Irish Writers in London Liam Autobiography 1 @Yan Kraffe & Friends

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Molly's Boy
Down The Long Road

Working in the bog

Excerpt 1

We went up the boreen and into the old farmhouse where the a turf fire was always burning on the flagstone floor beneath the chimney. The magnificent Bawnmore hospitality was expressed; 'You are always welcome here' was repeated and repeated and indeed you did feel immediately at home. Every body joined in the welcome; dogs would come out of their deep sleep beside the fire and go rushing about, cats would stop their grooming and family and neighbours would ask about you and all in Dublin and within a short time you were absorbed into the country farm regime. There were always jobs to be done at any time of the day. Water to be drawn from the freezing cold spring well with the corrugated lid in the lower field; turf to be brought down from the shed for the days heating and cooking; cows to be herded in for milking; hens and
calves to be fed, not to mention the major tasks of working in the fields and the bog itself.

You were at once valued and part of the team. You did not hang about looking for things to do like you did in Dublin. Every pair of hands was very welcome in Bawnmore and instantly put to good use. I worked mostly with Brother and some of the jobs in the fields were hard for a soft Dublin boy. Thinning sugar beet was a particularly difficult task. You had to tie old manure bags around your knees and crawl up the drills pulling out the weeds and leaving one beet plant about every eight inches. On occasions you would grab a thistle and that was painful and your knees would get raw sore from rubbing along the dry earth. Even it if was damp or wet it was also unpleasant and the mud would stick to you all over.

Brother would try and make life easier by going ahead in the drill with a hoe and taking out most of the plants and weeds and freshening the earth for more comfortable handling. He would also skim up the drills with his horse to met it a little softer on your knees. Easy, ya hoar, he would cry to the horse, easy.

But most of all he would tell you stories of the countryside; yarns of the family; trips to hurling matches and fairs; rows and scandals and fights; vermin affecting his crops; his fight to improve his land and a myriad other tales. He would seldom fall silent; he had too many interests and opinions to be able to keep quiet and all this was administered in the fresh, unpolluted bog air with the skylarks and curlews and thrushes and every breed of bird chirping and warbling away. There was a glorious silence apart from the soft Kilkenny murmur of Brother's voice as he retold saga tale after story in scintillating detail. The dogs would lie waiting on the headland until we took our breaks at the end of every drill and Brother would light his Woodbine cigarette and pass comment on any events of the day. It was there that I discovered storytelling.

On other days we went to the bog to work on the turf. Each of the families around Bawnmore had their own bank of turf going back generations and from this their year's supply of turf was cut. A large slicing knife was used to cut off the heather and crumbly dry turf for the first few feet and then you got to brown turf gradually changing to black turf which was the best for burning. Brother got cutting with his slean, an Irish word for this cutting instrument. There was water on one side from previous cuttings and he would work down spit by spit and whip up the turf sod by sod to me who placed the sods onto a wooden barrow to be wheeled out over the heather to dry. During all this work he was often chatting away and if he felt that you were not paying attention you could get a wet, smelly turf sod in your face. After the turf dried for a bit and formed a crust it was turned over and than put into small stacks, then larger clumps and eventually drawn home .

Working in the bog would give you a huge appetite and even after eating well you were hungry again after a couple of hours. Some times during morning or afternoon breaks the tea was brought down by one of the women of the house and this tea in an old gallon can would taste like nectar and the home made bread spread with farm churned butter was the food of the Gods. It was simple fare but magnificent in its quality. Neighbours and other men were always passing along and a chat would quickly develop about a recent hurling match or election or some local news. Whenever there was a hurling match between Tipperary and Kilkenny, between whom there was a ferocious rivalry, a dispute might happen between users of the bog from the two counties. Then the skin and hair would fly and I would rest on my turf barrow and let them to it thanking my lucky stars for this welcome breather.

The angelus bell ringing at 6 o'clock from Crosspatrick church was the signal for the end of the working day. Brother would take his cap off and recite his prayers and I would mumble along with him. It was a poetic moment in the quiet of the evening with a good day's work done to give our attention to the creator of this beautiful scene of purple heather and bogland brown. Occasionally people would find things in the bog like all churns of butter which were used for greasing the farm carts and each year we would come across an old road deep down in the bog with huge interwoven beams of wood which was presumed to be a crossing over the bog in ancient times. We did not find any sacrificial victims as in other bogs. I was the happy sacrifice and I would wend my way home with Brother, bringing in the cows on our way, to our evening meal of wholemeal bread and eggs straight from the chickens scratching busily outside the half door.

mother and kid

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