POLLY
OF BRIDGEWATER FARM
AN UNKNOWN IRISH STORY
CATHARINE FLEMING MCKENTY
Smashwords edition
2012
Dedication:
For all those who have Irish roots
past, present and future;
and all those
who search for a connection to their own
family story.
Polly Noble was born in 1837 on a farm near the old coach road from Dromore to Enniskillen. Dromore was then a tiny village of two streets nestled among the ancient drumlin hills of County Tyrone in Ulster, about ten miles from Omagh.
Polly and her family left Ireland ten years later in the midst of the Great Famine. In 1850 they arrived in Toronto. Polly married a young tailor, John Verner, when she was seventeen. Soon they opened a small grocery store in Cabbagetown at 283 Parliament Street. One after another a dozen children who had lost their mothers landed on their doorstep. This book tells the Irish part of her story that none of those children knew.
“There may be many a land where the verdure blooms more in fragrance and in richness - where the clime breathes softer, and a brighter sky lights up the landscape, but there is none … where more touching and heart-bound associations are blended with the features of the soil than in Ireland, and cold must be the spirit, and barren the affections of him who can dwell amidst its mountains and its valleys, its tranquil lakes, its wooded fens, without feeling their humanizing influence upon him.”
“Charles O’Malley, the Irish Dragoon”
by Charles Lever
1841
Polly Noble was born in 1837 on a farm near the old coach road from Dromore to Enniskillen. Dromore was then a tiny village of two streets nestled among the ancient drumlin hills of County Tryone in Ulster, about 9 miles from Omagh.
Polly and her family left Ireland 10 years later in the midst of the Great Famine and settled first in Montréal, Québec, Canada.
On the evening of April 25, 1849, 12-year-old Polly and her companion John Verner, 5 years older, were visiting Montréal’s colourful Bonsecours market. She had a mop of unruly dark brown hair, a firm chin and clear grey-green eyes that had already seen too much for such a young person. John had come with his family from Ulster in 1840 and apprenticed as a tailor. His family and their neighbours the Breadons had been kindness itself to Polly and her family.
Young John was determined to show Polly all the sights of her new home. In winter they met to view the spectacular ice-palace glistening in the sun at Fletcher’s Field. On this particular day, they were exploring the vast port with sailing ships coming in from all over the world.
Suddenly they heard shouts of “Fire, fire!” and saw people running along the cobbled streets in the direction of Parliament Square. As Polly and John followed, they saw flames shooting up from the roof and walls of the stately St. Anne’s Market that had served as Parliament House of the United Province of Canada for the last five years. The unruly mob, which had caused the fire, were still shouting in the square, unaware that in their fury at the passage of the Rebellion Losses Bill and at a colonial government in general, these normally respectable citizens had just succeeded in depriving Montreal of its vocation as a capital city.
“What a silly thing to do,” Polly murmured, and John was relieved to see the colour coming back to her cheeks. Polly would long remember this evening, not just because of the fire, but because then and there she decided this kind young man was the one she was going to marry.
In 1850, Polly and her family left Montréal and moved to Toronto. At 17, she married John Verner as expected, and soon they opened a small grocery store in Cabbagetown in downtown Toronto at 283 Parliament street. One after another a dozen children who had lost their mothers landed on their doorstep, including R. J. Fleming, her half-brother from her mother’s second marriage. This is the Irish part of her story that none of these children knew.
Little did Polly realise then that their grocery store in Cabbagetown would become famous to thousands of Canadians across the country through the newspaper columns of Vern McAree, a writer for The Mail and Empire and the Globe and Mail, or that she would be the heroine of his classic Cabbagetown Store. Vern was also among the dozen children who had lost their mothers, mainly in childbirth, who came to live at the store that offered credit to families a week away from insolvency.
My grandfather, Robert John Fleming, was another of those children. He was Aunt Polly’s younger step-brother. He came to live with her and Uncle John when he was seventeen, after the death of their mother. Later he became four-time mayor of Toronto. Neither he nor any of us knew the Irish part of the family story, and yet in moments of crisis I felt I could reach back into Aunt Polly’s strength, even though I had never met her.
When I was growing up, few people talked about the million people who died of hunger and disease in the Great Famine.
ln 2002, thanks to Robert Funston, Florence and Seamus Corey, I set foot at long last on the Fleming farm, on the old coach road near Dromore, nine miles from Omagh in Co. Tyrone, Northern Ireland. To my amazement the old whitewashed stone house was still there. As I was leaving the farm, walking alone down the lane, I heard voices talking. It was suddenly clear to me that these were voices from the past, as though an invisible curtain had been pulled aside for a brief moment. I had to find out what these voices were saying. This book is the result. It begins two years before Polly’s birth in 1835 when a young ordnance surveyor sets out from Dublin to find Dromore just as I did.
Dublin, 1835
A wet and windy day early in November.
Edgar Plimsoll, civil servant, sat fuming in his office at the back of Mountjoy House, headquarters of the famed Ordnance Survey at Phoenix Park. He was struggling manfully to find something at the bottom of an enormous pile of maps, drawings and reports on the desk in front of him.
“Willy!” he bellowed. “Willy, where the devil is that report on Dromore? It was due days ago. Heads will roll if we don’t get this mess off our hands soon.”
“I did Dromore like you said,” muttered Willoughby, a lanky youth of indefinite age, who detested his nickname. “It’s in here somewhere.” He pulled at a corner of the pile and the whole heap slid gracefully and inexorably to the floor.
“There are two Dromores, you idiot,” snapped Plimsoll, as he struggled to disentangle the heap, “and the one you can hardly find on the map is missing. Without it, we can’t hand in Tyrone. Why we bother I sometimes wonder. This whole ordnance survey has gotten out of hand if you ask me.” No one had in fact asked his opinion, but that never stopped Edgar. He actually liked this brightest of his new recruits, foresaw a fine career ahead of him, but he was stubborn, needed a good push now and then, like all the Welsh.
“You’d better get to it. Take the mail coach tonight to Omagh. Stop at the Royal Arms Hotel. They say it’s one of the best in the county. Orr, the owner, will give you a good horse there. And look sharp. The Duke of Wellington is expecting results for all this money Treasury is spending. Though why he thinks anyone can organize the Irish is beyond me, and himself an Irishman.”
Willy left in a huff. His grandfather was Irish and he was tired of hearing these constant caricatures. By the time he arrived at Gosson’s Hotel in Bolton Street, there were no inside seats left. Thus at 7:30 that night, he found himself perched precariously on top of the lurching coach, as the horses galloped down the darkening roads. He remembered all the lurid tales of highwaymen he had heard from colleagues, especially John O’Donovan, their place name and Irish language expert. One time O’Donovan had taken the night coach from Londonderry to Omagh. It set off with eighteen passengers clinging for dear life outside, and ten passengers crammed inside, himself clutching his umbrella as a shelter from the driving rain and wind, his feet almost frozen from the cold. As if this wasn’t enough, didn’t the coach overturn in the mud just past Strabane.
“When
in doubt, walk, my boy,” advised O’Donovan. He himself had done
just that, only to discover next morning that the coach for Dublin
had departed without him. And to add insult to injury his superior,
Larcom, had warned him solemnly to omit all ‘ribaldry’ in his
survey reports. To which he is said to have agreed to make all his
future communications “very serious, cold and
un-Irish.”’
Hours later, Willy arrived in Omagh, sleepless, soaked to the skin, and with a cold well on its way. If only he could have stayed put for a day or two at the comfortable inn where a hot meal was set down before him.
The next morning a stable lad provided Willy with “one of his best horses.” No sign of Mr. Orr, the owner, who was “away on business.” It was still pouring rain when master and beast, both equally disgruntled, plodded along the muddy road in the direction of Dromore. Halfway there the horse stumbled and threw a shoe, in sheer spite, Willy declared later.
Willoughby George Hemans arrives at his destination.
A bedraggled figure stood hesitantly at the open door of Dromore’s forge. He was warmly welcomed by the group of men near the blazing fire, who of course wanted to know every detail of his errand, and as much of his life history as he would reveal. He had suddenly become a more interesting person than he had ever thought himself to be. In turn, he was more than a little surprised to discover that even the poorest labourer in this group had a vocabulary at least three times as large as his English counterpart, drawn from his Irish roots.
Remembering his duties, he queried the smith on how many houses there might be in the village. Thomas O’Neill, a giant of a man, roared with laughter. “I’ve never counted but I can tell you there are nineteen spirits dealers, and Cassidy’s is the best of them. For the rest you’ll find two grocers, two bakers if you’ll be needing a loaf of bread, one butcher, three cobblers, and if you want a place to stay, there’s McCann’s hotel, for what it’s worth. If you’re needing a fresh horse, as by the looks of it you do, there’s not a single one for hire here, but George Noble’s yer man, up on the coach road to Enniskillen.”
And
so it was that Willy Hemans found himself on the doorstep of the
Noble’s house on a hill just off what is now called Bridge Road.
Jane Noble, a sturdy young woman of medium height, perhaps three
years older than himself, stood in the doorway.
She took one look
at him. Before he could protest, he found himself supplied with dry
clothes, albeit a size too small, a hot meal and
a bed for the
night.
The next morning, Will, for so he was now called, accompanied his host to the barn to find a suitable mount. Five years older than himself and half a head shorter, George Noble strode ahead so fast, talking rapidly all the while, that Will arrived nearly breathless at the barn, where several pairs of brown eyes stared curiously at him.
Indeed he had come to the right place. He couldn’t believe his luck. These horses, he soon discovered, were a cross between the sturdy local mares and the same Irish thoroughbreds that both the Duke of Wellington and Napoleon had ridden at the Battle of Waterloo. George’s grandfather had acquired one at the end of the war when they were going cheap at the famous Moy horse fair.
George and Jane wouldn’t hear of Will going to stay at McCann’s. That night around the fire Will discovered that his host’s forebears had almost been born on horseback; reivers (or cattle rustlers if you like) living by their wits on the borderland between England and Scotland. They had been shipped out lock, stock and barrel by James VI of Scotland when he became James I of England. He was glad to get rid of the lot of them, and they, in turn, had as little love for the law and authorities as did their new Irish neighbours. The Nobles on the whole were Presbyterians, but George’s father John had loaned three horses to John Wesley, the Methodist preacher, when he came through Trillick and Drumquin.
Every morning Will rose early and rode out to measure the height of hills, the length of rivers and the dimensions of any building that could possibly be of interest. In the evenings, neighbours dropped by after milking time, full of stories and information that unfortunately never made it into his report. He was just twenty-one. This was only his second field assignment and he was still a little in awe of the polished British officers who were in charge at Mountjoy House.
After all, who would ever read these reports? Likely these memoirs that had so excited Colby’s successor, the debonair young Lieutenant Larcom (now Superintendent in charge of the whole Mountjoy Ordnance Survey Project), would moulder on some back shelf.
And so Willoughby George Hemans relaxed in the warmth of the Nobles’ home and mentally consigned his assignment to oblivion. His real dream was to become a famous engineer on one of the new railroads. Railway fever would soon be sweeping Ireland. Every town in Ireland would want to be on a line. And he was in the right place at the right time to be part of the excitement.
Will explores Dromore.
One neighbour who was intrigued by Will’s dream and came by often on these November evenings was Joseph Fleming, a master stonemason, who lived with his son, William, on the farm on the opposite side of the coach road.
While George and William talked horses, Will discovered that Joseph had worked on the new portico of the great courthouse in Omagh that Will had seen through the rain. Will was soon describing the magnificent Roman arches he had admired when he had reluctantly spent two years with his father in Italy. Resentment against his father, a retired sea captain, who had deserted his mother and five small sons under the age of six, (himself the eldest), had given Will a burning desire to succeed.
Joseph had some time on his hands now that the harvest was in, and so he went with Will to have a good look at the four-arched bridge over the widest part of the Owenreagh River at Shaneragh. Just below Dromore itself, they stopped at another bridge with a history.
In the old days, the cottage weavers from Drumquin forded a mountain stream at that spot to bring their famed linen yarn, tweeds and flax to the Dromore Fair. The Alexander family, who had settled the place a long time before, had recently encouraged their tenants to build a bridge at the ford. The tenants worked long and hard, believing the promise they had been given that no toll would ever be exacted for that bridge. On the first Fair Day of the next New Year, imagine the surprise of the villagers who found themselves face to face with a tollkeeper!
By ten o’clock that morning, a colourful parade of tenants and weavers had formed with marching bands and were headed down the road toward the now inaccessible Owenreagh Bridge.
In the meantime, landlord Alexander had called in a troop of horse soldiers and the local yeomanry. At noon, armed only with blackthorn sticks, and cheering wildly, the people drove the police and cavalry steadily back through the streets of the village.
Unfortunately, property was damaged and a policeman killed by a stray stone. Three men, Barrett, Gallagher and Hannigan, were transported to Van Dieman’s Land in Australia and many others were forced to flee to safety. But the day the cavalry had to back off lived on in local legend.
The
next morning Will went dutifully back to the more boring part of his
task, counting houses; twenty-nine of one-storey,
sixty-eight of
two-storeys, and five of three-storeys, mostly built of stone, he
noted down. Joseph broke in, “And there was the house in which a
man named Kelly was murdered by Lieutenant Hamilton on a Fair Day
just fourteen years ago when he shot into a crowd of innocent
people.” This certainly didn’t fit under the headings Will was
supposed to fill out, so he continued, twenty-seven slated roofs and
the remainder thatched.
“Those roofs nearly all went up in flames when the notorious Lord Blayney and his dragoons came through here in search of rebels some years back,” Joseph informed him. “The whole town might have gone up in flames if it hadn’t been for our curate, Benjamin Marshall. He’s the mildest mannered man you’d ever want to meet, but he stopped Blayney in his tracks with the help of a Captain and a Lieutenant who were horrified at his Lordship’s actions.”
“That same curate rushed into a burning house on that corner right over there to rescue a baby from its cradle where its terrified parents had left it. And now the daughter of that curate is married to one of the richest young men in Australia, one of the Osbornes.”
As they continued down Main Street, Joseph told him who lived in each house: the Sproules, O’Briens, McCoys, Scotts, McCuskers, Fenlons, McMahons, Humphreys, McLoughlins, McAleers, and the Anthony family. Then there were the McGraths, James Gilmore the carpenter, James Slevin, one of the schoolmasters family of Slevins, Catherine and Denis Teague, Thomas Corry, Margaret Cunningham, Thomas Gallagher, and Breege McIlholm.
When they turned onto Church Street, John Scott, the tailor, teased Joseph Fleming about having a new suit made. “I’d never afford that, John,” was the reply.
“Don’t blame it on me if that waistcoat falls off you all by itself one of these days,” John retorted. Indeed the britches Joseph habitually wore had turned almost grey from the lime dust embedded in the corduroy.
By the end of the day, Will had met nearly everybody in Dromore. They spent a little while in Cassidy’s. Though Joseph did not drink alcohol, he sat comfortably swapping stories with the other men while Will listened. If the story was especially poignant, about two brothers who had killed each other over a woman, it was met with a Greek chorus of “oh, the pity of it,” or “sad, indeed that was,” encouraging the storyteller to continue with another one.
Will regretfully returned to the mundane task at hand. Under the heading ’Communication’, he noted with some feeling: It is notorious in the parish that half the number of roads actually contained in it would be more serviceable if kept in good repair than all the wretched lines which now intersect it in all directions.
Indeed, he noted: There has been little improvement in the parish of any kind for many years, because of the absence of proprietors and of the rector of the parish who had not lived in it for forty years back until three years ago when the present incumbent arrived.
And twenty-one-year-old Will couldn’t resist adding a cheeky comment of his own to amuse his superiors: It is a singular fact that almost all the parishioners belonging to the Church of England are at heart mere Methodists, and though they appear at church in the morning, they never fail to season the information they derive there with a little Methodist rant in the evenings. Never mind that his friend, Joseph, was a Methodist.
The Old Church on the Brae
Early the next morning, the two men climbed up to the Old Church on the Brae. Will admired the mullioned transept window. Joseph had patched some of the cracks around it, but more cracks were appearing, and the roof was obviously beyond repair. There was talk of a new church, but the rector was occupied with the fine new glebe house he was building for his large family. And on July 12th of that year he had tactlessly placed a large Orange flag on the church roof, and another one over the entrance to the graveyard where Catholics and Protestants lay side by side.
Joseph showed the younger man the grave of his own grandfather. Thomas Fleming, born 1713, died aged 94 in 1807, son of John Fleming of Mulnagoe, so the inscription read.
Will sensed the attachment this man had to this place and the people who had gone before him. He thought with regret of his own father, now living in grand style in Italy. He and his brothers had been obliged to go with their mother to live with their grandmother in the tiny Welsh hill village of St. Asaph, gateway to the picturesque vale of Clwyd, with the smallest ancient cathedral in the whole of Britain. All these years his mother had supported them with her poetry. How he wished he had had a father like Joseph.
His thoughts were interrupted by an apologetic cough. A man of middling height had entered the graveyard with another, who carried a large shovel over his shoulder. “Our curate, Mr. Marshall, who saved Dromore, and our friend to the end, Mr. Walsh.” The gravedigger touched his cap then moved to his task.
Will murmured appropriate phrases but the sight of a new pit being dug opened up a raw wound. Only last May, he had watched his beloved mother being lowered into her own grave. Felicia Browne Hemans, age 41, the inscription read. She had died of tuberculosis in her tiny house on the edge of St. Stephen’s Green. He had found her there. The only relative at the graveyard had been his uncle, now Chief Constable of Dublin’s Metropolitan Constabulary. Felicia had come to Dublin to be near him.
Every schoolboy in the Empire probably knew her most famous poem by heart - at least the first two lines of it:
The boy stood on the burning deck,
Whence all but he had fled.
He wanted those lines carved on her tombstone, but had been dissuaded by his uncle. Would anyone remember them ten, twenty years from now?
His mother had been a friend of the poet Wordsworth, had stayed with him and his sister, Dorothy, at Dove Cottage in England’s Lake District. The great poet had praised her poetry, and her gentle spirit. She had won the hearts of a generation of Victorians who perhaps saw in her writing a reflection of their best selves. She had raised five sons, all the while a semi-invalid. Would even her name be remembered one hundred years hence?
Will looked around at the other graves, some unmarked, some with headstones leaning a little crazily to one side. Near the entrance a few were enclosed by a fine wrought iron railing, engraved with the name Noble. “Some of George’s wealthier relatives, I believe, those who own their own land, unlike the rest of us,” Joseph explained, with no trace of regret. Will thought of Jane, the young Jane Noble, who reminded him a little of his mother, with her dark hair, and of his new friends, George and Joseph. How strange, he thought, that the lives of these people I have just met should become so interwoven with mine, as though each of our stories is part of some greater whole, unfolding all the while. Curious that in this isolated village he should no longer feel so alone. A few days ago it was just a dot on a map.
It was peaceful, here on the Brae. Across the road, a few cows grazed placidly against the slope of the hill. One raised its head, stared at him, then bawled companionably. He almost laughed out loud, remembering his mother’s favourite poem. He repeated the words slowly,
The
curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd winds
slowly o’er the lea,
The plowman homewards plods his weary
way,...
“Do you know it, Joseph?” he asked hopefully.
The older man nodded, “We learned it in school.
Now
fades the glimmering landscape on the sight,
And all the air a
solemn stillness holds,
Save where the beetle wheels his drowsy
flight,”...
A cough tinged with merriment broke in on them. “I don’t see a beetle anywhere, do you?” said the voice of the curate at his side. “Ah, but our Thomas Gray got it right, Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard and here we are.
Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid
Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire;
Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest,
Some Cromwell, guiltless of his country’s blood.”
“And ours too,” he muttered. “Would that it were true.” And with that curate and gravedigger accompanied Will and Joseph back down the hill to the village.
On their arrival they heard a great commotion. People were running out of the shops toward one of the houses on Main Street. Two of the village’s constables were striding purposefully in the same direction, soon to disappear though a front door now thrown wide open. Joseph followed. He knew the house well; his son, William, had often been a guest there. Its owner was Dr. W. who had been a surgeon on a man-of-war naval vessel for many years. William had enjoyed the man’s stories. They were well told, enlivened by the fine classical education Dr. W. had gained in his early days at Trinity College. Recently, without explanation, William Fleming had ended the visits.
Before Joseph could find out what had happened, Dr. W. was led away in a straitjacket, half-supported by one of the burly constables. Joseph went into the house and found James Dill already there. This young Presbyterian minister had just arrived that August from Donegal, and already knew most of the people in the village.
Little by little Joseph learned the whole sorry story. The visits of the doctor to the local pub had become more frequent. “Yesterday morning the doctor’s sister-in-law, a young girl, came across the street to my lodgings to request me to go over to see the doctor, who she said was very ill,” Dill told him. “I found him in bed and apparently little the matter with him, except a tremor in his hand and a slight twitch of the lip. On my remarking, “You are not very ill,” he replied, “You don’t know what is the matter with me - it is the first stage of delirium tremens. I have had it three times before, and now while my reason remains, I want to prepare for the worst.”
“I was absolutely astounded,” young Dill told Joseph. “I read and prayed with him, pointed him to the Lamb of God who ‘came into the world to save sinners, even the worst, whose blood cleanseth from all sin,’ and besought him to flee to this only refuge of the sinner. I saw him again several times during the day; every time there was a change for the worse.
“Early this morning I was sent for in great haste. I ran across and there I beheld a sight I shall never forget - Dr. W. stood in his nightdress at his own bedroom door with a drawn dagger in his hand; his wife and sister-in-law had fled and he was pursuing them. I prevailed upon him to give me the dagger and to go into his bed, but every minute he started up, and with the most frightful gestures exclaimed, ‘There they are, don’t you see them!’ The surgeon was able to shave his head, but he became so violent soon after that the constables had to put him in a straitjacket, as you have seen, and I fear we will not cast our eyes upon him again except in death.”
Joseph was more than usually silent as they rode homeward. Will was interested to learn more about the young preacher who had faced down an armed man. Later Dill would give a rousing speech on temperance to a cheering crowd of three thousand people in the new Catholic chapel, standing side by side with Fr. Theobald Matthew, the apostle of temperance from Cork. Before he went to bed Will added a self-righteous note to his report: It may be noticed under the head, ‘Habits of the People,’ that there is a quantity of whisky drunk in this small place quite disproportionate to the number of the inhabitants, as the above table containing nineteen spirit shops out of forty-four tradesmen’s houses will testify.
The next evening, knowing Will would soon be leaving, the Nobles invited some of the neighbours. Will still had many questions and now threw one of them out. “Why is there so little new building in the village itself? Why are some of the houses in such disrepair?” The answer came with unexpected heat from William Fleming who had sat silent on two previous evenings. “I was just eight years old when two bad harvests in a row hit our part of the country, 1816 and 1817 that was. Some of my school friends were dying of the fever that followed on after. They closed the schools. People sold their clothing for food - there were children running around naked. There was no dispensary then, no medicine except a few herbs, no doctor.”
“People were just beginning to recover from that, those that did recover, when a second famine hit five years later. There’s a cumulative effect to these things that takes the heart out of people. Do you wonder people don’t worry about a bit of dirt or a broken-down wall?”
Will was intrigued by this man now suddenly so passionate. William was a fraction taller than his father, Joseph, equally broad-shouldered with black hair and deep set eyes. He had the bearing of a soldier but had never carried arms; his skin and roughened hands told of a life outdoors.
Now he continued. “On the other hand, we’re luckier than many a village in Ireland. We’ve two good men who’ve landed in our midst. I take it you’ve been hearing of James Dill, our new young Presbyterian minister who came in here like a whirlwind from Donegal in August and was ordained this month. He’s set us all back on our heels, including our new rector, who isn’t used to a young upstart - just your age Will, begging your pardon - stirring things up, and a non-conformist at that. And then there’s our new Parish Priest, Father Peter Gordon, a cousin of old Benjamin Marshall whom I gather you met upon the Brae. Interesting man is Father Peter, son of a Protestant blacksmith, with his father’s height and strength. He’s gone about rebuilding the church with all that energy, and the willing help of his parishioners. He’s even dragooned my father into helping them insert two lovely new windows, as I’m sure you’ve seen.” Will nodded. He had noted down the rebuilding for his report in his usual laconic style.
On the last evening of his stay in Dromore, Will found himself wishing he had a painter’s gift. Jane sat by the fire mending her lovely red cloak. It fell in folds of rich colour across the dark blue of her long wool skirt. The cloak had been made by her grandmother and given to her on her wedding day. She was just twenty-four years old, with silky black hair coiled loosely at the back of her head, clear skin tanned by hours in the fields and dark eyes that sparkled as she talked. Her nine-month-old baby, Eliza, lay fast asleep in a cradle at her feet. George stood leaning against the hearth, pipe in hand in a rare moment of relaxation. The blazing turf fire cast a ruby glow over the whole family, as though Will were looking at an old painting. He would remember them like this.
Back in Dublin, in his cubbyhole at Phoenix Park, Will reread his report. Pretty pedestrian stuff, he thought. For a moment he hesitated, then inserted one final paragraph. One instance of peculiarity of costume prevails in this as well as in the surrounding parishes of this part of Tyrone, that is, the great prevalence of red cloaks and shawls among the women. At a fair or any other concourse of people this remark cannot fail of occurring to the stranger. Its effect is very pleasing in the crowd. It gives a great air of liveliness and brilliance to the fairs.
With a flourish he signed his name, Memoir by W. Hemans, 30th November, 1835.
Perhaps someone else would see Dromore through different eyes….
Polly Steps Out, 1839
Bridge Road, Dromore. January 6, 8:00 a.m.
“Where is that child going?” George Noble asked suddenly as he caught sight of a jaunty little person vanishing at rapid speed out the front door, wearing his favourite cap at an angle on her tousled brown hair.
“Polly, come back, you haven’t finished your porridge,” called her mother, Jane, without looking up. She was busy stirring a special cake for Little Christmas, ‘Women’s Christmas,’ they called it. All over Ireland women were preparing a special feast for their families.
“How on earth anyone can keep track of such a lively two-year-old is beyond me. I don’t know where she gets all her energy. Probably from your side of the family,” she said pointedly in the general direction of her husband.
George was only half-listening as he sat at a corner of the kitchen table calculating how many pigs he would have to sell this year to pay the heavy lease on his land that came relentlessly due every year. The year of our Lord 1839, January 6th, he wrote carefully at the top of the letter he was writing to the landlord. Already another year gone, he thought. And even though we are better off than some, with no debts and enough land for cows and horses, and bacon enough for ourselves and then some, we never seem to get ahead. If I make improvements, the rent can go up any time that miserable steward gets it in his head to raise his own standing with our big landowner. He came to with a start. “What is that you said about Polly? I’ll go and look if that will set your mind at rest.”
George looked fondly across at his wife who was showing Eliza, their eldest, now all of four years old, where to place currants in the fragrant cake. Jane had grown up on a farm near Enniskillen. Her father was a Fermanagh man, Thomas Caldwell. He married Mary Fair, who had relatives in Dromore (who used the old spelling of Phair). It was in their home that George had met Jane. They had been childhood sweethearts. As soon as she turned eighteen, he had proposed. Now he was worried about what would happen to them if his health failed. His chest still troubled him after the last drenching he got chasing a wayward cow. Shaking himself, he stood up, glad of an excuse to leave the bills and get out of doors.
“Run along with your father. The sun will do both of you good,” Jane said indulgently. Eliza bolted for the door, glad of a reprieve from the morning’s chores. How could anyone stay indoors on a day like this when the whole world had turned into a snowy white paradise? As Jane watched her go, she frowned slightly. This child had an elfin quality about her, with her light blonde hair, dancing pointed chin, grey eyes, and slight build. Already her head was full of stories she had heard, goodness knows where, and could tell off by heart. Her birth had been difficult, unlike Polly’s, and Jane worried a little about her.
Eliza herself had not a care in the world as she skipped happily along beside her adored father, humming a little tune, tugging at his old brown wool shirt to get him to look at a rabbit burrowing through the new-fallen snow.
Polly was already out of earshot in fast pursuit of her little pet hen. She had stepped out into a white world, transformed overnight as if by magic. A heavy snow had fallen, a rare enough occurrence in Tyrone, and soon her little brown hen had turned into a ball of white fluff, scooting along on spindly yellow legs. Barn and byre had turned into a place fit for a princess, glistening and gleaming. The stalks in the far cornfield sparkled with a thousand diamonds of light.
George needn’t have worried. Soon he saw Muff, the sheepdog, gently escorting her charge back where she belonged. Lucky the day he had found Muff, covered with mud, huddled in a ditch by the roadside. When her fur was cleaned she turned out to be a beautiful black and white border collie, abandoned no doubt by a careless owner on his way to winter elsewhere. Muff had adopted Polly as one of her own, to everyone’s relief.
Dublin, 1839. 10:00 p.m.
That night of Little Christmas, their friend, Will Hemans, had been enjoying a comfortable dinner with his uncle George Browne. They had been celebrating Will’s new job, building bridges under the tutelage of one of Ireland’s most distinguished engineers. Neither had noticed the sudden drop of the barometer. At 10:30 when the storm broke, his uncle, now head of the Constabulary, was out the door like a shot, Will following him across the Carlisle Bridge,4 where people were crawling across on their hands and knees. When he could at last stand upright, in a sudden eerie calm where hardly a candle flickered, his uncle was already out of sight.
Then suddenly, he saw two gigantic whirlwinds coming towards him from opposite ends of the street. He was in the middle of the worst storm in six hundred years. A tall chimney came crashing down almost at his feet, bringing part of the roof with it. He could have been killed. He learned next morning from the newspaper that a young man, “as he turned the corner of Sackville Street and Britain Street was blown off his feet, dashed against a lamp post and had his leg fractured in a most shocking manner.” Will had escaped by a hair’s breadth.
All around him the city had the appearance of a war zone, streets blocked by fallen trees and debris, more than five hundred chimneys down and some of their roofs with them. As he turned a corner, he heard men shouting and nearly fell over a huge cannon being dragged towards what appeared to be a wall of flames.
It was the Bethesda Chapel, now a blazing inferno threatening to engulf the nearby House of Refuge for Reclaimed Females. The artillerymen had orders to bring down any adjoining walls to prevent a citywide conflagration, but they stood paralyzed - neighbouring houses were ablaze and one of them now came crashing down. Will saw his uncle amid the haze of smoke and rushed to help him and some of the soldiers bring the terrified women and children to safety. The fire burned well on into the next day before it was under control and only then did Will have a moment to wonder what had happened with his friends up north.
Bridge Road, Dromore, 10:00 p.m.
Earlier that afternoon, the weather had turned unexpectedly hot, the temperature rising steadily towards evening. The snow began to melt. It was so remarkably still that George could hear voices talking to each other a mile away across the valley. The horses in their stalls stirred restlessly. George was uneasy, but there had been none of the usual weather warnings. All day heavy copper clouds hovered, blocking out light and holding the heat in. At nine o’clock a light breeze promised relief.
Both children were fast asleep. Eliza in the outshot bed not far from the hearth. Jane and George sat quietly by the fire. All at once, at about 10:30, a noise like the screaming of a thousand banshees broke the eerie silence. As though the sky itself had cracked open, a violent wind rattled the house to its very foundation.
Every piece of Jane’s wedding delph crashed down from the dresser shelves. The two front windows blew in, scattering the floor with shards of glass. There was an ominous cracking sound overheard, as though the central beams might give way. The chimney shook violently and then before Jane’s horrified eyes, the hearth fire seemed to turn into an avenging figure of the Last Judgment, blowing a cloud of flame and cinders into the room. A tongue of flame ran up the side of the curtain of the outshot bed.
In a single motion, George tore down the curtain, snatched up Eliza and handed her to Jane. Roughly he pushed them towards the safety of the small bedroom where Polly lay sleeping, slammed the heavy oak door shut and snatched up a bucket of well water.
When Jane dared to come out, the hearth room had grown cold. The fire was out, the floor a sodden mass of ashes, shards of china and glass and burnt cloth. “At least we’re alive, the children are safe!” Jane exclaimed, still shaking and shivering from shock.
George said nothing. He made sure the windows were well stuffed and barricaded in case the wind rose again. He looked in on the sleeping children, kissed Jane goodnight, and before she could stop him vanished out the door into the drenching rain to see to the horses. He had heard them screaming in the storm. To his amazement, he found the whole side of the barn down, partly demolished by the wind and the rest kicked out by an infuriated mare who was not about to let her offspring perish in the storm. Off she galloped, colt in tow, and as the storm clouds closed in once more, George heard the echo of a far-off wild whinny. She’s in her true element, so she is, he thought.
Dromore, January 7
The next day, the entire population of Dromore was out in Main and Church Streets, marveling that they were still here. The End of the World had not come, as many had feared. Some had run terrified and half-naked into the streets, only to be met with a hail of debris. Hayricks from every haggard had been lifted on the wind and blown through the streets and far into the countryside. A turf stack had been lifted a foot into the air and then dashed to pieces. No one knew what they owned anymore. All the streams and small loughs were clogged. The old church on the Brae, high above the town, had been severely damaged.
News was coming in from all over. Salt water had been tasted forty miles inland. The Strule at Omagh had flooded as usual, only more so. Cassidy’s, the spirit dealer, stayed open, though all the shops and schools were shut, so that the stories could be told in a proper setting. Fish had been seen swimming down Omagh’s High Street. One man swore he had seen an old lady hanging onto the tail of her cow as it swam past him. Two coffins had been dragged upright at Ballylesson. No one knew whether to laugh or cry.
Up on Bridge Road, Jane sat quietly by the bedside of her husband, now tossing with fever in a fitful sleep. He had come back in the early morning, all but one of the horses safe, but himself chilled to the bone. A coughing fit had seized him and nothing she could do would stop it. Late that evening the village surgeon, Dr. Marshall, came by, but he only shook his head. There was little they could do now except wait.
Jane’s mother came to stay with her. At 3:00 a.m. four days later, Jane wakened from an exhausted sleep, her mother’s gentle hand on her shoulder. “He’s gone,” was all she said.
Neighbours came by, bringing food and comfort and news of the storm that continued to come in from all directions. Jane found something consoling in hearing these stories, as though it made her own loss more bearable. Others were worse off, she could tell herself. In Grenshaw, a mother and her three daughters were killed by a house falling in. In Loughrea, eighty-seven houses had burned to ashes. From Galway and all along the coast came news of ships sunk, bodies washed ashore. A million beautiful trees had been uprooted.
In all the general devastation, the individual stories were most poignant: the watchman in Belfast who was killed when one of the tallest mill towers came crashing down, leaving one small son and his widow penniless; and the weavers of Tallaght who had silently looked at the ruins of their homes on Killenarden Hill, pounded to smithereens by their own looms broken loose, and then had walked away without a word, no one knew where.
And from nearby Belcoo, a letter in the Enniskillen Chronicle and Erne Packet that Jane’s mother read to her:
It is hard to conceive and impossible to describe the melancholy effects of this awful storm in this neighbourhood. Few houses, if any, have escaped, several families were obliged to take shelter at the back of ditches, whilst their tottering cabins threatened destruction, and having fallen caught fire from the cinders and were burned with their contents. One poor man has lost his life - four cows were killed on the property of Mr. Hugh Bracklin - whole stacks of corn, in several instances were carried off and destroyed, whilst hay, straw and turf are to be seen everywhere scattered through the fields. But the most lamentable object to be seen in the general ruin is the Holywell Chapel. This beautiful edifice, the ornament of a wild and barren mountain, the object of the peculiar care of a numerous and poor people, which for years they had been struggling to raise, and which they had now almost finished in a manner, even beyond their means, suited to the worship of the most High, this their great earthly comfort is the most melancholy instance of the irresistible fury of the late storm. The wind having forced open the western door made its way through the roof on the north side and carried off timber, slates, ridge and barge courses, which are to be found at a mile’s distance broken in pieces or ground into dust. The roof on that side is totally gone - the principals only remain, whatever had been left on the south side is falling by degrees. It is really distressing to see the poor people today going about this sad ruin sighing and wailing.
Jane and her mother had often gone to the Holywell near the chapel where people had come for centuries to find healing. It was a place she had loved as a child. The ice-cold water coming in a never-ending stream from deep in the earth, springing up into eternal life, she always thought as she sat there watching, as she had sat that long night beside the bed of her beloved husband.
Neighbours came quietly to Jane’s aid. Potatoes were set and dug, corn planted and harvested. Jane was well loved and respected for her open-heartedness and simplicity. She determined to run the farm as best she could.
Eliza was the only one who could remember their father clearly, a man who now seemed to Polly like someone in a dream. Together with their mother they brought flowers that summer to his grave in the Noble compound in the old churchyard. There never seemed time to arrange for a marker. All of Jane’s energy went into the never-ending daily tasks.
Occasionally she and the children stopped to watch Joseph Fleming and the other stonemasons as they attempted to repair the damage done to the old church by the Big Wind. It was a thankless task. Most of the roof and part of one wall had been badly damaged. All of the lovely old glass windows had been smashed to smithereens. By the end of the summer, however, enough repairs had been done to allow services to resume.
William Fleming Proposes, 1840
Early one September day, Jane was out in the yard feeding the hens when she heard the clatter of hooves. It was William Fleming from across the road. She couldn’t help noticing what an attractive figure of a man he was, astride a frisky young draught horse, which he controlled with a light touch. She also knew from local gossip that he spent quite a lot of time playing cards with some of the wealthier local lads. It was from one of them he had won this fast horse, named Ahasuerus, which was now a favourite in the small local races on the flat ground outside Dromore. Having two horses was an unheard of luxury among the neighbouring farms. Every local mother with an unmarried daughter had her eye on William, but so far he had shown no sign of settling down again. Yet each time there was a crisis on Jane’s farm, he had turned up. It was clear the horses welcomed the sound of his voice. Now all he said was, “a few of the neighbours are coming tonight to celebrate my father’s seventieth birthday. I know Polly has become a special favourite of his. We’d be honoured if the three of you would celebrate with us.” Jane accepted with alacrity. It would be a welcome change from the long days of hard work running both farm and household, and keeping track of two lively children who just now were racing noisily across the field to avoid the crabby old billy-goat.
A year later, to no one’s surprise except their own, William and Jane were engaged. Joseph made no secret of his delight. “You’ll be a good steadying influence on William,” he whispered to Jane. “I know he’s been a little wild since he lost his first wife and newborn child, but there is a largeness of spirit in the man that has not shown itself yet.” The wedding was set for October 15, 1841.
While all the preparations were going on, Eliza and Polly went to stay with their grandparents in Fermanagh. Jane’s mother, Mary Fair Caldwell, was an indulgent grandparent, much less strict about things like bedtime than their mother. To their delight, their Uncle Sandy Fair had just arrived for one of his rare visits from London where he was a Scottish guard at Queen Victoria’s court. He brought his sister a reproduction of the new portrait of the young queen. Polly studied it carefully. Victoria had come to the throne in 1837, the year Polly was born. She thought the young queen looked rather sad and overwhelmed by the task ahead of her, and decided then and there that being a queen was not much fun.
Polly’s sister and closest friend thought otherwise. Eliza looked a little like a princess herself, with her light golden hair that came from her mother’s side of the family. She adored romantic stories, but she soon discovered that Polly was bored by passive princesses cooped up in towers waiting to be rescued by a male hero, so she began storing away tales to intrigue this small sister with brown hair that always refused to curl. Their grandfather, John Caldwell, and his neighbour, Mr. McElholm, knew many of the old Scottish and Irish Celtic stories. Eliza could repeat almost word for word everything she heard from him and the older neighbours. And so Polly heard about the kingdom of Dalriada that once stretched from the top of Ireland right over into Scottish Argyle.
Most
memorable in Polly’s view was the sorrowful tale of Fionnuala, the
daughter of Lir, turned into a swan for nine hundred years along with
her three brothers by a jealous stepmother. Waving a Druid’s wand,
the four children were allowed to spend the first three hundred years
close to home where their heartbroken father and grandfather could
come to see them. They kept their own children’s voices, and people
from all over Ireland came to hear their beautiful music.
But
then they were condemned to fly for three hundred years over the cold
and stormy waters of the Irish Sea. When at last after another three
hundred years the spell was broken, their wizened faces frightened
each other.
And now, to keep Polly from being lonesome away from home, in the big bed in the loft of their grandparents’ house, Eliza whispered another story to her from olden times of three Scottish princesses who fell in love with three Irish princes. Eliza rose to her full height, waved her arms with the drama of it all, her golden hair shimmering in the moonlight as she described the tragedy, the death of the three princes in battle, and the heartbreak of the three princesses as they turned their faces into the ground to die on the spot of grief. Polly wiped a tear from her eyes as the glorious story ended, then promptly fell asleep, curled up beside her sister in the old house with an owl hooting gently outside in the starlit night.
When the girls returned home there was great bustle and comings and goings as Jane prepared for the wedding. She would have preferred to have young James Dill perform the ceremony. She had become close to his wife, Sarah, who like herself had been widowed at a young age. The two of them had shared many a laugh and a shiver at James’s insistence on moving his new family into the most notoriously haunted house in the area.
There was still, however, some lurking question about the validity of marriages conducted by Presbyterian clergy, much to young Dill’s annoyance. And so Jane was married in her home by Rector Henry Lucas St. George, thirty years older than Dill, and seemingly already set in his ways.
For days before the wedding, Jane worried how on earth she was going to keep the two men well apart. The very public letter feud in the northern newspapers between them over a minor incident in the parish of Dromore had kept the neighbourhood amused for weeks. She needn’t have worried.
Just as the rector pronounced William and herself man and wife there was a clatter of hooves accompanied by shouts and shrieks of laughter. A band of the younger Presbyterian farmers galloped up, late for the wedding and not in the least apologetic. Some of their horses had accidentally skittered into the large open cesspool at the edge of the village. The dresses of the ladies, the britches of the men and flanks of the horses were splattered with the reeking stuff. No one would forget this wedding in a hurry.
Once Jane and the children had settled into their new home across the road at Bridgewater Farm, Sarah Dill came over for a visit and a good laugh.
“I can tell that living with a Fleming will never be dull,” Jane confided. “The local gossips are at pains to tell me that Patrick Fleming was a well known outlaw in these parts, one of the rapparees. Ironic when it was the Flemings who helped the Normans conquer the English in 1066. They say Patrick and his fellow rapparees only stole what they needed to survive. Then there was Redmond Fleming, another outlaw who lived by his wits and only just escaped prison. People have long memories in these parts. They talk as if this all happened just yesterday.”
“Now the gossips love to tell me there is a Fleming running an illegal still on the island in Aughlish Lough, making a potent and popular brand of poteen from potatoes, right under the nose of the constables. Joseph just shakes his head when I ask him about it.”
Sarah sympathized with the delights and problems of a second marriage. Her young husband, James Dill, in addition to the letter-war with the rector, had recently stumbled on a cure for cancer. People were beginning to knock on their door at all hours of the night.
The Bridgewater Years, 1841-1847
These first years at the farm were undoubtedly the happiest and most carefree of Polly’s life. She could tell how contented her mother was in her new role. And then there was Joseph. From the first moment she had met him, Polly had adopted Joseph as her grandfather.
Just over six feet tall, with ruddy cheeks, keen grey-blue eyes and the weather-beaten skin of a man who had worked out of doors all his life, Joseph had an easy way with children, animals, and strangers at the door. In earlier years, if he wasn’t ploughing, sowing and harvesting his own fields, he was over at a neighbour’s, comfortable both giving help and asking for it when need arose. He paid little attention to clothes, quietly resisting all his wife’s well-meaning efforts to get him spruced up. “That old shirt is going to fall off your back by itself if you don’t watch out,” Molly would scold.