seemed, at once, setting up tenants groups, organising, encouraging, exhorting, instructing, teaching the farmers how to run orderly meetings, how to record motions, how to speak up and how to negotiate collectively. How to be brave.

Davitt and Bee moved on through the field, following the sound of the hidden stream until finally she saw the wintry light glimmering off it.

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘over here Michael.’

Davitt came with her and stood in silence on the low bank looking down into the water. It ran clear and cold a little way beneath them. He did not speak for some time. She took the opportunity to look at him, to take in her own fill. He was still appallingly thin, the prison pallor not yet gone from him. But his face was so often lively, the brown eyes warm, the mouth laughing. ‘What are you thinking Michael,’ Bee asked him now, interrupting his meditations, daring where most of the men would not have.

‘I am thinking,’ he said, and just for one moment she allowed herself to imagine that he would say ‘of you.’

‘of how quiet this field is,’ he said, ‘how silent this whole great world.’

He looked up and around the field, as if searching for something. ‘You, dear Bee, will be too young to remember, but once this little stream sang back the merry voices of children. Once Straide was a populous and prosperous village.’ He looked away again, down at the stream, and recited.

‘On highway side, where oft was seen/the wild dog and the vulture keen/Tug for the limbs and gnaw the face/Of some starved child of our race.’

She said nothing. Just listened.

‘Slow terrible deaths from hunger, coffinless graves on the roadside.’ Davitt spoke with a dreamy voice of memory, as if he saw the faces of the dying reflected back to him by the stream. ‘Everywhere that a hole could be dug for the starving peasantry of Mayo. People buried when and where they fell. Bodies thrown into pits outside the workhouses – no priests called. And the survivors driven out – banished to the four corners of the earth.’

Now he looked back up at her, his brown eyes very dark. ‘Tell me, my dear Bee, what crime did the Irish peasant commit to have deserved such terrible punishments as occurred here thirty years ago?’

‘None Michael,’ she said, quietly, ‘except perhaps to have too much faith in the justice of God and men.’

‘It was not God who starved the Irish people!’ Davitt was suddenly so fierce, she felt a little afraid of him. ‘And anyone who says it was God’s will is a blasphemer.’

He moved away from the stream, getting ready to return. ‘This is a new and terrible Famine, Bee,’ he said, turning back to face her, ‘but this is also a new generation. This time we are not going to let our people lie down on the road and die, having paid their rent and said their prayers.’

‘No Michael, we are not!’

‘This country – this land – is for the people who labour upon it, not for those idle vultures who reap our flesh and harvest our children’s futures.’

She understood that he was speaking not to her, but to the thousands who would come to Straide to hear him speak that day. ‘Michael, you are the bravest man in Ireland.’

She saw him frown a little. He did not really enjoy receiving compliments. She had noticed that he even seemed to fear them. As if he feared being used or manipulated by anyone, of being drawn from his path. ‘So long as I have tongue to speak, or heart to feel,’ he touched his heart with his left hand, ‘Irish landlordism and English misgovernment shall find in me a sleepless and incessant opponent.’

And then he turned fully away from her and the stream, and strode rapidly back to where the men were waiting at the edge of the field. James Daly was waving vigorously at them, shouting out something to them across the cold air. Urging and urgent. He shared Davitt’s sense of urgency. After all, they had a people to rouse from despair. And not just to rouse but to organise.

She had to scramble hard after Davitt and his long legs to catch up. ‘Come on Bee,’ he called back to encourage her, ‘Let’s go and drive the robbers out of the house!’