RTÉ Culture presents a series of five early short stories written by Lady Augusta Gregory (1852-1932) - these tales, Lady Gregory's only known efforts at short fiction, offer a remarkable insight into one of Ireland's most important literary figures.
Below, editor James Pethica introduces Lady Gregory's story Peeler Astore, taken from his colllection Lady Gregory's Early Irish Writings 1883-1893 (Colm Smythe Publications).
Divided loyalty is likewise a key theme in Peeler Astore, the third of Gregory's "Angus Grey" stories. Although less accomplished than A Gentleman or A Philanthropist in terms of finish, structure and overall literary craft, Peeler Astore is the most conflicted and complicated of the three in its investigations of matters of class, religion and cultural loyalty; and, unlike the others, it registers and refers to recent political events directly in its plot. Gregory had a typescript of the story professionally prepared, presumably for submission to a publisher, but it never appeared in print. Whether it was declined, or she decided to withhold it herself, remains unclear.
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Listen: Editor James Pethica talks to RTÉ Arena
As in the central plot of A Philanthropist, here a growing intimacy between a female English outsider and a young Irishman fails, and the latter dies, partly from disappointment. But whereas Louise Eden recoils from her marriage-promise principally from fear of a loss of social caste, and other ideological and political considerations are largely elided from that story, "Peeler Astore" acknowledges emphatic and threatening forms of difference between its lovers. The aloof Beatrice Graham appears to be staunchly Protestant, for instance, and as the daughter of an Englishman hated by the locals for his part in serving a harsh landlord, she is directly associated with hard-line Unionism. In terms of class, religion and political heritage, she is an incongruous match for warm-hearted John O’Mara, born in a peasant cottage, who deplored the divisions and violence of the Land War. Clad in a "scarlet poppied hat", holding a "scarlet parasol", and adopting airs when we first encounter her, she seems almost a caricature of alien, intrusive Englishness. Given the story’s arc, we might indeed be tempted to see John O’Mara as figuratively, and even literally, having been sickened, and ultimately killed, by her dangerous presence. In idealizing her—she is no Dantean Beatrice, despite her name—he is ultimately damaged, as surely as is Doctor Quin when he makes Louise Eden "an object of worship to him."
Yet unlike Louise Eden—whose surname is likewise no index of fundamental innocence on her part— Beatrice Graham retains strong feelings for her dead love. And the story hints that her English loyalties have been challenged far more awkwardly while she lived in Ireland than is the case for the callow Louise. But while the story gestures to the significant differences between the lovers, we are never given access to any of the actual personal transactions between them. Peeler Astore plays with the idea of dangerous crossings of cultural boundaries, in other words, but does not actually directly show them being attempted. The story ends with her performing an exaggerated Englishness as she hides her former Irish life and sympathies, John O’Mara dead, the locals unaware of their covert relationship, and no clear yield of greater cultural or political understanding.
Despite its many limitations, Peeler Astore nonetheless suggests heightened self-consciousness on Gregory’s part about the real difficulties of achieving such understanding. The story offers several Chekhovian sequences of misprisions and failed connections, in which even people within the same culture, let alone with people whose assumptions or practices are significantly different, repeatedly fall short of successful communication. Each of these vignettes offers an object-lesson in the ways differences of social power, education, and class—as well as of age and political viewpoint—tend to produce misunderstandings or failures of empathy. The only figure in the story who successfully finds out more about other people is the schoolmaster who features as the observing central figure in the narrative; but though interested in and acute in interpreting what he sees, he ultimately remains distanced from all the people he encounters—appropriately enough, he remains unnamed throughout.
In making a man rather than a woman her principal character, Gregory was able to gain greater imaginative distance from the biographical directness of A Philanthropist and A Gentleman. But Louise Graham’s conflicted loyalties and concealments remain her central concern in the story.
PEELER ASTORE (1)
The solitude in which the round tower of Kiletra reigned, keeping watch and ward over its seven deserted churches, was suddenly broken by the arrival of a picnic party. For even in the far west of Ireland an occasional great house can afford to keep its beds aired and its rooms occupied. And a house once full, what is the most lively desire on the part of both hosts and guests but to get it empty again for as many hours of the day as possible? So this gay party had forsaken the trim terraces and gardens and tennis grounds of the Castle, and even its lake and swans, to drive on outside cars over miles of unshaded roads to eat their lunch amongst the ruins in the graveyard of Kiletra. (2)
Even the least imaginative of the troop could not be quite indifferent when at a turn in the road the tall melancholy tower came in view, standing with its seven sanctuaries and its centuries of dead gathered at its base. (3) The hills of Clare, seemingly built in stone terraces, showed their long low line in the distance, and a plain, treeless and desolate, covered with stones, in walls, in heaps, in single boulders, stretched away to the invisible ocean.
There was silence for the last few moments of the drive, and then the slight excitement of the descent from cars by those unaccustomed to them, and of the diving into the "wells" for the viands packed therein set voices and laughter going again.
The guests were those of any ordinary country house party within the four seas, and may be put down as comprising the Beauty, the Antiquary, the Traveller, the Quoter, the Jester, and the Bore. Also the Miscellany, in which last catalogue may be included the Beauty's Husband. Each, released from the unavoidable tete-a-tete of a car proceeded to do according to their kind. The Beauty languidly walked in the smoothest pathway until she found a tempting resting place in one of the ruined churches, where though the view offered to her gaze was not extensive, a tomb carved with a rough representation of the Crucifixion and of the Patron Bishop of the Church made, with the soft greys and yellows of its lichen covered limestone a sufficiently picturesque background for her white dress and gold ornaments and scarlet poppied hat. (4) One or two of the Miscellanies remained at her feet, while the Antiquary feeling himself the right man in the right place, delivered a discourse on the strange leaning conical topped tower that rose above their heads, giving first for the pleasure of demolishing them at leisure, the various erroneous theories as to its origin stated by various writers. Some thought Fire worshippers from the East had built it as a "Tower of Silence"—or the Phoenicians (5)—but here the Traveller seized the opportunity to give an account of the visit he had made to the real Towers of Silence at Bombay, in company with a Parsee friend who looked with gentle interest at the vultures awaiting the bodies of his co-religionists, and how so far from being graceful Heaven directed shafts like this they are but squat and kiln like affairs, not looking poetic even at night under the stars and palm trees. (6)
The Antiquary, proceeding, declared that all traditions pointing to a Pagan origin must be abjured. The learned had long been convinced of this, but proof strong enough to convert the vulgar was given, when in examining the foundations of this very tower of Kiletra, skeletons were found below, lying with their faces to the East, just as we all wish to be laid (Heaven forbid! murmured the Jester). (7) Whereas every schoolboy knows that in pre-Christian times the Celtic warriors were buried sitting upright, sword in hand ready to spring forth all armed when touched again by the vital spark.
The Quoter, upon this, with eyes modestly cast down repeated in the original the last verse of Heine's "Zwei Grenadier." (8) The Antiquary, however, interrupted him at the penultimate line to explain in reply to a generally murmured question that the real raison d’etre of the building was that of belfry, watch tower and place of refuge. The original Irish name "cloightead" ('which’, observed the Jester may most nearly be rendered into English by a sneeze) pointed to the first conclusion, and its position overlooking a plain towards the sea, whence in that 7th century came danger and the Danes, to the second. (9)
The Quoter, in revenge for the last interruption was already repeating from Swinburne.
"As men’s cheeks faded
"On shores invaded
"When shorewards waded
The lords of fight;
"When churl and craven
"Saw hard on haven
"The wide winged raven
At mainmast height;
"When monks affrighted
"To windward sighted
"The birds full flighted,
"Of swift sea-kings. —" (10)
Whereas, resumed the Antiquary, whose temper was rapidly becoming soured, their use as a place of refuge is amply proved by the door so many feet above the ground, doubtless reached by a ladder afterwards pulled up. The sacred vessels were probably put here in case of invasion as well as the wives and children (of the priests? asked the Jester with a pantomimic blush) for arrows and darts might rattle in vain against that solid stonework. Flooring had of course existed though no trace could now be found. But at this the Traveller (or was it the Bore?) seized the occasion to give a detailed account of a recent visit to Ravenna where he had not only seen the round towers, which though not so high as this were more cheerful in their red Irish colouring and better preserved, and where there are still wooden floors which have to be approached by ladders. (11) The Antiquary was proceeding to discuss the cause of the lapse from the perpendicular, when a Local, seeing the world "Pisa" forming itself on the Traveller’s lips, came unexpectedly to the rescue by remarking that the country people attributed its incline to the force of the cannon balls fired against it by Oliver Cromwell: (12) and before the Antiquary could recover from this unworthy triviality his hearers had dispersed in search of a shady spot for lunch, and that once discovered, equality of appetite banished for the moment efforts for mental supremacy.
Lazy enjoyment took the place of enquiry afterwards. One of the party passing his finger over the mossy letters of the gravestones within reach, read out such ambiguous legends as "This monument was erected by John Hayes and posterity and Honour Hayes his wife." These worthies at least could not reproach posterity with having done nothing for them. One of the Locals was murmuring details to the Traveller, who was collecting statistics, as to the value of the stone paved fields beyond, where lambs (finding the sweetest bit lies near the bone) thrive wonderfully, and where juniper bushes spread a mantle here and there, and the starry gentian looks skywards. The hills, their grey limestone formation softened by blue distance looked serene in the afternoon light. "Not a tree between this and America," the Traveller kept on entering in his note book "and beyond those quarried hills are the giant cliffs that take the first onset of the Atlantic, acting as a breakwater for Europe, and though this district has satirically been called the 'riddling of Creation,’ it was no less a poet than Bourget who gave it the name of ‘le royaume de Pierre.’" (13)
The Jester was meanwhile murmuring to his immediate listeners authentic anecdotes of a mortuary turn, such as of the bereaved husband ‘perhaps on this very spot’ who coming back after some months to kneel on his wife’s grave in prayer, found his weak-kneed corduroys penetrated by a vigorous crop of nettles, and sprang up in an altered frame of mind exclaiming "Bad luck to you Biddy! You have the sting in you yet!"
Some children on their way to school came peeping round the ruins, and were tempted by bribes of fruit and cake to enter. One little flaxen-haired fellow got over his shyness, and was persuaded by the sight of a sixpenny bit to "sing a song for the ladies." This he gave with more goodwill than harmony especially in the refrain which ran
"Oh Pat is fond of argument and very often wrong
"And Pat has got a timper that doesn’t last him long
"And Pat is fond of jollity and everybody knows
"There’ll never be a coward where the shamrock grows." (14)
The other children could not be induced to open their lips, the cake once finished, but the last singer, with something of the feeling of the fox who had had his tail cut off announced that "Nora Jordan knew grand pieces." The little damsel referred to shrank behind a tombstone and was with difficulty persuaded to come forth. She was bareheaded like the others, but wore boots and a muslin pinafore, which caste marks were explained by the fact of her being granddaughter to the steward of Inchguile. A countryman who had joined the group called encouragingly for "a song with a skin on it," for little Nora had no intention of exerting herself more than was absolutely necessary to gain her sixpence, and contented herself by reciting some verses, at first in very low tones but afterwards raising them as she felt the sympathetic admiration of her schoolfellows. (15)
"Ah when by the hearth" she began
"At the end of the day
"You think of the boys
"Who have gone far away
"When you sigh o’er the lost
"And sing of the slain
"With a tear for the lad
"Who was murdered in vain
"Ah grudge not a fair word
"For one hero more
"The brave man amongst us
"My Peeler Astore!"
"’Twasn’t at the school she learned that," murmured the flaxen haired Patsy, as the little reciter went on with a spirited account of an eviction battle.
"The ragged stones fall
"And the scalding streams pour
"On the bare dauntless head
"Of my Peeler Astore!"
The countryman turned away with a grunt of disapprobation before the last verse was reached.
"When pale and reluctant
"The moon lends her light
"To guide the swift bullet
"That flieth by night
"One by the poor cabin
"His cold watch doth keep
"And wearily wakes
"That the threatened may sleep.
"A shot breaks the stillness
"And guarding the door
"In death as in life
"Lies my Peeler Astore!" (16)
The Beauty had turned away as though not listening, but as little Nora passed near her, holding her silver prize she took the child’s hand for a moment, and a golden gleam might have been seen after that through the tiny closed fingers.
The Antiquary was meanwhile growing restless for further discoveries. He had been told of a field near by, where were to be found remains of pre-historic buildings. The countryman before mentioned was hailed and questioned as to its whereabouts. The only description given having been of "a field full of stones (as plentiful here as chalk marks on the doors of Bagdad on the night of Ali Baba’s coup d’etat) and the name "Oughtacaramana" having probably lost some of its accidence in transmission, discovery seemed hopeless. The Local, however, came to the rescue by suggesting
"It’s likely a place where there’s fairies."
"Oh the place where the fairies do be. I know that well enough," was the response, followed by an offer to act as guide. "I must come back again," he observed, however, "to mark the place where me first cousin’s wife is buried, he has a stone cut ready for her this long time, but the mare being in foal he had to wait a while to bring it, and he can’t come over now the times is so hurried. Indeed I had no great wish for the ould woman within her life time, but I’d say no harm of her now she’s dead. But a d___d hard upper crust she was, and coming as she did from the country of Clare. But the Clare women are a great deal cliverer than the Galway women, and that makes them a great deal crosser."
The Beauty alone refused to join the exploring party, declaring in a slightly disdainful voice that the surrounding scenery was enough for her. "But have you not been here before?" some one asked. "In the neighbourhood—ages ago," she answered languidly, putting up her scarlet parasol as if to shield herself from further conversation.
So, her wish for solitude being so evident she was left alone, and soon heard the wheels roll away.
It was just at this moment that the Schoolmaster of Cloon-beg (17) passing by and seeing so large and gay a party depart from the ruins, climbed the low wall and came to take a look at the churches, as if he expected to find some new cause of attraction about them. So, as the Traveller would have observed, do little boys congregate round an artist sketching the Campanile or Rathhouse of their village, and gaze aloft with pride at the spire or gable they have passed unheeding all their lives before.
Thus did the Schoolmaster direct his footsteps towards the nearest of the churches, from which he had seen the strangers emerge. But as he came near he heard a movement within which made him stand still, fearing that his shyness was about to be confronted with the presence of some laggards of the party. Presently, hearing no voices, he came quietly to a little side window to reconnoitre. What he saw held him from any further movement. A lady in white, her scarlet hat lying on the ground was kneeling in the grassy aisle over a grey slab. After a little she unfastened a knife which hung from her belt, and began to scrape the moss from the letters cut in the stone. Then after a moment’s hesitation she proceeded to cut away the nettles that overhung it, grasping them bravely, though a start or exclamation now and then told that wrist or arm had suffered.
The Schoolmaster watched her curiously. It was hard to believe that any of her own dead lay in such poor estate. Her work was almost done when a sudden stampede of cattle, driven wild by the flies tormenting them, startled her to her feet. Then the sound of returning wheels could be heard. She knelt again for a moment, put her lips to the stone, and turned to go. The Schoolmaster had just time to retreat behind an angle before she came out and walked away. Then he entered the church and looking at the fresh-cleared letters read the words, "Pray for the soul of John O’Mara of Isserkelly" and the date of his death, five years before. "That must be the boy in the Police that old Mrs O’Mara lost" he thought. But what could that grand lady have had to do with the likes of him?" A gleam on the ground caught his eye. It was the little gold mounted knife that had just been used in such unwonted work. He caught it up and leaping the loose wall into the road again, met the party on the point of starting. They were consulting their guide who had remained attached to them as to the possibility of taking another road back to the Castle. "Why wouldn’t you?" he was answering, "sure the other road’s longer but it isn’t so hilly and holly as the one you came. You have but to go straight and take to the right till you come to the hill that’s beyond the hollow." The Schoolmaster had hurried up, "I beg your pardon, ma’am," he said, "I found this in the field beyond, you might have dropped it climbing the gap. Its owner took it and bowed her thanks without speaking but her colour rose as she looked at him. He saw large scornful eyes and level eyebrows and red-brown hair waving low on the forehead.
As he walked on, his thoughts dwelt upon the strange scene he had witnessed, but some domiciliary visits for the collection of school fees kept him occupied till late in the afternoon.
When he came at last to the so-called "Square" of Cloon a group of idlers or "corner boys" were standing listlessly watching the hotel driver washing his car at the town pump. The Schoolmaster joined them, recognizing James Flynn the "carman" as having been one with the party at the tower. With a half formed hope of enlightenment as to the beautiful stranger on whom his mind was dwelling, "Those were grand ladies you had with you today, Jamsie," he hazarded. "They wor so," was the brief reply. "I never saw the like in these parts," proceeded the Schoolmaster. "Maybe you didn’t, and maybe you did," answered Jamsie, splashing his rag mop in the trough of the pump. "There’s some that’s grand now that wasn’t always so, and there’s some that’s forgot the way to keep a hoult on a car that was mebbe glad enough of a lift not so long ago." "Sure you never saw any of the strangers before, Jamsie," said one of the bystanders roused to faint interest by these enigmatic expressions. "Why not?" was the reply, "and so did yourselves mebbe if you hadn’t such short memories." "Well, I saw you talking very friendly to one of the gentlemen and he wearing spectacles" said another "but sure he didn’t look like one of this country." "Is it he?" responded Jamsie with a grin. "No indeed he was never here before. Information about the country and the crops he wanted. Faith I gave him what’ll last him seven year. The oat fields we were passing "What’s that yellow weed," says he, looking out at the branstha-bhui. "What a scandalous thing that the people do be too indolent to hoe their fields." "Weed is it, your honour?" says I, "you may call it weeds in your parts but there’s a farmer here makes £200 a year out of it." "You don’t tell me so," says he, "and how is that?" "Sure he’s a beekeeper, your honour says I, "and the bees thrive better on that flower than on any other, by reason there’s more honey to be found in it. Sure he plants over 60 acres with it every year and £3 an acre isn’t the most he clears out of it, no nor £4 either." "You astonish me," says he. "Is that a fact now. And where can we see the hives?" "He has them removed to the mountains at the present time," says I, "for to get the taste of the wild yerbs on the honey, to fit it for the English market. He had no less than 8 horses and 3 jennets employed for a week with them, and it was only in the night time they could go the road for fear of the bees stinging the passengers."
Jamsie winked to the audience, and prepared to take his car back to the hotel yard. "An’ did he believe all that?" asked a rival car driver with a sympathetic grin.
"I believe you, he did, and not a word but he wrote it down in a small little book he took from his pocket. And he gave me 2/6 before he got off the car. But there was wan on the same side with him that gave me a look when I was talking, and ‘twas then I knew she was no stranger, but I couldn’t for the life of me remember where I seen her till I was coming home [a] while ago." He began slowly to back his car towards the yard, and the bystanders lounged towards the chief emporium of the town where the weekly cartoon from "United Ireland" had just been put up, representing a landlord hat in hand begging for "a little relief" from a haughty frieze coated representative of his tenantry. (18)
The Schoolmaster, however, kept Mr. Flynn in sight, and presently finding him disengaged proposed a drink of porter at a convenient public house. He did not waste words in circumlocution but continued the former conversation by saying "And who did you make that strange lady out to be?"
Jamsie puffed meditatively at his pipe and then answered with habitual indirectness, "Did ever ye hear of Graham the English agent that got broke and had to leave the country at last, where he couldn’t hold on his business?
"I think I did," said the Schoolmaster doubtfully. "He was agent to Lord Carna, wasn’t it he?" "He was, and to Comerford the Evictor, and many a time he was near being shot. Sure at the Toralt evictions he sat on the car for two days with his rifle in his hand and the police around him, and hardly they would have saved him but for the name he had of being such a great marksman. One time I remember he was at Ennis, and when it began to get dark he went to sit by the river and fire at the rats swimming across, and sorra one did he miss, and ye’d hear the lads saying to one another, "Look at that! What chance ’ud there be for us," I’m told he wore a coat of mail in under his clothes whenever he went on the high road."
"Did he now? Sure he’d hardly do that," said the Schoolmaster.
Mr. Flynn winked meaningly. "Believe me, he did, and this is the way I know it. I was driving Jebb the little officer one time from Tubber here, and Graham was a little way ahead of us with a carful of police in front of him again. I was going fair and aisy and the officer wanted to hurry me on. "Jamsie" says he, "what ails the mare?" "Nothing ails her, Captain," says I, but believe me wherever Graham is, it’s well not to be too near him. But he made me push on a bit and just when we came in sight of the cars there was the report of firearms, and when we came up the horse was shot dead and Graham lying in the road and the police around him, and five or six men making off through a field of oats." (19)
"Was he hurted?" asked the Schoolmaster regardless of grammar which indeed he usually broke loose from after school hours.
"He was, but not much," returned Jamsie solemnly. "And that’s how I know about the coat of mail. Sure when Cowan the doctor came I heard him say that but for wan thing he was dead, and what else would that be but the armour beneath his clothes."
"But what has the lady from the Castle to do with Graham?"
"To do with him! What has his own daughter to do with him? that’s what she has. I seen her that day when she heard the news her father was shot (and indeed it was before he was fired at at all she was told it by them that knew). She came riding a black pony down the road, a fine slip of a girl she was—there wasn’t a stone wall ’ud stop her and she out hunting. I was on the way home when I met her and she calls out to know is her father safe, and I told her he had nothing on him to signify. "And is any other one hurted?" says she. "Sorra one Miss, says I, only the horse and he’ll never see Tubber fair again." And with that she rode on, but I saw her now and then till the time Graham left the country. And since that day I never saw her again till this morning. But I let on not to know her when I saw her that used to be so plain and hardy looking through a glass at Kiletra steeple, and wanting a gap to be knocked in the wall before she’d cross it." And Mr. Flynn having simultaneously finished his pipe and his porter lounged into the street humming to himself some lines of a popular song.
"For seven years makes great alteration
And the raging seas betune you and me!" (20)
During school hours next day the master had but little time for meditation on subjects outside his four walls. He had been somewhat late in arriving, and found his scholars engaged in a free fight, using as missiles the sods of turf each had brought in as a contribution towards the warmth of the hearth, and the demoralization caused thereby added to the usual difficulties of tuition and left him exhausted in mind and temper. It was not till the next day, Saturday, that his interest in the stranger revived. He had profited by his half holiday to find his way to the station, where the arrival and departure of the midday train was usually witnessed by most of the professional idlers of Cloon. One or two policemen throwing off official dignity balanced themselves on a paling and chatted amicably with possible Moonlighters, while the prices at recent fairs were discussed with a kind of limp interest by three-acre farmers with a view to future excuses for the non payment of rent.
During the comparative bustle caused by the arrival of the train the omnibus from the Castle drove up, and the stranger of the graveyard appeared. She walked slowly along the platform, her veil down but her head held as proudly as before. "Make haste, Beatrice," her husband cried out, helping her fussily into one of the dusty carriages. The Schoolmaster fancied she caught his eye for a minute but she made no sign, and he stood gazing at the white smoke as it melted into the grey sky, and wondering more than ever what possible feeling would have led her to kneel at the neglected grave of an Isserkelly policeman.
"I’d like to go and see old Mrs. O’Mara," he said to himself as he returned to the main street of the town. "She might be able to tell me something. It’s a long walk, but maybe if I borrowed the new greyhound that John Donohue is after getting from the city of Cork I might get a chance to meet with a hearty young leveret going across the country.
He succeeded in carrying out this idea the next morning, and escaped not unwillingly after early mass, while a collection was being made for a "Testimonial" to some patriot in difficulties. The sun shone with unusual brightness, casting open work shadows of the "lace walls" which mark the boundaries of the large green fields in which flocks of sheep and cattle were putting on flesh for the English market. His back being turned to the rock built mountains be had nothing but broad pasture before him. A solitary rabbit, however, was the only trophy that fell to the speed of the vaunted greyhound, and with this in hand as an offering he found himself soon after noon in sight of the thatched roof of the house he sought. There was a look of comfort about it. A great stack of turf showed provision against the winter cold, and various thriving pigs implied well invested capital, while the heap of manure, forming the approach, in which they rooted, promised well for next year’s crops.
The half door was closed, but the visitor, looking over it with the customary greeting "God save all here" was met with the inevitable response, "God save you kindly", from an old woman sitting crouched over the fire, presumably preferring its smoky flicker to the soft sunshine without, and employing her Sabbath leisure in the lengthy brewing of a "drop of tea."
Her visitor recalled himself to her memory as an old acquaintance at wakes and weddings. "I had it in my mind to come ‘ether this long time," he remarked mendaciously, "and I thought you might like to make a drop of broth with the coneen (21) we’re after getting beyond."
He was hospitably received and offered a share of the well stewed tea, and they found many topics of mutual interest in the affairs of their respective neighbours and in the state of the potato crop. "They were very slack in the month of May," was the old lady’s diagnosis, "they got a great tattherin’ and rackin’ with the rain, but if they get the heat maybe they’ll be good again." "It’s long since I was in Cloon," she continued in reply to an enquiry. "I’m not limber enough to walk the road these times. Last Easter twelvemonth I went to the burying ground at Kiletra where my poor boy is lying, and the rain came and my boots let in the water and I’m destroyed ever since with the rheumatism. My God! if I was as afraid of sin as I am of that pain I’d never commit a sin again! I scotched the shoulders well with nettles for it but sorra much good they did me, but the doctor gave me a bottle that was worth gold."
"Couldn’t you get an odd lift from Thomas Skerett? I saw you with him once or twice," suggested the Schoolmaster.
"Ah sure we didn’t speak since the 15th of January where we went to Mrs Noon’s funeral and he got rusty on the car coming back where he had a drop taken. It’s hardly I’ll see the Kiletra steeple till I’m brought there myself, and maybe that’ll be soon enough. An old woman like me doesn’t ask much privication to go off."
"Is it many years, ma’am, since you buried your son?" asked her visitor, seeing an opening for the introduction of the subject uppermost in his mind.
"Tis five year and four months," returned the widow. "God knows I begrudged him and he all I had belonging to me. I dunno at all why I let him into the police. If I had the luck to keep him at home he’d be in the face of his family this minute. To be out all night and to be wet through and through and to have all the hardships! Sure a labouring man ’ud be better off that ’ud find the fire kindled before him at night and a sup o’ tea on the cinders. My fine boy! there wasn’t one living, gentle or simple but had a good word for him. Graham the agent would tell you that, he thought a great deal of him. The day they were fired at in Carna and exchanged seven volleys across a river, ‘O’Mara’ says he, ‘I’ll stand by you,’ when they wanted him to shelter in a ditch and the bullets going about them. And never drank a drop in his life but wanst the priest in Kilereagh gave him a glass o’ whisky."
The old woman wiped away a tear with the corner of her apron, and gazed into the smouldering peat fire again.
"And what was he died of in the end, is it? ’Twas some sort of a chill or a fever that took him and he home on leave with me. I got a ticket for Quin, the doctor, and brought him ‘ether, for the neighbours said it was the typhus he had and not one would come into the house. But when the doctor seen him ‘Mrs. O’Mara,’ says he, ‘I wish your son was well enough to sit on the wall along with 400 men and not one of them would be the worse of him.’ And he gave him a bottle but it didn’t serve him and I called in a neighbouring woman and says she, ‘Get a handful of the yerb that grows beyond, the hart’s tongue, and 2d worth of liquorice from John Grealy’s and a naggin o’ spirits, and,’ says she, ‘if he was smothering that ’ud cure him.’ But it didn’t after."
The greyhound from the city of Cork being at this moment discovered with his nose in a pot of black potatoes destined for the pigs without, Mrs. O’Mara got up and placed the attractive mess on a shelf out of reach. The Schoolmaster not finding himself any nearer a solution of the mystery tried another question. "Why was it he never got married?" he ventured.
"You may well ask me that and many’s the time I told him to bring home a wife to mind the place for him. There was a neighbouring girl with a flock o’ hens and a flower garden would have swam across the lake of Inchguile for him if he would have asked her. But, not one bit of him would. ‘Mother,’ he’d say, ‘it’s nearly every month there’s a plate going round for police widows, and I hope no plate’ll ever go round for mine,’ and so he’d keep putting me off from time to time. But if he had all the wives in the world he wouldn’t have had one to care him as well as myself, and if there had come two thousand five hundred descendants there’d never be one like him, no not if he had sixty thousand sons."
"And was he long in dying, ma’am?"
"He was, a fortnight, or more. But it wasn’t the fever that killed him but the fret he got where he went to see the farmer that was shot in Scariff a few weeks before his death. He was a great one for children, and till the day he died he never hardly put his head on the pillow but his last words would be about the poor little chaps he saw playing about their father’s body till they were frightened with the blood on the floor. (22) At the end he lost all courage and lay still for two days and nights without ever speaking and I called in Father Rock to anoint him, and he never seemed to feel him being there. But all of a sudden he sat up in the bed and says he ‘Mother, what horse is that I hear coming?’ and I heard nothing at all, but to satisfy him I went out down the road, and there, sure enough, came a lady riding along, Graham’s daughter, they tell me she was. And well might she come, for little ease or comfort my poor boy had the two years he was along with them. She stops when she sees me and asks how is my son. ‘Middling, Miss,’ says I, ‘thank God and you.’ And then she said she’d come in and see him but when she heard the priest was in it, ‘Another time,’ says she, and she out o’ sight in three seconds. I told John about her after the priest’s going, but he lay still and said no word. And the same night when I was giving him a drop o’ milk, ‘Mother,’ says he, ‘I have something here I want you to burn in the fire and let you not leave it till it’s all destroyed.’ And with that he put a small gold brooch into my hand. ‘Sure it’s gold, agra, says I, ‘twould be a pity to lose it.’ ‘Put it in on the coals, mother,’ says he, ‘for I can’t die easy while I have it about me.’ But I thought it might be some kind of a charm and there might be no luck to burn it, so I slipped it into my inside pocket and I took my thimble in its place and in with it to the fire. ‘Is it burned, Mother,’ says he after a while. ‘It is so,’ says I, ‘sorra tint of it left,’ and I came over to the bed to him thinking to tell him in the morning it was but the thimble I put in. ‘Kiss me, Mother,’ says he, ‘it’s well you earned me and I’m a great trouble to you.’ And he tried to put up his face, but with the weakness he fell back again. And when I lifted down my lips to kiss him, he was gone."
The old woman covered her face with her hands and tears were trickling through them. The Schoolmaster sat still for a time. "And have you got the charm yet?" he asked at last. Mrs. O’Mara silently went to a chest in the corner, which she unlocked, and taking out a small bundle, unwrapped one covering after another, until an oval gold locket was disclosed. "I never thought to show it to e’er a one before," she said "and I dunno is there anything inside. It’s no good me looking for my eyesight’s so bad since all that time I cried that I couldn’t count a shilling in coppers correct to you." The Schoolmaster gently opened it. The name "Beatrice" was engraved within, and underneath were the words "Peeler Astore." The other side enclosed a miniature of a girl with scornful eyes and level eyebrows and red-brown hair rippling low on the forehead.
The Schoolmaster replaced it in its coverings and got up. He had gained the knowledge he wanted and it was time to go. "Good evening to you, ma’am," he said kindly.
But the old woman did not hear him. The memories of the past had been awakened and were not easily to be put away. She had sat down again by the hearth and rocked herself to and fro over the embers.
"T’was God took him," she murmured, "And maybe ‘twas to save him from worse, from being shot or the like. But I’m lonesome without him and the world wouldn’t comfort me. And we buried him by the Kiletra steeple where his father, and his grandfather was lying before him. And it’s there myself will be brought to be buried some day—if the Lord spares me!"
NOTES
(1) The Irish phrase "A stór" (anglicised as "astore") means "my darling" or "my treasure". "Peeler" was slang for a policeman, the term deriving from Sir Robert Peel, who established the London police force in its modern form, in 1828. The text reproduced here follows that in a typescript of the story held in the Berg Collection, New York Public Library.
(2) Kiletra is based on the monastic ruins at Kilmacduagh, some 3 miles south of Coole Park, which date from around the seventh century. In 1879 Sir William Gregory had provided financial support for the restoration of the round tower there. Lady Gregory (AG) routinely took guests at Coole to visit the site. The "Castle" from which the picnic party have come is probably based on Lough Cutra Castle, 3 miles east of Kilmacduagh.
(3) The round tower at Kilmacduagh, which is over 110 feet high and leans 2 feet out of vertical, stands close by the ruins of the Abbey church, the principal building of the monastic settlement, and amidst a large graveyard.
(4) The "O'Shaughnessy" chapel at Kilmacduagh contains the 17th century tomb of Dermot O’Shaughnessy, first Baronet of Gort, who was a lay patron of the Cathedral. There is a carving of Jesus on the Cross above the tomb entrance, and AG is also recalling the two reredos slabs to the right of the O’Shaughnessy tomb. One of these represents Jesus on the cross with Our Lady and St. John standing on each side below him; the other represents St. Colman, thought to have been the founder of the monastery. AG made watercolour drawings of these slabs during a visit in July 1888.
(5) AG had likely read George Petrie’s book The Ecclesiastical Architecture of Ireland, which includes discussion of the theories that they were fire-temples, or of Phoenician origin.
(6) Dakhmas (termed "Towers of Silence" by British travellers), are circular, low structures used by Parsis in India to expose their dead to scavenging birds rather than allowing putrefaction, which they believe allows evil to enter the body. AG had seen these structures during her visit to Bombay in the winter of 1885-86.
(7) AG here draws on the report of the excavations and restoration work which had taken place at Kilmacduagh in 1878 and 1879. Specifics from the report concerning the discovery of human bones beneath the foundations of the round tower are given in Jerome Fahey’s The History and Antiquities of the Diocese of Kilmacduagh (1893).
(8) In Heine’s poem, written in 1822 following the death of Napoleon, two French soldiers, returning from imprisonment after the disastrous invasion of Russia, learn of the scope of the defeat. In the final stanza, one of the soldiers asks the other to take his body to France if he should die, and to bury him fully armed, so that he can be ready to rise up should his lost Emperor ever ride across his grave.
(9) AG draws here and in the following paragraphs on details from Margaret Stokes’s accounts of Irish round towers in Early Christian Architecture (1878). Stokes notes, that the "name by which these towers are usually distinguished by the annalists is Cloiccthech, signifying bell-house, with its cognate Welsh clochdy." AG likely also discussed Kilmacduagh and round towers with Gort parish priest Jerome Fahey. In The History and Antiquities of the Diocese of Kilmacduagh, Fahey would report that Irish round towers were "frequently called ‘Clogad’ and ‘Clogteach’. It is well known that the usual Irish designation for bell, is ‘clog’."
(10) From "Winter in Northumberland," the first section of "Four Songs of Four Seasons" by Charles Algernon Swinburne.
(11) Stokes’s Early Christian Architecture compares Irish round towers to the towers in Ravenna, Italy; but AG had also seen and sketched these towers for herself when visiting Ravenna in May 1889.
(12) In The History and Antiquities of the Diocese of Kilmacduagh, Fahey notes that the round tower "leans visibly from the perpendicular" but only by some two feet; the tower of Pisa leans more than fifteen feet from the perpendicular.
(13) French novelist and critic Paul Bourget (1852-1935) visited Galway numerous times for summer visits, from 1881 onwards, typically staying with AG’s friend the Count de Basterot, at Duras. Bourget gives extended descriptions of the stone-laden Galway landscape, and of De Basterot’s house, in his story "Neptune Vale" in Voyageuses (1898).
(14) From the ballad "There Never Was a Coward where the Shamrock Grows" by Johnny Patterson.
(15) Here AG draws on an experience recorded in her diary for 20 June 1888 (Berg): "Off in the morning with Frank to Corcomroe where we spent the day drawing, lunching in the ruins & walking afterwards to Oughtmana [sic] where the ruins tho’ more ancient are less picturesque — … While drawing I had a large audience chiefly of little girls & boys — I asked them to sing & after some pressing Margy Quin gave us ‘Nora Magee’ but an old man who appeared was very contemptuous, & asked for a song ‘with a skin on it.’"
(16) Untraced, and possibly of AG’s own composition.
(17) AG may have drawn for the story’s schoolmaster on James Treston (b.1864), who taught at Kiltartan from 1889 until 1927. Treston began giving AG’s son, Robert, private lessons in arithmetic and geography in summer 1889 soon after being appointed as teacher at Kiltartan, and later gave him Irish lessons.
(18) United Ireland was a weekly Nationalist newspaper, established by Parnell in 1881 to promote the Irish Land League and its agenda.
(19) "Comerford the Evictor" was Henry Comerford (d.1861), who in 1857 acquired some 2,700 acres of lands in and around Kinvara, Galway, sold by Sir William Gregory to meet debts accrued as a result of his passion for betting on horse races. Comerford promptly more than tripled the average rents to his tenants, engaged in a harsh campaign of evictions, and within a decade drove the property into ruin. Much of the land, including the acreage taken over by his brother Isaac Comerford (d.1869), ended up being seized by creditors or litigated in Chancery. Gregory felt deeply responsible for having failed to protect his former tenants’ interests, and gave a comprehensive account of the effects of the sale in his Autobiography. As he recalled, the parish priest of Kinvara thereafter always referred to Comerford as "Holofernes". AG’s readiness to refer to Comerford under his actual name in this story reflects her awareness of, and agreement with, WHG’s continuing anger at Comerford more than three decades later. "Graham" is based on Edward Shaw Tener (1831-1915), agent to Hubert George de Burgh-Canning, 2nd Marquess of Clanricarde (1832 –1916). Clanricarde was regarded as one of the harshest landlords in Ireland, and was a main target of the Plan of Campaign, which sought reductions of rent, and encouraged tenants to pay no rent at all if reductions were refused. Tener was an Ulsterman, and AG’s mentions of the "Toralt" evictions perhaps gestures to this, since Toralt is in Co. Fermanagh. Tener survived an assassination attempt on him, much as described in the story, in September 1889.
(20) These lines are from a traditional ballad most often known as "A Servant Maid in her Father’s Garden", "The Broken Ring" or "The Sailor’s Return", in which a country girl who has waited for seven years for her sailor lover to return does not recognize him when he comes back (or is opportunistically proposed to by another sailor who pretends to be her former sweetheart).
(21) Irish for "little rabbit".
(22) Based on the murder of Peter Dempsey, a farmer shot to death near Loughrea in 1881 for taking a farm left empty because of an eviction. AG had known Dempsey, who had worked as a gardener for one of her brothers.
