Brigid the Girl from County Clare Read online

  “So why you leaving if it’s all so grand, then?”

  Brigid was a bit taken aback by Sally’s tone – not exactly sneering, but something about the scene she’d painted did not sit well with the other woman. Brigid knew only too well why she had to leave. “There wasn’t enough to feed everyone.”

  * * *

  The O’Briens were a large family with cousin marrying cousin, generation after generation, her parents included, confusing those who didn’t know the people. Whenever the family got together, whatever the reason, the topic of conversation remained the same: The Great Famine of 1845 – always referred to in capital letters – little more than forty years earlier, when far too many had starved to death because of the potato blight. Many of those who survived emigrated to America. They left in their droves, starting the migration of the Irish around the world.

  Her Granda Michael and Grandpa John, the remaining cousins of their generation, could talk for hours about the hardships they remembered, the people they knew who had died, the ones who had taken ships across the oceans, and how badly the English treated the Irish.

  Brigid would never forget the conversation that started it all – nigh on a year ago, before things turned bad. She could still hear her Granda’s voice ringing in her head.

  “The landlords are a hard lot, most of ’em,” said Granda Michael, reminding them of all the evictions they’d witnessed. The battering rams smashing into homes, destroying everything the families had worked for and built, so they were forced to move on.

  “Aye, but it’s been worse, now, hasn’t it?” Grandpa John had surprised everyone by saying something positive for once. While not as many people were dying of starvation the way they had four decades ago, there were still too many worried where their next meal would come from.

  “Aye, that it has,” Granda Michael had agreed. “But we’ve seen better days too, mind.”

  But not many. Harsh winters, excessive rains and high prices drove many to the brink. Crops sold for profit elsewhere by the English landlords left only the unsaleable and often inedible produce for the locals to live on. That, and whatever else they could grow on stony and infertile ground.

  “We have, we have, but still, there’s food enough for the moment – when the season doesn’t fail us – what with the chickens and the odd pig or two. Mustn’t complain, now. Mustn’t complain.”

  The two men had puffed on their pipes and reflected on their problems.

  They truly believed that while the potato survived, so would the Irish – but each decade, the blight returned, albeit lesser and more localised, with smaller famines, but damaging nevertheless. The years when the crops were light, the English imported corn of poorer quality at cheaper prices, forcing the local villagers to sell their grain for less and less.

  “That may be so, Da,” said Patrick, joining his father and father-in-law. “But I’ve got six girls to wed off. There’s no way I can afford the rents for more land. Can I?”

  “You’re right there, boyo,” said Michael, eager for a chance to complain. “The t’ing is, son, we need Lord Finucane and that other fellow to rent us the land, cheap like. We need more land – like we used t’ have. And where are the cottages for the boys when they wed? Where’re they coming from, I ask ye? Where?”

  “Ach, you’ll be grand, now Michael,” interrupted John. “Your boys will set themselves up right fine, they will. There’s plenty of lasses you can find to suit. But aye, I remember when we had enough for everyone. Aye, those days are gone.”

  A few months later, at another family get-together, the topic on everyone’s lips had been the news about a family from a nearby village.

  “They’re emigrating. To Australia, no less,” Granda Michael had explained. “They got it all planned. They’re sending one of the girls out first. There’s need for skilled workers, farm labourers and servants – or so the authorities say – and she can go for free. They showed me an advert in the paper, they did, to prove it. Then once she’s settled, she sends for the others as remittance passengers or some such. Only have to pay a few shillings each.”

  Brigid listened in on the conversation, unsure of what it might mean for her family but intrigued by the idea.

  “Now, from what I hear,” continued Granda Michael, “this Australia place has lots of land and sunshine to grow crops. And the authorities are offering up the chance of getting your own piece of land to farm – and giving people grants to get started. There’s job schemes to be had for the young ’uns an’ all. And the girls can work in the big houses.”

  “My, that sounds grand,” Brigid had chimed. “But I’d be scairt by so much water, I t’ink ...”

  “Scairt?” Patrick interrupted her with a laugh. “You’ve never been afeard of naught in your life, mo chailín. Not even when your cousins tried to scare you, pretending to be banshees.”

  “Away with ye, Da,” she’d said, giving him a friendly push on the shoulder. “That’s different. I knew it were them.”

  “That you did not – you were too little. But you’re a brave girl, our Breeda.”

  Her father soon forgot Brigid as he entered into deeper conversation. “Tell me more about Australia and this emigrating business, then.”

  In the days that followed, she started to dream of the possibilities. Maybe the whole family should go. She could sell her lacework, or stitch gowns and jackets with lace insets, while the menfolk worked the land. She imagined what this Australia would look like, with modern buildings and roadways, transport and people, and none of the misty, clammy Irish mist or stony ground. Her ideas grew, but her Da said nothing more about it. Time passed in the daily grind of eking out a living.

  Many months later, her father had found her feeding the chickens and collecting the eggs. “Breeda, my girl.” He couldn’t stand still, his voice faded as he paced away from her and back again. “I’ve worried about it for a long time now ... but there’s just no way around it.” He sat on the wooden seat along the wall, clenching and unclenching his fingers. “Ye see ... t’ings is tight. I can’t afford to feed ye all. And the babbies must come first. Ye see that, don’t ye?”

  Her da rested his elbows on his knees and looked sideways at his dark-haired daughter who sat beside him, clutching her basket of eggs. “I have to ask. Will ye wed if I arrange it?”

  Brigid hadn’t answered. She turned one egg over, then another, and ran her fingers over their shape. All she wanted was to make lace. Captivated by the hypnotic, rhythmical flow of Clones lace as hook and thread looped through her fingers. She could believe she was weaving stories of times gone by and passing them on, creating myths for the future. If only she could go to the big city, she would sell her lace and make enough for them all to live on.

  She waited for her father to speak.

  “There’s a fella over back a-ways that’s been talking of wedding his son to expand their holding.”

  “Ah, no, Da. No. You can’t ask that of me. I can’t wed someone I don’t know.”

  “Aye, well. I t’ought that might be what you’d say. We’ll see, Breeda, we’ll see.” He pulled his pipe from his jacket pocket and tamped the tobacco down.

  Brigid’s hands fluttered up and down the handle of the basket, she pulled at her pinafore to wipe her clammy hands, hoping to still her nerves, and watched her father as he lit his pipe. Regardless of her modest efforts, food was getting scarcer, and with less money coming from the harvest, they were headed for desperate straits.

  It’s not fair, her mind raged. Her Da and generations before him had farmed this land. They were rightful tenants. But ever since the blight and the famines, things had never been the same.

  But, aye, they’d managed before and manage they would again.

  She truly believed it.

  Until the bailiffs came.

  Her father hadn’t been entirely honest; only a matter of weeks later the landlord’s lackeys came demanding the rent.

  “I’ve got last month’s rent,” he t
old them as he handed over what little he had, “but not the extra you’re asking.”

  The man, wearing a thick black cape to keep the cold at bay, weighed the pouch in his hand. “This’ll do for now, but we’ll be back. Get it, or you’re out.”

  Each time they came, the amount climbed higher. They took the chickens, the pig and the sheep, until ...

  “They’ve left us nothing,” her mother wailed, shivering with the cold and wrapping her shawl around her more tightly. “They even took the grain to make bread from my bowl.”

  “And if any of you throw your lot in with them,” the bailiff growled at the ragged villagers gathered in support, “you’ll get what’s coming to you too.”

  Despite the threats from the bailiffs, family and neighbours shared their meagre rations, but there was never enough.

  Late one morning the following month, Brigid felt the hairs on her body stand on end when the pitiful sound of women keening reached her ears. She rushed from the fields back to the village to find the bailiffs stripping every house in the village of its food supplies. The women howled. The men, angered beyond control, fought the bailiffs off amidst chaos and confusion. They stormed the walls of the estate, to no avail. No one was home, and no one was listening.

  One day – a day that would be etched in her memory forever – the bailiffs returned. They brought the Royal Irish Constabulary and horses and many more men – and the battering ram.

  Systematically, they made their way through the village destroying home after home. The pounding shook the earth beneath their feet and echoed in their bones. With each blow a single lament rose and grew as the destruction mounted, until the keening became a continuous, mournful note that carried across the land to the hills and the oceans beyond, to the place of shattered hopes.

  Her father tried to comfort her mother, who clutched the tiniest ones to her. Their choices were few, and, to Brigid at least, their future plans could not and should not include her. She needed to make her own way in life – wed or emigrate. But how could she leave her ma and her sisters? Anguish washed over her like the ever-increasing rings on water after a stone was dropped.

  The dream didn’t look so grand after all.

  * * *

  “So what happened?” Sally prompted.

  For a few hours, sometimes longer if she was busy, Brigid could forget what happened. She could block out the recurring images, muting each vibration echoing in her head and quelling the panic that consumed her. But not often, and not for long.

  “The whole village got evicted.”

  “What! Why?”

  “The Land League. They stood up to the landlords, refusing to pay the higher rents. They went on marches and protests. People put up stone fences to block the roads and disobeyed the police and bailiffs. Civil disobedience they called it. We even had a ladies branch – they were the loudest of all, demanding fairness. Lots of people in our village were part of the league, but the authorities banned it back in 1881.”

  “And ...?”

  “The Irish aren’t good at taking orders, so they tried other tricks, but the English and the law were against them.”

  It hadn’t always been like that, and it seemed hard to imagine how badly things had got out of hand.

  “That’s why I’m off to find a new life – to give them hope.” A wistful, faraway look crossed Brigid’s face. In her heart, she knew they would not follow – not for years anyway – not while her grandparents lived, and maybe not even then. “There’ll be more room with me gone, and Norah is good with babbies. She’ll be a blessing to Ma, she will.”

  With a quick shake of her head, she shifted her thoughts back to the present.

  Sally had listened to her story without question, but the blank look on the other woman’s face suggested Brigid wasn’t the only one with a story of suffering to tell.

  “What about you, Sally? Do you have family?”

  “Nowt to speak of.” She shrugged nonchalantly. “Left home when I were younger than you, lassie ... Wonder when they’re going ta feed us. I’m fair hungry. I can tell ye.”

  Brigid, although taken aback by the abrupt change of subject, let it pass. She could do with some food too.

  Sailors scurried down the ladders and began shifting people from where they sat. Brusquely, they showed those nearest the ropes tied on the outside walls how to lower the large tables from the roof. Once the tables were in place and the benches positioned along both sides, the corridor became nigh on impassable.

  “Grab yer plates and get in line if’n you wants anything to eat,” shouted a sailor wearing a stained, once-white apron. “No plate, no mug, no food.”

  Doing as instructed was easier said than done. The sailors placed large enamel pots and flat pans on tables at one end. Brigid could see steam rising, and her stomach rumbled, but she couldn’t move for the crush. People tried to go every which way to retrieve their plate and utensils.

  Some of the younger girls scrambled under the tables and stomped down the benches to get to the food first, but the sailors were having none of it.

  “Wait yer turn, young ’un,” one snarled, and used his metal soup ladle to whack a hand reaching out to grab some bread.

  The noise grew louder as the women pushed and shoved, and nothing was going to plan. A sudden deafening rattle of metal spoon against metal pan silenced everyone in an instant.

  “You lot on that side – sit. Wait yer turn. You on this side – come f’ward up to ’ere and stand still. Those at the back get in line. Now one at a time, get your plate. Gawd, help me. I gotta do this every time,” the cook complained.

  Gradually, order returned. Once everyone was standing in line again, the foreign sailors began to serve the food as the crowd shuffled forward in turn. In the crush, Brigid had lost sight of Sally and stood somewhere near the middle. It had been a lesson well learnt and, in future, they would all be better organised. Brigid hoped some might even learn manners from it, but it seemed doubtful. A low rumble of complaint began long before she reached the table to see what was on offer.

  The least likely looking woman, dressed in a once-elegant but now timeworn gown, spoke in a surprisingly gentle and cultured voice. “I beg your pardon, sir, but the fare looks rather unappetising. Is this the standard we are to expect?”

  Raucous laughter met her question.

  “This, my dear lady,” mimicked the sailor with the grey apron, “is better than what you can expect. Wait till we’ve been at sea awhile. Ungrateful shrew. At least you’re getting your grub cooked for you. Didn’t used to be like that, it didn’t. And it ain’t that long since you lot down ’ere brought your own food to cook, and cleaned up after yourselves. Which, in my ’umble opinion, is how it should have stayed ... Next!”

  The exchange did nothing to bolster the spirits of those eating or those who waited. When Brigid’s turn came, she was pleasantly surprised. There was plenty of food, and she’d seen worse in her own village.

  The sailor ladled a thin soup with a few bits of what looked like a vegetable into her mug, and loaded slices of beef with lashings of gravy, boiled jacket potatoes and a thick slab of bread onto her plate. She made her way along the tables until she saw Sally and managed to squeeze onto the bench next to her.

  “We won’t starve, at least,” mumbled her new friend, chewing on a piece of meat. “But can’t say ’tis the tastiest or tenderest meat I’ve ever had.”

  “As long as there’s broth and praties, I won’t mind.” Brigid strained her neck to look around the room. “Will we always eat in here, just us women together?”

  “Dunno. Probably. Why?”

  “It’s just I’d like to see Jamie.”

  “You mean that young fella what carried yer trunk?”

  “Aye. That’s him.”

  “Nay, lass. He’ll be up the blokes end. They won’t let him in here.” Sally dismissed Jamie as unimportant. “What you think of them brown-skinned fellas?”

  Brigid turned her head to lo
ok at two of the workers she’d seen on the wharf and who now helped carry the pots and pans. “I think they look as miserable and unhappy as some of the passengers. Why?”

  “Don’t know as I trust ’em.”

  “Trust them, how?”

  She shrugged, but Brigid was curious. “Why should we trust them less than some of the lot sharing our quarters?”

  “’Cos they’re foreign, of course!” Sally sounded astounded she should ask such an obvious question, but Brigid wasn’t put out.

  “Why does that matter? I don’t know anything more about you or Annie and Lettie than them.”

  “Aye, but least we speak the same language. Not some foreign mumbo-jumbo.”

  “That’s as maybe, but don’t mean I can understand everything what’s said. They don’t bother me, I won’t bother them.”

  “More fool you.” Sally pointed her fork at Brigid and waved it in time to her words. “Never trust nobody, I say. That way you’ll survive. Watch yourself, lassie. Or you’ll find yourself in all sorts of grief.”

  Their meal finished, the two women joined the throng making their way up on deck. The majority of sailors bustling around and clearly doing all the work were the brown-skinned people she’d seen earlier. They were watched over by a few senior officials dressed in their braided uniforms, who were light-skinned and, Brigid assumed, English. She’d have liked to know where these other people were from but felt too shy to ask.

  The line moved forward slowly. Copying the others, Brigid threw her scraps overboard, rinsed her plate and mug in a barrel of once-clean water that now had a floating, greasy scum, and moved on. If she wanted to see clean water, she needed to get to the barrel more speedily next time.

  Sally wandered off to chat with some other women, but Brigid couldn’t see even one familiar face to speak to. Earlier on, she’d heard more than four hundred passengers were emigrating to the Colonies, so she reasoned it would take time to get to know even a handful of that number.

  A hollow feeling in the pit of her stomach seized her. She had yet to learn the skill of speaking to strangers and felt isolated. She’d grown up in a village where everyone knew everyone else, and whilst there were petty squabbles with this one not talking to that one at times, there’d never been a shortage of people to talk to. How would she get on in Brisbane, a place of strangers?