ALTHOUGH IT WAS NOT DARK when we reached Cnoc na Bealtaine in 1927, we did not have enough time to explore our surroundings the first day. The following morning we set out to survey the area. It is a countryside of glens and hills with the bulk of Cnoc Fola forming a backdrop to the sky. The voices of people and the lowing of cattle could be heard from a village far away on the other side of the valley. Nearby one was aware of the murmur of streams and all around us the countryside was bathed in golden yellow sunlight.
A boreen led us to the brow of a hill where our attention was drawn to something out in the middle of a bog. The focus of our attention was an old yellow stone outhouse. This structure was dilapidated and hardly fit for animals. We would not have given this derelict structure a second thought except that smoke was rising from a hole in the thatched roof, proclaiming that somebody lived there. We drew closer to investigate, walking around until we reached the open door. It was so dark inside that nothing could be seen, but we were visible from the inside or our presence had been otherwise sensed. From a bed in a corner of the dark room, a woman’s voice began singing a five-worded nonsense rhyme over and over again. I do not know if the song was to challenge us, to let us know that the house was occupied, or simply for fun. Shyness on our part stopped any further exploration so we made a quick getaway.
The following day we saw this woman and I shall never forget the shock we got. The face was old and haggard, like the face of a hag, but it transpired that it may not have been age but the hardship she bore that aged her prematurely. She was of medium height and dressed in the local fashion – a black shawl. What was unusual was that she had only one leg and this was bare. She was going down the road on the one leg in jumps, with no crutch or support of any kind! Even kangaroos have two legs. When she had travelled about thirty yards she took a big jump to one side into the ditch, where she lay resting and getting her breath back. Once she was rested, she got up on the one leg and resumed her journey.
The incident of the ‘hopping’ woman might have been forgotten had there not been more to it. This poor woman went to mass on Sundays, and from the hovel on the bog to the church in Gort an Choirce is a distance of two miles with steep hills en route. Cnoc na Bealtaine alone is a severe slope. The road also needs to be added to the equation. At the time there were no tarred or tarmacadamed roads in Donegal. The roads, such as they were, contained massive potholes and were covered in sharp stones; in summer they were dusty, in winter they were muddy. A family that lived on the road to Gort an Choirce told me that they regularly saw this woman making her way past, even in winter when there was snow on the ground! Someone else told me that resting in the ditch was not her only stratagem – she would also rest against a tree or a wall!
Gallagher was her name and it is hard to understand how she survived in that hut on the windswept bog. I thought that she lived alone but I have since learned that she had a brother who had the old-age pension, which was worth about five shillings a week.
I met people afterwards who could not understand why she did not use a crutch. If they had seen the ‘house’ and if they thought of the life that prevailed there, they would quickly appreciate her plight – there were no social services in those days nor any thought of them.
I never found out how she lost the leg or how long she had to live with the affliction. She is dead a long time and buried in the graveyard in Gort an Choirce. I like to think that her brave heart must have given up the struggle in the middle of one of her jumps. If that be so, then who is to say that this last jump didn’t take her over the hills into eternity!