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| | Posted on Saturday, June 07, 2003 - 5:00 pm: | |
I started yesterday to write a bit of history for my sons in NZ who know little of rural ireland. I intend (sometime) to write about the Griffiths (Mother's family) as well as dad's. Alan Clarke (Henry's son) told me about this site and I wondered if you are interested in family history as opposed to more general stuff. If so , I dare say that I could edit a short version for you to your specifications. I will be in Ireland in late sept (I think) to see my sister Olive (Brown)- near Bessbrook and Billy in Carryduff. I live NZ. I started working life as a pharmacist (Lurgan, Belfast ) then as a scientist/lecturer (Medical school Belfast) then a while at Johns Hopkins Univ. (Baltimore) then as a scientist at the Veterinary Research Labs. Stormont. Then as a senior lecturer / associate professor at Massey Univ. Palmerston North NZ where I am now retired. I play bowls and spend a lot of time flyfishing in rivers for trout. I spent from 1934-1954 living in Railway Street Poyntzpass. That means that I must be: John Clarke.
My grandparent’s (Robert and Isabella Clarke – Robert and Bella) farm was at the top of the hill on the road to Newry- and then down a lane. You can’t ,miss it –it’s behind the pond. It is about a mile away from Poyntzpass and you had to pass it on the way to my father’s (David Clarke –Davy) farm at Demone. Father’s farm was about half a mile further along the road. Here is a little history and some early memories of these places and characters.
My grandmother had a brother John Reside. He and his wife had one son (don’t know his name).They lived at what became my father’s farm. Their son worked on the railways and drove the engine. At that time (well before WW2) the railways in Argentina were run by the British and he went there to work in a senior capacity with the locals. I remember many carefully preserved letters from Argentina in the roof space at father’s farm. After some years there he became ill and was invalided home. He never recovered and died young. His parents were devastated and his mother died. All this was before my (John Clarke) time and I was born in 1934.
The Reside house had a water supply. It was and is a small stream which arises (or arose) from a little well up the road a bit, on the other side. John Reside stripped to the waist and washed in it each morning-winter or summer. This stream was a very reliable water supply and stopped (or almost stopped ) but once in all the 38 years I was familiar with it.
John Reside lost his mobility –or as my father would have put it “the man was done” and moved in with his sister at Aughantaraghan. That is how I remember him. He sat on his own chair at one side of the fireplace (an old black range). Grandfather had the other side. Once he gave me a penny. I guess that I was about 5 then and I don’t remember him dying.
A consequence of the death or poor health of the Resides was that my father-the eldest of the family- took over the Reside farm of about 10 or 15 acres. Dad’s father gave him the use of about 5 acres of land approached through “Ann’s lonan”- never called Ann’s lane- which was a few hundred yards before you reach father’s farm. But I must digress a little.
There lived in the village of Poyntzpass a maiden of virtue and beauty, Florence Griffith by name, the youngest of many daughters. She had inherited a shop (ladies drapery – with the temerity to call itself “The Arcade”) with a house attached and about 6 acres of land out the County Down road.
In those days it was not unusual for a farmer’s son to live at home and await the death of the parents before marriage. But let us not be morbid or mercenary. Romance flourished. This and a combination of extra land plus a house and shop and comely maiden led to matrimony. I refer to the marriage of Florence and David in 1933. A year later, the writer of this whimsical account appeared on the scene.
This is the story of my memories of the Demone and Aughantaraghan farms so it is fitting that my earliest memory is that I was pushed in a pram from Poyntzpass by what was then called “a servant girl” to my father’s farm. The pram and I tipped into the stream. This had no serious consequence except that I got wet and had to be taken home immediately. Of that I remember little but I was pushed passed Mrs. McKee’s house (one of the 2 small cottages on the right) and was mortified to be dressed in a woman’s cardigan, because even at age two (or whatever ) I wanted no ambiguity to arise as to my gender.
The Demone house was in its original state all my time in Ireland (I left in 1972). It had earth floors and a kitchen with a fireplace which was fanned by bellows and cooking was done by hanging a black three-legged pot hooked on a movable arm. However I confess that by my time cooking was no longer done there. The fire was lit only rarely to heat some water. In this room as I write I have a pot from the house. It is my sole momento, apart from some photographs, from my Poyntzpass past.
A digression into agricultural economics: I write this in New Zealand in 2003. Farms here are big and getting bigger and almost all concentrate on one product. For example dairy farms commonly have 1000 or even 2000 milking cows and a farm with 200 would not be economic. Sheep farms are commonly over 2000 acres. Such farms thrive or despair over the price of milk solids or lamb. Others worry only about the price of maize or wheat. In New Zealand, farmers invest huge sums of money in their farms. Dairy farmers put bridges over streams; put in long walkways for the cows to walk along; put a fortune into milking sheds and cooling equipment and fertilizer is applied by the tonne.
In marked contrast Irish farms, especially in my childhood, were into everything. My father with about 25 acres had sheep, beef cattle, pigs and hens. He ploughed the land too and grew seed hay, oats, barley and potatoes. My grandfather had a much bigger farm but he had much the same mix. Apart from the above list he grew a little wheat and my grandmother kept geese. Grandad had a lot of farm implements and had a tractor and horses. Dad worked for him often and used his father’s implements on his own farm. How did my father and others like him make money out of such a small farm? I look at it like this: in NZ a dairy farmer may invest $100,000 per year in his farm eg buy new fences, milking gear and fertilizer and may get a total income of say $300,000. He may also have a couple of employees and pay them $100,000 so that he pockets $100,000 and is happy.
If prices went up so that he grossed $400,000 his net profit would be $200,000. Great! But if prices went down so that he grossed only $200,000 he did not make a cent that
Year.
Now look at Irish farmers of whom my father was an extreme example. He invested almost no money, only work. Fences? All were hedges and if they had a hole it was fixed with a branch cut from a thorn bush. Fertiliser? He kept pigs and they produced it free for him. A tractor to spread out the pig dung? No he had a pony and cart and shovelled it on and off by hand and then spread it by hand. I know, I often did it! An employee? You must be joking. Any task needing more than one person meant that someone of the family, including his brother Bobby helped. Cows, we never had more than three, were milked by hand. The calves which became beef cattle, were fed milk from a bucket. Sheep were clipped by hand. His hens were fed on his own oats but I have to admit that he bought meal for the pigs. That was his only significant outlay. With such low cost input and such diversity of income a yearly profit, albeit always a small one, was assured.
Since nobody lived there the farm was a lonely place and I hated working there. However I spent much more time at my grandfather’s farm where there was always people around. It is that farm I remember best and will describe here.
In the 1940s my grandparents and their son, my uncle, Bobby lived there. Grandad had a lot of farm equipment much of which became redundant as mechanization and technology changed farming. Let me describe the harvest of hay and “corn”. When we said corn we referred to oats since it was by far the main cereal crop. Oats became ripe for harvest around 15 august. The crop was cut using a reaper labelled McCormack; Chicago; USA. It was pulled by two horses and needed two people to work it. One drove the horses –this was the easy bit that I sometimes did. The oat stalks as they were cut fell on an articulated platform (kept at about 45 degrees by the second worker’s foot) just behind the cutting blade and were collected for a few yards until there was enough for a sheaf. The second worker lifted his foot which allowed the platform to go flat to the ground. Then using a rake the loose cut stalks were pressed down a little while the platform moved on. The worker-usually my dad- then pressed down with his foot which raised the platform to allow it to collect another potential sheaf.
A row of cut corn was called a swathe and a row of workers tied the corn into sheaves. To do this they lifted the loose sheaf, took a handful of stalks from it which was put around the sheaf, twisted the ends together to tighten the sheaf a bit and pushed the loose end was under the “belt”. This was then a completed sheaf. When the sheaves were tied another swathe was cut.
The sheaves were collected near the end of the day and made into stooks. Stooks were made from four or six sheaves. They were loosely tied at the top to prevent wind from toppling them.
The stooks were left for the grain to complete the ripening process and to dry out. This took a week or two in good weather but often took over a month if it was wet. When dry the stooks were brought together in the field into small stacks about 8 or 9 feet high. This made the oats safe from more rain. Later the small stacks were taken sheaf by sheaf by horse (later tractor) and cart into the farmyard and put into big stacks until the thrasher came. Building stacks was a bit of an art form. There were two requirements: the stacks must not fall down and the sheaves, especially the outer ones must be placed at an angle with the inward facing seedheads higher than the outer stalk ends. This is so that rain falling on the outside would run down the outside and not into the center of the stack. The tops of the big stacks were thatched with rushes to minimize the effect of rain.
Seed hay –perennial ryegrass- was treated the same way as oats. It was harvested starting around 12 july. But hay not harvested for seed –we called it “loose hay” was cut in June. It was turned by a tedder until dry. It was then put into small stacks and these could later be pulled intact on to a flat cart –a hay float- and taken to the farm hayshed.
Thrashing was a big and communal event on farms. My earliest memories were of coal-fired steam engine pulling the thrashing machine. The thrasher was placed, the wheels cogged to keep it in place and the engine turned around to face it. A very long belt from the steam engine drove the machine. There were plenty of helpers, unpaid since it was work done on a reciprocal basis. Each sheaf was forked up to a platform. A worker (me often when I was a little older) grabbed it, undid the tie and threw it to the thrasher man who fed it into the thrashing hole. There was another sheaf-untier on the top so sheaves came to central man and thus the hole, from both sides.
Mice ran and even rats out of the corn stacks especially if they had been left untouched for a few months. Shouting, dogs barking and even the odd gunshot were heard when vermin appeared. As a young child the resultant excitement was the bit I liked best.
The oat grain appeared from hoppers and was collected in bags which were sewed up when full. The straw came out of the top back and it was carried into the hayshed and piled to the roof. Every man (this was not women’s work) knew his job. I never heard an argument and it all went like clockwork. After all it had been done for generations and people had grown into their jobs. For example my father always collected the grain in sacks and sewed them up neatly. Someone else carried them to a barn. My grandmother was great at providing food for all the workers and it was generally arranged that the thrashing at their place started in the morning and she provided lunch. I forget what food was served for lunch (we called it dinner) except that there was usually fresh peas (pronounced “pays”). To ensure this, a huge row of peas were always growing in the garden. These were planted to ensure a supply at the right time.
I must emphasise that the above description is my earliest memories from around 1940 to 1945. Things started to change. Tractors replaced steam and a “binder” cut the oats and tied it into sheaves. But this is about the old times so I will largely ignore later advances.
To try to avoid boring my reader or readers, if there is more than one, with agricultural details I will digress and record a few different sort of memories.
There was a large orchard down the lane before you came to the house. It had many damson and apple trees which were mainly “Bramley Seedlings”- great cooking apples but too tart to eat. However there were also some plum trees with sweet juicy fruit in season. One day I was playing in Poyntzpass with Charlie Morrow who lived near me in Canavan’s pub. I mentioned these plums and he persuaded me to take him up to get a feed of them. We had got down the lane and were about to climb the hedge into the orchard when we met Mrs Mc Kee who was visiting grandma. We told her we wanted plums and off she went. I had a vague feeling that since I had brought a visitor who like me wanted plums, I should have asked permission. I should say that if I was there on my own at the weekends as I frequently was I could eat all the fruit I wanted without asking anyone. Mrs Mc Kee, as she told me later, remarked to grandma that a couple of boys (no names mentioned) were eating her plums. Grandma , without explanation or comment went to investigate. What Charlie and I saw was this old woman approaching us with a big stick and shouting. We asked no questions and legged it!
I was a bit apprehensive when I appeared at the farm on the weekend but I need not have worried. Mrs Mc Kee had asked gran what the fuss was and she told her. Mrs McKee asked- did you not recognize John? Gran had not ,and she was a little embarrassed too when next we met.
This story is basically my memories of the war years. Food rationing was a big deal especially for townies. Grandma made butter (of which more later) and sold her small surplus. Meat was in short supply but gran always had bacon. How did they manage it?
Like all farmers they kept pigs. At intervals (about twice a year I think) It was suggested to me that I go home early – very unusual since I came and went at my convenience. I disappeared but not as far as was sometimes thought. A couple of butchers appeared and slaughtered a few pigs. These were turned into bacon and big hunks were stored in salt. Hardly the crime of the century but the Clarkes were usually lawabiding folk. Did they bend the law a bit? I remember my grandfather telling two stories of events well before my time.
Shooting pheasants: to show that I won’t tell tales of others that I would hide in my own case I should confess that I have a criminal record. Some time around 1960 I bought a shotgun and got a license to shoot rabbits, pigeons etc. (I had always used granddad’s gun for years without a licence). Thinking that I was now all legal I went up towards Markethill to where I was not known and shot a pheasant without a game certificate. The owner was watching and I was fined a pound. I had to record this on official forms several times: when I applied for emigrant’s visa to the USA (I got one) and when I applied for a job at the Veterinary Research labs., Stormont. The tendency to shoot pheasants may be inherited.
Early history: all the land around “The Domain” belonged to what we called “The gentry”.I refer to what was then Close’s domain which was and I suppose still is surrounded by a high wall. All the land outside the wall, including my father’s farm belonged to Close family but the government took it from them and sold it to the local farmers. They paid, annually over a long period, a sum of money which included capital and interest and the land became theirs eventually. The annual payment involved became nominal due to inflation but my father only fully owned his land around 1960.
My grandfather as a young, but married, man owned the land below my father’s farm and across the bog at the bottom. This land belonged to the Robinson family (Henry ) in my time. It is close to Close’s domain and Closes employed gamekeepers who helped with the hounds and reared pheasants which were shot by “the gentry”. These pheasants came in numbers and fed on the corn and stooks just outside my grandfather’s house (before he bought the Aughantaraghan farm). He got up one morning very early and got 2 birds with one shot –highly illegal. Soon the gamekeeper arrived. Did he hear a shot? When? Just at daybreak (about 4.00am in summer). No, he was always asleep then. The birds were plucked, eaten and the feathers burned. Grandad reckoned that the feed of pheasants paid for the lost corn. Note: in 2003 in NZ I pay $3.00 for a single tail feather of a pheasant. I use it to tie “pheasant tail nymphs” for fly fishing. I use the original Frank Sawyer pattern.
Years later he was not so lucky. They were cutting corn at “Gallow’s” farm- that’s opposite Sam Robinson’s farm. The land belonged to uncle Bobby (Clarke). They had a helper who remarked on all the pheasants which flew out as the corn got cut. After lunch another pheasant flew out – the helper, not one of the family who would not have dared with granddad there- had got a shotgun at lunchtime and hidden it until the bird appeared. He shot it and from over the hedge a gamekeeper appeared. Grandad was wild at the unsubtle poacher but also resented a prosecution of his worker. He threatened to sue Closes for all the lost grain if the man was prosecuted. The matter was dropped but the conclusion was – if you want to do a bit of poaching do it with a bit of subtlety and finesse, not in public at midday.
As an introduction to another story I should say that at the Clarke’s vets (ie veterinary surgeons) were seldom if ever called to help with animal health. A combination of cost and a feeling that (since the call if it occurred would be very late) the vet could do no good anyway. I need also explain that Swine Fever is a virus disease which like foot and mouth disease leads to the slaughter of animals. This was accompanied by little/no compensation at the time of this story.
Well before the war and before my time granddad diagnosed swine fever on his farm and called the vet. He assured him that since he (granddad) knew it was swine fever there was no need for the vet to come in person. However the vet came immediately. I am sure that he was antagonized by of granddad’s attitude and said he was wrong. Grandad urgently got a “dodgy” butcher/dealer and put the pigs on the train (just down the road) and by evening they were on the night boat to Liverpool. The vet thought things over and appeared first thing the next day. Too late. Grandad was in the clear- the vet had assured him it was not swine fever.
Not a family story just a friend’s problem around that time. These were the years of smuggling food eg bacon, butter etc and clothing eg nylon stockings and expensive jewelry from the republic. This friend had got married but left the purchase of an expensive engagement ring until they could get down to Dublin. They bought the ring placed it on the lady’s finger and also bought some butter. On the way back on the train the lady got nervous, took the ring off without telling her husband and shoved it into the pound of butter. The butter was found and confiscated. She, weeping, told her husband. He went to the customs man, pointed to his weeping wife and attributed the tears to the lost butter which he assured the customs man was for her mother who was near to death and had asked for butter as a last luxury in life. The man’s heart softened although rumor has it that a dollar or two helped. “OK” he said “just go and pick it up from the pile of confiscated butter”. Sad ending “How the hell could I tell which pound of butter was yours” he explained.
My grandmother’s role: male and female roles were sharply differentiated in those days. Grandad was the outside man, grandma looked after the domestic arrangements. However there were exceptions: grandma looked after the eggs and the geese. She started with three geese- two geese and a gander- in the spring. The geese were free to roam around and did not need to be fed. They nested anywhere and everywhere and the challenge was to find their nests and take the eggs. Sometimes they layed on the island in the pond so getting the eggs was a messy business. The eggs were they put under a “clucking” hen which hatched them. This kept the geese laying so that she ended up with about 30 gooslings which were reared and sold at Christmas. One year since others were busy I volunteered to pluck the lot. Simon Ryan killed them (the squeamish should miss this bit) by putting their neck under a shovel shaft on which he placed his feet and he pulled with all his strength. Plucking geese is a terrible job –they have layers of feathers and the final down is difficult to get rid of. After 30 geese… never again. Of course at an earlier stage the hens got the surprise of their life when their “chickens” started to swim.
Life in those days was unexciting and predictable but people amused themselves by playing little tricks. Grandad smoked a pipe, he had plug tobacco which he carried in his pocket. When working in the fields the first thing he did was to get out his penknife, cut bits off the plug and light up. This always took a lot of matches. Grandma was frugal and complained about the zillions of boxes of matches he used. Consequently when he saw matches at meal time he gave the box a shake to make sure that it was not empty and quietly pocketed them. Simon Ryan who worked for him was a joker. He got new-looking empty matchboxes, put some oats into them and left them in the kitchen. Grandad when he found himself with oats, but not matches, in some field always said the same thing ..Ryan! up to your damned tricks again!
Most beggars who came to the house were chased off by gran who shook a stick at them but longstanding tradition allowed one or two to come to the house and gran gave them bread. Grandad was usually an amused non-interfering bystander but I remember that once he asked an aged tramp if he would like some potatoes. Of course he would. Grandad then gave him a hundredweight (50 kilos) bag of them which he placed on his back. This burden had to be carried up the steep lane and another mile to the village… as granddad well knew there was no chance. The bag was dumped after a hundred yards. The old fellow put some spuds in his pocket and tramped off. The bag was returned with much mirth whence it came.
Lets get back to farm activities.
Cows were milked by hand twice a day. The milk was separated from the cream in a separator –what else?. This involved turning a handle which took a bit of effort. If you turned it fast enough a bell rang clearly but if you were too slow the bell gave a click. I used to turn the handle but could not slack because of the bell. The skim milk was fed to the pigs and the cream was put in a huge crock and left to go sour. About twice a week the sour cream was churned by gran to make butter. It was put into a churn and this was rotated on its pivot till the fat ie the butter separated from the buttermilk. I often did the churning but gran recovered the butter which came in very soft blobs. It was translucent and light yellow- quite distinguishable from bought stuff- and it was worked with little wooden paddles into pound lumps. Salt was added and if it was too pale some “butter yellow” dye was added at an early stage. We called it “country butter”.
How about my early education?
Perhaps time has helped me to put on rose-tinted glasses. I started school at five. The school had two classrooms- one had a mistress and the other had the master, Mr. Harvey. I don’t remember the name of the “mistress” but she taught me to read and write within two years and when 8 or so I got to the master’s room. He was a man of talents. He loved mathematics (algebra and geometry- which he called Euclid) and classical music. As far as English is concerned he concentrated on the formation of the actual letters rather than on any content we had to write.
Around the piano,which he loved, we sang arias (English language versions) from various operas.eg Verdi’s Rigoletta “La donna e mobile”.and J S Bach’s “Schafe konnen” – Sheep may safely graze. I still sing the latter occasionally but Kathleen Battle does it better. I realized only many decades later that this sort of music was not common in primary schools. However we also sang Irish songs especially “The minstrel boy to the war has gone/ In the ranks of death you’ll find him./ His father’s sword he hath girded on/ and his wild harp strung behind him. Land of …Etc.
He taught “English composition”. To do this we wrote “compositions” the subject of which was some simple thing –almost always food eg Bacon. For each line of writing there were four lines in the book (inner two green outer two red) and you matched the writing to the four“copperplate” lines. The content was not criticized – only the actual writing and the spelling. So to avoid thought and new words we always started with the same sentence “Bacon(or whatever) is rationed now because of the war” This, with the huge writing, filled half the page. “bacon has lean and fat bits and has a rind”would complete the page.
We all knew our “times tables” and in those days you added pence…
Eg seven nines are sixty three pence five and threepence.
The geometry I forget but he was keen on algebra. However we solved only simple equations like 3(5x + 7) - 4(2x+ 7)-14 = 0. Solve for x. Once you learned to do them they were boring but we never got any further.
We also “parsed” sentences. This was actually useful later but is a lost art and when editing my students’ Masterate and PhD theses many decades later I often had to explain the difference between an adjective and an adverb- not to mention the fact that sentences can be improved by punctuation. Spelling is not now too much of a problem now due to spellcheckers. Before those days I remember a thesis (not my student’s!) being returned because in descriptions of chemical reactions various substances were oxidized by potassium pomegranate. Note for non-chemists: should be potassium permanganate. Spellcheckers are no help with Aughantaraghan of course. I was sent at age nine to a preparatory school in Newry. That made life more serious. But I digress.
Hygiene: remember I speak of the war years. There was no toilet at my father’s farm and the only toilet at grandad’s place was a dry one which was approached via the front door. I never used it nor do I remember any man going into it. We made our own arrangements. There was a huge garden, many trees, many barns etc. so privacy was not a problem. Toilet paper? There may have been newspaper in the dry toilet but that was not for men. What did we use? There is an old rhyme which may give you a clue.
In days of old when men were bold/ and paper was not invented/ men wiped their ass with a lump of grass/and went away quite contented.
There was no bathroom until about 1949 and men shaved by the kitchen sink. Bathing arrangements? I never stayed there at night and don’t know. Water was brought into the house by buckets. The pump was about 20 yards from the door. Funny thing I never saw any of this as being a problem. Times change. To be continued… |
Willmorr (Willmorr)
Username: Willmorr
Registered: 8-2009
| | Posted on Sunday, August 09, 2009 - 2:46 am: | |
Cant wait for second instalment John Especially enjoyed the part about my late brother Charlie and the plums Hope you are well Willie |
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