Creagh
August 1845
ALL AROUND MARY, THE WHITE POTATO BLOSSOM FLUTTERED IN THE fields. The pale flowers crowned each lazy bed of the crop, for the drills were nearly ready to be dug. The air was heavy and warm. Patch lumbered over to sit near her feet, panting with the strange, intense heat of the day. Mary pulled up her streels of light-brown hair as it was so warm, and closed her eyes momentarily as Con, Nora and Tim played together, while ten-month-old Annie slept in her crib inside the cottage. She was roused from her moment of stillness by Nora, whose freckled face was flushed from running.
‘Ma, it’s too hot for us. Can we get some water?’
The hens clucked around Mary as she walked to the well and filled the bucket with cold, clear water. She dipped the can into it again and again as she and the children drank their fill and splashed water on their faces and arms to cool down. Each time she refilled the bucket and tipped it into the hens’ dish, Patch lapped up the spilt liquid.
Within half an hour the heat of the day was gone, for the sun had disappeared behind a dark heavy cloud. Without warning, rain began to lash down and she called to the children to join her inside as they ran to escape the torrential downfall. As the heavy raindrops beat the ground and the straw roof, she worried how their plants would tolerate such a deluge.
It was the second time this week that the strange rain had come.
‘Mam, there’s a fierce bad smell outside,’ announced Nora. ‘’Tis everywhere.’
Curious, Mary stood up immediately and, with Annie in her arms, went to investigate.
As she looked around, she could neither see nor smell anything except for the peaty scent of smoke from the fire. She was about to go back inside when she glanced towards their fields. Her attention was caught by the strange, sudden wilting of the tall potato stalks, which seemed to have blackened and collapsed. Row after row of their potato plants were stricken.
‘Take your sister!’ she ordered Nora as she made her way to the drills.
Within seconds, Mary too was assailed by a sickening stench – rotten and putrid. She had never smelt the like of it and was filled with apprehension. Taking the spade, she began to dig. As she reached with her fingers, she lifted a clump of shapeless blackened potatoes that resembled nothing she had seen before: the vegetables were a stinking mess in her hands.
Worried, she called for the boys to come and help her.
‘Ugh!’ grimaced Con, covering his nose with his hand.
‘Run and fetch your father!’ she urged. ‘He’s down in the lower woods with Flor, cutting logs. Tell him he’s needed here!’
Her eldest son took off while she and seven-year-old Tim dug a few more plants.
‘Mam, these are bad,’ complained Tim, for the ones he lifted were marked with signs of some strange disease.
Before long, John returned from the woods with Con. Uncle Flor, out of breath, followed behind them with Smokey, the old donkey, and the little cart. John grabbed the shovel from Mary immediately, cleaving deep as he dug into one drill after another, checking the potatoes.
‘God’s truth, I’ve never seen the like of it,’ he said with worry as he scrutinized the potatoes, his fingers touching the oozing softness of the blackened tubers.
‘I’m away to our place,’ declared Flor, his eyes filled with concern.
‘Any potatoes you find that are white and hard, throw them in the bucket,’ John told the boys as he turned the earth, searching the ridges desperately for any potatoes that could be saved from the pestilence that had fallen on their crop.
Mary could see in the neighbouring field that the Flynns’ crop appeared to be in the same sorry state as their own. How could potato plants have turned so quickly from growing strong and healthy one minute to this state?
Over in the small field, the drills seemed a bit better and John dug quickly, the lug of the spade turning up clumps of firm white potatoes that seemed untouched, unlike the other tubers.
‘Con, bring the buckets for me to fill!’ he called out.
Side by side, the family worked together, examining every smooth round shape closely in the hope of finding healthy and edible potatoes. In the surrounding fields, Pat, Flor, his wife Molly and their neighbours were digging and kneeling in the earth, backs bent, doing the same.
When he came to some of the drills at the far end of the field, John gave a shout of triumph. Despite having black spots dotted on their leaves, the potatoes seemed firm and healthy. The family filled four or five buckets with them, then John layered those that bore no sign of disease carefully in the potato pit where they would be kept until they were needed.
Annie began to cry hungrily, and Mary sat down on the stone wall to feed her.
‘Are ye all destroyed too?’ asked their neighbour Nell Flynn, coming towards them. Her hair fell around her face in dirty streels, and her skirt, blouse and feet were covered in mud. ‘There is divil a bit to eat in our patcheen of a field. I’ve never seen the like in all my years. What did we do to deserve this?’
Mary knew how hard things were for the Flynns, who lived with their three sons in a tiny cabin near the end of the lane. They had only a bare quarter-acre to feed them. Nell’s husband, Tom, with his bad hip, was unable to do the same heavy work as the other men, and he and Nell constantly borrowed and begged off their neighbours.
‘Nell, will you have some tea?’ Mary offered her. ‘It’s too hot to be sitting here.’
The older woman followed Mary, who was glad to get away from the sight of the rotting stalks, into the cottage.
‘The boys will go hungry for we’ve nothing to give them,’ Nell complained as she sipped her tea noisily.
‘They’ll not go hungry tonight for you’ll take a few eggs and a half of soda bread home with you,’ Mary found herself offering, for she was used to Nell and her ways.
‘But you might have need for them yourself,’ Nell wheedled, looking around her.
‘I have more flour in the barrel and my hens are good layers,’ Mary insisted as Nell left, trying not to give in to the rising panic she felt at the loss of most of their potato crop.
John stayed outside, searching their fields for any more healthy-looking potatoes, as Mary prepared their evening meal. The children were quiet, their eyes big in their heads, as she served up a pot of the first crop of new potatoes with some salt. To her mind there was a slight taint to them.
‘I think they taste grand,’ said ten-year-old Con, who always made the best of things, as he helped himself to more.
‘What are we going to do, Mammy, when the taties are all gone?’ ventured Nora.
‘Your daddy and I and all of you will be fine,’ she assured them, trying to hide her worry and fear. ‘We have three sacks and some in the pit. We have plenty of flour in the barrel and vegetables, pigs and sheep to sell at the market. We’ll not go hungry, for your father will always get work.’
The children were gone to bed when John finally crossed the door, his black hair wet with sweat. Mary flung her arms around him and made him sit by the fire. She dished up the new potatoes with a mug of buttermilk, which he ate hungrily.
‘At least we’ve three good sacks and some in the pit to feed us,’ she said, serving him a few more.
‘Near two-thirds. The best part of our crop is gone,’ he said forlornly.
‘It’s not the end of the world,’ she replied quietly. ‘We’ve lost part of the crop before.’
‘Nothing like this!’ he said bitterly. ‘It is like some quare disease that has fallen on them. Denis Leary says it is everywhere across the Mizen and that the pestilence came in the mist and the clouds and the rain.’
She thought of her brothers’ fields in Goleen, and wondered if they too were badly affected.
‘I don’t know what we will do, Mary,’ he said in despair, ‘for we still have to find the rent money.’
‘We can sell the animals,’ she said reassuringly.
‘Aye,’ he agreed with a yawn. ‘Besides, without potatoes we have nothing left to feed the pigs with.’
They were both worn out and so made ready for bed. John finally gave in to exhaustion and fell asleep beside her, but thoughts crowded Mary’s mind. She stared up at the dirty thatch, wondering how, with so much of their crop gone, they would manage during the hungry months to come.