Children of the Dead End: The Autobiography of an Irish Navvy. Patrick MacGill

feel proud of myself and of the work I was doing.

      Once every month I got a letter from home, telling me about the doings in my own place, and I was always glad to hear the Glenmornan news. Such and such a person had died, one neighbour had bought two young steers at the harvest-fair of Greenanore, another had been fined a couple of pounds before the bench for fishing with a float on Lough Meenarna, and hundreds of other little items were all told in faithful detail.

      My thoughts went often back, and daily, when dragging through the turnip drills or wet hay streaks, I built up great hopes of the manner in which I would go home to my own people in the years to come. I would be very rich. That was one essential point in the dreams of my return. I would be big and very strong, afraid of no man and liked by all men. I would pay a surprise visit to Glenmornan in the night-time when all the lamps were lit on both sides of the valley. At the end of the boreen I would stand for a moment and look through the window of my home, and see my father plaiting baskets by the light of the hanging lamp. My mother would be seated on the hearthstone, telling stories to my little sisters. (Not for a moment could I dream of them other than what they were when I saw them last.) Maybe she would speak of Dermod, who was pushing his fortune away in foreign parts.

      And while they were talking the latch of the door would rise, and I would stand in the middle of the floor.

      "It's Dermod himself that's in it!" they would all cry in one voice. "Dermod that's just come back, and we were talking about him this very minute."

      Dreams like these made up a great part of my life in those days. Sometimes I would find myself with a job finished, failing to remember how it was completed. During the whole time I was buried deep in some dream while I worked mechanically, and at the end of the job I was usually surprised to find such a large amount of work done.

      I was glad when the end of the term drew near. I hated Bennet and he hated me, and I would not stop in his service another six months for all the stock on his farm. I would look for a new master in Strabane hiring-mart, and maybe my luck would be better next time. I left the farmhouse with a dislike for all forms of mastery, and that dislike is firmly engrained in my heart even to this day. The covert sneers, the insulting jibes, the kicks and curses were good, because they moulded my character in the way that is best. To-day I assert that no man is good enough to be another man's master. I hate all forms of tyranny; and the kicks of Joe Bennet and the weary hours spent in earning the first rent which I ever paid for my people's croft, were responsible for instilling that hatred into my being.

      I sent four pounds fifteen shillings home to my parents, and this was given to the landlord and priest, the man I had met six months before on Greenanore platform and the pot-bellied man with the shiny false teeth, who smoked ninepenny cigars and paid three hundred pounds for his lavatory. Years later, when tramping through Scotland, I saw the landlord motoring along the road, accompanied by his two daughters, who were about my age. When I saw those two girls I wondered how far the four pounds fifteen which I earned in blood and sweat in mid-Tyrone went to decorate their bodies and flounce their hides. I wondered, too, how many dinners they procured from the money that might have saved the life of my little brother.

      And as far as I can ascertain the priest lives yet; always imposing new taxes; shortening the torments of souls in Purgatory at so much a soul; forgiving sins which have never caused him any inconvenience, and at word of his mouth sending the peasantry to heaven or to hell.

CHAPTER VIII OLD MARY SORLEY

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      "Do that? I would as soon think of robbing a corpse!"

       —As is said in Glenmornan.

      I devoted the fifteen shillings which remained from my wages to my own use. My boots were well-nigh worn, and my trousers were getting thin at the knees, but the latter I patched as well as I was able and paid half a crown to get my boots newly soled. For the remainder of the money I bought a shirt and some underclothing to restock my bundle, and when I went out to look for a new master in the slave market of Strabane I had only one and sevenpence in my pockets.

      I never for a moment thought of keeping all my wages for myself. Such a wild idea never entered my head. I was born and bred merely to support my parents, and great care had been taken to drive this fact into my mind from infancy. I was merely brought into the world to support those who were responsible for my existence. Often when my parents were speaking of such and such a young man I heard them say: "He'll never have a day's luck in all his life. He didn't give every penny he earned to his father and mother."

      I thought it would be so fine to have all my wages to myself to spend in the shops, to buy candy just like a little boy or to take a ride on the swing-boats or merry-go-rounds at the far corner of the market-place. I would like to do those things, but the voice of conscience reproved me for even thinking of them. If once I started to spend it was hard to tell when I might stop. Perhaps I would spend the whole one and sevenpence. I had never in all my life spent a penny on candy or a toy, and seeing that I was a man I could not begin now. It was my duty to send my money home, and I knew that if I even spent as much as one penny I would never have a day's luck in all my life.

      I had grown bigger and stronger, and I was a different man altogether from the boy who had come up from Donegal six months before. I had a fight with a youngster at the fair, and I gave him two black eyes while he only gave me one.

      A man named Sorley, a big loose-limbed rung of a fellow who came from near Omagh, hired me for the winter term. Together the two of us walked home at the close of the evening, and it was near midnight when we came to the house, the distance from Strabane being eight miles. The house was in the middle of a moor, and a path ran across the heather to the very door. The path was soggy and miry, and the water squelched under our boots as we walked along. The night was dark, the country around looked bleak and miserable, and very few words passed between us on the long tramp. Once he said that I should like his place, again, that he kept a lot of grazing cattle and jobbed them about from one market to another. He also alluded to another road across the moor, one better than the one taken by us; but it was very roundabout, unless a man came in from the Omagh side of the country.

      There was an old wrinkled woman sitting at the fire having a shin heat when we entered the house. She was dry and withered, and kept turning the live peats over and over on the fire, which is one of the signs of a doting person. Her flesh resembled the cover of a rabbit-skin purse that is left drying in the chimney-corner.

      "Have ye got a cub?" she asked my master without as much as a look at me.

      "I have a young colt of a thing," he answered.

      "They've been at it again," went on the old woman. "It's the brannat cow this time."

      "We'll have to get away, that's all," said the man. "They'll soon not be after leavin' a single tail in the byre."

      "Is it me that would be leavin' now?" asked the old woman, rising to her feet, and the look on her face was frightful to see. "They'll niver put Mary Sorley out of her house when she put it in her mind to stay. May the seven curses rest on their heads, them with their Home Rule and rack-rint and what not! It's me that would stand barefoot on the red-hot hob of hell before I'd give in to the likes of them."

      Her anger died out suddenly, and she sat down and began to turn the turf over on the fire as she had been doing when I entered.

      "Maybe ye'd go out and wash their tails a bit," she went on. "And take the cub with ye to hould the candle. He's a thin cub that, surely," she said, looking at me for the first time. "He'll be a light horse for a heavy burden."

      The man carried a pail of water out to the byre, while I followed holding a candle which I sheltered from the wind with my cap.

      The cattle were kept in a long dirty building, and it looked as if it had not been cleaned for weeks. There were a number of young bullocks tied to the stakes along the wall, and most of these had their tails cut off short and close to the body. A brindled cow stood at one end,