Tipperary (32 page)

Strangely, the food of the Catholics could prove more generally edible, however spare it might have been. On many occasions I have eaten in the humbler houses of the tenant farmers and the cottagers—the “peasants,” a term that they dislike. For economic reasons, they could not provide much variety at table, and it was the more fortunate who ate two meals a day. For breakfast they took porridge, made of oatmeal and cooled with the milk of their domestic cow or, more often, goat. But it was often excellent porridge, salted and with a good consistency. (Porridge must be almost capable of being poured, must hesitate on the thick side of liquid; and the best method is to mix milk with water equally at twice and a half the quantity to that of the oats.)

No matter how good the oatmeal, however, affluence stayed away from the table. Though all the family partook, they often had to wait their turn for the use of a utensil; the bowl or spoon had to be rotated according to the seniority of the family members. The father went first; the mother usually waited for the last child to have eaten.

If they were well enough off to take luncheon, it typically consisted of no more than a bowl of milk, with perhaps some of the soda-bread the woman of the house had baked, if she was industrious and if the family could afford flour. But in many houses no such meal was afforded, and all, including the youngest children, had to wait until evening. Then the family dined (I hesitate to use the word) on potatoes that had been boiled in hot water.

Of some such families, I have heard of an irony that they practiced— that they called their evening meal “potatoes-and-point.” This derived from the fact that the family had, hanging from the kitchen rafters, a flitch of bacon, which would remain there until Christmas dinner. However, until then, all raised their potatoes on their forks and pointed at the bacon, in the pretended belief that the flavor of the bacon would some-how travel through the smoke of the kitchen and invest their potatoes with its tang.

As will be understood, this culinary experience differed severely from that of some of the Great Houses—where, should the cook be a person of capacity, often foreign, it was not unusual to dine on pheasant and salmon, pastries and wine. But mostly, these delicacies were also dreadfully prepared.

When I observe that these two peoples of Ireland “read different books,” I am arrested. Books stand at the center of my family's and my country's lore.

Not all of my forebears possessed the gift of “footwork,” as described by my father. One antecedent, by name Michael Joseph O’Brien, who lived in the south of the county around the year 1790, had received some education abroad, where some of the great Catholic universities contentedly took in Irish boys who sought education. This Michael Joseph went first to Louvain, where he took a dislike to the Belgians. He fared better in Salamanca. (“The Spanish have wine,” said my father, “and the Belgians have only beer.”)

Upon his return, my forebear was shrewd enough to conceal all his volumes about his house, because the possession of books was, for a native Irishman, a serious crime in those days. But Michael Joseph O’Brien grew defiant and quoted from his books when arrested. He was flogged and sent to Van Diemen's Land, a poisonous island off Australia, where he prospered and eventually died among his many children.

When education and the owning of books became free of criminality, many Catholic households—even quite poor ones—rushed toward reading. Printing-houses in Dublin began to enjoy a vivid trade. People would read anything; some printers even published in daily book form the proceedings of sensational court trials.

As the century wore on, Mr. Yeats and Lady Gregory began to make clear the value of ancient Ireland's traditional legends and culture, and literature became a symbol of national patriotism. The Catholic Irish flocked to these renditions of their past. In their houses, I have heard them read aloud the mighty tales of Celtic gods and heroes—of the boy-hero Cuchulainn (whom some call “Coo-Hualann” and some “Koo-Kullen”), of the warrior-god Finn MacCool and his hunters. They regale me with the stories that they find in these books; they know that such tales were originally handed down by word of mouth, and now they joyously rediscover them—and pass them on.

I have taken care to acquire some myself; and here is a story that I tell when I am among them. When I first heard it from an old story-teller, I took the precaution of transcribing it while I remembered it well, and since then I have memorized it; I rehearse it often.

As you all well know, Ireland is a country where magic rises out of the ground. There's magic around every corner, in the branches of the trees, in the beards of the bushes. The story I'm going to tell you is about magic that came out of the woods one day in County Louth.

If you go to the village of Dunleer, there's a hill. Nearby there's a great plain of land, and in days gone by there was a wood bordering that plain; it ran all around the edge of it like the whiskers on an old man's chin. Before our time and before that time again, great warriors and hunters strode this beautiful country, and the greatest of these was a man called Finn MacCool. He was named Finn because the word means “blond” and he had hair the color of straw on snow. And he was named MacCool because he was the son of a man called Cool.

Finn always hunted with a band of companions. He was a young man and young men like each other's company, and there was no wife at home to tell him that she didn't like his friends. One day they were all on this plain, hunting near Dunleer, and out of the woods steps this beautiful deer. She was young, she was limber, she was lovely, not much older than a faun. The dogs began to bark and the hunters began to run, their spears at the ready.

Off runs the doe, like the wind; she heads up by the edge of the wood, onto the breast of the hill, and across the top of the ridge. They could see her clear against the blue sky, her movement fluid and graceful. She had that effortless flow of all great athletes, who never seem to be hard-pressed.

Finn and his hunters thought they had no hard job in catching her, but to their amazement they never got near her. Not only that, but one by one the young men and their dogs were unable to keep up the pace. Only Finn had the stamina. Finally, he and his two dogs drew ahead of the rest and were soon lost to sight.

As the great man and his two hounds came down a steep hill, they saw the deer ahead of them. She must have slowed down a bit and Finn thought she was tiring—so he urged his two dogs on faster and faster. To his great surprise, the deer lay down on the grass. She lay there quite happily—as though she was waiting for the dogs. When the two hounds came to the deer, they ran at her—but they didn't bite her, or rend her with their teeth. Instead, they stopped and began to lick her, and play with her, and gather round her in a protective manner.

You could have knocked Finn MacCool down with the feather of a Galway goose. He stood there and he watched the three animals, the deer and his two dogs, nuzzling and nosing and caressing, the best of friends.

The deer rose from the grass, and the two dogs, like escorts, began to trot across the fields with her. Finn followed them, and by now the rest of his band had begun to catch up. When their dogs went after the deer, Finn's dogs bared their teeth and barked—they were not going to let anything, man or beast, harm that deer.

Soon, Finn began to understand that his dogs were leading the deer home, and sure enough, when they reached his mansion gates, his dogs turned into the yard and led the deer into a comfortable stable. The dogs ran back and forth, to and from to the barn, and made sure they brought enough hay and straw in their mouths to make for the beautiful doe the most comfortable bed in the palace that night.

As the deer bedded down, Finn and his companions went in to dinner, and their talk for the evening was full of this mysterious deer, with which they had all become enthralled. They drank a lot and they ate a lot, and after the day's exercise out in the open air they soon began to feel sleepy, and off they all went to bed.

At about four o'clock in the morning, the hour when all strange things occur, something wonderful happened to Finn MacCool. A bright light filled his bedchamber, so dazzling that no man could stand a chance of staying asleep. Finn woke up, and standing there in front of his bed he saw the most beautiful young woman that he had ever seen. He reckoned that she was about nineteen years old but with the maturity of a grown woman. Tall, slender, and with long hair that was ornamented with tiny golden balls, she wore a gown of green and gold, and she had a serious face that now broke into a smile as sweet as the sea on a sunny day. The beautiful young woman spoke, and this is what she told him.

She said, “I am the deer whom your hounds pursued today. When I was a girl in my father's house, a Druid visited us, an evil man. He sought to marry me, and when I refused, the Druid cast a spell on me and threatened to turn me into a deer. And so he did, and his hounds chased me out of my father's house. I had to run fast in order to escape, and I ran and I ran until I reached a wood in the west of Ireland.

“There I lived a terrifying life, hunted every day of the week from dawn to dusk by every passing stranger. Many of the hunts, of course, were caused by the Druid and his hounds, and one day last week, to fool him and his huntsmen, I ran to his house, where I hid in his orchard. A young servant-girl saw me, and saw that I did not run away from her. She asked me was I the girl cursed to be a deer. I nodded my head, and she told me that she had overheard her master say that the only man who could break this curse was Finn MacCool inside his own house, which was a place free from all bad magic.

“So I set out, and I ran night and day across Ireland until I found you and your huntsmen today and your two lovely hounds, who are not fools and who know the difference between a real deer and a woman in a deer's form.”

Finn MacCool looked harder and longer at this creature, and fell in love with her. The next week he made her his wife; their marriage began in a peace as deep and quiet as the first snow, and every minute of every day he looked at her with love in his eyes and his heart, and he thought himself the most fortunate man in the universe.

But Finn MacCool was a man of duty, and one day duty called. The King of All Ireland sent a man on a fast horse to Finn, telling him that raiders from across the water to the east had landed on the coast. Finn's lovely wife told him that he must, of course, go and do his duty, that his King and his country expected no less. Taking a leave of her as tender and tearful as a child on a first day going to school, Finn set off.

What Finn didn't know was that, for all these months, the Druid had been aware, through his own magical powers, of where the deer-woman had gone. So for several months he had been camped in the woods near Finn's house, waiting for the day when Finn would leave his house and his wife unprotected.

The morning Finn rode off to war, the evil Druid knew that his chance had come. He changed his shape to that of Finn MacCool and he rode to Finn's castle. On the ramparts, looking out across the open plain, her hand shading the sun from her eyes, stood the young wife. When she saw what she thought was her husband suddenly returned, she shouted with joy and came running down to his arms.

At the very last moment, she realized her mistake as the Druid waved his deadly wand and changed back to his own shape. She called out, “Please don't harm me. I am carrying my husband's child.” Of course, this only angered the Druid more, and he touched her with his wand and she became a deer once again. She raced from the castle, out across the countryside, pursued by the Druid's hounds.

Finn MacCool came home from the war, and when he heard what had happened he felt a great crack split his heart, right across the middle. He mourned and he wept, and he wept and he mourned. He strode around the castle holding his head in his hands, making great loud moans. Eventually, his companions persuaded him that he should go out and look for his beloved wife, saying that he had found her before and he might find her again.