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

a horse and cart with Ned O'Donnel, who lived next door but one to my father's house.

      Sometimes I would go out for a walk with these two men on a Sunday afternoon, that is, if they allowed me to accompany them. I listened eagerly to every word spoken by them and used to repeat their remarks aloud to myself afterwards. Sometimes I would speak like them in my own home.

      "Isn't it a shame the way Connel Diver of the hill treats his wife," I said to my father and mother one day. "He goes out in the evening and courts Widow Breslin when he should stay at home with his own woman."

      "Dermod, asthor! What puts them ideas into yer head?" asked my mother. "What d'ye know abot Connel Diver and the Widow Breslin?"

      "It's them two vagabonds, Micky's Jim and Dinchy's Ned, that's tellin' him these things," said my father; "but let me never catch him goin' out of the door with any of the pair of them again."

      Whatever was the reason of it, I liked the company of the two youths a great deal more afterwards.

      On this May evening, as I was saying, I came back from the day's work and found my mother tying all my spare clothes into a large brown handkerchief.

      "Ye're goin' away beyont the mountains in the mornin', Dermod," she said. "Ye have to go out and push yer fortune. We must get some money to pay the rent come Hallow E'en, and as ye'll get a bigger penny workin' with the farmers away there, me and yer da have thought of sendin' ye to the hirin'-fair of Strabane on the morra."

      I had been dreaming of this journey for months before, and I never felt happier in all my life than I did when my mother spoke these words. I clapped my hands with pure joy, danced in front of the door, and threw my cap into the air.

      "Are ye not sorry at leavin' home?" my mother asked, and from her manner of speaking I knew that she was not pleased to see me so happy.

      "What would I be sorry for?" I asked, and ran off to tell Micky's Jim about the journey which lay before me the next morning. Didn't I feel proud, too, when Micky's Jim, who had spent many seasons at the potato digging in Scotland, shook hands with me just the same as if I had been a full-grown man. Indeed, I felt that I was a man when I returned to my own doorstep and saw the preparations that were being made for my departure. Everyone was hard at work, my sisters sewing buttons on my clothes, my mother putting a new string in the Medal of the Sacred Heart which I had to wear around my neck when far away from her keeping, and my father hammering nails into my boots so that they would last me through the whole summer and autumn.

      That night when we were on our knees at the Rosary, I mumbled through my prayers, made a mistake in the number of Hail Marys, and forgot several times to respond to the prayers of the others. No one said a word of reproof, and I felt that I had become a very important person. I thought that my mother wept during the prayers, but of this I was not quite certain.

      "Rise up, Dermod," said my mother, touching me on the shoulder next morning. "The white arm of the dawn is stealin' over the door, and it is time ye were out on yer journey."

      I took my breakfast, but did not feel very hungry. At the last moment my mother looked through my bundle to see if I had everything which I needed, then, with my father's blessings and my mother's prayers, I went out from my people in the grey of the morning.

      A pale mist was rising off the braes as I crossed the wooden bridge that lay between my home and the leading road to Greenanore. There was hardly a move in the wind, and the green grass by the roadside was heavy with drops of dew. Under the bridge a salmon jumped, all at once, breaking the pool into a million strips of glancing water. As I leant over the rails I could see, far down, a large trout waving his tail in slow easy sweeps and opening and closing his mouth rapidly as if he was out of breath. He was almost the colour of the sand on which he was lying.

      I stopped for a moment at the bend of the road, and looked back at my home. My father was standing at the door waving his hand, and I saw my mother rub her eyes with the corner of her apron. I thought that she was crying, but I did not trouble myself very much about that, for I knew women are very fond of weeping. I waved my hand over my head, then I turned round the corner and went out of their sight, feeling neither sorry nor afraid.

      I met Norah Ryan on the road. She had been my schoolmate, and when we were in the class together I had liked to look at her soft creamy skin and grey eyes. She always put me in mind of pictures of angels that were hung on the walls of the little chapel in the village. Her mother was going to send her into a convent when she left school—so the neighbours said.

      "Where are ye for this morning, Dermod Flynn?" she asked.

      "Beyond the mountains," I told her.

      "Ye'll not come back for a long while, will ye?"

      I said that I would never come back, just to see how she took it, and I was very vexed when she just laughed and walked on. I felt sorrier leaving her than leaving anyone else whom I knew, and I stood and looked back after her many, many times, but she never turned even to bid me good-bye.

      On the road several boys and girls, all bound for the hiring market of Strabane, joined me. When we were all together there was none amongst us over fourteen years of age. The girls carried their boots in their hands. They were so used to running barefooted on the moors that they found themselves more comfortable walking along the gritty road in that manner. While journeying to the station they sang out bravely, all except one girl, who was crying, but no one paid very much heed to her. A boy of fourteen who was one of the party had been away before. His shoulders were very broad, his legs were twisted and his body was all awry. Some said that he was born in a frost and that he got slewed in a thaw. He smoked a short clay pipe which he drew from his mouth when the girls started singing.

      "Sing away now, ye will!" he cried. "Ye'll not sing much afore ye're long away." For all that he was singing louder than any three of the party himself before we arrived at the railway station.

      The platform was crowded. I saw youngsters who had come a distance of twelve miles and who had been travelling all night. They looked worn out and sleepy. With some of the children fathers and mothers came.

      "We are goin' to drive a hard bargain with the masters," some of the parents said.

      "Some of them won't bring in a good penny because they're played out on the long tramp to the station," said others.

      They meant no disrespect for their children, but their words put me in mind of the manner of speaking of drovers who sell bullocks at the harvest-fair of Greenanore.

      There was a rush for seats when the train came in and nearly every carriage became crowded in an instant. There were over twenty in my compartment, some standing, a few sitting, but most of us trying to look out of the windows. Next to us was a first-class carriage, and I noticed that it contained only one single person. I had never been in a railway train before and I knew very little about things.

      "Why is there only one man in there, while twenty of us are crammed in here?" I asked the boy with the clay pipe, for he happened to be beside me.

      My friend looked at me with the pride of one who knows.

      "Shure, ye know nothin'," he answered. "That man's a gintleman."

      "I would like to be a gintleman," I said in all simplicity.

      "Ye a gintleman!" roared the boy. "Ye haven't a white shillin' between ye an' the world an' ye talk as if ye were a king. A gintleman, indeed! What put that funny thought into yer head, Dermod Flynn?"

      After a while the boy spoke again.

      "D'ye know who that gintleman is?" he asked.

      "I don't know at all," I answered.

      "That's the landlord who owns yer father's land and many a broad acre forbye."

      Then I knew what a gentleman really was. He was the monster who grabbed the money from the people, who drove them out to the roadside, who took six ears of every seven ears of corn produced by the peasantry; the man who was hated by all men, yet saluted on the highways