Living in the Past: A Northern Irish Memoir

W
hen Eileen Hughes stepped into our farmhouse kitchen my mother greeted her with a smile. Eileen stood there in a knee length swagger mohair coat with a fur collar, and she may even have had a hat with a small veil.

She was a tall, handsome woman with striking dark blue eyes, and had arrived for the evening in order to relate her adventures of the previous night when she had gone to a dinner party in a Dungannon hotel.

My mother loved these get-togethers, I think because she had come from a more upmarket background herself but, now, as a farmer’s wife with a family to tend to, she had to be content with secondhand dining out.

Eileen lived in the next farmhouse to us, about 200 yards away, with her mother and father, Kate and Peter, and her brother, Jim Joe. It was a home from home for us kids, and Peter, who had returned from America where he had worked in the carriage trade with horses, used to tell me stories about it.

“Holy boots,” he would say – that was his only swear word. “To watch the lights along the Hudson River was a magnificent sight.”

We lived in Derryvarn, which is a subdivision of the townland of Derrytresk in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland. Derryvarn consisted of ten long thatched farmhouses built along the main road to Coalisland with their gable ends towards the road and nearly all facing east, as were most houses at that time.

There were but two cars in our locality then – the teacher’s and the priest’s – and we all travelled by bicycle. Everyone had a bike, which had the same status as a horse in western films, where horse stealing was a hanging offence. The bike could be left anywhere and it wouldn’t be touched.

In the town, of course, the doctor and the businessmen had cars and the newly qualified blond son of the chemist would deliver prescriptions in a red sports car speeding over our bumpy roads.

Eileen, who was a children’s nurse, worked for a rich Protestant family in Lurgan and later Upperlands, Co. Derry, where she was highly thought of as she was a very capable woman. As the only way to live the life she wished, Eileen had to pick only boyfriends who were mobile, and so it was that a succession of men, all on four wheels, would whisk Eileen away to another evening in the town. Sometimes on the way she would call at our general store for her cigarettes and depart in a cloud of perfume. To give her her due, she was no snob and a lorry or a van would suffice at times.

The following day she would call round to see Teresa, my mother, and, when the tea and cake were served and we kids had taken up our viewing positions around the kitchen, she would give a blow by blow account of the evening in detail from the starter to coffee and interspersed with many sherries, of which she seemed to be quite fond.

Sometimes we missed important bits, as the voices would drop quite low, but we knew we weren’t supposed to hear these.

In the summer evenings these sessions could last until midnight, which did not please my father, at all. Tomorrow the cows would be waiting to be milked and we had to be fed and sent to school and, Eileen, as she was on holiday from her nursing career, could sleep all day if she wished. My father didn’t think it quite fair.

Arthur’s mother, Teresa, with Eileen Hughes

One night, of course we were all in bed, she left about 11:30 p.m. and, as usual, they continued the conversation as my mother would walk her to the corner, where Eileen turned right to go home. Time passed and my father was getting restless as it was past their bedtime and he had done his rounds and locked up. Suddenly the clock struck midnight and he walked out to the gate and looked up to the corner, and there they stood in the moonlight, still engrossed. What did he do? He stood on the road, flapped his arms and crew like a cock. It didn’t have the desired effect as the two of them panicked and came running back again. In the end my father had to escort Eileen right to her door.

I was born in 1926 and had three older sisters, Mary, Kathleen and Elizabeth, and a younger brother and sister, Shamey and Peggy; Mary, the eldest, sadly died of TB at the age of twenty-two.

There were two farms belonging to the Magennis family. My father, James, was born on farm one and he had two brothers, Joe and Peter. Peter, the eldest, inherited farm one when my grandfather, Arthur, died, and Joe inherited farm two. My father, the youngest, went to Edinburgh to work in the liquor trade.

Joe, who had also a pub/grocery business at number two farm, set about building a large two storey barn of stone and slate. It was a big undertaking at the time and he got into debt, so much so that my father had to come home to rescue him, which makes me think he would have been more than a barman to be able to do this. He bought the farm from Joe but still owed him a balance.

Joe then emigrated to America with his family and recently his son, Joe, came over to see us but has since died. When we were young long letters would arrive from America and we had to be quiet while Daddy read Joe’s letter. The same thing would happen while he replied; dead silence was observed while he wrote to Uncle Joe. They seemed to be very close friends. My sister, Kathleen, who is four years older than I, says that she always saw him putting money in the letter.

The big two storey barn and loft were eventually completed and it looked as if we were permanent citizens of Derrytresk farm number two.

Arthur, 16, in front of two-storey barn

The land around where we lived flooded in winter time as nearby Lough Neagh couldn’t take the extra rain. Our house was on a hillside overlooking fields and meadows about half a mile from the Blackwater River which meandered around us from south to north, until it reached Lough Neagh a few miles further on.

When I was born, Northern Ireland had just been created – invented might be a better word. Britain had decided to withdraw from Ireland, but the Unionists of Northern Ireland objected to it and their wishes were granted, in spite of the democratic principle that the wishes of the majority are paramount. The Unionists were a minority in the nine counties of Ulster, so six of the nine counties were cordoned off with an imaginary border and the province of Northern Ireland was born.

The reason for the concentration of Protestant Unionists in the northern corner of Ireland goes back to 1611 and the plantation of Ulster. After the defeat of the Irish by a massive army sent over by Queen Elizabeth I, the British advertised for settlers to come and fill the places left by the Irish, who had either been killed or driven into the bogs. These were called the planters and they came in their thousands, the majority being Scottish Presbyterians who were not a good choice for peaceful coexistence, as they hated Catholics to such an extent that they wouldn’t celebrate Christmas, because they thought it was a Catholic festival; it wasn’t until 1950 that they were allowed to do so. They celebrated the New Year instead. The New Year is the feast of the circumcision of Jesus, which is an important day in the Jewish calendar and it became a Christian holiday as well. That is why New Year is celebrated.

In 1926 I was born into a bigoted society where it was arranged that Catholics could never have a majority. The recent Good Friday agreement has changed all that and Northern Irish people have equal rights, irrespective of their colour or creed now, and they are managing to live together in comparative peacefulness.

Of course, when the ‘planters’ arrived they only wanted the best land and when they reached the Blackwater River from the north, they would have stopped and looked across at Derrytresk and, if it was winter, seen only floods, half a mile wide along the river bank and reaching as far as they could see north and south, and in the background the hill of Derryvarn and Derrytresk surrounded by bog land. They were not going to risk their lives crossing the river for floods and swamps.

So Derryvarn and its situation adjacent to the river, separating it from the settlers, became a microcosm of the Plantation of Ulster.

I suppose after a time the Irish, who had escaped the massacre, came out of the bogs and settled in the unclaimed land which flooded in the winter but where the meadows, called the Brilla, could be grazed in the summer months. At that time, my ancestors may have been amongst them. I don’t know if any records were kept or saved from that time. My father was born in 1872 and died in 1954, and my grandfather, Arthur, could have been born in the mid 1800s.

Most of the Irish who were driven off their land settled in the bogs. They built houses from timber and zinc, which wouldn’t sink in the bogs but were freezing cold in the winter time. Many got jobs working for the peat company.

The river could not be seen from our door, as the bank was much higher than the surrounding land. When I was very young I remember being held up at the front door to see the floods which came right up to the foot of the hill below our house. The Brilla and fields looked like one large lake. In later years Lough Neagh was lowered in drainage schemes and the Brilla became beautiful meadows all year round.

A steamer came up the river at eleven o’clock each morning. All that we could see from our house was the top of its red and black funnel as it belched its black smoke into the air. It came across the lough from Belfast about thirty or forty miles away and it towed a long chain of lighters or barges laden with coal and Indian corn. Just about opposite our house it would blow its loud horn for two or three minutes and soon we would see the hauliers trotting past on their way to pick up the lighters and tow them up the canal to Coalisland, where the big dray horses would distribute the cargo around the coal yards and mills.

When we were in the meadows, the steamer was a sight to behold, especially when we were young. We’d wait on the bank expectantly until we heard it in the distance and then it would come past with a vengeance, smoke belching, engine pounding, and just as quickly it would disappear round the bend. In contrast, the lighters would suddenly appear, moving absolutely without a sound. We would start to count them – one, two, three – and usually there would be about eight or nine, all strung out along the river, with someone at the tillers guiding them around the bends and away from the banks.

The steamer and the lighters would go on a few more miles to a place called ‘The Point’ where the Coalisland canal joined the Blackwater River and the hauliers would collect the lighters and tow them to Coalisland along the towpath and through the locks.

That was very relaxing to see on a nice day, as the horse would plod silently along the towpath while the great lighter would move silently behind. Some people went down to the locks in the good weather just to see it.

Some of our farm helpers would know a few of the barge men because, as they lived on the barges and could be a day or two in the area while they unloaded, they would come up to our shop for supplies.

“Hello Atty,” one would call to a man who always had a black and white fox terrier sitting on the prow looking very important, and they would exchange a few words. His name was Atty Mullen.

Our shop was situated on the corner of the crossroads and our farmhouse was about 100 yards further down the road. It was known in the area as Magennis’ Corner and was a meeting place for people. The main road sometimes was busy with big lorries which carried large loads of peat away to the towns. On dole days, the road would be busy with bicycles as the men went to sign on on Tuesdays and collect their money on Fridays. On Saturday mornings, the road would be busy again, with horse, pony and donkey carts, laden with peat turf for customers in Coalisland and Dungannon. This was the day that I would wait at the corner with my penny to ask someone to get me a pennyworth of marbles. I was always very excited, waiting to get the bag and open it, as there were so many beautiful colours. But, if I had a favourite, I was sure to lose it at school the next week.

Our house was the typical long thatched farm house of the time. All the houses in Derryvarn were the same, but ours had been modernised a bit, although the fireplace still had the black iron crook that had a hinge at the side and swung out and back again with the boiling pot or kettle so that it could be lifted off from the fire.