"When Kilty had passed through his awful grief he set about the business of surviving with his only son, your daddy, Tomas. By trial and error they got to know every edible plant that grew wild in the high mountains. There was the odd rabbit on a lucky day and ways of stealing from the Prods, even though they were armed for a war. In short time Kilty realized that if they were to come through it they had to fish the lough.
"A fragile curragh was hidden in the tall grass near Three Trees. By night they would row with whispering stealth to one of the rock islands between Red Castle and White Castle, with navigating as treacherous as St. Brendan finding his way to the New World. Many the time I'd row the night with them. After living through that ordeal we'd nearly have our heads bashed off making the approach to the rock . . . bobbing up on the high swells, then sweeping in like a bolt. Footing was slippery as the snot off your nose. We'd run the curragh ashore and hide it in the crags just before daylight.
"We'd make our way around the island and do most of our work on our bellies, laying low to avoid being spotted by the Constabulary patrols. We'd clean mussel from the rocks, set lobster traps and fish the day with horsetail hand lines. Maybe the saints would bless us and we'd net a sea gull or migrating bird. If we got entirely skunked there would still be the mussel and edible seaweed."
Daddo blew a long breath. "Oh, Lord, Conor. All I seem to remember for almost three years is seaweed and mussel. The taste of it is in my mouth to this very day. Famine food. We would fill our bellies while out there on the island so's we could take back what was left for the neighbors. We'd wait for the cover of darkness just lying there. It would turn into a nightmare when the winds and tides blew high. Many the day we'd cling to the rocks, our arms around each other to keep from getting washed away with the sea bashing over us, choking us half to death and pounding us to pudding. With blessed darkness we'd make our way in, being tossed about like seeds in the wind."
With his head on Daddo's lap, Conor could no longer contain the tears which had been seeking an outlet all through the night and he cried softly as the shanachie came to the closing of his story.
"In America, Cathal and his wife Siobhan and two living daughters joined the shanty Irish in a shantytown near the railroad tracks. The women worked as domestics in fine Boston homes for fifty cents a day. Then: masters were not unlike our aristocracy. Cathal did what he had to do. The railroads paid a dollar a day and almost everything they earned was sent back to keep their kin alive. It was the Irish fleeing the famine were the navvies who put down the railroads and canals in the New World."
*
The British wearied of Irish famines by the fourth straight crop failure and relief was nearly at a halt. The door to England was shut in Irish faces. In the fifth year of the great hunger Ireland had been decimated by a million deaths of starvation and disease and yet another million by emigration. Those fortunates who reached America kept those in Ireland existing. The American people generously poured millions of dollars into Irish relief.
*
"Cathal never returned to Ireland. Once a man leaves, he gives all his love to his new country, for what he had left was bitter vetch. Sure, they sing sentimental songs, weeping crocodile tears as they do, and they wear the green once a year in their parades . . . but they never come back.
"There came a time in all of this that even MacAdam Rankin and his kind realized too many good farmers had gone. Those who survived were able to increase their holdings and laws changed so that there was a chance to buy land.
"That is why you have to realize why thirty-two acres of this land has the Larkin name stamped on it forever and why your daddy stands so proudly upon it . . ."
*
Daylight streaked into the byre, inching into the stall and over Conor's face. The warmth and brightness of it brought him out of his deep sleep. He sat up quickly. Daddo and Tomas were both gone! He sprang to his feet, looking about in confusion.
"Ah, there's the sleeping beauty," Finola said from her milking stool. "I thought you'd never wake up."
"Where's Daddy?"
"He's off to the bogs and high time he decided to do a day's work."
Conor pranced out to the yard, looking around perplexed. He dunked his face, sprinted to the wall, leaped it and broke into the O'Neills" best room.
"Daddo!" he cried.
The old man was seated at the table digging into a pot of mush.
"Daddo!"
"Just because I'm blind doesn't mean I'm deaf as well. Who's doing all the shouting at me?"
"It's me, Conor."
"Blessings of the day to you, Conor."
Conor slipped to the table opposite him and studied him queerly. Sure, it was not the same man he had talked the night away with. It was just plain old Daddo.
"Daddo . . . where were you last night?"
"Taking my rest of course."
"Did you not go any place special?"
"I'm too old to be dancing around; besides, I'm feeling sorely over Kilty."
"Did you . . . I mean . . . Jaysus, I don't know what I mean. Daddo, let me ask you this. Were you once a fine ballad singer?"
"Aye, lad, aye. There's legends about the saintly quality of my voice. You know that, surely."
"And . . . and did you go to England with Kilty during the great hunger?"
"Of course. Everyone knows I did."
"And did you steal fish from the Earl's islands?"
"Like any adventurous man hereabouts has done. And Why, may I ask, the grand inquisition?"
Conor cradled his face in both hands, attempting to get things in proper order. "Oh, it's a puzzlement."
"What's a puzzlement?"
"I think I'm getting things all mixed up. Stories and dreams and things."
"Oh, I see," Daddo said. “A visit from the fairies during the night, perhaps?"
Conor scratched his head. "It was so real."
"Then you did get a visit. But sometimes, Conor, we know little bits and pieces of things all along, only needing a fairy to fit them all together. If that's what happened, you're likely onto a special gift with the possibility of being a shanachie one day yourself."
Conor looked to the door and his legs quickly followed his eyes to it. "Good-by, Daddo! Have a grand journey home!"
He raced like fury to the crossroads, then stopped short at the churchyard, entering reverently. Kilty's grave was still a mass of flowers and little clay pipes. Conor fell to his knees and crossed himself.
"Oh, Grandfar, it was a great man you were. I'll be a Larkin you'll be proud of one of these days."
Conor did not stop running for almost a mile until he caught up to the line of men trudging toward the bogs with his daddy, as usual, at the head of them.
"Daddy! Daddy!"
On seeing his boy Tomas became alive with joy. "Slow down with you, Conor. You're always running too hard."
"Can I come and work the bogs with you today?"
Tomas put his arm around his son's shoulder and they continued upward. "Sure now," he said, "that would be grand."
END OF PART ONE
PART TWO
The Orange Card
CHAPTER ONE
JUNE 1885
Major Hamilton Walby, M.P., M.M., M.V.O., C.I.E., was a bluster of a man. Belying his sixty-three years, he rode his white Arabian with ramrod erectness surveying his realm at a fast trot as though he were perpetually on the verge of breaking into a cavalry charge.
The squire of Lettermacduff Township and Borough was contemptuously proud that his was the most thoroughly Anglicized community in County Donegal. Nearly every constituent was an inheritor of Cromwell spoils.
The first of the Walbys to come to Ireland had been Isaiah, who in 1649 won a measure of renown as a Cromwell officer. Captain Isaiah distinguished himself during the massacre at Drogheda in which several thousand Catholics, women and children no exception, were slaughtered in holy vengeance. The Drogheda murders were sanctified by Oliver Cromwell himself, who d
eclared it "a righteous judgment of God upon barbarous wretches." In the three hundred-odd years that followed, this opinion of the natives remained largely unchanged by succeeding generations of Walbys.
As his reward, Captain Isaiah Walby was given a grant of some four thousand acres of land usurped from the O'Neill clan, and a Crown charter for the Borough of Lettermacduff. Isaiah peopled it with soldiers of his old regiment, parceling out land grants and, after making further seizures, selling that to worthy Englishmen at threepence an acre.
Major Hamilton Walby, the present squire, continued an unbroken tradition of family service to the Crown. He purchased a commission in the army and the privileges that went with rank. In the Ulster Rifles he got his taste of action in suppression of the great Sepoy Mutiny in India. It was a particularly gory affair distinguished by brand of savagery on the part of rebel and Crown that would have done old Isaiah proud. The manner executions became grisly and highly ingenious. The Ulster Rifles, successors of a notorious Yeomanry, were determined not to be outdone. Condemned Sepoy mutineers were piped out to the parade ground with great pomp in cadence to the jaunty music of some old Orange or Ulster marching air. After a proper reading off the Sepoy would then be strapped to the muzzle of a cannon and a round blown off. This method of execution became so popular that it was literally stolen by less inventive regiments until it became a universal punishment
Lettermacduff Borough proved to be among the most prosperous settlements, resembling a bit of transplanted English countryside, and no Irish property was more loyal to the Crown. The Walbys built a modest fortune on flax. Each new squire in turn became a pillar of the community.
Prior to the Act of Union, the family had been members of the all-ascendancy Anglo Parliament in Dublin during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. After the Union, the East Donegal seat in the House of Commons at Westminster became a family possession. Major Hamilton Walby, alone, had served for nearly three decades. With the Walbys in Commons and the Hubbles in Lords, the political well-being of the loyal settlements was thoroughly attended to. Then came the audacious news that a Fenian and Land Leaguer, Kevin O'Garvey, was challenging the squire's seat.
Enraged by the utter cheek of it, Hamilton Walby erupted so furiously that his personal physician feared the squire was going to have a seizure of apoplexy. For a week the color of his face rarely faded below sunrise purple. He finally sputtered to a low gasping calm when his son-in-law and closest confidant, A. J. Pitkin, returned from Dublin Castle with comforting news. With so many new voters eligible for the next election, most of the districts would be subject to review and a Crown commission would make required necessary boundary adjustments. It was never put into so many words but certain districts such as Walby's East Donegal could be nudged into the proper column with a bit of fixing.
Major Walby, with Pitkin at his side, was invited to commission meetings to offer his advice in the matter. In company of sympathetic friends from the Castle, Walby drew out new boundaries which would guarantee a loyal majority and his continuation in the seat. In adopting his proposals the East Donegal boundaries were jiggled about and redrawn, so that land corridors reached out into the hinterlands as elongated fingers to encompass the most remote Protestant pockets of population. At the same time, numerous Catholic towns and villages, which had always been inside the district, were lopped off and placed outside so their votes would be nullified.
Without public hearings or consideration of O'Garvey's proposals, the commission departed and dispatched their conclusions by post. East Donegal had been gerrymandered into a grotesque configuration resembling an octopus. No justification was required of the commission and no appeal allowed.
Relieved that the Castle had come through for him, as it should have, Hamilton Walby was content to oversee his borough and remain in communion with his renowned garden of Ulster roses.
Until that time, few croppies in East Donegal believed there was a chance for Kevin O'Garvey. Yet, instead of the desired results, the blatant gerrymander had a powerful adverse effect. Defying the ravages of age, Daddo Friel heralded O'Garvey's candidacy in village after village and Tomas Larkin followed in his steps. As news of this activity filtered back to the squire, he became increasingly irritated, then suspicious.
"It's becoming a bloody damned nuisance," he told A. J. Pitkin after another disturbing report of a meeting with over a hundred croppies in attendance right in his own borough. "I thought we put this nonsense behind us with the new boundaries, Pitkin. What do those people think they're doing?"
"One would gather," Pitkin answered after the usual double clearing of his throat, "they actually believe they've sufficient strength to win."
"Balderdash, pure rot. I mean, after all, you were right there at the commission with me. They acted completely down the line on our proposals."
Atwell Pitkin sputtered in a manner which meant that unpleasant news was not far behind. A.J. was a good chap, that sort of thing, but not the staunchest of men. He been selected to marry Heather Walby because of his legal and accounting skills. The squire arched his brow ominously, wilting his son-in-law under his sternest military glare.
Pitkin blanched and his voice upped in pitch. "We have a small doubt whether our majority is clear cut," he said.
"What!" A cup clattered about the desk from the crack on the table
"Now, now, Major, mind the old blood pressure."
"I [fist on table] want [fist on table] to [fist on table] know [fist on table] WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON!"
After clearing his forehead of its sudden outpour of moisture, Pitkin pulled himself together, trying to stem the growing rage opposite him. "I had a shadow of doubt so I went back over the tenants' lists supplied by his lordship, as well as the available public records. As you well know, Squire, the Catholics are extremely lax in registering births and deaths. Well, we are all aware of that, are we not?"
The Major's eyebrow was scrinched so it looked as if it was going to touch his mustache. "Carry on, Pitkin."
"With all their comings and goings and their breeding habits, well, one can't be certain of their actual numbers, can one?"
Hamilton Walby's face was turning that awful color again. He bellowed for his son-in-law to get to Dublin Castle and reopen the matter of the district boundaries with the commission. Pitkin then dropped the other shoe.
"As a matter of fact, Squire, I contacted them immediately."
"And?"
"They said we'd better leave well enough alone," he mumbled.
"What did you say?"
"I said they said we'd better leave well enough alone."
"The Castle told you that!"
"Well, sir, it seems that the only way we can extend the boundaries to take in more loyal subjects is to reach clear down to the outskirts of Londonderry. The problem with that is that Londonderry is reaching out to Ballyutogue for the same purpose. You see, the Liberals are liable to get wind of all this and come to Ireland and investigate . . . er . . . irregularities."
“Irregularities? What irregularities? The whole bloody mess was perpetrated by the bloody Liberals in the first place with their bloody reform. It's the end of the Empire, that's what."
After his hot blows Hamilton Walby generally went about his business with cold dispatch. Pitkin was ordered to leek an audience with the Catholic Bishop, Gerald Nugent. As a matter of practical policy, Lord Hubble endowed the Bishop's good works generously, a policy also subscribed to by the Major. Neither Bishop Nugent nor the Cardinal at Armagh needed to be reminded that legislation favorable to the Church was in Walby's and Hubble's hands. Support for that legislation could be counted on only so long as a quid pro quo was maintained.
Pitkin's request was twofold. The Bishop proved most cooperative. An accurate census was needed and the best way to obtain it was through His Grace's parish priests. Secondly, the Bishop's priests should be instructed to inform their parishioners in no uncertain terms that flirtation with Fenian agitators would be
construed as sinful.
The census came back in quick order and, despite the gerrymandering of the district, it turned up some sobering figures. The number of Catholics and Protestants with the right of franchise was only a few hundred votes apart AJ, tried to mollify the Major with the argument that the Catholics would be too disinterested to exercise their vote and, furthermore, Bishop Nugent's message would soon be at parish level.
"Everyone knows," Pitkin stated as fact, "those people do what their priests tell them."
Hamilton Walby wasn't so sure but the old days with the Ulster Rifles had told him there could be no flinching in the face of the enemy. Damned if he'd be forced into any change of stance. He would carry on as usual, attending some of the fairs and making the perfunctory visits to the Anglican congregations in the district. Yet even as he practiced bullheaded nonchalance he could not completely shake the feeling that the family heirloom, their seat in Commons, might be in danger and God forbid if he were the first Walby since the Act of Union to lose it.
Things came to a head at the Buncrana Fair. It was a large annual event attended by nearly everyone on Inishowen Peninsula. Although the area was heavily Catholic, the fair drew great numbers of Presbyterian farmers from Ballyutogue. While the squire did his usual stint of judging flowers and horseflesh, Kevin O'Garvey held a rally at the far end of the grounds.
Curiosity over the Fenian Land Leaguer brought scores of Presbyterians near the speaker's platform, which was heavily guarded by Tomas Larkin's people. Trouble was likely because the Constabulary had refused to provide protection, stating that O'Garvey's permit to speak was not properly executed. Despite the possibility of a riot, Kevin decided to hold the rally because he knew that his chances to address Protestant crowds would be limited.