Chapter Seven

In the spring of 1845 Ellen Meagher, the youngest of

Conor and Maureen’s children was sixteen.

There was a warm and comfortable monotony in the

carrying out of routine duties and more than fifty years

later Ellen would remember the banal and habitual

events of that autumn morning even to the sound of her

father’s voice returning from the first milking of the day.

History subsequently recorded the numerical scale of

what came to be known as The Great Hunger and in the

dust dry official documents the bare bones of the living

entity known as Phytophera Infestans remains alive; but

it is not possible to put flesh on the skeleton of numbers,

only the embedded memories of the survivors could

communicate the reality of that time.

Those who survived long enough to have a retrospective

view of events agreed that the incidental progress of

daily life obscured the sense of being part of a larger

historical picture.

Ellen was visited by an American nephew, the son of her

brother Milo who left Duimhnagh not because of the

famine but because there appeared to be little chance that

he would ever attain full independence from the tyranny

of his parents determined acquisition of land which they

insisted must remain whole and intact.

There was no precise day or month, not even a year

when the collective consequences of the blight came to

be recognised as a famine, she said,

‘It was slow,’ she explained, ‘in September my father

came in from the milking and said that the Friesian cow

wasn’t giving up her usual milk yield. The potatoes

looked like they had mildew, he said; but that wouldn’t

have meant much to us because my parents only grew

enough for ourselves. The priest had arrived the day

before and Fergal came from the rectory to tell my

father. People in the village did tend to look to my

parents as leaders because of the stone house they had

built and because they were well ahead of our

neighbours in the way that they farmed.’

The slow accretion of small tragedies had an anaesthetic

effect and it was only from the comparative safety of a

distant and hitherto unimagined future that it was

possible to re-assemble odd random memories into a

coherent portrait of what had gone before.

‘Nobody in Duimhnagh actually starved to death,’ Ellen

explained, ‘we weren’t a proper fishing village because

there was no harbour but a fair few families had curricles

so we always had fish and there was the carrageen weed

which we gathered at low tide. But still we missed the

solidness of the old potatoes.’

It seemed to Ellen that Killian was less than pleased to

hear that he could not number the martyrs of the famine

amongst his ancestors.

‘People did die,’ she said, ‘the older people and the ones

with consumption who would have lasted a bit longer if

there was more food. There weren’t any corpses to be

seen standing by the roadside like there was in some

other villages. One day my father went to Castletown to

buy seed and he said that the things he saw he wouldn’t

have believed if he hadn’t seen it with his own eyes. In

one village which he passed on his way into the town

there were families living under hedges at the side of the

road. He said he was hard put to know who was alive

and who was dead for there was neither light nor life in

the poor souls. The worst part of it, he said, was the way

they just stared at him; they didn’t even try to ask him

for help. It was as if they were waiting for God knew

what to come along and rescue them. There was a

woman with barely any flesh on her bones holding an

infant and trying to get it to suckle but he said that there

was no more milk in her breast than there was life in the

child. My father gave some money to the man but as he

said himself ‘twasn’t money they needed for there was

little or no food to be had outside of the towns and the

poor souls would be dead of exhaustion before they got

there.’

Ellen tried to explain to her nephew that he would not

find what he wanted in Duimhnagh for it was fairly clear

what brought him back across the Atlantic asking

questions about the famine, absentee landlords, rack

rents and religious oppression.

These men returned to Ireland carrying ancient

grievances along with the seemingly limitless wealth of

America. They came home for their parents’ sake, to tell

those who remained behind that their line had survived

and prospered. They came to wreak revenge for those

who died and for those who could not return.

‘Didn’t my own father have to come away on account of

the famine?’ he asked and Ellen answered that he had

not left Ireland because of the famine but because her

father would not allow him to have his own house built.

‘My mother was always in charge but on some things

they were absolutely united and they were determined

that the farm would not be broken up because even

before the famine the small farmers only barely

managed. Naturally this made it hard for the boys to

settle down for they knew that they would never be

independent but to be fair to my parents they paid for all

of us to be educated and hoped that the boys would

become professionals; doctors and solicitors and such

like. Your father left Ireland in 1844 with a decent

amount of money to get himself settled once he arrived

in America. We never heard another word from him

even though there were people leaving more or less

every month and my mother sent a message every time.’

It seemed laughable to Killian that anybody would be

naïve enough to believe that a message sent from the

village of Duimhnagh might survive the hazardous

crossing of the Atlantic not to mention the rigours of

Staten Island and the vastness of New York City.

‘My mother’s folk left because of the famine,’ he said,

‘She came from Co. Roscommon. I went there before I

came here and there’s not a soul left of her family or

even a gravestone to mark where they were laid. There

are a lot of Irish in New York and we’ve got the money

to help people back here if they need it. My father told

me that ‘twasn’t much easier to get along in New York if

you didn’t know the right people. The people who were

already there weren’t too keen on helping newcomers in

case there wasn’t enough to go round but it was obvious

that you had to help your own and so they arranged for a

representative to meet people on Ellis Island and help

them get through immigration. The people who made

money agreed to contribute to the famine relief fund and

afterwards the money kept coming in and people were

still coming over saying that there was nothing left in

Ireland, that it was a country for old men. Nowadays the

men who come want money to make Ireland independent

and they invite people like me to come and learn about

the people who stayed behind and how we can help

them.’

‘But what do you see?’ Ellen asked him, ‘the people

aren’t starving anymore and nearly every farmer has a

secure tenancy now. There’s nothing to fight for

anymore’

‘I know what I saw in Roscommon, my mother’s entire

family wiped out and not even a grave to say they lived.’

‘Build a monument if that’s what you want but don’t be

sending guns for youngsters to shoot.’

‘The problem is that not everywhere is as lucky as

Duimhnagh.’

‘There’s nothing lucky about Duimhnagh, Killian. We

survived here because we did things differently. There

were plenty of people who would have died if it hadn’t

been for my father and the French priest and the

Reverend McGorrigle. My father took up every tenancy

that became vacant and sometimes the tenancies were

offered even though the families still lived on the land.

My father was a lucky man; everything he did was

successful and he never knew how much money he was

worth. If he ever thought about spending money he

asked my mother whether he could afford it and she

would say yea or nay and that would be the end of it.

I’ve been trying to remember a bit more about the

beginnings of the famine but you see apart from what my

father could tell us when he’d been into Castletown we

had no way of knowing. The entire potato crop was lost,

we knew that but my father agreed that he would pay

any due rents to tide people over and so nobody had to

leave their tigh. People said he was greedy but what they

forgot was that if it had been down to Lord Mandeville

they’d have been in the same case as the poor souls my

father saw.’ Ellen fell silent; it seemed that she should be

able to recall more, indeed she could recall more but the

recollections she had were not of words or numbers.

It was a very wet summer, she remembered but wasn’t

that what made their land so richly productive? It was

more often wet than otherwise but normally the hardy

potato was unconcerned unlike other more histrionic

crops that must have just the right balance of light and

shade, the finest loamy soil and an intolerance of any

rainfall that fell outside the narrowest limits of its

tolerance.

It was warmer than usual for she had walked with her

mother to the rectory to greet the new priest and the air

had been fragrant with the scent of and dog roses.

Two days later the blight had embedded itself and the

sweet foetid smell of rotting vegetable matter hung in an

almost visible pall over the fields where the deep green

potato plants lay like unburied corpses.

‘The first time the blight hit was hard,’ she said, ‘but it

had happened before and so it seemed not much different

to having a bad growing year. People thought that if they

could manage through this one bad year they would be

alright; nobody believed that it could happen again. But

by the time the second crop failed Duimhnagh had been

fairly picked clean of anything that could be eaten and

there was nothing left to eat apart from what fish could

be caught by the curricles; even the rocks that were

usually covered with limpets were stripped bare and for

a time it seemed that the shore had been swept clean of

every living thing.

During this time people were leaving you must

understand but it wasn’t easy if you had elders to care

for they would maybe be too weak to make the journey

and even the younger people couldn’t manage a long

trek to Cobh with no food to give them the strength to

put one foot in front of another. ‘

The day she remembered best of all was the day she

walked to the rectory five years later and she heard the

wood pigeons chortling overhead and it was another

damp day; on just such a day the world, it seemed, had

begun to end. But the world didn’t end and now she

smelt again the remembered scent of life before the

blight.

‘I can’t tell you what it felt like,’ she said, ‘to walk along

the same familiar paths and smell life again after so

many years when it seemed that everything was dead or

dying. It made me feel special, to be alive and here to

witness this day was as if God had singled me out and

said, ‘look, I am still here and I have created this

morning for you to see that for every day of grief there

will be a day of joy.’

‘There won’t be any joy for those who died, Aunty

Ellen.’

‘But there were small miracles, Killian. There was a time

when it seemed that we could not survive for eventually

it didn’t matter how much cash we had, we couldn’t buy

food that didn’t exist.

Then one day there was a miracle. Everybody had fallen

into the habit of going to the beach to gather the seaweed

and crabs and any other creature that might be eaten.

Sometimes there would be a dead gull but we discovered

that ‘twasn’t worth the energy of the eating for the meat

was foul and made our guts heave ‘til we’d brought back

every scrap we’d eaten.

Nobody had found anything worth eating for a good long

while and it hardly seemed worth the energy of getting

down onto the beach.

When there’s barely enough food to keep you alive you

soon realise that you can’t just go throwing your energy

away. ‘Twas a fine balance-if you wasted energy going

looking for food and didn’t find any you’d be worse off

but if you didn’t move around in the cold weather you’d

perish of the cold.

Truthfully more people died of the cold for the second

winter we had some vicious frosts and hardly enough

peat to keep the hearths lit so it was decided that the

younger ones like me would be sent to gather what could

be eaten and what could be burnt.

I never minded being sent because the beach was the

only place where there was neither the sight nor the

smell of the blight. Usually I would take the cliff path

down by the Martello tower to the shingle shore because

there was more chance of finding life there than on the

sandy shore where only the tubeworms which the

fishermen used as bait could be found.

The sandy beach was better if you were looking for

something to burn because there was usually driftwood

or coal but you had to get there early for everybody was

in the same state. It was a terrible sight to see all these

people looking like they had returned from the grave

wearing the clothes they were buried in but with no flesh

to fill the garments and hardly the strength to put one

foot in front of the other.

I suppose my family was lucky for we had just about

enough to keep going but my father insisted that we must

keep only what we needed to keep body and soul

together and whatever we had spare must be shared with

our neighbours.

My father was very irreligious so I don’t think it was

entirely because he was a good man but he was very

wise in the ways of people. I’d heard him say that it

wasn’t right for us to continue eating our fill while

people starved and he probably meant it but I think he

was also remembering that my grandmother Pegeen

Bawn had raised ructions against him and Eoign when

his sister married the land agent. Apparently he and

Eoign was a pair of blackguards and Pegeen said that if

they weren’t stopped from their marauding they’d never

be stopped for the land agent was powerful enough to be

able to tell the visiting magistrates to let them off. So, as

I say, I think my father was wise enough to know that if

we didn’t share voluntarily then we’d most likely be

murdered in our beds and they’d have everything from

us anyway.

He said it was important for us to be seen to endure what

everybody else endured and so I went every day to

gather cockles from the rock pools. I usually woke early

for we went to bed as soon as the sun went down

because it was easier to keep warm and saved us keeping

the fire lit.

Because my parents were no longer young I suppose it

took it out of them more than myself and my mother

who had always a busy soul seemed to fade into

slowness so that she was glad of her bed and didn’t wake

often until late in the morning even though we still had

some fowl laying and a few cattle still yielding milk.

I suppose I got more of what there was to eat and so I

usually woke earlier and was glad of the clean quietness

of the beach where the smell of the blight and the hunger

didn’t reach. Once or twice I was met by some of the

other women and had to give them what I had gathered

for the hunger had put them in a killing mood, poor

souls.

Of course I didn’t see it that way then I just saw that for

all my father’s generosity towards them they would still

kill me for the sake of a bit of seaweed and a few cockles

that were there for anybody to gather if they had the wit

to get out of bed as I had done; I also saw my father’s

wisdom for it was certain that what we did not share

willingly they would take from us.

Anyway it was the sea kept us alive. One morning I

woke very early, it was not yet light but I knew that I

would not sleep again and so I decided that I would go

early to the beach. I would not usually do such a thing

because I did not like to venture into the darkness where

there might be all kinds of devilish spirits but only the

day before I had been confronted by the hungry women

who looked like the old witches and banshees in the

stories that the seanachai used to tell us and I was afraid

of them.

I knew every one of those women by name and in the

days before the potatoes rotted they had sat beside my

parent’s hearth listening to the seanachai telling his tales.

I had danced in the reels with them in the flickering light

of the Bealtaine and Samhain fires and they had teased

me with proposals from their sons for I was thought to

be a good match because of my parent’s prosperity.

It seemed that the blight took everything and rotted it so

that even my father’s generosity was mocked; ‘twas well

for us, they said, pretending that we were in the same

boat when any fool could see that we were well set up.

I could see how they felt and I was inclined to agree with

them for it was true, we did have more than enough and

sometimes it seemed to me that my father was a fool

because everybody knew this. It was like giving

something up for lent but lent only lasted six weeks and

we had been practicing starvation now for three years.

Although the sea had always been there we had not the

knowledge of it that other villages had for as I said we

did not have any harbour and so only those men who had

curricles and the ones who set lines knew the timing of

the tides. By the time the potatoes rotted for the third

time everybody had learnt the movements of the sea; we

knew the time of each high tide and each low tide; we

knew exactly how high the water reached at high tide

and we knew how far the low water mark extended at

low tide. We learnt to predict the movement of the

waves from the shape of the moon and we knew that

during early spring and autumn the tides would be at

their highest.

Early in April the tide was at its highest and so I decided

that if I left now then I would be able to gather what was

to be had before the rest of the women arrived.

It was still dark and there hadn’t been a moon the night

before but once you became accustomed to it there were

variations in the intensity of the darkness; when it was

raining as it was that morning the sky overhead looked

as if it had been spun into a giant silver cobweb. The rain

seemed to fall slowly, almost lazily around me so that

where it landed I could see the darker shapes of trees and

hedges and the early morning sound of the birds told me

that it would soon be sunrise. Somehow knowing that the

birds were awake and heralding the dawn made me less

fearful although it was still fully dark and I walked

quickly along the footpath which was bordered by sharp

clumps of marram grass until it became submerged by

the drifts of sand which led into the dunes proper.

I knew my way more or less by heart and soon I was

running down the steep incline that led to the bend in the

coastline where the Martello tower stood. The tower was

built during my grandfather’s time when the people rose

up against the Sassenachs and the French were supposed

to come with ships and soldiers to help them. North of

the tower were the shingle shore and the rock pools

where we gathered what shellfish we could find and to

the south was the sandy shore where the seaweed

sprawled in clumps along the wide flat sands.

The first pale light was creeping out of the sea, bouncing

off the sheets of rain and then back into the green and

white swell of the sea. I stood watching and even though

the red glow meant another damp day like so many other

damp and hungry days I had a feeling of joy in my heart;

and then a great rage overtook me when I thought of all

the people who had died and those who would die under

the indifferent glory of this damp sunrise.

I clenched my fist like a child and wished for the power

to demolish this brazen creation which mocked our

hunger and allowed the sun to rise; the tides to turn and

every other natural thing that could continue to follow its

own whim without having to think about nourishment.

I took my old boots off and lifted my skirts to run along

the rippled sand at the waters edge while I shouted my

anger into the empty air. I wasn’t even looking to see

what there might be worth gathering for it seemed to me

that the hungry women were right, what need had I of

the small gleanings to be had from this already bone

empty strand?

I stopped to catch my breath and the small waves

sauntered playfully around my feet, tickling my toes like

feathers. The tide was not fully in but had reached that

point where it seemed as if it had not fully decided

whether it would venture further or retreat. That day it

was venturesome and a low wall of water lumbered

slowly towards the beach; it was almost as if this wave

had separated itself from the rest of the sea and wished

to walk on dry land. I hopped backwards for fear it

would engulf me and when it came crashing down

around me the spray flew into my face so that for a few

seconds I was blinded by the salt water. Almost as soon

as the great wave broke the tide seemed to have spent

itself and I could feel the grainy sand tugging beneath

my feet with the pull of the receding tide.

I think by this time I had given up on God for I could not

imagine what form the certainly could not have imagined

that it would come from the sea. There lying on the

beach just a few steps away from me was an enormous

creature the like of which miracle we needed would take

and I had never seen in my life, nor had I even heard of

such a creature. I had heard of such things as elephants

and giraffes and although I had never seen such creatures

I knew that they were to be found in faraway countries

where it was always sunny; furthermore I had never

heard that they lived in the sea.

I cannot even now begin to describe my fear of the

creature and I was afraid even to move for a long time

because I did not know whether it had legs that were

hidden beneath its enormous belly. It lay quite still while

the waves rolled and tumbled around it; sometimes it

seemed as if it shifted of its own accord while other

times it seemed that the waves tugged gently like parents

trying to persuade a difficult and over large child from

danger.

I stood for a long while watching and waiting to see

whether the monster would open its jaws and swallow

me but by the time that I felt safe enough to move the

tide was a long way out. A few times I thought the

monster was attempting to make some sound but it was

only the gurgling of the water as it settled into the

stillness of the sand when the power of the tide was

gone.

During that time I don’t think I had any sensible

thoughts about the creature because my mind was too

busy wondering how I could escape but in the end I was

so frozen with the cold and the fear that I knew I would

eventually move and betray myself.

Gradually I loosened my muscles, so slowly I felt the

blood begin to run warmly through my arms and legs

and I opened my mouth to take in great gulps of air as if

I had been drowning. Then I tested my brain, very

slowly I looked and as if I was talking to somebody who

wasn’t there I made a picture for them to imagine what I

had seen; as if it was an imagined thing that nobody else

would ever see.

How big? That was the hardest thing to describe because

who would ever have seen anything so big? Bigger than

a steam engine but we did not then have such a thing in

Duimhnagh.

What colour? On its back a dark purplish grey and

underneath almost pearly white.

How many legs? None that I could see but it had short

flippers like a seal, a sharp looking fin growing out of its

back and a tail shaped like the whirly bits that fell from

the sycamore trees in the autumn.

How many eyes? Two small black holes set far back on

each side of the front of the animal and the mouth

underneath almost buried in the sand by its weight.

Alive or dead? I didn’t know but it seemed that it must

be dead for it didn’t move and I could see no sign of it

breathing.

I was still frightened but when I was a child I would

scream and shout and run if I was frightened whereas

now I was cautious with fear and started to walk very

slowly backwards. When I was a child I was frightened

of a lot of things, my mother blamed my father for

indulging my fancies and when my mother would not

put up with my timidity any longer he told me that

animals know when we are frightened; for example I

was frightened of dogs and so he said I should keep my

fists closed and ignore the dog until it gave up bothering

me and although I remained frightened of dogs they did

seem to bother with me less.

So I remembered his advice and walked slowly

backwards for some distance until I felt certain that even

if the creature was shamming it would not be able to

catch me if it decided to pursue me. Eventually I felt safe

enough to run and so I did, the fastest run I ever made in

my life without even flinching when my bare feet were

scratched and bleeding from the furze bushes that grew

along the footpath.

I didn’t even pause to think about my mother’s reaction

to the loss of my boots which I had forgotten in my

panic.

It was fully light by the time I reached the two mile

bridge and a few of the women were walking in their

tired way towards the beach but when they saw me

running with no shoes upon my feet and without my

usual basket they must have thought the end of the world

had arrived for they stopped dead and I could almost

hear the desperation in their souls for there could be little

point in them wasting their carefully hoarded energy on

a fruitless journey.

There is a terrible monotony about starvation because

even in times of plenty so much of life is devoted to

food; every minute of labour that went into the growing

of crops and the tending of beasts is dedicated to the

moment when the vegetable is gathered and cooked, the

day when the grain is milled and the bread baked or the

time when the animal is butchered and eaten.

So with the fields lying rank and stinking under the

mouldering potatoes it was hard to fill the long hungry

hours of wakefulness and brains fidgeted uselessly under

the enforced inertia of our exhaustion.

I stopped and gasped out my news breathlessly and I

could see that the women thought I had succumbed to

some form of fever brought on by starvation, indeed I

heard one woman say that it was getting beyond a joke

when Conor Meagher was so fair minded that he’d let

his own daughter starve rather than share what they

believed he was hoarding with his neighbours.

Noeleen Galway interrupted the women who were

dismissing my story as nonsense and said that I might be

telling the truth. Her husband had been a sailor and he

had gone on a long sea journey to Baffin Bay where he

said there was huge sea creatures called Whales that men

hunted for they were the most useful creatures in the

whole of creation. She asked me to describe the creature

for her but I knew that she’d no more idea what a whale

looked like than I did and so she said she’d send her man

Brendan over to my parent’s house. I still had some

doubts myself that when I went back to the shore the

creature would still be there and certainly I had not

begun to think of it in terms of food.

It wasn’t long before Brendan Galway arrived and once I

described what I had seen we went back to the beach so

that I could show him where it was. I had to wear an old

pair of boots belonging to my mother who as I expected

was raging at the loss of my own boots. By the time I set

out with Brendan Galway I was more worried that the

whale would have found legs and walked back into the

sea so that my mother would think I had invented the

creature to excuse my carelessness.

The whale was still there when we got to the beach and

when he saw the creature Brendan started to leap and

howl with delight as if I had shown him a gold mine

instead of a dead monster.

‘Thanks be to the Lord God almighty I never saw a

whale half so fine when I was working on the whalers

out of Baffin Bay and it must be divine providence that

brought the creature to this shore.’

‘Is it dead, Brendan?’ I asked him for I was still

frightened that the monster would wake and devour us

and he said that the whale had probably died before it hit

the shore but that there was meat enough on it to feed the

whole village for a good while.

‘But will it be fit to eat?’ I asked remembering the dead

seagulls, ‘Will it not be foul like the dead gulls?’

‘No,’ he answered, ‘for it won’t have begun to rot yet if

it only came out of the sea this morning. I swear to you

Ellen Meagher this whale will be the salvation of us all

for nearly every bit of the whale has a use, ‘tis the most

economical animal in the whole of creation.’

The stories he told about his time on the whale ships

sounded so fantastic that if I wasn’t standing beside the

whale I’d have said he was romancing. I thought about

all the warm winter evenings when he and Noeleen sat

listening to the tales of the seanachai and he never told

of his own adventures on the whale ships.

‘There are hundreds of these creatures in Baffin Bay and

they’ve never been used to any creature challenging

them so ‘tis like taking lambs to the slaughter except that

they take more killing than a lamb. The men who own

the whale ships are as rich as Croesus for parts of these

animals are worth more than their weight in gold. Think

about it Ellen; Mrs.McGorrigle that keeps house for the

reverend is a fine figure of a woman but what do you

think holds the woman together? Her stays that are made

out of whalebone, no less! And that perfume that she

wears so that you can smell her coming at fifty paces,

where do you think that comes from? Why ‘tis snot from

the whales head or else ‘tis out of the whales guts! And

the fine candles that his reverence uses to light his study

when he’s doing his antiquarian antics are made out of

the blubber that keeps the whale warm while it swims in

the freezing water that would have a man stone dead in

less than five minutes. I’ll grant you the meat is a bit on

the tough side and maybe not as tasty as a nice bit of

bacon but ‘twill feed us nonetheless.’

By the time Brendan had finished telling me about the

marvellous uses of the dead whale every living soul in

the village was gathered on the shore as well as the

Reverend McGorrigle and Father Francis.

Some of the boys climbed onto its back and were poking

it with sticks in a half terrified way as if they might rouse

the whale’s wrath. Brendan let out a roar and ordered

them to get off the whale in case they tainted the meat or

damaged the other valuable parts.

Brendan Galway was usually a quiet man and not at all

full of himself but he was the only man who had any

knowledge of what to do with a dead whale. Even so he

was reluctant to take charge saying that there was a lot

more to dealing with whales than just butchering the

carcass.

Reverend McGorrigle being a man of many interests said

that he had read some interesting accounts of the

whaling industry in Newfoundland and he would go and

fetch the book.

The main problem was finding tools sharp enough to

actually cut the whale up and so all of the men went back

to their tighs in search of anything that might be used.

Meanwhile the women were sent to fetch their pots and

the older children were sent to fetch whatever could be

spared to get some fires going so that the blubber from

the whale could be melted down.

Before long the beach looked as if we were celebrating

Bealtaine and the old woman Lenshe was chanting a

song of praise to Mannwyddan the son of Llyr who ruled

the sea and who had surely favoured us with this gift.

The Reverend McGorrigle had set himself up in a

folding chair and was reading passages from the book

about whaling; some of it seemed to be news to Brendan

but he listened just the same, nodding occasionally more

out of politeness to his reverence than because the

information was useful.

Father Francis was not pleased with Lenshe’s praying to

the old god and after he said a long blessing he preached

a long sermon about some old fella called Jonah who got

swallowed by a whale and lived in its belly for a good

while.

Brendan was a bit put out at the mention of this Jonah

fellow because he said he was bad luck to sailors.

I couldn’t imagine the size of a ship that would be big

enough to carry the carved up remains of even one of

these creatures never mind ten or twelve which was what

Brendan said they did; nor could I imagine how men

would be able to kill these monsters and do all that

butchering on a ship in a freezing cold sea.

At the end of the first day the head had been cut open

and a great quantity of pale slimy stuff was gathered into

the churns which were used for the milk when people

still had cows to milk. This was what Brendan said was

used to make perfume and the reverend said that it was

indeed worth its weight in gold although where they

might find somebody with the gold to buy it I could not

imagine.

There was still a huge amount of work to be done before

the whale was cut down to a manageable size and before

any meat could be got from it but people were already

weak and starving with the hunger. The rain had cleared

away and it stayed dry and sunny but there was still a

chill breeze and for people who had no flesh to keep

them warm it was cold enough so a few pots were filled

with anything that could be cooked- my mother agreed

to kill a few of the older hens that had stopped laying

and they as well as the last piece of salt pork were set

over the fires to boil. I was put in charge of some of the

younger children and we gathered crabs and cockles as

well as the carrageen moss; a few of the men who had

curricles put to sea and returned with some mackerel and

into the pot to make a stew the like of which nobody had

ever eaten before but I never saw people more gladdened

by their food. You would think that with such a long

hunger to satisfy they would have gobbled their food like

animals but they ate slowly and in the pernickety way

that I was taught by the nuns, as if they were enjoying a

fine banquet in the highest company and with nothing

more important to worry about than minding their

manners.

People nowadays talk about the famine but at the time

we had no real idea that across the whole of the country

people were starving just the same as we were; indeed

we thought that we were having the worst of it when the

truth of it is that in Duimhnagh we were better off than

almost everywhere else.

It took nearly a week before we had taken everything

there was to be had from the dead whale and I think that

was one of the happiest weeks in my life; the children of

course made a great holiday of it because we worked

through the night as well to make sure that every last bit

of the animal was saved.

The next day we had removed enough of the blubber and

we were able to start butchering the meat. A lot of

people would have just eaten the whale meat and not

bothered looking for the stuff we usually gathered like

the fish and the shellfish and the carrageen but Brendan

said that in Nantucket the whalers cut the meat into strips

and hung it on lines to dry out so that’s what we did. Not

everybody was convinced that the drying would work

and Brendan agreed that it might not be cold enough and

dry enough to work properly so my father went into

Castletown to buy salt so that it could be salted down

like we did when the pigs were killed. It seemed daft to

be spending money on salt but as I said there hadn’t been

food to buy for many a long day and salt on its own

would do no good but make you drink the sea dry.

It was amazing to see the uses that could be made of one

dead whale but by the time we had finished stripping the

carcass there was little left to show that there had been a

sea monster there at all.

Often during that week it did seem that we had been

given a very special miracle because if it hadn’t been for

Brendan Galway and his knowledge the whale might

have been eaten but all the other parts would have been

carried slowly back into the sea by the tides.

Even with Brendan’s knowledge a lot of people thought

it was mad to waste time gathering anything that was not

able to be eaten but Reverend McGorrigle having read

every book in his library that told of whales and how

they lived at sea as well as the marvellous products that

were made from whales said that we must gather the

bountiful harvest of the whales remains.

The whale skin was very tough and obviously

waterproof and the men managed to remove it in one

great single piece which they stretched over poles so that

it would dry out and make a weatherproof shelter

beneath which they could work when the weather turned

wet.

Lines were set up along the shore and thin strips of the

meat were hung to dry but it turned out that it was too

wet for that to work and eventually we saw that all the

meat would have to be salted and so my father had to go

back to Castletown to get more salt; he said that there

was a fair bit of curiosity about his buying salt for as I

say very few people had any livestock left to preserve.

The arrival of a whale on the beach would normally be

news that would be told far and wide but people didn’t

share information like that any more because ‘twould

bring a crowd of people and plenty of trouble so my

father had to pretend that he was looking to the future

and buying up anything that was going cheap since there

was no demand for salt or saltpetre or any other thing

that was not immediately edible.

This didn’t do his reputation much good and many years

later the story of how Conor Meagher could afford to

callously buy salt while the village of Duimhnagh

starved was told as evidence of the treacherous greed of

my parents.

While the women worked at salting the meat the men

continued to scavenge the carcass for the other treasures

about which Brendan had spoken; the massive jaw bone

and the rib cage were stripped bare and the reverend got

very excited saying that the skeleton looked very like

some ancient bones of creatures called dinosaurs that

lived on the land long before men were around and this

got him round to talking about a fellow called Charles

Darwin who said that we weren’t made by God but were

just clever monkeys. Father Francis got very annoyed

with the reverend and said that ‘twas all very well

making jokes like that among intelligent men but ‘twas

no comfort at all to people like us who didn’t understand

what he meant. The reverend got very huffy with Father

Francis and said that there was nothing in Mr.Darwins

ideas that ruled out God and for him to remember that

the people of Duimhnagh were not fools.

The worst bit was when we had to open the guts of the

whale to look for ambergris which Brendan said was

also used to make perfume although it was hard to

believe him for the smell of the whale’s guts was nearly

as bad as the smell of the blight.

The week of the whale marked a turning point for us all;

this was partly because everybody was busy in some

way or another, as I said starvation was a very

monotonous business; also people became more

generous with what they had and there was a new

closeness between people even where there had been

long standing enmity.

The greatest regret was that we didn’t live in Baffin Bay

where the whales lived in their hundreds and the

potatoes could rot to hell for all the matter it made to us.

While we were busy dealing with the whale Brendan

oversaw everything and at each stage he had a tale to tell

of the whales he had seen on the whaling ships. I got the

impression that he had not much enjoyed his time with

them for he seemed to have an admiration for whales and

when he described the way they blew huge spouts of

water up into the air he sounded almost sad for the cruel

way they were hunted.

Probably the most important thing we learned in that

week was that there were other ways of living; before the

blight it seemed that the only way for people like us to

live was off of the land and for most people that meant

potatoes.

After the famine was over it was clear to everybody that

the people would have to change the way they farmed if

‘twasn’t to happen again.

Chapter Eight

Gradually there was a slow return to the comparative

plenitude of the days before the blight but no household

yet felt confident enough to abandon the cautious

husbanding that had become second nature.

Usually the winters were damp and wet; indeed it was

the perpetual mild dampness that caused the blight to go

from a single opportunist attack to an entrenched siege.

When eventually there came a winter of sufficient

severity to destroy the blight the population was so

debilitated that it was difficult for Ellen to believe that

anybody would be left alive.

The whale had saved the village not just from starvation

but also from perishing; although there was turf for the

cutting it was damp beyond imagining because there was

barely a single dry day during which it could be set to

dry.

If necessity is the mother of invention it is certain that

the people of Duimhnaghs’ inventiveness were

remarkable under the rigours of the famine.

Although the community lacked any formal governing

body there was an inherent respect for knowledge and so

it was that Brendan Galway became the first point of

reference whenever events or circumstances required

more than the common body of knowledge. The

reverend McGorrigle was also revered as a source of

wisdom to the dismay of Father Frances who continued

in authority on matters spiritual but had not yet stood the

test of time as a man who could be trusted with more

worldly concerns.

When the famine continued into its third year the

population seemed to surrender themselves apathetically

to the slow leaching of hope and faith in their earth to

restore to them its benevolence and so when Ellen

discovered the whale and Brendan Galway was able to

explain the amazing versatility of the leviathan it was not

difficult for them to believe that they had been granted a

miracle.

There was some small sectarian bickering as to the

source of the miracle; Lenshe asserted that it was

Mannwynann the God of the sea who had taken pity on

their state; reverend McGorrigle said that it was no

miracle at all but a testimony to the value of travel and

learning to broaden the mind of man; Father Francis

knew that the miracle was the work of his own almighty

God but was too exhausted to argue the point.

Ellen had never travelled further from her home than the

nearest town which was Castletown and so she had no

reason to believe that there was anything special about

her home.

Naturally she knew that they had been particularly and

especially blessed by the beneficence of the whale which

had undoubtedly stimulated the population into action

but apart from that random good fortune she supposed

that they fared neither better nor worse than their

compatriots.

Before the coming of the whale it was true that there was

a generosity amongst the population that forbade the

hoarding of food and an optimistic faith that somehow

there would be sufficient unto the day although it was

understood that that sufficiency might be somewhat

arbitrary.

After the whale it was seen that with proper leadership

Duimhnagh could emerge the winner in the bare fisted

contest with the sullen potato crop.

Predictably the whale was picked clean before food

became plentiful again but somehow everybody felt that

to succumb to starvation again would be a tantamount to

spurning the noble sacrifice of the whale which popular

myth now decreed had presented itself voluntarily for the

consumption of the starving populace.

The fact that Duimhnagh was not a fishing community

and had at best an opportunist relationship with the sea

made the gift of the whale even more remarkable.

Whatever God was responsible the people of Duimhnagh

knew that their survival was no mere random matter but

had been pre-ordained; therefore however bleak the

future appeared they had an implicit faith that they

would not starve. And they did not starve.

Each individual now harboured a small certainty that

there was a future beyond this rigorous present and for

each that future held something more than just sufficient

unto the day.

Nobody voiced this conviction because hearts held their

own council for fear of tempting fate; it was understood

that the only urgency was the next meal.

They evolved a form of communism which rotated the

supply of food so that those who had strength and youth

were fed more than the bare nutritional requirement on

the presumption that this would enable them to forage

more effectively.

Pegeen Bawns old tigh was swept clean and the hearth

was kept alight so that there was one dry place to which

any member of the community could retreat. The damp

turf that was cut each day was stacked to dry and Conor

had constructed a frame of ironwork that allowed several

pots to be suspended over the fire at a time, each of

which was always full with a broth which Ellen later

learned was called gumbo when on a visit to the southern

states of America. The substance of the broth varied

greatly depending upon how well the foragers had fared;

sometimes it might be no more than water and nettles

which were normally plentiful as well as various edible

seaweeds and what shellfish could be obtained from the

rock pools on the shore; even the multitudinous limpets

were now dwindling in numbers.

The curricles still put to sea but there was an increase in

territorial disputes between the people of Duimhnagh

who had merely augmented their diet by fishing and the

other villages along the coast for whom fishing was an

industry.

In Duimhnagh there evolved a unique co-operation

between each layer of the community which subsequent

generations were inclined to disparage as being no more

than misty eyed wishful thinking. It was claimed that the

survivors of the famine were guilty, by virtue of that

survival, of collusion with the corrupt and degrading

system which was the cause of the famine in the first

place.

Ellen was to find herself explaining the multiple

complexities that accrued upon the bedrock of bare fact;

it was not easy to disagree with the informed ignorance

of sympathisers who could not conceive that such a

creature as herself existed. An Irish woman of good

education whose father had climbed out of the mire of

subsistence farming into a new elite who were poised to

reap the reward of their tenacious survival, land free of

encumbrances and rights guaranteed in law.

The portrait of Ireland and her people that had been

created to beguile the civilised world had no place for

creatures that refused to lie down and wallow in the mire

like inert victims.

A lifetime of conversations was to ensue before Ellen

fully understood the unique harmony and unity with

which her people had defeated the devastation of those

hungry years.

It had been Ellen who observed that the opportunity

which the scavenging of the whale presented had

animated people into industry and suggested that the old

tigh be brought back into some degree of habitability.

Once the work of salvaging every bit of the whale was

complete it seemed to her that people were in danger of

relapsing into their previous apathetic state and so she

had suggested that those who were fit and able enough

might be persuaded to help restore the old place into

usefulness.

Maureen was not enthusiastic at the idea for it had been

her whole life’s work to create for herself and her family

a homestead that elevated them above the paucity of the

common lot. ‘Wouldn’t you tell her, Conor? Why would

we want to be turning the henhouse back into a tigh?’

‘I’m not wanting us to go and live in it, Mama but it

could be made into a dry roof and a bit of heat and

‘twould keep people busy.’

‘But sure they haven’t the energy to be busy, colleen!’

‘But you’re wrong, Mama for they had the energy when

they needed it.’

‘Tisn’t for me to be making more work for myself when

‘tis all I can do to keep my own mouths fed, will you tell

her Conor.’

Conor and Maureen had been observed enviously by the

rest of the village and there were plenty who had waited

expectantly for them to get their comeuppance. It was

agreed that Conor was a decent soul who would do you a

good turn if he could and if he couldn’t would certainly

do you any harm. On the other hand the popular opinion

was that Maureen would mind mice at a crossroads and

had a tongue like a December frost.

The truth was that Conor could afford to be the soul of

affability because his wife would take care of the

necessities and leave him with sufficient to maintain an

illusion of independence.

‘Well ‘tisn’t a bad idea, Maureen. I saw old

MacDiarmuid only this morning and he trying to drag in

a cart load of wet turf. The poor old soul’s two lads went

off to America before the blight and Gerty’s been away

with the fairies since before they went. She hasn’t even

the sense to dress herself and he’s hardly more sense

himself for I said to him what did he want trying to cart

all that turf for I could see there was turf half way to the

roof of his tigh but he just said that ‘twas as well to be

prepared in case the weather turned cold again.’

‘But Conor we’ve got mouths of our own to feed,’

Maureen protested but she knew that Conor would not

gainsay Ellen and so she contented herself with stating

that she would not be seen to do a hands turn on the old

place but she supposed that if ‘twould do some good

‘twas her Christian duty to agree.

So Ellen had gone around the village explaining what

she planned to do. There had been a mixed reception to

her idea; those who had been awaiting the comeuppance

were generous in their sympathy and agreed to help

because justice compelled them to acknowledge past

hospitality while others agreed because they had nothing

better to do and could not readily capitulate to the

solitary anticipation of slow starvation.

Father Francis marvelled at the way in which Ellen

Meagher was able to reinvigorate the people and

remembered that she had been inclined to take the veil;

he reminded himself that in the early days of Christianity

it was not a necessary requirement for saints to be dead

and wondered whether Ellen had been born out of time.

The transformation was completed within a matter of

days and Ellen let it be known that there would be

shelter and warmth for all and the only requirement for

admittance was a willingness to contribute to the

common weal, each according to his ability.

Conor had taken the trap into the village and assisted

MacDiarmuid and his demented wife back to what

became known as The House of Congregation. The old

man had been reluctant to leave in case the smouldering

fire which seemed to consume more warmth than it

emitted went out completely.

He was seated beside the fire in what was universally

recognised as the privileged seat of the patriarch but it

was evident that both he and his wife were in the last

stages of starvation.

‘You’re a grand man, Conor indeed you are a grand man

but ‘twould be folly to leave for the fire’ll extinguish

itself and I’ll never get it lit again with the cut of that

damp turf. ‘Tis bad enough to be starving to death

without freezing as well!’

‘My Ellen’s gone and rigged the old place with a good

blazing fire and good hot broth and she’ll skin me alive

if I don’t bring ye back to have the benefit of it.’

Still the old man grumbled that he’d be missing his own

hovel and ‘twould upset Gerty to find herself in a strange

place but eventually Conor persuaded him that ‘twould

only be for a short while.

Conor believed that he had shed his last tears long ago

when he had seen that family starving by the roadside,

marooned in an empty insubstantial half world; but they

had been strangers after all and he had permitted his

consciousness to incorporate them into a sort of biblical

tableau which rendered them mere representations, a bit

like the people of Israel wandering for forty years in the

desert; they were no more than parables.

Seoirse MacDiarmuid had been a bull of a man in his

youth, a man notorious for the brute power of his fists

who was unconquered by any challenger in the province

of Munster.

Seoirse represented all his adolescent aspirations and the

sight of the old man’s bewildered effort to adhere to the

routines of a lifetime almost broke his heart.

‘You’ll have a drop of the hard stuff, Conor; before we

go will you take a drop with me? Here, Gerty ‘tis

Finbar’s young fella, you remember he married Maureen

Bawn. She’s a bit deaf these days Conor but she’ll be

delighted you called just the same. Just let me get this

old fire going and I’ll join you in a drop for the road.’

‘Seoirse will you leave the fire alone and get into the

trap while I fetch Gerty.’

‘Oh, no Conor Gerty’ll have the hide off me if I let you

go without having a drop first.’

The old man stumbled to his feet and went to a shelf

where he fumbled amongst hollow sounding crockery

that echoed its emptiness until he produced a ceramic

jug, ‘I was saving this for the time when there’d be

praities again but ‘tisn’t likely I’ll see that day so

‘twould be an honour to share it with you Conor. Would

you look at that fire, I don’t remember a time when the

turf took so long to dry out but if you’ll just hold yer

whist for a minute I’ll get the blasted thing lit again. ‘Tis

good of you to call Conor you’re a credit to your old

fella which I’m sure is more than the old scut deserves.

I’ll just have a look and see if there’s a bit of something

to eat. Gerty’ll be raging that there’s not a bit of bread to

share with you but I never got the hang of baking bread

and sure why would I think I’d need to?’

Conors was thankful that MacDiarmuid’s confusion was

fraying his patience for it was easier to bear than the

remembrance of old glory.

Eventually he lifted the old woman and sat her in the

trap while he led Seoirse who followed quite willingly

once he saw that Gerty was going also.

Conor had become accustomed to the foul odours of

famine but he had never before encountered anything

like the stench that emanated from the old lady. A dead

beast stank, he knew and although it was foul it could be

buried, the smell no more than the consequence of an

absent life. Gerty smelt like the carcass of an animal but

there was the added contribution of long standing excreta

which must surely have dwindled to nothing by now.

Father Francis marvelled at the competence with which

Ellen dealt with her first guests despite the first recoil

from the stink of the two old people.

When asked how she knew what needed to be done she

replied, ‘sure didn’t we have plenty of practice with my

uncle Eoign stupefied since before I was born.’

Gerty died within a few days of her arrival and for a time

it seemed that Seoirse would not long outlive her for he

became convinced that Gerty remained back at their old

tigh.

This delusion was countered by a piece of extraordinary

coincidence in the form of a letter published in the Irish

Times some two weeks before Ellen opened her Hall of

Congregation and which belatedly reached the village

via the generosity of Reverend McGorrigle. The writer

of the letter was one Feilim MacDiarmuid now residing

in New York and the letter was a perfectly commonplace

call upon the citizens of Ireland to renounce the vile root

vegetable known as the potato which he compared to a

mandrake in its capacity to make mischief.

The letter made a further call for the Irish nation to

abandon altogether the consumption of alcoholic

beverages deriving from that same malicious tuber.

The writer did not elaborate on the subject of alcoholic

consumption so that it was unclear whether his objection

was only to products of potato fermentation or was a

more general denunciation of the demon drink.

Reverend McGorrigle reading this exhortation thought it

unlikely that the author would be the same Feilim

MacDiarmuid who had fled the country ten years

previously having manufactured and distributed a batch

of poteen so potent that it was claimed to have been the

direct cause of at least two deaths.

Thus it was that in addition to the occupational hazard of

the excise men he added the police who had issued a

warrant for his arrest on two counts of manslaughter

with a possible further three under investigation. Still it

was a coincidence and he wondered whether his elderly

and bereaved father would derive any consolation from

the notion that his fugitive son was sufficiently settled in

his new life to have leisure for the writing of letters to

the Irish Times and so he brought the piece with him

when he made his daily visit to the Hall of Congregation.

Seoirse sat in the patriarchal seat which it was agreed he

was entitled to by virtue of being the first guest to enjoy

their hospitality. He sat attentively feeding the flames

with a generosity which occasionally needed to be

curbed for fear of setting the whole thatch alight and

Reverend McGorrigle who if the truth be told knew

more about ancient gods than he did about his own deity

thought Seoirse might well have been some associate of

the hammer god Thor. This impression was enhanced by

the red glow which the fire cast upon him so that he

seemed almost to merge and emerge from the flames.

‘Good day to you Seoirse, I bring greetings and tidings

of your lad Feilim from the American colonies unless

I’m very much mistaken.’

‘And how would you have word of my Feilim when I’ve

had not a bit of news since they slandered the quality of

his distillation and I after teaching him myself the way to

make the purest brew of poteen ever made?’

‘A letter, Seoirse, a letter from one Feilim MacDiarmuid

of New York city published in the Irish Times on

Tuesday March the 10th

of this very year. I brought the

piece for I thought ‘twould hearten you to have word of

him although I confess I was not certain that it could be

your own Feilim for the fellow has some very peculiar

ideas. Still I thought it was interesting purely as a

curiosity,’ he said before proceeding to read the letter for

the benefit of Seoirse who was unable to read.

If Seoirse was intended to derive comfort from the

missive it was clear that he did not; indeed his outrage at

the perfidy of his son was loud but as Reverend

McGorrigle pointed out afterwards a man could console

himself just as well with the perversity of his progeny as

he could with their sanctity and Seoirse was just as

animated by his grievance as he would have been with

some subject to rejoice.

It was the emotion that mattered, he declared; it didn’t

greatly matter what a man felt strongly about so much as

that a man had the capacity for strong emotions that

would keep the blood hot in his veins.

The truth of this observation was borne out by the

renewed vigour with which Seoirse took charge of the

hearth fire and often Ellen was forced to remind him that

she wished only for the Hall of Congregation to be kept

comfortably warm and his spendthrift feeding of the fire

was an extravagance they could not afford for they still

had to dry the turf.

Chapter Nine

During the times when Ellen was busy she had neither

the time nor the vision to look beyond each long lean

day to a time when there would be leisure to reflect on

the wealth of half guessed possibilities that had flared so

brightly while she had seen Brendan Galway ordering

the salvaging of the whale.

She had heard her parents discussing what would happen

when the famine was over and the one thing she knew

they were agreed upon was that there would be land

reforms. This meant so far as she could gather that some

people would no longer be able to continue to eke out a

living as subsistence farmers and these people would

need to hire themselves as labourers.

Ellen had no faith in the land to support them and she

had become fascinated by the idea of a community that

could support itself by the manufacture of goods which

could be sold, this idea having first presented itself when

she heard Brendan Galway and reverend McGorrigle

talking about the immense value of the inedible part of

the whale.

Although she had been to Castletown and spent on small

luxuries, a ribbon or some eau de Cologne she had not

come across anything with a fraction of the worth of the

ambergris or spermaceti. And yet according to his

reverence and Brendan the whale was not hunted for its

meat but for those parts of a carcass that would normally

be discarded as offal.

Clearly if there were people who were prepared to pay

such huge sums of money it was worth investigating

those industries.

Before the famine there had been little room for a

contrary nose for the business of farming was inherently

smelly and to any land person these odours were proof of

some success; if your yard smelt it was because your

beasts were performing their bodily functions, a sign that

they were healthily excreting the waste that resulted

from their very efficient grazing of that much envied

pasture and in the efficiency of natures design that waste

was returned to the pasture and so it remained rich and

plentiful.

Pigs, she thought were far and away the most stinking of

the beasts; this was presumably because of their

voracious and indiscriminate appetites but still there

wasn’t any animal that was easier to maintain than a pig

and few that yielded so much meat or reproduced more

successfully.

The handling of carcasses did need a certain skill

because the digestive system of any animal stank but the

meat itself did not smell until it was put to roast and

then, oh and then you knew why you rose before

daybreak to tend you beasts; then you knew why you

coddled each pregnant animal and sat beside it at night

when it laboured to bring forth each new life; you knew

why you grieved with the beast that bore a dead infant or

struggled to persuade the weakling runt to take suck.

There was a mutual agreement, a contract between you

and the beasts you bred. It was understood that in all

ways you would be in loco parentis to the beast; it was

your responsibility to ensure that the beasts were

provided with every necessary thing from sufficient food

to shelter from the worst of the elements; it was your

responsibility to nurse each beast and it was even your

duty to provide them with the necessary means to

reproduce; with time and experience you leant to manage

even this so as to give each beast the best possible

chance of delivering healthy offspring without harm to

itself. In return for this investment of labour and

affection the animals and their offspring lived safely

under your protection and you received enough meat to

feed your family as well as the product of each animal,

milk from the cattle and eggs from the fowl. Every

objectionable smell gave evidence of contentment and

continuity, the ongoing activities that are necessary for

all living creatures.

In the years of the blight each familiar smell was tainted

and eventually destroyed by the foulness of putrefaction

so that by the last year when she found the whale even

the memory of wholesomeness was banished.

Brendan Galway’s declaration and the further knowledge

of Reverend McGorrigle set her thinking about the

business of making smells, for essentially that was what

a perfumer did; he made smells for people whose lives

were far from the intimacy of fertilising, planting,

feeding and harvesting the land.

In the future, if her parents were right the people who

were now starving and dependent upon the benevolence

of her hall of congregation would have to move from

their ancient smallholdings and engage in work which

would remove them from all the intangible security of

the familiar.

Maybe she could harvest one last benefit from the sacred

whale whose ribcage now supported its weathered hide

just above the high tide mark. It had proved remarkably

durable and had evolved into an ecumenical shrine of

sorts for despite the competing claims as to the architect

of the miracle the whale itself was sanctified.

The one thing of which she was certain was that the

people of Duimhnagh must look beyond the confines of

their own small world. They must look to a world that

had leisure and wealth enough to pay for those intangible

securities that were the privilege of those who endured

the demanding business of living off the land.

This they already did to some extent by producing grain

for export and by selling their dairy surplus to the nearby

town of Castletown, but there was a poor return for these

activities and it was because of this that they were

starving. It was plain that those who laboured to feed

their neighbours enjoyed no part of the rewards for this

labour.

And yet there were people who would sail halfway

around the world, face frozen seas and monstrous whales

maybe twice the size of her whale, as she had come to

think of it; and they did this to obtain that small part of

the animal that was used to make perfume! Apart from

the eau de cologne which smelt of lavender and was to

be had from the apothecary for 2d she could think only

of the frankincense which the kings brought for the Holy

Child or the incense which was used to anoint the dying

and she knew that both were equally valuable.

Brendan Galway had shown her the small nuggets that

he retrieved from the guts of the whale but the smell of

the guts were too powerful for her to make any

judgement about the merit of the smell. However she

believed that despite the foul smells there was so much

relief at their salvation as to make them immune to any

stink.

The ambergris and the spermaceti had been committed to

the care of reverend McGorrigle but Brendan was not at

all sure what needed to be done to these substances in

order to make them saleable, however he did know that

it might take more than a year for the substances to reach

their final destination and so he was confident that they

would not be spoiled by some delay.

Gradually the crisis became less critical and eventually

there came a day when she went into Castletown with

her father to purchase what was available and on their

return she was able to say, ‘I was able to get everything

we needed today, Dada, mind you those Mahone’s are

nothing but a pair of brazen robbers!’

Conor nodded his head and said, ‘they were never any

different, a ghra and I know it’s been hard on them these

last years but I’d be surprised if they don’t have to

emigrate when there’s food enough to sell and money

enough to buy it for people won’t forgive and forget

these years.’

It was a warm drowsy evening in June; the first of the

potato crop had passed the critical stage and there was an

almost audible silence because there was still some six

weeks before the crop would be ready for harvesting.

There had been no real spring and the weather had

passed without the usual damp hesitance from the bright

frozen sharpness of late winter almost immediately to the

long, light dry days of early summer.

The people were giddy with hope for this first crop that

held the promise of a resurrection for the fields that had

been cleared and replanted. There were many acres that

lay untilled and were in the process of returning to a

state of wilderness. It would be more than half a century

before this land came once again under the plough for

there was emptiness about the country that made Ellen

think of Adam and Eve in their Garden of Eden.

The blight she saw as the serpent which had slithered

silently among the tall grass and rooted itself into the

land. Its determined hardiness had beguiled her people

into the belief that it would feed the entire nation after

which it disintegrated into rottenness and left them

bewildered and starving.

There was no joy in her heart for this resurrection she

saw as just another attempt on the part of the wily

serpent to lure the unsuspecting into a false confidence

that it had mended its ways and would not fail them

again; and yet what else could they do? These were the

people whom Ellen saw as the ones who must be won

over to the idea of wage earning.

There were naturally many obstacles to be overcome and

it took her a long time to allow the idea to be more real

than the mythical four leaved clover for which she had

searched as a child. She had approached the reverend to

ask him about the processes involved in the

transformation of those unspectacular substances into

something that was prized by kings and priests.

It was this confidence in his knowledge that made the

reverend not just a burdensome clergyman who must be

maintained despite the spurning of his spiritual services.

Every person in the village knew that he could be relied

upon to deliver honest and truthful advice on matters

temporal and spiritual and Ellen was not disappointed.

She wondered whether to tell him why she was

interested but the reverend was not a man who needed to

know why a question was asked since he presumed that

his own limitless curiosity was shared by everybody else

and so he merely escorted her into his extensive library.

There he produced several manuscripts which he knew

contained references to the processes involved in the

hunting of whales as well as the paths taken by the

products that were obtained and the processes which

were employed to transform them into the prized

perfumes and incenses.

The reverend was impressed by Ellen’s natural curiosity

and her ability to apply what she learned. She asked him

had he any idea what the perfumes they made smelt like,

‘oh yes, indeed I have in my vestry a considerable

amount of incense which is provided at the expense of

the diocese. I am not inclined towards high ritual myself

although your own faith uses incense quite liberally in its

churches; but of course there is no church of your own

faith in Duimhnagh yet. We must see about rectifying

that deficiency once the current food crisis is passed.’

Ellen sniffed the incense and found it to be a most

peculiar smell, her first impression was of power; this

was no delicate girlish scent like her eau de cologne but

a heavy enveloping odour which was pungent enough to

compete and triumph over all the smells that she had

ever experienced. However she was certain that it

contained some elements which were not dissimilar to

the many familiar smells that she had been considering

when she had been trying to explain why people would

spend such sums of money to purchase a smell.

Finally she decided to explain her ambition to the

reverend and again he did not let her down as she

suspected Father Francis would have done by reminding

her that perfume was the height of depravity and a

devilish device to lure respectable people into irreverent

behaviour.

Ellen had discarded the notion that she might have a

vocation to take the veil although she feared that only a

woman who had taken the veil could have the freedom to

explore the world that the implementation of her plan

required.

She knew that she would miss the challenges which she

had been forced to meet during the hardships of recent

years and dreaded the day when there would be leisure

for her mother to put her mind to the organizing of a

marriage.

So it was on that first day Ellen and Conor arrived in

Duimhnagh having obtained every necessary provision

during their excursion to Castletown. It had been a day

of bright sunshine and as they approached the village

each tigh seemed almost mystic with the reflected golden

brilliance of the kind old sun that blessed the hedgerows

and their small reclamation of land and the meadows

where the buttercups and the marguerite daisies and

thistles overtook the fields that had been under the

plough for generations.

The shadows were still sharp and violet where the light

fell between the foliated trees and there were people

gathered around the old green that had been untended for

so long. Almost Ellen could think that the starving years

had not happened except for the timid whispered

conversations that told of a people who had survived

some infernal struggle and were not yet certain that the

day was again theirs.