The Whitest Flower

‘Sure, Ellen, isn’t Michael busy lifting the lumpers from that fine field you have? What would he be thinking of a man to be running messages to him, bothering him, if I didn’t lift a hand to help you – me being a neighbour? I’ll bear them up to the cabin meself for you, Ellen, with a heart and a half,’ he said, delighted with himself. The red-haired woman wouldn’t catch him out like that! Emboldened, he didn’t wait for her assent but picked up the basket and set off for the O’Malleys’ cabin. He had got out of that one well. Now he could walk with Ellen Rua, and no one to say a word to him, only thinking what a fine good-natured fellow he was. Why, with all her schooling the Máistir’s daughter still couldn’t outwit Roberteen Bawn.

Had he glanced back over his shoulder, he would have seen the mischief sparkling in those eyes.

As they walked she chatted amicably with him, showing interest in his prattle and being grateful to him for his kindness. He found it hard to look straight at her, but was conscious of her nearness and the power she seemed to have over him. He couldn’t wait to tell her about all the work he was doing with the turf, and how he would soon live up to his father’s reputation for doing the work of a man and a half. But somehow the words all came out in a tumble and he wondered if he was making any sense at all to her. However, she didn’t seem to notice and, the times he did look at her, she smiled at him, which set him off talking ten to the dozen again.

When they reached her cabin she asked him to put the creel over in the corner next to the hearth. He did as she asked, but when he turned to leave he found that she was leaning against the cabin door, having closed it behind her.

‘Now, Roberteen Bawn, my fair-haired boy, I’m very grateful to you, very grateful indeed, for sparing me the task of carrying that heavy load. Will you not wait a while and take something with me?’ she coaxed seductively.

‘No, no thanks,’ blurted out an alarmed Roberteen.

‘Sure, it’s in no hurry you are, Roberteen, and himself won’t be home yet a while to thank you for your kindness to me.’

The thought of Michael arriving to find the door of his cabin closed against him, and he, Roberteen, alone in the house with Ellen, sent the fear of God through the youth.

‘I have to go now … the work … my father.’

‘Faith, Roberteen, I’ll be thinking you have no regard for me,’ she teased with mock hurt in her voice.

Dar Dia, he thought, if anyone hears her, I’ll be ruined. Then involuntarily he heard himself say, ‘No, no, Ellen. It’s not that, it’s not that at all.’

‘Well?’ Ellen drew the word out slowly. ‘Sure, that would be a terrible thing for a woman to hear, and she walking to the lake every morning, and throwing her head to the sun for a man to be looking at her, and he not having any regard at all for her. Wouldn’t it now, Roberteen?’

Why was she doing this? She was trouble, all right. He’d never bother with her likes again, as long as he lived. A red-haired woman was nothing but trouble to a man, nothing but trouble, and this one was the very divil.

‘I have to go now … I have to …’ he spluttered in panic, thinking that not only Michael but the whole village would soon know he was in here, alone with her.

‘Well, I’ll not be the woman to stand in the way of a man and his work,’ said Ellen, feeling some sympathy for the state he was in – and he, after all, only a simple gasúr, for all his nineteen summers. ‘But it’s a queer thing, all the same, you running off that way, and me offering you the hand of friendship only to have it dashed back at me again.’

She stood away from the door and he bolted for it. But she was quicker, and again he found his way out blocked by her.

‘Now, one piece of advice to you, me fine buachaill …’ she said, her face now close to his.

The smell of her womanliness, her talking to him this way – she was confusing him. Doing it on purpose. His plan had gone all wrong.

Sensing she might have gone too hard on him, Ellen changed her tone. ‘There are plenty of fine young single girls out there, waiting to be taken off their fathers’ hands, for you to be watching a woman that’s married and with children nearly as old as you are. Isn’t that so, Roberteen?’ She was not scolding him now, just stating this in a gentle, matter-of-fact way.

The boy looked at her, his light blue eyes filled with a mixture of infatuation and sheepishness, and she regretted having taken it so far with him.

‘I’m sorry,’ was all he said.

‘I know you are, Roberteen,’ she said, reaching out and touching his arm. ‘You’re young – there’ll be someone for you, you’ll see.’

He did not respond. Wondering whether she had underestimated the depth of the feelings he carried for her, she decided not to prolong his agony.

‘You should go now,’ she said. ‘We won’t say another word about this, or the other thing – the mornings – to anybody. It will just be between the two of us.’

The boy didn’t lift his head as he went out past her. She waited a while and then called after him, so others would hear, ‘Roberteen! Thank you for carrying up the sciathóg – it was getting too heavy for me.’

As the door of his own cabin swallowed him into its safe haven, Roberteen Bawn was grateful for that.

After the Rosary had been said and the children were asleep, Michael spoke to her.

‘I saw our neighbour’s son carry the sciathóg for you today. I’m thinking he has a longing for you, Ellen,’ he teased.

‘Ah, sure, he’s only a gasúr, it’s just the summer madness that’s troubling him. The long cold nights of winter coming in will knock that spark out of him!’ She laughed, and drew closer to Michael. Then more seriously, she asked: ‘But what of the potatoes, and this blight?’

‘Well …’ Michael paused. ‘We didn’t find any blackened ones at all today. We’ll dig again tomorrow. I’m thinking maybe we should lift them all out.’

Ellen considered this. If they dug up all the potatoes now, they would be small. There wasn’t enough room to store them all, so they’d have to sell the excess immediately, but the price they’d get would be low on account of their size. After the rent was paid, there’d be nothing left. If they left the crop in the ground until the later dig in November – ‘the people’s crop’, as it was called – the lumpers would be full size. There wouldn’t be the storage problems, and they wouldn’t have to sell them below price. But were the blight to strike, the second harvest might be ruined. And so would they. It was too big a risk.

She turned to Michael and put her hand to his cheek. ‘You are right, a stór,’ she said, full of love for him. ‘We should lift them all now. Somehow we’ll find space for them.’

‘You know,’ he said, his dark eyes aglow for her, his hands reaching for her hair, ‘it was a joyful sight for me today to see you and the children beside me in the fields. The two small ones sporting and playing, and Patrick, wanting to do me out of a job of work. But most of all,’ her husband softened his tone, ‘’twas yourself, Ellen, singing your old songs on the breeze, tending to the children, bending and picking all day – without ever a want or a word of complaint. You were like the sun itself come down to earth all fiery and bright. Happy any man would be, Ellen Rua, with you next to him in the fields.’

Ellen went to her knees in front of him. She took his two arms in hers.

‘Michael, my love, I’ve something to tell you. The Lord and His Holy Mother have blessed us again.’ She got it all out in one mouthful.

‘You don’t mean …?’ Michael’s face lit up.

‘Yes, I do – I am with your child a month now.’ She said it like a girl, her face shining up into his. He looked back at her, the pride and love bursting out of him. He had always wanted more children with Ellen, but had almost given up hope. After all, it was six years now since Mary and Katie were born. Not that the whisperings in the village worried him – three being a small number of children. No, he wanted more children for their own sake, and now his prayers were answered. Never mind what times lay ahead, he, Michael O’Malley, would provide for all his children, and any more that the good Lord would send. He caught hold of her.

‘Rise up, Ellen Rua, rise up! It’s not for you to be on your knees to me, or to any man. I knew it was a sign from above – you with a song on your lips and the sun dancing around you all day like you were the very centre of its world,’ he declared, holding her to him. ‘I just knew it!’

In the days that followed, they continued to work in the fields: lifting the potato harvest; inspecting the tubers for signs of blight, of which there were none. Late into the night they were cleaning and drying the potatoes, then storing them in their cabin for the winter ahead.

In other years Michael had stored half of each harvest in a pit near the cabin, and the other half, which was for more immediate use, in the cabin itself. This year he decided not to take the chance on outside storage because of the danger that the murrain might attack the potatoes in the pit.

This posed a problem, for the amount of potatoes requiring storage was almost double that of a normal year. Even though the lumpers were smaller than usual, it was going to take some ingenuity to fit them all into the two loft areas which ran either side of the cabin from hearth to door. The potatoes had to be laid out on beds of straw to keep them dry and well ventilated. So Michael and Ellen devised a way of stacking the lumpers to roof-height, taking care not to bruise them, and interleaving each level with straw.

Then it was time to bury the seed potatoes for next year’s crop. These tiny tubers had to be kept in the earth because it was the only way to preserve them until it was time for planting; thus Michael had no choice but to place them in the outside storage pit.

All in all it was a good week’s work for the O’Malleys and most of their neighbours. Some of the villagers had decided to take a gamble and leave a portion of their crop in the ground for the later harvest. Debate raged in Maamtrasna as to the merits and demerits of each course of action, both sides convinced that theirs was the right way. The general mood, though, was one of optimism for the year ahead, and thanksgiving that everyone in the valley had some sufficiency of food for the long winter months to come.

So it was that the much-relieved villagers decided to hold a céilí celebrating the harvest the following Sunday night at the place where the roads to Maamtrasna, Derrypark and Finny met.

At eventide people drew in from all over to the céilí. Father O’Brien turned up; not so much to keep an eye on proceedings, as his predecessor might have done, but to see his people enjoy themselves. Before he had gone to the seminary at Maynooth, the young priest had been well able to step it out with the best of them in a set or half-set of jigs or reels. Mattie an Cheoil – ‘Mattie Music’, as he was known – brought his squeeze-box accordion over the road from Leenane, and Michael took down his fiddle and bow. They were all there: the O’Malleys, the Joyces, the Tom Bawns. Even Sheela-na-Sheeoga crept down the mountainside to be at the ‘spraoi agus ceol’.

When Ellen and the children arrived the céilí was in full swing. Michael had gone on ahead to ‘tune up’. Ellen well knew that part of the ‘tuning up’ applied not so much to the fiddle as to Michael himself, and involved a sup or two from Mike Bhríd Mike’s poteen still. Well, he deserved it, she thought.

Laughter and merriment mixed with the music, ringing around the mountainside and down to the Mask, floating over the lake’s surface and then fading into each corner of the valley. Ellen’s head was swirling with it all and the loveliness of the mid-autumn evening. Meán Fómhair – middle harvest. How apt, how poetic it was, the Gaelic name for September.

‘To think our language and music were driven underground by the Sasanach – the harpers hung high for playing the old songs,’ said Father O’Brien, his words echoing her thoughts. ‘And why are you not dancing, Ellen Rua?’

‘Well,’ she said, ‘with Michael making the music, and the young ones to mind …’

‘Oh, come now!’ He caught her hand. ‘Step out a jig with me – I’m a bit out of practice, but …’

‘No, Father, I …’

He looked at her. Such an outstanding beauty; even in her peasant’s clothing, she could have turned many a berretted clerical head in the cloisters of Maynooth. That rare combination of strength and engaging humility. He had seen her at Mass – you couldn’t help but notice her – kneeling upright, intent and attentive throughout, except now and again to throw an eye on one of those errant twins. When she received Holy Communion, she closed those dark-green eyes and you just knew she truly believed she was receiving the Body and Blood of Christ. He had seen many holy and pious men, but none so transfigured as she was in the presence of God. He had heard tell that her mother, Cáit, had also been renowned for her piety and beauty. She had died in childbirth. The infant, a young sister for Ellen, had also been lost. It had almost broken the Máistir’s heart. And what grief it must have been for the young Ellen to lose the mother she loved.

‘Is there something troubling you?’ he asked. ‘Last Sunday at the church … Sheela-na-Sheeoga?’

‘No, Father, there’s nothing troubling me, nothing at all, that isn’t a good thing.’

There – she had given him a clue. The young priest pressed her no further. Though his priestly studies had been of death and rebirth rather than birth itself, his upbringing in rural Ireland had given him a finely tuned ear for the half-said and the unsaid.

‘Well then, Ellen,’ he said gently, understanding her circumstances, ‘if you won’t dance, at least you can’t refuse to sing. It’s time we had a song.’

When she didn’t refuse, the priest approached the two musicians and spoke with Michael. They cut short ‘The Siege Of Ennis’, much to the dismay of those re-enacting the famous siege through dance. The mutterings of discontent quickly subsided, however, when Father O’Brien shouted, ‘Quiet now, please, for a song from Ellen Rua.’

A few calls came for different songs, but she would sing Michael’s favourite: ‘The Fair-Haired Boy’, an old song of love lost through emigration. Ellen sang, unaccompanied, in the sean-nós style. This primitive style allowed the singer great flexibility – using notes around the melody line other than those which were correctly of the melody. Some sean-nós singers favoured much ornamentation, which displayed their vocal skills. Others, like Ellen, preferred to remain faithful to the original melody, letting the beauty of the song speak for itself.

Father O’Brien was glad that these old songs survived in the West. Like storytelling, they formed an important part of the oral tradition of Ireland. Not that the Church had much time for the old ways, many of which were considered to be leftovers from the pagan days. But these songs were neither Christian nor pagan: they were songs of the lives and times of the people.

The priest’s thoughts were interrupted by the first notes of Ellen’s song, cutting through the absolute stillness the crowd had accorded her.

Oh, my fair-haired boy, no more I’ll see You walk the meadows green …

As always, when she sang, Ellen would close her eyes, and go deep within herself, particularly when singing a goltraí – a sad song – like this one was. She would think of Cáit, her mother, from whom she had learned the songs and the art. She would think of Ireland and the great misfortune of its people, and she would think of Michael, her great love.

‘Hope with the sadness of no hope – love with the lament of lost love,’ was how Mattie an Cheoil described her singing.

So the story and air of the fair-haired boy, loved and then lost, became merely a vehicle for Ellen’s own feelings. She revealed herself most when she sang. This somehow connected the singing with those same deep places of the heart in her audience. Every so often between verses, she opened her eyes and looked at Michael. His gaze remained transfixed on her throughout, as he struggled to understand the turmoil of emotions which her singing raised in him.

The young priest too stood marvelling at how true she was to the melody, not needing to embellish it just to show she could. Being true – that was the quality she had, this red-haired woman.

Ellen opened her eyes and looked at the crowd. In the background she caught sight of Roberteen – fair-haired Roberteen – hanging on her every word, the sorrow of unattainable love etched on his young face. For the briefest of moments their eyes met and she gave him the flicker of a smile. Then she closed her eyes again and continued to sing, drifting away into the depths of her song.

Your ship waits on the western shore,

To bear you o’er from me,

But wait I will e’en to heaven’s door,

My fair-haired boy to see.

She had scarcely let go of the last note before the crowd began to cry for more.

But the magic of the moment was short-lived.

‘What the devil is going on here?’ The belligerent voice of Sir Richard Pakenham cut through the applause. Accompanied by Beecham, his agent, and three constables, he rode into the centre of the crowd.

‘Lazy swine!’ he shouted at the revellers. ‘More interested in merrymaking and drinking than tending to my land. Blight is forecast – you should be on your knees praying!’

Mike Bhríd Mike tried to take advantage of the commotion to slip away with his jugs of poteen, but Pakenham spotted him. ‘Constables – seize that man!’ he ordered the Peelers. ‘I won’t have him selling that devil’s juice they call poteen to my tenants!’

Mike Bhríd Mike, his progress hampered by the two large jugs of illegal brew he was carrying, was no match for men on horseback. The constables quickly apprehended him.

Then Pakenham turned on the priest: ‘And you, Father, a man of the cloth, encouraging this wildness, this lawbreaking – what have you to say?’

Father O’Brien stepped forward. ‘These people have done no wrong. Nor are they savages to be ridden down and rounded up. They are people of God who have worked hard all week saving their crops from the blight so that they can pay the extortionate rents you exact from them. This is their innocent enjoyment – can you not leave them even that?’ Having been well capable of matching the most fearsome of the French professors in Maynooth, the young priest would not now be faced down by a Protestant landlord.

‘Popery and Pope-speak, that’s all you priests ever have so as to keep the people enslaved to a Church which takes their last few pennies after paying their lawful rents. Did not your own people rise up against the high tithes demanded by your Church to baptize, marry and bury them? Shame on you and your kind, Priest! Cromwell was right: “Hang them high, and hang them plenty!”’

At the name of Cromwell, a muttering arose from the crowd. Pakenham jerked his horse round. ‘Silence! And you there – music makers!’ he sneered at Michael and Mattie an Cheoil. ‘You call this caterwauling music? Neither form nor grace to it. I know you, O’Malley. Fine time to be fiddling! Mark me, if the rent’s not on time, I’ll have you and that fiddle of yours out on the road, and you can diddley-i-di-diddle-i to the moon and the stars all you like, then, with no roof over your head.

‘Now, Beecham, let’s see what else we’ve got here in this happy little gathering, besides a priest, a lawbreaker, and a pair of tuneless musicians. And, of course, the singer,’ he said, pulling his horse around in front of Ellen. ‘Beecham, is this the sweet thrush we heard, whose notes floated across the Mask to greet us as we rode here?’

Beecham’s reply was drowned out by the landlord’s command to Ellen: ‘Step forward, woman, till we see you.’ Ellen moved forward. The children gathered into her, afraid.

‘Ah, a thrush with fledglings,’ Pakenham continued, leaning forward in the saddle. ‘Methinks I know this red-crested thrush. What is your name, woman?’

‘Ellen O’Malley,’ she said, not proffering the usual ‘your Lordship’. This was not missed by Pakenham.

‘Ah! I see!’ he exclaimed, looking back to Michael and then turning once more to Beecham. ‘A fine little nest of songmakers we’re raising here, Beecham – don’t you think?’

Beecham muttered again, but this time a ‘yes, M’Lord’ could be distinguished.

‘Well, we’ll see what sort of music you lot make on empty bellies, and what jigs and reels you hop to when you present yourself to me over the next few months.

‘And you, Priest, stick to your popish spells and incantations, and don’t meddle in my affairs.’

The priest did not respond to the taunt as Pakenham kicked the stirrup into the flank of his mount, emphasizing the threat. The mare responded with a high whinny until he jerked her around again to face Ellen.

That one’s trouble, Pakenham thought to himself. There was a defiance about her and that husband of hers not found in the other wretches – except for the priest.

Ellen stood, never flinching before the horse which, goaded by Pakenham’s rough use of the bit, bridled in front of her. She could see Michael tensing himself, ready to jump in if insult or hand was laid on her.

Pakenham addressed her again: ‘You’ll sing for your supper yet, my red-haired songbird – mark my words!’

Ellen’s eyes never fell from his for a second. But for now she would keep her peace.

Eventually Pakenham broke the moment, calling over his shoulder: ‘Come, Beecham, let us away from here and back to Tourmakeady, to whatever modicum of civilization is to be found in this damned country. For now we will leave these scoundrels to their dancing, but they’ll dance all right: any riotous behaviour on my lands, and dance they will – at the end of a rope!’

Ellen watched as they rode off towards Tourmakeady. Mary and Katie were in tears at either side of her, frightened by the menacing attitude of both horse and rider. Patrick meanwhile had moved slightly in front of her, instinctively stepping into the role of protector.

Suddenly, a shout rang out from the retreating landlord. ‘The devil! I’ve been struck. There he is – up there! After him! I’ll have his hands off,’ they heard Pakenham order his escort, all the while holding a hand to the back of his head where the well-aimed missile had caught him.

A cheer went up from the crowd, but Ellen was concentrating on the drama unfolding on the road below them. A movement caught her eye and for a moment she had a clear view of Pakenham’s assailant. There, in the murky shadow of the mountain, was a figure clambering up where no horse could go. The figure stopped and turned to look once, not at its pursuers, but back towards the villagers. Back towards her.

Ellen saw a young face exhilarated by the chase, and by the revenge exacted for the insult to the red-haired woman. Then the face was gone, and Ellen knew that the fair-haired boy would escape his pursuers.

The following day Michael came running to her, down from Bóithrín a tSléibhe. ‘Ellen, the Church – Lord Leitrim has torched the thatch of it again! A curse on him, I’ll wager Pakenham put him up to it this time!’ he cried out.

‘You’d think he’d leave the House of God alone,’ Ellen replied. ‘That’s a few times he’s tried to burn it since Father O’Brien refused the keys to him.’

‘Well, the priest is right,’ Michael said. ‘Even if Leitrim owns the church, no man is God’s landlord. He can torch it now, but one day himself will feel the torch of hell for it. We’ll see how he’ll landlord it below there!’ And he laughed.

It was true, Ellen thought, the landlords owned everything, even your religion. And they tried to own the people, not only their little bit of land and the botháns and whatever they produced, but their bodies and minds, too.

4

Ellen was in the middle of the morning lesson with the children when first they heard it. The shout seemed to come from faraway, and Ellen, thinking it was the men in the fields calling to one another, paid no heed but carried on with her story. She was busy explaining to a very attentive trio of pupils how the potato first came to Ireland, why it seemed to have overrun the whole land, and as a result why this blight was so serious. It had been Mary who had raised the question. Indeed, the topic for today’s lesson was hardly surprising, given that so much talk recently, from church to crossroads, was about the blight.