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)

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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

Landlord, Rent, Eviction, Emigration.

This unique letter dated 1912, housed in the little museum in LetterMullen in Connemara, provides a very personal glimpse into the minutiae of our social history. Our modern society ironically resembles this early 20th century vignette, more than we might care to admit.
Today, as in 1912, renting is the norm. Back then, it was a rented house and farm, today an apartment or house. Today, so many renters are in financial difficulty, from covid19, or more likely, from an underlying social inequality, unemployment, refugee, single parent family. Our social services and charities strive to provide some support for those families, much as did this priest (and many other benevolent people), helping a family keep a roof over their head and stave off eviction.
Today it’s the banks, investors and hedge funds who are the landlord class, back in 1912, the landlord class had morphed from primarily Anglo-Irish landed estate, to a merchant and investor middle and upper class, who took advantage of the encumbered estates fire sale (think NAMA).
The old landlord system was bankrupted by the famine, tithe tax and the Land League, and were bailed out by the British Government (think NAMA). They had even less empathy and familiarity with their tenants, and the cautionary tone at the end of this letter reflects that distancing of tenant and land owner. That generational clan and community system was all washed away by 1912, with the arrival of the carpetbagger opportunist landlord and his ‘Agent’, as is the case here.
Connemara had rolling famines. Crop failure after crop failure, bad summer after worse winter. Emigration was their only escape. Most Connemara farms were in arrears. This agent had an unenviable and impossible task, which by 1921 became academic.
Lastly, the tenant's debt while small by our standards, was insurmountable by his. A ticket in third class on Titanic in 1912, the same year as this letter, was £7-10s., just shy of his overall rent arrears of £8-5s. So, I think that I will finish on a hopeful note. Sometimes the family had foregone paying rent in order to save up and pay the passage to America for one of the children.
Perhaps owing to the sacrifice of his or her family in 1910 and 1911, that young emigrant managed to save some money in Boston and paid off the family’s debt, avoiding eviction and eventually buying out the family farm in Rosmuc. Wouldn’t that have been a good end to a very sad, but not uncommon tale. Brian Nolan. Walking Tours of Galway

I just love a good mystery!

Mother and son. Lisdoonvarna, County Clare, Ireland Photo taken in Lisdoonvarna c. 1900.

These people, likely both of them had witnessed and survived another pandemic, the Irish Famine, where generations of whole families were swept away by starvation, typhoid and influenza. Their weather-beaten lined faces tell a story of resilience, and perhaps determination and pride. Their home-spun, bespoke clothes are not of the poorer quality, there is some money here, even for his cravat and her wool shawl. Were they in Lisdoonvarna, for the match-making festival, seeking a bride for the son, seeking health from the sulphur spa and the bracing cliff walks.

If so, why the elaborate and expensive photograph.

Look more closely. Aside from his cravat and bowler hat and bushy beard, he is holding some sort of memorial card, perhaps, or a boat-ticket, or even, a land-deed... he is holding it up very deliberately, he wanted it to be part of the photo, wanted it to pe recorded and preserved, it's definitely a message, perhaps intended for the recipient of this especially-posed photograph, not an inexpensive luxury for the time, this was taken professionally by a photographer in a studio.

For whom was the message intended?

Maybe he, or she was someone who had emigrated, to America, Canada, Australia?

Perhaps they'd paid for memorial cards, for the old lady's husband?

Or maybe, perhaps it is a travel ticket, to America, for one or both of them to reunite with the wealthier, now emigrated family member overseas?

Yes, to me this photo is an enigma, but it is a fascinating mystery? I don't have the right answer as to why they'd gone and had it taken, but using my imagination, my favourite explanation is that this is a land-deed document that he is holding, the title deed to a small farm, somewhere in county Clare.

Maybe these two had been sent money by their family overseas, to buy-out their Irish farm, perhaps from an encumbered estate, or an unwilling and previously harsh and uncaring land-lord and this was proof they'd done as requested, and had bought the family farm, or house, using the monies remitted to them from overseas.

So many people had been evicted over the previous 50 years in Ireland and in County Clare, where my dad's folks come from, evictions were commonplace and devastating.

That this is my guess, they had been evicted, with devastating consequences for the family, some of whom had emigrated, and now 50 years later, the farm is bought back, free and clear, 500 years of subjugation, brutalisation, degradation and eviction, yet, all made good by an emigrant's hard work and determination to right a wrong, to reclaim their land, their heritage and their pride.

Yes, I do love this photograph, and the quirky memories it evokes.

(Photo courtesy of Pat Herbert).

These are the stories I tell in O'Connors Bar in Salthill Galway O'Connors Bar Galway during my Fireside Tours, and on the streets of #Galway, on my Walking Tours of Galway ... hopefully all will be back to normal again soon and we can once again be walking and talking on the streets of Galway and Salthill. Stay well. Stay Safe. See you on the other side!