ONE OF OUR ADVENTURES IN Cloch Cheannaola that year was to go deer hunting. There were deer in Gleann Bheatha at the time and I believe they are still there. In fact, the deer were so numerous that some of them broke through gaps in the wire fencing around the estate and were a danger to motorists on the road at night.
When the Kennys heard that there were deer in the mountains they were keen to go hunting them. Of course it was necessary to recruit guides who knew the mountain terrain, and also the deer and their haunts. It was important, too, to avoid being caught like the man who foolishly drove his car into the estate a week earlier. One of the keepers noticed the car and contacted the Garda barracks. The poacher was caught on his way home with a deer in the boot of his car! We intended to make our way across the mountain on foot.
We found two men who were willing to act as guides. One was fifty years of age, the other a young man of about our own age. Initially it proved difficult to persuade the older man to undertake the task – he wanted to be certain that we had the capacity and endurance for the walk. ‘I would not go across the road with the like of those,’ he would say, referring to some other people who had sought him as a guide in the mountains. This middle-aged man was as tough and agile as a goat on the mountain and had the vigour of a motor. He was of rural stock that was once as plentiful as bog cotton – strong, active people who would walk twenty miles as readily as others would walk a couple of hundred yards, or think nothing of journeying fifty miles on foot if the need arose.
Seán MacMeanmain, the author, was one of these long-distance walkers. While I never met him – we exchanged a few letters – I was told by my mother’s friend Mary Gallagher that he used regularly walk to Strabane from Castlefin, a journey of thirty miles. It was in her house that he used to stay when visiting Strabane and indeed it was there he was arrested by British police or soldiers, as he recorded in one of his essays. His arrest had nothing to do with whatever nationalist protests were taking place at the time, but arose from his association with Mary Gallagher, who was involved in Cumann na mBan.
Our father, too, had this physical capacity for walking long distances. Some time ago I paid a visit to relations still living in Eiscir Dufaigh in County Tyrone. They told me of a day in 1903 when our father walked from Strabane to see his mother. She was out for the day, so he returned to Strabane the same evening. The double journey would be about thirty miles. Thank God I inherited some of this capacity myself – I needed it, too!
Our deer hunt began at daybreak. There were six in the party – Brian, the two Kennys, the two local men and myself. It is surprising the things we do when young. It never occurred to us to conserve our energy for the long walk by going to bed early. Indeed, we did not go to bed at all – there was a big céile in Coláiste Uladh and we spent the night there. And while we ate a hearty breakfast before setting out, there was nothing left to make up a lunch pack.
We met the local men as arranged and set off past the station of Caiseal na gCorr heading for the foot of Errigal. It was along this side of the mountain that we went, on a path high above the shore of Lake Altáin. We reached the wire fence of the Gleann Bheatha estate at last and passed through it.
The wilderness of heather and rocky mountain in Gleann Bheatha is bewildering. I have never revisited the place since and do not know if some path has been made in recent times. The opinion I formed on that day was that the uninitiated could easily go astray and be wandering about, lost for days on end. And if bad weather intervened …
We walked for a good while before we saw a deer – he was far away and disappeared in the twinkling of an eye. We took a rest break at the lake side – this one was called Loch na mBeadaí, according to our guides. We resumed and walked until midday, when the local men sat down to have their lunch. They offered to share what they had with us but we declined their generous offer. Afterwards we headed up a high mountain and on reaching the summit we could see, far below on the floor of the glen, that noble sight, the big-antlered stag with a dozen doe stepping out behind him. They were so far away that they were in no danger from any shot we might fire.
It was well into the afternoon when we reached an area where the terrain consisted of hillocks and little glens. As we came to the mouth of one of these scattered glens – it was no more than a hundred and fifty yards long – behold, standing at the other end was a young deer! Whoever fired the shot from the .22 rifle scored a direct hit, and the deer fell.
The beauty of the slain animal, with its shapely head, its slender snout and its thick red-brown fur, momentarily rebuked us for taking its life. Until that moment it had not occurred to me how even six of us could carry such a weight of meat for a hundred yards, never mind the fifteen miles we were from home! That problem was quickly resolved – the young man was on his knees, a large knife in his hand. He made a long cut in the animal’s stomach and removed the entrails. He then began to cut the deer into quarters and these were placed in sacks that our guides had brought with them. It was evident from the quick, deft way he worked that our young guide was no stranger to butchering deer.
Soon we were facing home with our booty stashed in sacks on our backs. Despite the fact that four of us had been fasting since daybreak, I do not remember any ravenous hunger. Neither did I feel any great tiredness until we reached the top of Lake Altáin again. When I saw the long shoreline of the lake which we had to circle, and thought of the journey that remained beyond the lake, the fatigue hit home suddenly and hard. Once we had the lake behind us, one of our guides said that there was a house on the homeward path and that he knew the people who lived there and perhaps we might get a bite to eat. At first I thought he was joking – we were still deep in mountain terrain with no house to be seen anywhere. However, he was right – after a little while, a house appeared on our right.
We knocked up the inhabitants and got a great welcome once their dog had been silenced. I do not remember, at this lapse of time, how many were in the house besides the father and mother but there were at least two. A big plate of porridge was set in front of each of us, with plenty of milk and buttermilk. In due course we were asked if we would like some more and I am ashamed to say that we said we would!
I have often wondered about this strange event in later years. Imagine this family living in mountain terrain, ten miles from a shop … the family passing the evening until supper time … a large pot of the choicest porridge simmering at the fireside. And then the sudden invasion, as the Danes would have come in a raid on a monastery in the ninth century or like a swarm of locusts descending on people’s dwellings in the East – the porridge pot emptied in a couple of minutes and all the milk in the house consumed! Of course, I exaggerate – it was not quite as bad as that.
Porridge at that time was made from meal called ‘pin-head’ and it was far superior in taste to what passes for porridge today. Nor could this porridge be cooked quickly – it had to be simmered gently for hours. The same lengthy cooking applied to porridge made from yellow meal, and if memory serves me right it was the latter that we got that night in Gleann Bheatha.
It was late at night when we reached home – our tent in Cnoc na Bealtaine. A few days later we gave a piece of the deer to a local woman to cook for us. It is a shame to admit that after all the aches, pain and endurance we had undergone, we could not boast that we had tasted venison! The neighbourly woman had no experience of cooking venison and instead of roasting it, she boiled it! A watery stew containing pieces of scraggy meat was all we got from our deer-hunting adventure. The roast that I sent to my mother suffered a similar fate. While mother was an excellent cook, she had an aversion to game, so she threw our joint of deer into the bin.
Notwithstanding all the hardship, it is necessary for a ‘would-be’ writer to widen his horizons by adventurous days spent deer-hunting while he is young. That is what William Shakespeare did – isn’t it?