Smile for the camera, 1854.

They look what, about ten or eleven year old, survivors of the famine, yet they'd probably lost everything, their families, their home, their hope, abandoned, living now in the workhouse, or just been let out of it, to do day work for a local farmer, back-breaking work, for them, them that were hungry all the time, and had no energy, no advocate, no one to be their protector, advisor, father, or mother. Imagine them, 1854, never having seen a camera, not having any clue what it did, or what a photograph was, never having spoken to a 'toff', a Colonel, looking at his rich clothes, afraid, completely terrified of his authority, of his status, hoping he'd hurry up at whatever it was he was telling them to sit still for so long for, and hoping, praying that he'd be true to his word, and give them a penny each, or tuppence, thinking they should have asked for a shiny tanner each, or even a 'bob', sure weren't they worth a bob? Or had they been told often enough already, they weren't worth a bob! They'd be worth a bob when they took the King's shilling and joined the army, yes, they'd be worth a bob then, little drummer boys, or worse, but anything would be better than their lot right now. Next year, when they are twelve, They'll tell them they are fourteen, next year they will get a uniform like that gentleman. Has he finished yet? What's he doing, he's still under that black cloth behind the camera, maybe they could just leave, what, leave without their tuppence, not a chance, they will wait as long as it takes, however long it takes him to fix whatever he's doing behind that box, they'll wait, like dogs at the back door, they have all day.

(Photo taken in 1854 in Templemore Tipperary, by Alfred Capel-Cure, 1826-1896, then a Brevet Lieutenant Colonel, stationed with his regiment in Tipperary, and a pioneer of early photography).

Gale Days and the Curse of the Púca!

Gale Days and the Curse of the Púca! (And I am not talking about tonight's windy weather).

Michaelmas, or the Feast of 'Michael and All Angels', is celebrated on the 29th of September each year. Michaelmas is associated with the end of the harvest, the beginning of autumn and the shortening of daylight hours as winter approaches and the nights grow longer, darker and colder.

Michaelmas is one of the 'quarter days'.

There were four traditional 'quarter days' in each year, even going back to pre-christian times and they marked out the year for our ancestors. Lady's Day was celebrated on the 25th of March, Midsummer's Day on the 24th of June, Michaelmas Day on the 29th of September and of course Christmas Day on the 25th of December.

It is no coincidence that they coincide roughly with the solstices and equinoxes, which were always celebrated since ancient times, especially by the earliest settlers in Ireland, call them what you like, the Fir Bolgs, Formorians, Milesians, Tuatha De Dannan, whomever, the end and the start of each season, be it Spring or Summer was always marked by them, by fire and by feast.

The 'quarter days' were closely associated with the four Celtic seasons, Imbolc, Bealtaine, Lughnasa and Samhain.

With the arrival of Christianity, they became associated with christian religious feast-days, and with our modern seasons, Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter.

More importantly, in the modern era, from the 17th century onwards, ever since the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland, the Down Survey and the forcible confiscation of 95% of land in Ireland from Irish, and Norman Irish families and clans, and transfer of same into English settler hands, the Irish became tenants on lands that we used to own!

Now, by dint of conquest, we were obliged to pay rent to these colonial settlers, to live on our confiscated land!

Those rents came due, usually, twice a year, coincidentally, or perhaps not coincidentally, on two of the 'Quarter days', traditionally, Ladys Day and Michaelmas Day.

Those two days became known as the 'Gale Days', which I believe is an anglicisation of the Irish verb to 'seize or capture or confiscate', 'Gabháil', which to the uneducated English ear, that word 'Gabháil' sounded an awful lot like 'Gale' and by God, it certainly put the wind up us Irish! While the English relished in telling us that 'it's an ill wind that blows no good', we Irish had dozens of words for the wind, many of which augured bad cess! And of course, 'cess' was an old English word for tax! Go figure. No question, 'Gale Days' were the bane of a tenant farmer's life.

If they could pay the rent, then all was fine, but if the growing season had been poor, or wet or stormy, or for whatever other reason, through illness, theft, houghing, disease, laziness, rebellion or just plain bad luck, and the rent was not paid, or only paid in part, then that tenant was on the slippery slope to privation, eviction, starvation or worse.

Gale Days were 'grab' days to the landlord or agent, and 'give' days to the farmer.

Eviction was a constant threat and that memory of eviction has left an indelible mark on our people, even today.

For some farmers, who may have been short of cash on the Gale Day, and time had to be bought to gather the rent, a goose or two would be brought to the 'Big House', as a token, in exchange for a bit of 'give', a little leeway on the debt to be paid, for a consideration, an obligation, and to beg or gain, just a few more weeks to allow the tenant farmer to raise the monies for the rental payment, to sell the pig, or the turf or potatoes, their cap in hand, tugging their forelock, begging, on their calloused knees, for just a bit of a break! Sometimes their pleas fell on deaf ears, and the battering ram and the Peelers were sent on their merry work, throwing down the walls of the pitiful cabins, throwing the families and their meagre possessions onto th side of the road, at the mercy of the dreaded Workhouse, or if they were lucky, onto the deck of an over-crowded 'Famine ship'!

Sometimes, it was a case of waiting for the 'money from America' from a son or daughter who had emigrated from the farm, and on whose remittances the farm, and the future of his or her family now depended.

If that cheque was late, well, your goose was cooked!

Michaelmas was therefore a kind of settlement day, a sigh of relief, or a cause of great anxiety, an end to one season and perhaps, hopefully, the beginning of another.

Michaelmas was also the traditional day to begin a new lease, or tenancy agreement, and also the day to start an apprenticeship, or a position as a farm-hand or servant, and also, though not farming related, the day for electing magistrates and the beginning day of legal and university terms.

In that sense, Michaelmas was not the farmer's friend, though Saint Michael, The Archangel, was in fact the Christian God of the Harvest, the God of Plenty, the fearless God who gave succour during the Winter months, giving the farmer protection and strength to see his family through the harsh Winter, to combat want and disease and disaster, until the following Spring, from darkness into light. He was 'the man'!

In Christian terms though, Saint Michael had also usurped the ancient Celtic folklore surrounding the harvest. He it was, apparently, that threw the Devil out of Heaven and consigned him to Hell, though not before the Devil managed, as he fell to his fiery lair, to grab onto an Irish blackberry bush, and ripped and torn by thorns, spat and crapped on the blackberries, cursing them, and making them rotten, inedible.

That fallen angel, the devil, took the place of the ancient evil Irish fairy, the 'Púca', the mischief-maker, the crop-ruiner, the milk-spoiler, the hunger-monger! He was a bad egg!

The folk-memory of the malevolent Púca is still observed today, though we'd never acknowledge the pagan origin of this belief.

Truth is, no one I know would dream of eating a Blackberry after the 29th of September, ever! You'd never eat a blackberry that had been pissed on by the Púca!

It sounds far worse in Irish.

'Lá 'le Michíl a chacann an púca ar na sméara. Ní lubhálfadh máithreacha dos na leanaí aon tsméar ná mogall a phriocadh ó Lá le Michíl amach mar bhíodh na sméara go léir sailithe age an bpúca.'

Folklore Collection Máire Ruiséal, Dún Chaoin (CBÉ, 469:151)

***

And so, as Michaelmas ends, and the modern season of Autumn begins, we might all say a prayer to Saint Michael, the Archangel, the conqueror of the Devil, to give us the strength to weather the coming Winter, and to survive, and to beat the Covid19 pandemic, the modern day equivalent of the 'Curse of the Púca'!

Brian Nolan 29/9/2020

The Avengers

Diana Rigg (20 July 1938 – 10 September 2020), passed away yesterday, leaving those of us of a certain age, and of a certain sex, totally bereft.

She was the original pin-up girl for my generation, with her sultry looks and her daringly revealing cat-suit, she fairly set our hearts to racing. She played Emma Peel in the TV series 'The Avengers', and she, and her 007-partner, John Steed, played by Patrick Macnee, always got their man, and us too, every time, in that long-running, 51 episode, BBC spy-series which ran from 1961-69, leaving an indelible mark on our deeply-troubled and pubescent imaginations.
A few years ago, I asked a school-boy friend of mine, Pat Kilboy, the old chestnut, as to whether he dreamed in 'Black and White', or in 'Colour'?
I was hearkening back to the days of Black and White TV, which was standard issue in Ireland, well into the early 1970's, and not just that, we also only had one TV channel, RTE 1.
His answer to my question was ...well, very specific to the time we lived in. His dad had a few cows whose milk sustained the growing and extended Kilboy family. That was not uncommon in towns and villages all around Ireland in the late-1960's. Many families were self-sufficient in ways that are alien to us today, having their own vegetables, pigs (bacon), chicken, and milk.
Pat, the eldest child, used to be tasked to go to the pasture, a mile or so outside town, at the top of Mount Pleasant hill, where his dad's cows were grazing and bring them into town, to their back-yard milking parlour, where they would spend the night. They would be walked back to the field the following morning, again by Pat, before he went to school.
Needless to add, all chores, then and now were just that, chores, inconvenient ones at that, and always had to be done at awkward or unsuitable times, for us busy kids at least. I had to walk my dad's greyhounds, up and down that same Mount Pleasant hill, racing dogs in training, walked at a fast pace, hardly stopping to sniff a lamp-post, and in doing so, Pat and I often said hi, and bye, as we escorted our very different charges, in opposite directions before our breakfast or after our tea-time.
I was a few years younger than Pat, who was perhaps 12 years of age when The Avengers series started to be shown on our single-channel TV service, an event that changed our lives, completely.
His answer to my half-in-jest question about his dreaming patterns went like this;
"I dreamed mostly of Diana Rigg (Avengers). We had 3 cows for milking to be brought in to town in winter evenings. I bet the ass off them going down Mount Pleasant to be in time for the Avengers. Me dad wondered why the milk yield was down. If he saw them running with udders flying he'd wonder no more."
Which meant of course, that Pat, and I, and many's another boy in Loughrea, dreamed happily, in glorious B&W.
Rest in Peace, Diana Rigg, and thank you, your job here is done.

Collecting Kelp, Connemara, 1911

 This painting titled 'Collecting Kelp, Connemara' was painted in 1911 by William H. Bartlett, ROI, (1958-1932) and was sold at auction in 2015 for €10,000, considerably more than that ever earned by the kelp-gatherers of old.

A 'weed drag', is a type of long-handled, bent-tine, fork used for clearing rivers and lakes of weed. Seaweed gathering also utilised a drag fork like this, even today. Along the Connemara coast, in shallow bays and rocky inlets and islands, a variety of seaweed called kelp was cut above the root with a knife/saw attached to a long pole, and it then floated free. The buoyant kelp was gathered into floating piles or rafts, called 'cleimins', and towed, or poled to shore, or, if further out, on an island or deeper water, the weed was dragged into the boat with the special bent fork, brought to shore and spread along piers or walls to dry.

Harvesting seaweed on the Atlantic shore was hard and cold work, standing waist-deep in Autumn seawater, out below the low-water mark, cutting the seaweed by hand, and gathering it into bundles to be floated to shore. From there, someone had to carry the cut seaweed in bundles from the foreshore, up to the place where it was to be dried, before it was collected and loaded onto boats to be processed in Galway to extract iodine and potash. Men usually did the cutting and harvesting of the seaweed, while the women and children had the task of hauling the heavy, cold, wet, sea-sodden, smelly seaweed inshore. No seaweed baths needed for those hardy folk.

When the seaweed had dried it was burned in-situ, in sheltered rocky areas, to produce alkali or iodine. Alkali was an important and necessary commodity in the soap, glass and textile industries and

was manufactured from the burned ashes of vegetable substances (potash, kelp and barilla). Iodine became important for the advances in medicine and photography in the 19th century.

Archaeological evidence for the kelp industry includes kilns, drying-walls and storehouses which are found all along the Atlantic coastline from Wexford to Antrim.

From the 1850's the dried kelp was transferred by boat, usually Galway 'Hookers', from the scores of harbours along the coast, and from the Aran islands, to the Claddagh quay, and then carried onwards on smaller boats, through the locks on the Eglinton Canal into the Corrib, and on to Menlo where the Galway Iodine Works was located. There it was burned and iodine was extracted. The remainder, ash mainly, was used as fertiliser, and also used in the photographic, munitions, bleaching, glass-making, soap-making, ceramics, salt and linen industries.

The business of converting seaweed to iodine was very labour and fuel intensive, quite polluting, and was subject to.and later on victim of, competition from European and S. American sources of potash.

After WWI synthetic iodine replaced seaweed iodine, and that seaweed-based industry became obsolete. Seaweed was also harvested and burned locally, to produce fertiliser, though that practice has also died out, and was never really sufficiently financially rewarding to be sustainable.

Seaweed is still harvested in Connemara, and elsewhere on the Irish coastline, and is used to produce ingredients for cosmetics and food-additives. It is now collected 'wet' and does not have to be dried on the walls along the coast. Controversy still surrounds the sale of seaweed-collecting rights in Connemara to a Canadian cosmetics company, Arramara, around 2014.

You can buy seaweed to eat, Dulse and Carrigeen, to enjoy at home, from several Irish companies, healthy and worth supporting. You could also go for a seaweed bath, Leenane and Enniscrone are two of several locations on the west coast where such baths are offered today. Indeed Salthill, Galway was originally a victorian seaweed spa town, where folks took the salt air and the baths, for health in the late 19th century. The seaweed baths were where Seapoint now stands.

1Brian Nolan