Chapter one

Uinsiún Ó Mathúna’s father had a terrible fall while he was working a few stories above ground in a
building in London in the forties. His back was injured badly and he wasn’t able to do another day of
work as a result. He had no means of earning in the land of John Bull and , after the company had
given him a few hundred in compensation, he gathered his family and all his possessions together,
and he went back home to Ireland. Thefamily settled down in a little house with a garden around it.

Uinsiún was the only one of the family to have been born before they left London but, after a few
years, there was a full house of gaffers younger than he – four sisters and, as his mother used to say
to him when he would lament that he didn’t have any brother, “blessed art thou amongst women,
my boy.”

The Ó Duinnín family were the closest neighbours to the Ó Mathúna family’s house. They had a farm
of more than a hundred acres of level, fertile land to use in abundant acres of common hills and
bogs.

The Ó Duinnín family’s son Pádraig was the same age as Uinsiún ÓMathúna and without any brother,
just a sister to ?talk to.

Though the Ó Mathúnas and the Ó Duinníns were brought up within a quarter mile of each other,
there was a great dissimilarity between the two families: The Ó Duinníns had abundant acres and
plenty of food on the table morning and evening, but in the Ó Mathúna house the table boards were
bare. Tea and homemade bread with potatoes, and more potatoes for dinner. Doubtless a little is
always appreciated.

Before Uinsiún finished his schooling at St Eirc’s School half a mile down the road, he would go in
through the kitchen door in the evening terribly hungry, he would cast his eyes up towards the
Embers… yes, the same old pot thrust into the sideof the ashes with boiled potatoes mixed with
turnip to bulk out the meal!

“Mum, is there any scrap of meat in the house?” perhaps his mother Cáit was preparing a mess at
the back of the kitchen for the hens. “No, darling.