THE HARVESTER

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXII, Issue 46, 17 November 1904, Page 23

THE HARVESTER

In the peaceful Irish Arcady where my lot had been cast, the familiar noise of a train was never heard, for the reason that th*>rp was no railway station nearer than ten miles, 'lhe shrill whistle or the labored null of ihc locomotive -was a sound as unknown in ivillanure as the music ot the ' church-gom^ bell ' was in Selkirk's desert island. Indeed, a large proportion, of the adult population of the mountain parish had ne\e.r °yen seen a train, mucli less travelled by one. However, this is not quite lelevant. The subject-matter of this sketch was suggested to me by an incident that happened while I waited for my train to Dublin at the railway station of A , on an aUernoon in the July of my second year in the parish. A special harvestmen's train came in from the West of Ireland, conveying about seven or eight hundn-d laborer to the Noiili . aii, en roiite lor Ujp Englis-h harvest helcis. I had an opportunity of taking stock of them while their train delayed ; tor during the interval a very large number of them sought the third-class refreshment rooms — those who had ' been over ' before being conspicuous by their moleskin trousers and their general air of swagger and importance. The whole scene was for me suggestive of sad reflections, and of one sad and pathetic incident in particular of my Liverpool experience, to which 1 shall presently return. Meanwhile, however, and by way of prelace, I may be permitted to give lny impressions ot this motley crowd of migratory laborers trom the ' wild West.' To be candid, although there were undoubtedly some fine specimens ot physical manhood among them, as a body they presented the appearance of as ill-fed, undersized, and ill-clad a crowd of men as could be seen anywhere. I belie\c that in statin e and physique the;, were much interior to the gathering that assembled, for instance, at the January fair of Killanure. But perhaps in this respect I am over-partial to my dearly-lo\ed mountaan-men. \et, though small of stature, these Western harvesters were all hardy, wiry, well-set, longarmed and sturdy fellows, mured to hardships and capaole ot great endurance. Most of them came from the seaboard and mountains of Mayo, where the breeze from the Atlantic is as pure and Ire&h as the breath of hea\c n itsell, and as life-givmg as t the 'vines of bngaddi.' Hence, ono might reasonably expect them to be of a more stalwart build and ampler girth ; and the only explanation I can oiler lor the seeming anomaly was Hi' poMiive want ot nourishing food in childhood, and partial starvation in boyhood and young manhood. Thfs it was that dwarfed them — tor what else could explain it ? 'i lie air in Achill or Ems, which "those young m^n have breathed since childhood, is laden with health and vigor ; so much so that crowds ot feeble, anaemic Londoners flock theie every summer to recuperate their wasted strength and to woo back- the roses to their faded cheeks. The scenery all round is grand, sublime, awe-inspiring, and calculated to make men poets and dreamers of blissful dreams. *et the poor peasantry who live amid these delightful surroundings 1 are palefaced and often sad and listless and apathetic, because, to put it plainly, they cannot procure enough to eatnot even of Indian meal and potatoes. Achill or Connemara mutton is no doubt a delicious thing, but (ho iiavor of it is scarcely known to the poor cottiers who raised it Indeed, it\ can be truly said— humiliating though the confession may be— that, besides the expectation of bringing home the rent of his mountain natch of artificially created son, the Western harvester nas the aumtional lure to draw Aim away to England of three good meals a day, and that is no slight temptation to a man accustomed to semi-starvation. I noticed that the simple, fnnoccnt youths who were goini^ to England for the first time could easily be distinguished from the swaggering, loud-voiced veterans who had frequently been over before, and whose rich native brogue showed traces of the accent of the Yorkshire yokel— aye, and of his coarse profanity and utteily un-lri:';h scurrility too. Some of them were mere boj s, or ' gossoons/ who, judging from their greenish >vays and their open-eyed, open-mouthed astonishment at ever\thing they saw, had never been far from home befo;e. As 1 listened to them conversing among themselves in the soft, liquid accents of the Gaelic tongue, I thought tihat were 1 rich enough, I should have freely distributed ten pound notes among them to induce them to return to their native villages, where the usual salutation was ' May God bless everything for you ! ' and the usual rejoinder, ' May Hod and Mary bless you ! '

However, I am digressing unduly from the episode of my Liverpool experience which the sight of those harvesters vividly recalled. One evening, during a walk into the country on the north side of the city, 1 met a middle-aged, low-sized man, whose face lit up with joy as he s-aluted me in the mellifluous accents ot the Irish brogue. 'When I told him I was an Irish, priest he took oft his hat and with bowed head prayed a fervent < an paidir '—for me, I suppose, and for himself, and probably for all men. He wore a grey iueze coat studded with hay seeds and chan, a weather -worn 'caibin,' and ' s^gan ' leggings— the Uaditional insignia of the lush harvester. He had his leaping-hook ri .ird scythe-blade carefully swathed in straw ropes ; and the bundle in the checkered handkerchief, suspended from the scythe-snath, which he carried on Ins shoulder contained his wardrobe, the presents he was bringing home to his wife and children, and the precious old stocking with his hard-earned wages in it m gold and silver. Poor fellow ! he looked haggard and ill, and had evidently caught a very bad cold ; for during the short tune 1 conversed with him about the patt of the country that he came from and the priests he knew- there he was frequently attacked with a painfully distressing cough and a difficulty of breathing, that induced me to shorten our interview. On my remonstrating with him on the danger of neglecting such a cold, he replied conhdontly : 1 Uh, your reverence, I'll get over it, with the help of God, as 1 often got over a bad cold before now ; for I'm well used to cold and hardship and wet, in sunshine and storm, this forty long year. Faix, then, your reverence, but I think that I was a bit foolish in sleeping under a hayrick last night, in order to save the price of mj. lodgings— humbly begging your pardon for bothering you with my story. As I was coming along in the dusk of the evening, up there outside Crasby, I saw a cony, comfortable spot under a hayrick by the roadside, and I thought I'd sleep there and sa\e my lodgings. But, as luck would have ha\e it, it turned out a teeming wot night, and I was dLenched to the skm by morning ; and that, with the cold that was on me betore, lett a shiver on me since. ' Well, after eatmg a bit of bread and cheese I tad in my bundle, I started to walk to Liverpool ; and I counted twenty milestones since then, your reverence. IMayuc, I should have taken the tram, but— C4od forgive rue lor bem^ so selhsh !— I was loath to break on my little earnings till I'd get to Liverpool. So I started oft on ' snanks' mare,' singling a bit of an Irish song in tuins to keep up my heart, and praying, too, for strength to finish my journey. And when the shiver came on me strong I used to say to myself : " Musha, Tom Malley, but aren't you the soft gom of a gosscon, to be beat up so easily after one night's wetting, and you atter getting plenty of the best of eating and drinking for the last three months up there at Farmer Swabrick's '' Have courage man, and you'll baffle off this little bout, so you will." ' By the same token, your reverence, I haven't tasted bit, i>ite, or sup since morning, and I'm dog-tired and weak this minute. But please God, and with the help of your reverence's prayers, I'll be better in the morning and able to go home ' I recommended him to a good old Irishwoman who kept a cheap lodgmg-housc near the Clarence Dock ; and as I shook his horny hand I slipped a half-crown into it, telling him to get a good nourishing meal as soon as possible. He refused the money respectfully but firmly. 1 i am heartily thankful to your reverence,' he said. ' Suie I've lots of money in my bundle, and my ticket home, too. I'm rich, your reverence— richer than I ever was in my life before, praise be to God ! And when I get home to my wife and, children I'll be able t 0 buy a liUie cow, I'm thinking, after paying the rent ; for— would you believe it ?— l've all of seve^i pound ten going home this time.' kc spoke in a solemn whisper as he imparted this secret to me, with a proud air of importance that would be mirth-provoking if it were not so pathetically saddening in its touching simplicity and childish candor. Shouldering his bundle, he staggered on toward the city, perfectly indifterent to the merriment which his outte figure excited in some thoughtless passers-by. He took no notice wnatever of their ill-mannered ridicule, nor so much as raised his eyes to admire the splendid equipage* of merchant princes or the faultless attire of the votaries of fashion. No, his eyes were with his heart, and that was far away in a cabin in Mayo where wife and children w r ere expecting his return" ; and he was singing and makings melody in hie heart j^t the thought of the joy, pride, and gladness his home-coming would bring when he opened his bundle and poured out on the table tne presents for the children, and his ' seven pound ten.' But man proposes and God disposes. Oh,

1 how incomprehensible are His judgments, how unsearchable His ways ! ' I had a haunting notion, after he left me, that I had seen his face or heard his voice before, although where or when I could not for the moment remember. He mentioned that his name was Tom Malley, and I now recollected that many years ago — it must havo been h'tteen— my father had a servant-boy whose name was Tom TVTeiia (the Gaelic for Malley), a Connaughtman, who hired with him, and who married our buxom .->ei-vant-girl and returned to his native place in the West. Could this man be the same, 1 wondered. 1 was not very much surprised when I got a sick call to this Irish harvester next morning I learned from Mrs. Moran, the good old Irishwoman already icferred to L that shortly after his arrival at her house he showed signs of weakness and extreme exhaustion , and after he had eaten a tew mouthfuls of the savory meal she had prepared for him, he experienced what he termed ' a woful heat,' which {cave him a nausea for any more food He was very ill all night, and next day he w«s visited by the district doctor's assistant, a kindhearted young Irishman, who pronounced him sufionns from double penumonia of the worst type. Hence I was; called on to attend him. He received the Last Sacraments with that absolute resignation to God's will I have since so often noticed in the Irish poor in the dread hour of mortal illness, and which is Mill to me, accustomed though I am to it now, a marvel and a miracle of the unseen power behind our holy religion among its simple, unsophisticated children 1 Do you Ihink, your reverence,' he said in a gasping voice ' will I rub out of this bout ? Sure I went through so much cold and hardship in my tune that I thought T couldn't be killed by slavery of any kind But I never felt like this before ; and I'm thinking, by the wav I'm caught in the breathing and the quuer feeling all over me, that I have the fever, the Lord between US i^rote^o him as gently as I could the unpleasant news that his illness, was of a very serious nature, tic looked at me wistfully for some time , and then, as if reading no hope in my face, he raised his a \f": ward and said in a tone of pathetic sadness that mo\ed nue almost to tears . ' So I'm going to die, after all, in a strange country. But, blessed forever be the holy will of God 1 ' Sure it was to be Father jewel » But what will become of n.y poor wite and children when I'm gone And they were just expecting me home, the creatures ! But Ini ,pom* to my Ion" home instead. So, m the name of God, your reverence, prepare me for the journey. But whisper Father ' If anything happens to me, won t you Lnd home to my wife t-he triile in this bundle that was telling you about-to Nancy Roche Tom alley s wife, of Baliycana, Ballycroy, Coi.nly Mayo ' And Ull her I was thinking of her and the poor children to the last, and that I'm sorry for the had news they U be alter petting from your reverence about me. Ah, 'hat will be the sorry day for you, Nancy, aslhorc machiec when you hear that/poor Tom is not coming home at all to you-nn, never at all, any more ' The mention of his wife's name, Nancy Roche, confirmed mv speculations about his identity. Now I knew ho was the same Tom Melia who nursed me as a child, and on whose sturdy shoulders I often rode J Pickaback. Poor fellow ! he had sadly changed m fifteen years . and it was hard to recognise in the care-lined ace before me, vith its stubbly grey beard, the smooth fresh cheek of the rollicking young fellow who ™**™**™ the heart of our good-looking servant-girl, Nancy Roche Well did I remember the barn dance or, the _ nig* ot their wedding, and among all that laughing t>™£™~ singing, hght-hcartcd crowd there was none so gay as 6'6 ' By a few pertinent questions I made sure that he was the man I suspected him to be. Then I made known to him who I was. . 1 Ah ' he said naively and with touching simplicity, ■ sure you coulan't be little J ' (mentioning my cmldish pet name) ' that I used to carry on ray back when I went to the grove-paddock in the evening to count the sheep ? Ah can it be— cam it be? Oh, isn't God good not to let me die among strangers, after all ; and to send to mv deathbed a priest that I nursed as a child Sure I'll die as peacefully now as if 1 was at home witn mv wife and little ones. And, Father dear, wont you look after them when I'm gone? Ah, wont you for the sake of poor Tom ? ' . I promised him that his wishes would be carried out with religious care ; and that 1 would endeavor to see, so far as lay in my power, that his family should not sufter want. He thanked me in gasping accents, and, seizing my hand, kissed it fervently and gratefully, while the hot tears flowed freely. Poor fellow ' he was syyinn in his heart his ' Nunc Dimittis ' with true Christian resignation.

Having other sick calls and duties to attend to just then, I left him ; but I returned in the evening, remaining to the end— and his end was peace. Before becoming unconscious, as might be expected, he was delirious, and in his ravings he mingled my name with the names of his family. That of his youngest child, Maureen, a girl of three years as I afterwards learned, was znost frequently on his lips, and he ofter murmured wnh pathetic tenderness : 1 Isn't that a purty babby (doll), Maureen, £hat I have for you, alanna ? ' lie died about the time the steamer in which he intended to sail left the Clarence Dock. Just then little Maureen was gaily babbling of ' daddy's ' homecoming, as his spirit wmge'd its' flight to its true and everlasting home. I sent the precious bundle to his wife, accompanied by a lon» letter detailing the circumstances of Door Tom's death and burial. The writing ot that letter was the saddest duty I ever had to perform. The following summer I took my holidays in the West of Ireland, and I paid a visit to Mrs. Malley at Ballycroy. I ,aw my own letter again, and it was almost illegible—blurred and blotted -with tear-stains.—' Aye Maria.'