of the ‘tuning up’ applied not so much to the fiddle as to Michael himself, and involved a sup or two from Mike Bhríd Mike’s poteen still. Well, he deserved it, she thought.
Laughter and merriment mixed with the music, ringing around the mountainside and down to the Mask, floating over the lake’s surface and then fading into each corner of the valley. Ellen’s head was swirling with it all and the loveliness of the mid-autumn evening. Meán Fómhair – middle harvest. How apt, how poetic it was, the Gaelic name for September.
‘To think our language and music were driven underground by the Sasanach – the harpers hung high for playing the old songs,’ said Father O’Brien, his words echoing her thoughts. ‘And why are you not dancing, Ellen Rua?’
‘Well,’ she said, ‘with Michael making the music, and the young ones to mind …’
‘Oh, come now!’ He caught her hand. ‘Step out a jig with me – I’m a bit out of practice, but …’
‘No, Father, I …’
He looked at her. Such an outstanding beauty; even in her peasant’s clothing, she could have turned many a berretted clerical head in the cloisters of Maynooth. That rare combination of strength and engaging humility. He had seen her at Mass – you couldn’t help but notice her – kneeling upright, intent and attentive throughout, except now and again to throw an eye on one of those errant twins. When she received Holy Communion, she closed those dark-green eyes and you just knew she truly believed she was receiving the Body and Blood of Christ. He had seen many holy and pious men, but none so transfigured as she was in the presence of God. He had heard tell that her mother, Cáit, had also been renowned for her piety and beauty. She had died in childbirth. The infant, a young sister for Ellen, had also been lost. It had almost broken the Máistir’s heart. And what grief it must have been for the young Ellen to lose the mother she loved.
‘Is there something troubling you?’ he asked. ‘Last Sunday at the church … Sheela-na-Sheeoga?’
‘No, Father, there’s nothing troubling me, nothing at all, that isn’t a good thing.’
There – she had given him a clue. The young priest pressed her no further. Though his priestly studies had been of death and rebirth rather than birth itself, his upbringing in rural Ireland had given him a finely tuned ear for the half-said and the unsaid.
‘Well then, Ellen,’ he said gently, understanding her circumstances, ‘if you won’t dance, at least you can’t refuse to sing. It’s time we had a song.’
When she didn’t refuse, the priest approached the two musicians and spoke with Michael. They cut short ‘The Siege Of Ennis’, much to the dismay of those re-enacting the famous siege through dance. The mutterings of discontent quickly subsided, however, when Father O’Brien shouted, ‘Quiet now, please, for a song from Ellen Rua.’
A few calls came for different songs, but she would sing Michael’s favourite: ‘The Fair-Haired Boy’, an old song of love lost through emigration. Ellen sang, unaccompanied, in the sean-nós style. This primitive style allowed the singer great flexibility – using notes around the melody line other than those which were correctly of the melody. Some sean-nós singers favoured much ornamentation, which displayed their vocal skills. Others, like Ellen, preferred to remain faithful to the original melody, letting the beauty of the song speak for itself.
Father O’Brien was glad that these old songs survived in the West. Like storytelling, they formed an important part of the oral tradition of Ireland. Not that the Church had much time for the old ways, many of which were considered to be leftovers from the pagan days. But these songs were neither Christian nor pagan: they were songs of the lives and times of the people.
The priest’s thoughts were interrupted by the first notes of Ellen’s song, cutting through the absolute stillness the crowd had accorded her.
Oh, my fair-haired boy, no more I’ll see You walk the meadows green …
As always, when she sang, Ellen would close her eyes, and go deep within herself, particularly when singing a goltraí – a sad song – like this one was. She would think of Cáit, her mother, from whom she had learned the songs and the art. She would think of Ireland and the great misfortune of its people, and she would think of Michael, her great love.
‘Hope with the sadness of no hope – love with the lament of lost love,’ was how Mattie an Cheoil described her singing.
So the story and air of the fair-haired boy, loved and then lost, became merely a vehicle for Ellen’s own feelings. She revealed herself most when she sang. This somehow connected the singing with those same deep places of the heart in her audience. Every so often between verses, she opened her eyes and looked at Michael. His gaze remained transfixed on her throughout, as he struggled to understand the turmoil of emotions which her singing raised in him.
The young priest too stood marvelling at how true she was to the melody, not needing to embellish it just to show she could. Being true – that was the quality she had, this red-haired woman.
Ellen opened her eyes and looked at the crowd. In the background she caught sight of Roberteen – fair-haired Roberteen – hanging on her every word, the sorrow of unattainable love etched on his young face. For the briefest of moments their eyes met and she gave him the flicker of a smile. Then she closed her eyes again and continued to sing, drifting away into the depths of her song.
Your ship waits on the western shore,
To bear you o’er from me,
But wait I will e’en to heaven’s door,
My fair-haired boy to see.
She had scarcely let go of the last note before the crowd began to cry for more.
But the magic of the moment was short-lived.
‘What the devil is going on here?’ The belligerent voice of Sir Richard Pakenham cut through the applause. Accompanied by Beecham, his agent, and three constables, he rode into the centre of the crowd.
‘Lazy swine!’ he shouted at the revellers. ‘More interested in merrymaking and drinking than tending to my land. Blight is forecast – you should be on your knees praying!’
Mike Bhríd Mike tried to take advantage of the commotion to slip away with his jugs of poteen, but Pakenham spotted him. ‘Constables – seize that man!’ he ordered the Peelers. ‘I won’t have him selling that devil’s juice they call poteen to my tenants!’
Mike Bhríd Mike, his progress hampered by the two large jugs of illegal brew he was carrying, was no match for men on horseback. The constables quickly apprehended him.
Then Pakenham turned on the priest: ‘And you, Father, a man of the cloth, encouraging this wildness, this lawbreaking – what have you to say?’
Father O’Brien stepped forward. ‘These people have done no wrong. Nor are they savages to be ridden down and rounded up. They are people of God who have worked hard all week saving their crops from the blight so that they can pay the extortionate rents you exact from them. This is their innocent enjoyment – can you not leave them even that?’ Having been well capable of matching the most fearsome of the French professors in Maynooth, the young priest would not now be faced down by a Protestant landlord.
‘Popery and Pope-speak, that’s all you priests ever have so as to keep the people enslaved to a Church which takes their last few pennies after paying their lawful rents. Did not your own people rise up against the high tithes demanded by your Church to baptize, marry and bury them? Shame on you and your kind, Priest! Cromwell was right: “Hang them high, and hang them plenty!”’
At the name of Cromwell, a muttering arose from the crowd. Pakenham jerked his horse round. ‘Silence! And you there – music makers!’ he sneered at Michael and Mattie an Cheoil. ‘You call this caterwauling music? Neither form nor grace to it. I know you, O’Malley. Fine time to be fiddling! Mark me, if the rent’s not on time, I’ll have you and that fiddle of yours out