The Stranded Tribe

ONE

Clonmel, Co Tipperary, June 1895

Nearing the end of his journey, he folded his newspaper in half, glanced again at the blaring headline, WITCH BURNING TRIAL SET FOR EARLY NEXT MONTH, tutted to himself and then thrust the paper deep into his coat pocket. In a douce part of Irishtown the old station trap edged to the kerb and disgorged its passenger. Dressed mainly for northern winters in the fields, he wore a russet woollen suit and heavy brogues and carried a yellow cane. His only concession to the southern Irish summer was a linen shirt decorated with a wide silk cravat and an American wide-brimmed straw hat. As he strode to the door of Number 6 he twirled his cane and shook the long red flow of his hair which curled down from his hat to dance on his shoulders. Two sharp knocks on the cast-iron serpent’s head knocker brought a white and black uniformed young girl breathless to the door.

Oh! ’Tis Mr Vance is it? she asked brightly but inexpertly. The doctor is in the parlour. I’ll be taking your coat, cane and hat, sir.

She gulped anxiously when she held out her hands to this tall, sturdy, almost wild-looking man from Ulster. Magnus Vance grinned to himself at the girl’s command and passed over the items which ended up on different parts of a battered hat stand in the hallway. He followed the young domestic through to the dark parlour hidden from the sun by heavy curtains. In a corner by a desk piled with large, leather-bound notebooks stood the bespectacled Doctor Joseph Keating, peering through the gloom.

Is that you, Young Magnus? I’ve been looking forward to your coming all morning. What a pleasure this is!

So saying, the doctor shuffled across to his guest with his right hand outstretched and clasped the hand of his visitor warmly. Magnus looked down on the small man and started to worry. Joseph Keating was, at 50, ten years older than him but he was not the man he had visited last summer. The short steel-grey hair still stood up on end and there was no baldness. But the blue eyes behind the rimless glasses were dull and surrounded by tired lines. His shoulders were slumped forward and the walk across the room to greet him had clearly been a great effort. There was no sign of his usual, matter-of-fact briskness.

And it is a great pleasure to see my old friend too, Joseph. How are you keeping? The doctor waved Magnus down into an old brown leather chair and Mary out of the room and then subsided into a facing chair.

I was hoping today would be one of my better days to greet you. Not quite so. I seem to have developed something of an affliction Magnus. Look, if you will. And he raised up his left arm slowly to the height of his shoulder with difficulty. The hand shook with increasing violence until the doctor pulled it down with his right hand into his lap. Magnus sat up straight and watched aghast.

No! Is that the palsy? Pray God it’s not!

‘Shaking palsy’ it used to be called. It has another name now. It’s a brain disorder. Messages not getting through it seems. My walking is worse you will have noticed. I’m like an old man, a very old man, at times. And this is just a start although I do have some better days.

You never mentioned any of this in your letters! chided Magnus with great concern.

Keating brushed it away. You have enough problems looking after your farm without hearing mine. I’m after hoping for a drug to ease this disease. A Doctor Charcon in France was working on it. Better idea than that damnfool Irish Doctor Butler who wants to use his electrical stimulation. That’s a certain cure to maim the patient! Enough of all that. Tell me about yourselves.

Young Mary slid quietly into the room with a tray bearing tea in venerable china cups complemented by a few oatmeal biscuits, giving Magnus time to rally his thoughts. The older man struggled to balance his saucer on his knee with his shaking hand and bring his cup to his mouth with the other. Magnus tried to lighten the lowering gloom in the room.

Well, I’m keeping very well and, as I told you in my last letter, Aunt Martha got to her seventieth birthday just fine. At her party in the village hall she danced the legs off the young men from the farms around us! Our brother Andrew, sounds as if he has built the new railway up to Glenties by himself, according to all his admirers in the Finn Valley and his Elspeth is expecting a second child this month, I believe. She writes to me that their little William is nearly three years old. I don’t think Andrew picked up the art of writing when he was at school but it seems he has the skills of a more than competent husband!

They both laughed lightly. Magnus carried on, hoping to take the doctor out of himself for a while.

And my wee brother Robert is now over at Killybegs with his Isabella and changing his love for farming, which was never strong when he was with us at Derrykillew, for fishing in and around Donegal Bay. He could make a lot of money from harvesting the sea so I will keep on the best of terms with him! And, all in all, the Vances are rather scattered now but are in good health, mostly due to your care when you were our family physician in Lisnarrick and then in Derrykillew.

His host put down his cup carefully on a side table and clasped one hand over the other shaking one to steady it. His voice had a strong tinge of emotion.

Those twenty years in Ulster were often very cold and wet but I made many warm and solid friendships among all sorts of folk, both my sort and yours, Magnus. And especially with you.

And then the doctor lightened the conversation. And among your sort, are you still the maverick Home Ruler?

Joseph, despite your arguments and sophistry over many glasses of whiskey in my farmhouse, I still think a fairly restored parliament for Ireland is needed for the better running of some of our affairs. And are you still a republican, my good doctor?

Keating grunted but accepted the challenge.

You know that this city resisted Cromwell over 250 years ago and was punished by having our Catholics herded outside the walls in their own shanty town. And he was a king in all but name! So, what else would I be? Republican but—um—without the violence, yes, if that were ever possible! But I fear the General Election this summer will see both our causes retarded by years after the Gladstone fiasco at Westminster. Still, we have waited for decades. We can wait a little longer. Now, tell me, how has your annual visit to our deep south fared this year?

Magnus tossed back his long hair again. I’m still indulging my love for fine, racing bloodstock. This year I have a patron, no less! Colonel McAusland of the Garvery Estate in Fermanagh is paying my expenses to seek out three thoroughbreds for his stables. He already races at Rosses Point near Sligo Town and at Roscommon. He has ambitions for the Curragh like all of his sort and he asked me to scout for him. So I managed to secure some prize horseflesh.

Keating gingerly stretched out his legs and jibed,

Not from Shanbally Castle then?

Magnus grinned mischievously.

No, but from the Rathronan Estate on the road to Fethard. I ah, I haven’t effected a visit to Shanbally yet but I was hoping you could provide me with a letter of introduction as one local notable to another!

It was the doctor’s turn to grin and harrumph loudly.

The day when George Ponsoby, conveniently converting to Protestantism and then rising to become Lord Lieutenant, takes any notice of a Catholic quack doctor from Clonmel, the Saviour of a united and independent Ireland cannot be far away!

Magnus laughed with him. A real fantasy, eh, Joseph?

A silence descended between the two men as the elderly carriage clock on the mantelpiece soft-chimed its way to eleven of the morning. The doctor was the first to speak after he painfully rearranged his limbs in the wing chair.

Fantasy indeed, Magnus. Now I would be bold enough to say that if you’ve been around Fethard looking at horses and even if you hadn’t and had only read any local or the national news papers, you would have come across the business of the Cleary family. Am I right and do you want to talk about it?

Magnus’ first instinct was to deny any knowledge of the Cleary business but decided that would be unconvincing and dishonest so he nodded his head and stated his interest.

I . . . , well . . . , I find the story or stories mostly unbelievable. I have read the articles in both the nationalist and unionist papers. Not many people in and around Fethard wanted to discuss the matter but the land agent on the Gough estate at Rathronan did tell me that you had been involved in the case and that you would be the best person to talk to.

Flattery from a Unionist? A very scarce commodity indeed. Keating mused. It is true that I have been drawn into the case although I am mostly retired and I asked if I could be excused from taking part.But I was prevailed upon. The medical committee of the Guardians wanted my private opinion of the character and behaviour of the doctor involved. And lately, I have given some advisory assistance to the doctor who undertook the pathology examination of the woman’s body and this also involved several officers of the Constabulary. So, I have been drawn into this matter much more than I had wished. Now, assuming what is said between you and I will remain here in this room, what do you want to know, my friend?

Magnus swallowed hard. Curious he was and so was the rest of the United Kingdom and Ireland. He had thought of questions any person would ask but the good Dr Keating in keen professional and scientific mode was a formidable man to deal with. In the old days when the doctor had held forth in the best medical and legal circles in Enniskillen and Ballyshannon when he was living in Ulster, the locals would refer to him as That Solomon from the South.

Magnus showed his hand. It looks like this to me—a man from near Fethard tortured then murdered his wife in March with the acquiescence, if not the active support, of some of her relations and neighbours. It seems quite a scandal and an extraordinary business! Am I anywhere near the truth?

Keating shrugged his shoulders. That is essentially correct although I would substitute ‘killed’ for ‘murdered’. And so?

The doctor pressed a forefinger to his lips as if he didn’t want to give anything more away. The younger man struggled to express his inner thoughts and feelings and opened out both his large hands to his friend in supplication.

A specific question first. Did the murderer or killer, Michael Cleary, really believe that he did what he did because the local fairies had changed his wife into somebody or something which was not his wife?

Keating stroked his chin and peered across the dim room.

Do you believe in fairies Magnus?

At first Magnus had a fancy that the doctor was laughing a little as he spoke. And he half-turned to see him more clearly. Keating’s hard stare made it clear he was deadly serious. He put on a bold front.

I know the stories. I know about the tales in Ulster of course. But to believe in humans being changed into other beings? I think not. Not really.

No? Mmmn.Then on the few corn fields you had at Lisnarrick and some now at Derrykillew what did your labourers usually leave at the end of the harvest?

Magnus caught on immediately. "Ah now, you mean a few sheaves of corn for the púca?"

Yes, the spirit, sprite, ghost or whatever you want to call it. And for what reason did they do this on your farm?

To, to, make sure they didn’t do anything untoward to any of the men, I suppose.

And why do you allow this, Magnus?

It is no more than a harmless superstition. I don’t believe in it although some of my men do. Though not all. It’s just what has been done for generations, more among my mother Maguire’s people than anyone else.

Keating got up stiffly and trudged slowly across to the cold, empty fireplace and turned and faced his friend.

And so it was here. Cleary’s wife was ill but they had the bad fortune to live near a fairy-ring.

Magnus sat upright in his chair. A mushroom circle? he asked unbelievingly.

"Well, more of an old ráth—a ring fort or some such. There are lots of local legends about them. The country folk are as superstitious there as anywhere in the rural backwaters of the county."

Magnus relaxed a little but only a little.

When Bridget Cleary got no better, so-called fairy-potions were tried on her by those who had them in their families—sort of silly home remedies handed down through the generations. When nothing improved her health, her husband was persuaded to resort to very drastic old remedies as it was said that Bridget had been changed from a human to somebody else.

Drastic? echoed Magnus. They say the man tortured her!

And so he did. He lost all reason, roasted her and then burned her to death with paraffin whilst others watched. In other words, Magnus, from simple, almost childish beginnings, the matter got well out of hand in a damnably serious way. Now, your general question was what?

Still trying to assimilate all the information, Magnus had to force himself to marshal his thoughts.

Tell me, in your opinion, how did it all manage to get so out of hand Joseph and end with such extreme brutality in this day and age? You know what is being said by the unionists—this makes Ireland look like a primitive and degenerate society. What was it the coroner said . . . . ?

The doctor stood before Magnus, holding his ailing left arm behind his back and gesturing emphatically with his right arm.

He made the unfavourable and unjust comparison of the Fethard people involved to the Hottentots of Africa. But many people have missed the most important points. In the view of this old coroner, Michael Cleary did what he did eventually, resulting in his wife death, because our own local society—and I mean South Tipperary—failed to support them properly.

Magnus gave him a blank and uncomprehending stare. He really did not understand.

"Alright Magnus—some facts. Neither Cleary nor his wife were rural primitives like some of their neighbours. He is a successful young cooper who can read and write. His wife was a trained milliner and dressmaker. They lived in a new two bedroom house and not in a hovel. But there seem to have been problems between them. They were six years married and no children. Worse, there was a lot of talk of Bridget having a paramour or two locally. She was a fine looking woman, if a bit too worldly for the likes of many in her area. There are several reports of Bridget speaking to her husband in public hearing in a very disrespectful way—and you know what that means in this part of Ireland and in yours! She contracted a bad illness it is true and the execrable dispensary Doctor Crean could only diagnose ‘a chill, possibly slight bronchitis’ when it was almost certainly pneumonia. As for the man Cleary, he was beside himself, not only with worry but jealousy, irritation and suspicion. Which responsible member of their community could and should have helped? If ever there was a villain to the piece it was the Doctor Crean. He was left a message on 9th March that said Bridget was very ill with a fever.That so-called doctor didn’t come to see the woman until five days later and only then after a complaint had been made to the guardians. And this abominable man arrived in his usual state of inebriation! His contribution was to present some inappropriate medicine and wine for the patient. Then he left after showing great annoyance at having been reported to the authorities. He did nothing else except leave behind the reputation of a once honourable profession in tatters in that part of the world. Who can blame Cleary for turning to home medicines pressed on him by neighbours and relations who actually cared for his wife?"

Keating realised his vehemence had left white spittle on the lapel of his jacket and he rubbed it briefly with a large white handkerchief from the top pocket of his jacket before resuming.

"And so that left the other pillar of the local community, the priest. One was summoned on the day Dr Crean made his visit. Father Ryan did come four miles over to bless Bridget Cleary. They said she was so distressed and sick by now that he felt he should give her the Last Rites but then, instead of reporting his concern to the medical authorities about the state Crean had left her in, he vilified the doctor and his medicaments to all and sundry and then left! Doctor and Priest! State and Church, eh? Universal Ignorance more like! What a position Cleary was in! No wonder he plied his wife with the herbs and potions of the locals and make silly country spells and fatuous pishrogues—er, charms you would call them—in the hope of reviving the poor woman. He did ask Father Ryan to come again but the priest from Drangan saw no reason why he should return so soon after his recent visit, would you believe?"

Magnus noticed that his friend was swaying a little unsteadily and stood up and led him back to his seat and sat him down gently.

Thank you Magnus. I am overreaching myself here but with good cause. There is a lot more I am sorry to say. Cleary was now clearly bereft. He had Bridget force-fed with fairy medicines, had her soaked in urine and then—God above—scorched her over his fireplace to drive out the person that was in her body, as he and his neighbours put it.

There was a short respite from all this horrid nonsense when Father Ryan was eventually persuaded to come and see poor Bridget Cleary for a second time and say Mass in the house. He did that and left again, apparently concerned about the woman’s physical condition but did nothing to advise the others about how to cope with the situation.

Cleary was by now highly agitated, deprived of sleep, sick with worry, beset on all sides by local gossips and know-nothings who constantly talked about fairy changelings. The last act came when his wife, probably deranged beyond all reason or possibly in a bout of spitefulness—we will never know which—accused Cleary’s mother of having gone off with the fairies. It sounds ridiculous Magnus, I know, but Cleary seems to have snapped at that point. I think you know the rest. Michael Cleary completely lost his head and doused his wife with paraffin when her dress was already smouldering from contact with a piece of wood from the kitchen fire. A horrible death it must have been. With help from others, Cleary buried the corpse in the corner of a boggy field away from the house. The constables found the body several days later.

The doctor fell silent and another brooding silence descended into the room. Keating put both his hands together and held them out in front of him. They didn’t shake. Magnus shook his head slowly and ventured his last question.

So it comes down to an incompetent, drunken doctor, an unhelpful and limited priest and a husband who lost all his reason as well as some misguided local people?

Yes snapped back Keating who now had the light of anger in his eyes. Crean should at least lose his licence and be drummed out of the parish. Father Ryan could well benefit from some sound instruction in adequate pastoral care. Michael Cleary needs medical help in an asylum and not the feel of a rough noose around his neck. His neighbours and relatives who urged the fairy cures and bleated about changelings and the like urgently require to go back to school for the simplest of scientific educations they clearly missed when they were much younger and were too busy tending their family quadrupeds!

His farmer friend nodded but added This is not how the rest of the world sees it Joseph. We are either a laughing stock or the old bogeyman. The Unionists will have a field day. And we home rulers and nationalists will try to keep our causes alive by blaming ‘English rule’ for the problem in the first place! Is that not true?

Keating walked to the window and peered through the thick net curtains out into the street.

Do not ever repeat this as my view outside this room but I honestly believe that none of this business is about nationalism or unionism. It has nothing very much to do with British colonialism and how badly we are supposed to be off under the English Crown. Nor is it anything to do with our supposed ‘need’ for a Britain for Ireland to lean on. It is simply about each of us on this island doing properly what we have to do. Bad doctors, bad priests and an ignorant community can cause scandal wherever these factors combine together in one area—whether it be South Tipperary, the Western Isles of Scotland, Mid Wales or the furthest reaches of Cornwall or Cumberland in England. We are just unfortunate in that this island is such a bone of political contention at the moment. It will pass in time but in more years than there will be in our lifetimes combined I fear!

Magnus shrugged his shoulders. So you have a little bit of optimism for the distant future then?

The doctor turned around, smiled at his friend and pressed the bell on the wall for Mary.

Well, of course—in the very distant future! And, as your ancestors probably used to say before they rampaged across the North Channel to steal our land and women centuries ago, a wee dram will help us to get there!

Magnus laughed. We Scotch still say it in Ulster, Joseph, even now!

TWO

It was a grand early summer’s morning. Just beyond the small Cloghan railway station Molly sat quietly on the grass and felt the gradual warmth of the sun start to seep through to her bones. Her big brown eyes followed every movement of the men working down by the river in the distance. Then she raised her head up to look intently at her master standing beside her. Andrew Vance caught her glance in the corner of his eye and leaned down to pat her head affectionately. He knew he had one of the finest bitch bullmastiffs in the North of Ireland. She was his friend, companion and guardian. He was her god.

Nearly two hundred miles north of his brother Magnus, on holiday in Tipperary, Andrew Vance was at work. He was leading his big gang of eight men, repairing and maintaining the newly-opened narrow gauge branch line from Stranorlar in the fertile valley of the River Finn, twenty-four miles to Glenties in West Donegal, only five or so miles from Gweebarra Bay and the Atlantic Ocean.

Co Fermanagh to Derry

Born in 1860 at Lisnarrick in County Fermanagh’s Lakeland, Andrew Vance was the second son out of three. His grandparents, Alexander and Jean, had migrated from their small landholding in Wigtownshire to Ulster when they had luckily inherited a larger farm left by Alex’s Uncle Magnus in 1824. Lisnarrick was much larger than the patch in Scotland but it was found, quite soon, that it needed a lot of hard work for a very limited return. Alex and Jean’s son, Magnus, properly named after his beneficent great-uncle, took over Lisnarrick when his father died of a heart-attack, probably brought on by overwork. Magnus was a strong and willing nineteen year-old when he took over the running of the farm and looking after his bereaved mother as well. It wasn’t until he was in his early thirties and his mother three years buried that he took the major and sensible step to marry pretty Mamie Maguire from nearby Irvinestown. The Maguires were a legendary, strong Fermanagh family although some of them had fallen on hard times. Mamie brought to Lisnarrick a number of impoverished male cousin labourers as well as a reasonable dowry. The farm began to prosper and its sale allowed the Vances and their Maguire allies to purchase an even bigger farm at lonely Derrykillew just inside County Donegal and running down to Keenaghan Lough which was less than a mile to the waters of Lower Lough Erne. The sons, Young Magnus, Andrew and Robert all assisted in their limited ways with the removal and then with the work of looking after the stock on the new farm.

After six years of what felt like drudgery in the wilderness, Andrew, a quietly rebellious sixteen year-old, hounded to do more and more work on the farm by his father, had had enough. He persuaded his elder brother, who knew he hated farmwork, to give him the huge sum of £20 to ensure his disappearance and peace for everybody at Derrykillew. Robert and Young Magnus were genuinely sorry and sad to lose their brother. Old Magnus said little but looked relieved. Mamie was heart-broken and died within six months of Andrew’s departure.

With Young Magnus’ money in his pocket Andrew made his way up to Londonderry and looked for a job which didn’t involve looking after animals or crops. If possible, he wanted to travel to see the world for he had read in the newspapers that there really was life beyond Donegal and Ulster. Standing tall and sturdy in his farm boots, it wasn’t long before he secured a job on a ship. In fact it was not much more than a boat—it was just a paddle boat which plied its steady way from the city, nineteen miles up Lough Foyle to the little resort of Moville where they transferred passengers and cargo to ocean-going vessels.

Finn Valley

Andrew’s deputy, Mick, was a traveller as well, crossing the Irish Sea regularly to navvy in Scotland in his youth. Like Andrew he was a nominal Presbyterian. He was a friendly, cheery, experienced man and totally loyal to Andrew and the railway. On this occasion he wore a worried look on his face. There was a teething problem on this section of the line, soon discovered after its opening on 3th of June. On the Glenties side of Cloghan Station, the line ran over the River Finn on a new iron bridge. Within a week of the first train running over it, the stone bridge abutments were cracking and falling into the river and there was noticeable sinking of the ballast under the track as it approached the bridge from the Glenties direction. The serious construction fault had nothing to do with Andrew and his men originally but his Big Gang of eight men had the task of putting it right, at least temporarily. Mick had been supervising the men directly down by the bridge whilst Andrew had been checking the tools and timber they had brought with them in the light bogie which had been lifted off the rails and set down on a rise close by.

Morris and Seán have finished the line-packing on top and I’ve got them down now to help Nav and Em with the timberwork under the bridge said Mick with a definite flatness in his voice.

Andrew looked at him hard. Alright Mick, I’m thinking we’ll be needing all this timber as props. Hadn’t we both get down there to lend a hand?

His deputy agreed. If the 8.35 from Stranorlar is to get across safely we need to step up the work so you’re right about six of us down there.

I can see there’s a problem by the droop in your face. What is it?

Andra, I’m less than happy about Morris down there.

Why so? He’s not after baiting young Em again is he?

Afraid he has done just that, telling him he’ll never be like big Nav at the job. Up to now Em won’t play his game but it’s a matter of time before the young lad will lay him out cold, especially with his uncle not around to hold him back. I feel like battering him flat myself at times.

Andrew needed no further information. Let’s get down there. I’ve had more than enough from that gobeen. His mouth will burst his nose, so it will. And he led Mick and Molly down the grassy bank to the men digging, hauling and lifting under the bridge.

It was a truly mixed gang in terms of age, experience and nominal religious conviction. Seán, Emmet’s uncle, was the oldest at nearly 40. After him came Andrew and Mick in their mid 30s. Then Morris and Navan in their early 30s whilst the youngest were Ezekiel at 29 and quiet Em at only 20. Seán and his nephew Emmet were both from Ardara in Western Donegal. They were Catholics and Gaelic speakers who had little experience of railway-working. Like Andrew they had a farming background and were strong workers who said little and just got on with earning a living. They were mentored by another Catholic, Finton, called Fin, from Gweedore, also in the West who had navvied on the railways in Scotland and England.

The rest of the gang were Protestant or nominally so. Mick, a Presbyterian, like Andrew, had worked on the County Donegal lines for many years. He loved the job but didn’t want to face the sometimes awesome responsibility of being a ganger. Ezekiel, a hard man from Antrim, was vaguely Protestant but was far more interested in chasing the local women, despite his weedy appearance, than in attending church services. Navan had left a travelling sideshow as a strong man when his mammy had begged him to come home to Ballybofey and get a settled job suited to his physical talents. Morris was the newcomer and only had a couple of years experience on the tracks. Strong Church of Ireland and ex Indian Army, he always gave the impression that navvying was really beneath him and he made it clear he was not fond of Catholics which not only distanced him from them but also from the Protestant members of the gang. They bantered with Seán and Fin about religion but never in deadly seriousness. At work they were all railway navvies even if they had relatively little to do with those of different persuasions when they were finished work. But there was a strong anti Catholic in Morris and Andrew wouldn’t tolerate it.

At Sea

Andrew Vance’s career at sea led him to accept and then even to like Catholics, confirmed Ulster Presbyterian though he was. For several months he worked as a lowly engine-room cleaner and greaser in dark and deafeningly noisy conditions. He was close to quitting and going back home when he spotted a poster in the streets of Derry near his lodgings, advertising the Allan Steamship Line which operated from Liverpool via Donegal to Quebec. They wanted, at short notice, engine-room hands for their SS Sardinian which lay in the Foyle, mysteriously undermanned below decks.

And your experience lad? asked the grim and tired-looking engine-room officer, delegated the task of sorting out suitable new stokers for his ship. Andrew knew that there were three other youths in for the job and they were all bigger than himself.

We normally prefer more mature workers on board. It saves trouble later on.

Not sure what he meant, Andrew could only blurt out the truth.

I’ve worked on a farm.

Surprisingly, the officer didn’t laugh or make any snide remarks although he looked very doubtful. What he did do was to get Andrew and the three other lads to take a shovel each and shift as much coal as they could from a large heap in the corner of a bunker in a timed exercise. After five minutes they were shouted to stop. On the officer’s face there registered a look of surprise when he saw Andrew’s pile which was the largest of them all.

You must have really heavy clay on your farm then he suggested grudgingly. OK. You’re hired. Lucky you! Come along and I’ll introduce you to Black Taff, the Chief Stoker.

And so Andrew bent his back, hour after hour and day after day in the depths of a 4,000 ton steamship which chugged its way to Canada and back. After a few months sailing under the black, white and red colours of the Allan Line, he felt he was beginning to grow up. He didn’t see much of Quebec when he got there and much of what he did see was through an unPresbyterian mist of early experimentation with alcohol in the dockside bars. Nevertheless, he got his substantial wages instead of begrudged pocket money from his father and that was a fine feeling. He even had time to read and improve himself which he had never had the chance to do on the farm.

The mystery of the constantly undermanned Sardinian was solved, to Andrew’s way of thinking, by the events of 10th March 1878. He was in the cramped crew quarters washing his clothes whilst the ship was moored off Moville in Lough Foyle. On reaching for the large bar of coarse soap there was an enormous crash and the blast of an explosion further forward and below. He was thrown to the deck, hitting his head on a stanchion on his way down, plunging him into unconsciousness. A while later he was being shaken by the engine-room officer who wore his grimmest expression yet.

Wake up lad! Come on! As Andrew shook his head and tried to focus his eyes, the officer gabbled an explanation and a command.

Explosion in the coal bunkers! Big fire sweeping aft! Ship’s sea cocks opened. Get ashore! He hauled up Andrew and propelled him roughly to the nearest ladder for the deck above. As Andrew staggered off the ship into a crowded lifeboat, the Sardinian was settling in the shallow water, gradually extinguishing the fire as it did so. Chief Stoker Black Taff checked Andrew’s head all the while muttering his verdict to no one in particular.

Now see if we can’t get a job on a safe ship before the Allan Line recovers this wreck, repairs it in dry dock and tries to get us aboard that damned coffin again!

Andrew’s first inclination was to was to give up the sea altogether after his shocking experience on the Sardinian but the steamship company promptly offered him another job in the stokehold of the three-masted SS Polynesian which also plied the the route across the Atlantic to Canada. There wasn’t much confidence among the crew or the passengers in this vessel’s seaworthiness either. The ship was reputed to roll so badly in heavy seas that she bore the nickname Roly-Poly.

The best thing about his three years on the Polynesian was developing a deep friendship with a Corkman of similar age whose name was Aloysius Molloy. Everyone below decks, including the Chief Stoker, called him Bandy. He did have bandy legs although they supported a very substantial trunk and upper limbs but he also hailed from the town of Bandon, west of Cork City. Nobody, including Bandy himself, could bring themselves to call another stoker Aloysius. A huge extrovert and joker, Bandy was liked by most of the other men, except for a small group of English, Scots and Ulster Irish who thought that a Catholic Irishman was either a Fenian or the son of one. Andrew worked alongside Bandy and ignored the mutterings of the Unionist clique. There was no real conflict however. Chief Stoker Regan, a staunch Catholic from Liverpool and of Irish descent, allowed no strife in his dark domain:

Ye’s all half-breed bastards anyway so none o’ that nonsense about Scotch this, Irish that o’ Welsh and English the other! As far as I’m concerned ye’re all a fuckin’ worthless bunch o’ mongrel British scum down here in Hell’s backyard. Anyone who thinks different can bugger off to where they came from!

They mostly smiled and went off in their little groups to talk about the others, but quietly. On shore, they drank together and were happy to get pie-eyed and foul-mouth the Canadians and deck-officers in the same breath.

Nearly three years on the Roly-Poly ended for Andrew with the ship’s refit. He and Bandy transferred to the nearly new and swanky SS Parisian—over 5,000 tons of steel with a big engine to speed its 1,250 passengers at 14 knots across the ocean. Four years at sea for Andrew and nearly six for Bandy seemed enough, however, and Bandy had a plan.

What say you to working back ashore, eh? Give up this metal can and the heat for good and be able to breathe fresh air again! Andrew frowned and Bandy hastened on.

You can shovel for a living in the open air without being a farmer’s labourer you know. And the pay is good so I’m told.

It turned out that Bandy’s eldest brother worked on the Cork Railways and he had passed on the news that more railways were planned in the south west of Ireland. Navvies were needed and he could put in a good word for his brother and his brother’s friend, if needed.

With a few misgivings about moving from shipboard familiarity to a place at the other end of Ireland from his own, Andrew finally agreed to try out the idea. When they returned to Liverpool, they signed off and caught a City of Dublin steam packet for Cork.

County Cork

In the bustling town of Bandon Andrew shared a room with his friend in his mother’s modest home. Bandy’s other brothers were living in Cork City and his father had died a while ago. Andrew wondered if Bandy had returned as a result of a guilty conscience with his mother on her own. Although the house was quite small and comfortable, Andrew wasn’t very happy at first. At nights, when he had gone to bed, he would hear thin walls Mrs Molloy through the thin walls express her concerns to her son.

A Presbyterian? An Ulster Presbyterian? God save us! What were you thinking of? Your father will be turning in his grave, bless his soul! When you said you were coming home for good with somebody interesting, I thought at worst it could be a heathen black man with brass rings in his ears and a spear in his hand, not a hard-nosed Protestant boy from the Godforsaken North!

And then she switched into Irish which she thought Andrew would not understand if he heard her. He missed a lot of it but Bandy had taught his some basics of the language during their long months at sea. He did pick up and translate Bandy’s cheeky comment to his mother that Andrew was his friend and not his fiancée so why was she worrying!

It changed in time. Andrew’s courtesy, reserved manner and restraining influence on the exuberant and daft Bandy won over Kathleen Molloy. After six months it was, None of this Mrs Molloy business, Andrew. Despite your heathen name . . . (Andrew or Vance,? He wasn’t sure but dared not ask)  . . . you call me ‘Mammy’ from now on.

The odd thing was that Bandy wasn’t allowed to call his mother Mammy. It had to be the full and formal Mother. Bandy pretended to be a bit jealous of his friend’s domestic status but that way he got a little more indulgence from his mother until she realised it was just one of his jokes whereupon he got what Andrew considered a modest clattering in the kitchen.

Their first work was helping to build the nine mile Clonakilty extension on the south coast of County Cork. Stokehold experience at sea and their youth assured them of prime navvying work. Bandy’s local knowledge, hard work and popularity took him to the position of ganger within eighteen months. He led ten men, including Andrew, to help drive the line to Clonakilty Bay. Mixing with more Irish speakers, Andrew picked up a good modicum of the language which was spoken among some of the men at work but rarely to anyone above the position of ganger where English was expected. After being seen as a kind of special exhibit, his identity as a northern Protestant receded into the background. He knew that other navvies called him that Scotchman among themselves but he became an accepted, hard-working and respected member of his gang. When the Clonakilty Line was completed and maintenance work began, a retirement raised Andrew, to his amazement, to Bandy’s deputy. It was all the more amazing as he had to have popular support and not just Bandy’s personal backing. And then they got the gang involved in the building of the Timoleague and Courtmacsherry extension line, another nine miles in south Cork. Work seemed assured for a good few more years.

But accidents happened all the time on the new line. Falling rails from the flat bed wagons broke hands and feet. Worn-out winding ropes broke and deluged tons of muck and hard debris on to navvies below, causing further injuries. There wasn’t too much machinery in use for excavation which could cause very serious accidents, but there were the working locomotives which pulled the heavy wagons of rails and tools to the navvies several times a day.

In the summer of 1889, half way through the building of the new extension, Bandy took to riding on the outside of the old locomotive which they had nicknamed Puffer on account of its wheezing heavily even on level ground with no load behind it. It had been bought as a retired engine from the Great Northern Railway and most companies would have condemned it five years ago as unsafe. On the day in question, it was hauling, in addition to Bandy, a flat bed wagon piled up with heavy sections of rail. Leaving Skeef it struggled up a short and piffling incline blowing steam as it laboured. Then Puffer’s driver and his fireman looked out of one side of the cab and screamed a warning to Bandy who was holding on to the rail on the side of the locomotive. He was facing forward, looking into the distance and heard nothing over the noise of wheels and steam. The driver and foreman hurled themselves off the cab into the gravelled trackside and, as they were rolling away, the engine boiler burst and its jagged steel splayed wide open in an enormous explosion. Bandy was hurled twenty yards into a field, broken-boned and mortally scalded.

Bandy’s mother agreed to her son being buried in Clonakilty churchyard. The town was where the friends had lodged for the last two years and it was where many of their workmates and friends also lived. Despite being heavily shocked, Andrew agreed to be the lead coffin bearer, assisted by others from the gang and his brothers. As the funeral procession trod slowly along the main road from the Old Town Hall to the relatively new Roman Catholic Church, hundreds of people silently lined the route, inclining their heads when the coffin passed. Many knew of the tragic death of the popular railway ganger and the circumstances.

Most astonishing to Andrew was that scores of navvies from the railway, many of them not necessarily knowing Bandy personally, joined the end of the procession without a word. Most wore their working clothes—felt-brimmed hats or small peaked caps, spotted or striped neckerchiefs and waistcoats with brass buttons together with moleskin jackets and leather-belted breeches, strapped under the knees with cord. All wore the stout, hobnail boots which clattered along slowly in unison, making the procession into more of a funeral march. A few of the navvies even had their clay pipes stuck in their mouths, lit or unlit. Nobody minded, least of all the main mourners, who were moved to tears by the occasion, including Andrew. Although he had witnessed burials at sea and the assembly of a whole ship’s crew for those occasions, the extent of the community feeling for a simple working man, unknown to many there, had a huge effect him that day.

A while later, back at work, his gang acclaimed Andrew as their new ganger. As one of them said Bandy would have laughed himself stupid to see the Scotchman in charge of his West Cork rabble! With a different style from Bandy, quiet, firm, thoughtful and always concerned for the welfare of his men, the transition to a new leader went smoothly.

In his private life he had made his own friends, especially through the town’s Presbyterian Church. Making friends with one particularly well-off draper’s family, the Moores, he started to court their good-looking young daughter, Elspeth and the romance blossomed. Now, as ganger, Andrew commanded a good wage, good enough to ask Elspeth to marry him. She doted on him for his strong but quiet personality and good looks. Visits to the Moore household produced the results they both wanted. Despite a reluctant Mr Moore and a tearful Mrs Moore, parental assent was given and the wedding took place in Bandon in 1891.

The extension line was built and before its final completion stage Andrew was looking for more railway construction work to assure him and his bride a secure future. Although Andrew