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Authors: Benedict Kiely

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So there, or here, am I, in Sweet Omagh Town, at the beginning of my road of poems and ballads round Ireland. And it occurs to me now that the idea may have been put into my head by the men who taught me when I had the privilege of going to school on Mount St Columba. And not just by M.J. Curry. The teachers came from everywhere and you saw Ireland, and other places, through their eyes and memories and conversations.

Brother Hamill from Belfast had been as far away as China, spoke Chinese, and could talk most eloquently about the multitudinous peoples and great rivers of that vast land. His brother in the world was Mickey Hamill, the famous centre-half, whom I once met.

One Brother Burke came from Dublin and was a rugby football man. The other Brother Burke, a hurling man, hailed from Birdhill, Tipperary, from where you have the heavenly vision of Lough Derg and the stately Shannon spreading, as Spenser said, like a sea.

Brother Clarke, a quiet man, was from Wexford, and he was as proud of it as any rebel-pikeman.

One of my happiest memories is of walking with Brother Walker, long after I had left school, and talking about James Joyce – about whom Brother Rice was a learned authority. Indeed, the first reasonable statement I ever heard about Joyce came from Brother Rice in the middle of a class in
trigonometry. Mr Joyce would have been impressed, and grateful.

Anthony Shannon came from Derry, and his memories of student days in Dublin were vivid. The great M.J. Curry was a Clareman, but had been to university in England and could talk most eloquently on all authors, from Cicero to Bret Harte. Frank McLaughlin came from Cork and Leo Sullivan from Wexford, but both of them, one a classicist, the other a scientist, were totally devoted to the Tyrone countryside. And there were others. In the pulpit in the Sacred Heart Church was Dr John McShane, who had studied in Rome and talked in friendship with Gabriele D’Annunzio.

There was Father Lagan who was related to a famous family in the town, and Dr Gallagher, and Father MacBride and Father McGilligan. And in Killyclogher there was Father Paul McKenna, who could quote Robert Burns forever and who brought me one day to Mountfield to visit the aged priestess Alice Milligan.

Patrick Kavanagh in ‘The Great Hunger’ made a reference to Mullagharn as the hub of a cartwheel of mountains. As I remember, it was something Brother Rice said that set a group of us, one day early in the year, to conquer that mountain. We were Joe Gilroy, Gerry McCanny, Michael Mossy, Larry Loughran, and myself.

Then away with us, up the Killyclogher Burn to Glenhordial, then up and up to the mountain top. Snow still lay in some of the hollows of the mountainside. And when we stood up there together, and looked down on O’Neill’s country, and shouted and sang in Irish and English, we felt that we owned Ireland and the world. Perhaps at that moment we did.

That was a day that stays forever in my memory.

 

We begin the journey, then, if you will bear my company, in my home town of Omagh. Right in the heart of the town the Owenreagh, or Drumragh as we locals call it, accepts the silver Camowen and from that confluence, and north as far as Newtown-Stewart, the bright water is called the Strule. The great lauded names along the splendid river valley between Bessy Bell mountain and the odd-shaped hill of Mary Gray (and Mullagharn and the Gortin hills, outriders of the Sperrins) were Mountjoy and Blessington. And away back about the time of Bonaparte it is possible that the felling of trees in the Strule Valley helped to pay for the cavortings of Lord and Lady Blessington and the ineffable Count D’Orsay. In time of war there was a demand for timber.

After Waterloo that demand diminished and some of the hired woodcutters were forced to go west over the ocean to make a livelihood, most of them strong young men from the Sperrin Mountains. The local historian, the remarkable Robert Crawford, has described how, on a market-day, those woodsmen would walk the streets of Omagh with great axes on their shoulders and fearing no man. About 1821 this threnody was written for the passing of the woodsmen, Blessington’s Rangers – no author have I ever heard named.

THE GREEN FLOWERY BANKS

Thrice happy and blessed were the days of my childhood,

And happy the hours we wandered from school

By old Mountjoy’s forest, our dear native wildwood,

On the green flowery banks of the serpentine Strule.

No more will we see the gay silver trout playing,

Or the herd of wild deer through the forest be straying,

Or the nymph and gay swain on the flowery bank straying,

Or hear the loud guns of the sportsmen of Strule.

It is down then by Derry our dear boys are sailing,

Their passions with frantics they scarcely could rule.

Their tongues and their speeches were suddenly failing

While floods of salt tears swelled the waters of Strule.

No more will the fair one of each shady bower

Hail her dear boy of that once happy hour,

Or present him again with a garland of flowers

That they of times selected and wove by the Strule.

Their names on the trees of the rising plantation,

Their memories we’ll cherish and affection ne’er cool,

For where are the heroes of high or low station

That could be compared with the brave boys of Strule.

But this fatal ship to her cold bosom folds them,

Wherever she goes our fond hearts shall adore them,

Our prayers and good wishes shall still be before them

That their names be recorded and sung to the Strule.

Here’s to Patrick McKenna, that renowned bold hero,

His courage proud Derry in vain tried to cool.

There’s Wilkinson and Nugent to crown him with glory

With laurels of woodbine they wove by the Strule.

But now those brave heroes are passed all their dangers,

On America’s shores they won’t be long strangers,

And they’ll send back their love to famed Blessington’s Rangers,

Their comrades and friends and the fair maids of Strule.

In the part of Omagh town where I grew up there was born, and lived for a while, a man by the name of Francis Carlin. He wrote some poems, then went off to the USA, where that hard world was not overkind to him. He was contacted, or unearthed, in New York City by the poet Padraic Colum and his wife, Mary, who found him a job in Macy’s department store: an odd place, perhaps, for a poet who, downriver from Omagh at Douglas Bridge, had seen a vision of the last of the Rapparees. Carlin died in 1945.

THE BALLAD OF DOUGLAS BRIDGE

By Douglas Bridge I met a man

Who lived adjacent to Strabane,

Before the English hung him high

For riding with O’Hanlon.

The eyes of him were just as fresh

As when they burned within the flesh;

And his boot-legs were wide apart

From riding with O’Hanlon.

‘God save you, Sir,’ I said with fear,

‘You seem to be a stranger here.’

‘Not I,’ said he, ‘nor any man

Who rode with Count O’Hanlon.’

‘I know each glen from North Tyrone

To Monaghan. I have been known

By every clan and parish since

I rode with Count O’Hanlon.’

‘Before that time,’ said he to me,

‘My fathers owned the land you see;

But now they’re out among the moors

A-riding with O’Hanlon.’

‘Before that time,’ said he with pride,

‘My fathers rode where now they ride

As Rapparees, before the time

Of trouble and O’Hanlon.’

‘Good night to you, and God be with

The tellers of the tale and myth,

For they are of the spirit-stiff

That rode with Count O’Hanlon.’

‘Good night to you,’ said I, ‘and God

Be with the chargers, fairy-shod,

That bear the Ulster heroes forth

To ride with Count O’Hanlon.’

By Douglas Bridge we parted, but

The Gap o’ Dreams is never shut,

To one whose saddled soul to-night

Rides out with Count O’Hanlon.

A great friend in my home town was Captain William Maddin Scott, head of a notable family and, as owner of Scott’s Mills, a good and fair employer. Captain Scott had prepared an anthology,
A Hundred Years A-Milling,
relating his family to the town and the Tyrone countryside, which they had honoured and aided for so long by their presence. When Seán MacRéamoinn and myself featured the book on a Radio Éireann programme called (how hopefully!) ‘The Nine Counties of Ulster’, the Captain was mightily pleased and I was elevated to being a dinner-guest at the Scott mansion at Lisnamallard, where I was introduced to the Rev. Marshall of Sixmilecross.

Marshall was a most gracious and learned gentleman, and a prime authority on Ulster folk-dialect. When the Captain told me that ‘our friend Marshall’ was ‘a Doctor of Divinity’ we both laughed merrily. Now there was no reason why Marshall of Sixmilecross should not be a Doctor of Divinity, or a doctor of anything and everything; what set us laughing was that the learned doctor had also written in his
Tyrone
Ballads
(The Quota Press, Belfast 1951) of the sad plight of the man in Drumlister:

ME AN’ ME DA

I’m livin’ in Drumlister,

An’ I’m gettin’ very oul’

I have to wear an Indian bag

To save me from the coul’.

The deil a man in this townlan’

Wos claner raired nor me,

But I’m livin’ in Drumlister

In clabber to the knee.

Me da lived up in Carmin,

An’ kep’ a sarvint boy;

His second wife was very sharp,

He birried her with joy:

Now she was thin, her name was Flynn,

She come from Cullentra,

An’ if me shirt’s a clatty shirt

The man to blame’s me da.

Consarnin’ weemin’ sure it was

A constant word of his,

‘Keep far away from them that’s thin,

Their temper’s aisy riz.’

Well, I knew two I thought wud do,

But still I had me fears,

So I kiffled back and forrit

Between the two, for years.

Wee Margit had no fortune

But two rosy cheeks wud plaze;

The farm of lan’ wos Bridget’s,

But she tuk the pock disayse:

An’ Margit she wos very wee,

An’ Bridget she was stout,

But her face wos like a gaol dure

With the bowlts pulled out.

I’ll tell no lie on Margit,

She thought the worl’ of me;

I’ll tell the truth, me heart wud lep

The sight of her to see.

But I was slow, ye surely know,

The raison of it now,

If I left her home from Carmin

Me da wud rise a row.

So I swithered back an’ forrit

Till Margit got a man;

A fella come from Mullaslin

An’ left me jist the wan.

I mind the day she went away,

I hid one strucken hour,

An’ cursed the wasp from Cullentra

That made me da so sour.

But cryin’ cures no trouble,

To Bridget I went back,

An’ faced her for it that night week

Beside her own thurf-stack.

I axed her there, an’ spoke her fair,

The handy wife she’d make me.

I talked about the lan’ that joined

– Begob, she wudn’t take me!

So I’m livin’ in Drumlister,

An’ I’m gettin’ very oul’.

I creep to Carmin wanst a month

To thry an’ make me sowl:

The deil a man in this townlan’

Wos claner raired nor me,

An’ I’m dyin’ in Drumlister

In clabber to the knee.

From that same time in the past dates a friendship with a priest, Father Paul McKenna, who brought me one day to the old rectory in the village of Mountfield, where the aged poet Alice Milligan then lived in a dusty grandeur recalling the home of Miss Haversham in
Great Expectations
. But the garden where she played in her girlhood could still be seen at the end of Omagh town where one road divides to make three: at a place called the Swinging Bars, where there once may have been a toll-gate.

WHEN I WAS A LITTLE GIRL

When I was a little girl,

In a garden playing,

A thing was often said

To chide us, delaying:

When after sunny hours,

At twilight’s falling,

Down through the garden’s walks

Came our old nurse calling –

‘Come in! for it’s growing late,

And the grass will wet ye!

Come in! or when it’s dark

The Fenians will get ye.’

Then, at this dreadful news,

All helter-skelter,

The panic-struck little flock

Ran home for shelter.

And round the nursery fire

Sat still to listen,

Fifty bare toes on the hearth,

Ten eyes a-glisten.

To hear of a night in March,

And loyal folk waiting,

To see a great army of men

Come devastating –

An Army of Papists grim,

With a green flag o’er them,

Red-coats and black police

Flying before them.

But God (who our nurse declared

Guards British dominions)

Sent down a fall of snow

And scattered the Fenians.

‘But somewhere they’re lurking yet,

Maybe they’re near us,’

Four little hearts pit-a-pat

Thought ‘Can they hear us?’

Then the wind-shaken pane

Sounded like drumming;

‘Oh!’ they cried, ‘tuck us in,

The Fenians are coming!’

Four little pairs of hands

In the cots where she led those,

Over their frightened heads

Pulled up the bedclothes.

But one little rebel there,

Watching all with laughter,

Thought ‘When the Fenians come

I’ll rise and go after.’

Wished she had been a boy

And a good deal older –

Able to walk for miles

With a gun on her shoulder.

Able to lift aloft

The Green Flag o’er them

(Red-coats and black police

Flying before them);

And, as she dropped asleep,

Was wondering whether

God, if they prayed to Him,

Would give fine weather.

BOOK: As I Rode by Granard Moat
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