Even on Days when it Rains (5 page)

I had been heartbroken the first day I arrived at the Foleys' to start my job, and I was just as upset the day I was leaving them. The tears ran down my cheeks as I bade them farewell. It cut me to the bone
to
see them so sad. Two wonderful people, they were. I never forgot them.

Six months was a long time to be away from home, especially as it was the first occasion. It was good for me, though. I had experienced a different kind of life through the Foley family. I had become a bit more confident from having to deal with new people. I had probably grown up a bit. My homesickness had gone away after a few weeks, but as I returned to Owey the excitement started to build up. By the time I reached the island I was ready to explode.

My father was down at the shore to meet me, and he had a big smile on his face.

‘God, Julia you're after shooting up. What were they feeding you in Derry?' he laughed.

My mother had the tea ready when I stepped through the door. ‘It's lovely to have you back in our wee house,' she said. ‘I never missed anyone as much.'

My mother and father missed every one of us when we went away, of course.

James and Edward were away picking potatoes, but Owenie and Maggie were in the house. And they wanted to hear everything about my time with the Foleys.

I was surprised that it took me a few days to settle back on Owey. It was strange at first going back into my old life. And working on the farm again, that was the hardest part. I'd been softened up during my employment with the Foleys because it was housework. It was a lot more genteel. Now I had to become a farmer again.

I remember the first time a radio arrived on Owey – what excitement that caused! A man by the name of John Gallagher, a relative of mine who lived across from our house, was the proud owner of the box, which was fascinating to look at with its knobs and dials. We all watched, adults included, with childish fascination as John switched it on, and it crackled, whistled and hummed as he searched for a station. As he tuned it in and voices came through, we were staring at it in wonderment.

From then on, John's humble cottage was the most visited home on Owey. Everybody made a nightly pilgrimage to the Gallaghers' to hear whatever was on the radio, which had only one station, Radio Eireann. John was an easy-going man who possessed a great sense of humour and was always laughing at something or other. His wife, Peggy, who was a native of Scotland, was equally good-humoured and good-natured; they were a very
hospitable
couple. Everyone who visited that house was given a cup of tea by Peggy.

We all became addicted to the radio. Later I would enjoy a programme called
The School around the Corner
, which was presented by Paddy Crosbie. It was very funny. Paddy was a tall, skinny Dublin man who always dressed in a smart suit and drew great humour out of the schoolchildren he interviewed. The mind of a child thinks much differently from an adult's, so their responses to Paddy's questions were unpredictable, and sometimes they were hilarious.

I remember how Paddy asked one young lad one night if he had any animals at home.

‘We had a horse, sir, but he got sick,' the boy replied.

‘And is he better now?' Paddy enquired.

‘No, sir,' the boy responded.

‘How is he?' Paddy asked.

‘He's dead, sir,' said the boy.

‘I'm sorry to hear that. And how did he die?' Paddy probed.

‘Me father shot him, sir,' replied the boy.

‘Shot him?' Paddy said with astonishment.

‘Yes, sir. Me father dug a hole and shot him.'

‘In the hole?' asked Paddy.

‘No, sir, in the head,' replied the boy.

Well, I thought Paddy Crosbie was going to die laughing. It was one of the funniest moments on the show.

The Irish country-music star Maisie McDaniel from Sligo was very popular at that time on the radio as well. We used to tune in to listen to her.

As there was no electricity, the radio was run on a battery, and whenever it ran down John would have to go over to the mainland to get it charged up again. Every household on the island contributed thruppence to this expense because we were all enjoying the entertainment it provided. That was one of the first real gadgets we came across as we crept out of the Dark Ages.

Our own house later became a popular place of entertainment when my father picked up a gramophone cheaply in a market one day, along with some old records. It didn't take long for news of this to spread around the island, and everyone wanted to see and hear this wonderful music machine. Later, when one of the island's teachers, Paddy Kelly, took digs at our house while my brothers were away working in Scotland, he gave my father Bridie Gallagher's first record. Bridie was from Donegal, and she was a big singing star in Ireland.

New inventions gradually made their way onto
the
island. There was one old woman who had a frightening experience with a battery-operated flash lamp when they first came out. The house she was visiting had just recently got the lamp, and one night as she was leaving late to go home they gave it to her so that she wouldn't trip and hurt herself in the dark. She was very wary of this strange light but agreed to take it with her. When the little old lady arrived home at her own house, she tried to blow out the light like you would an oil lamp or a candle. She blew and blew, but the light, needless to say, wouldn't go out. Exasperated, the old lady finally gave up trying, and, fearful that it would burn her house down as she slept, she left the lamp sitting outside in a ditch overnight. God bless her innocence.

The people on Owey were very superstitious in those times. There were lots of old wives' tales. If you were dressing in the morning and you happened to put on a cardigan or jumper inside out, you wouldn't dare take it off and turn it right side out because that was said to bring you bad luck. You had to leave it on for the day, and only at night, when you were preparing for bed, could you take it off.

If two teaspoons were accidentally placed on your saucer, it was the sign of a wedding.

You'd be terrified of breaking a mirror because it apparently meant you were going to experience six years of bad luck, and nobody wanted that!

And if it rained on 15 July, folklore said it would then rain for 40 days and 40 nights. Wasn't I born on a bad day!

It was also said that no one ever saw a donkey dying because donkeys are holy animals. They have a cross on the back of their neck. One day our donkey was dying on Owey. I decided to keep a vigil beside my beloved animal as I wanted to be the first person to see a donkey dying. I sat beside the sick pet all day. Eventually I ran into the house for a cup of tea, and when I came out the donkey was dead. And that's a true story!

Any spare moment I'd have at home was spent doing knitting, which I'd mastered as a child, taught by a neighbour called Mary Boyle. I was too young at the start to use needles, as they were considered to be dangerous in the hands of children. Instead, I used feathers from a rooster's wings. My father had honed and shaped them with his pocket knife. Later I graduated to proper needles. At night the women would gather in one house knitting and chatting, while the men would go to a separate house to pass the hours by playing cards and telling yarns. On the way home the men
would
look at the night sky, and somehow they could predict the weather for the following day. They could tell by the appearance of the sky, the moon and the stars.

When I got older, I discovered the joy of dancing. It became a real passion, even an obsession, to the point where I would deceive my mother and father by pretending that I was going off to houses to knit with some of my friends, when really I was going off dancing with them on the island. On those days, I'd knit as fast as I could while I was away looking after the cows. If I felt that it was less than I'd be expected to achieve at a night's knitting session, I'd stretch the sock to make it look longer. Then I'd hide my handiwork in a hole in the ditch so that my mother wouldn't see it. That night on my way home from my dancing, I'd return to the hole in the ditch, retrieve the woollen sock and then confidently enter the house. If my mother woke up, she wouldn't be bothered as to where I'd been because I had knitting to show for my night's escapade. At other times after the rosary was said at night, and my mother and father had gone to sleep, I'd go out to meet some of the other teenagers to chat and dance. The clock in our house used to strike on the hour every hour, so while my mother and father were sleeping I'd put it back two hours in case they
awoke
when I was coming in late. Then I'd get up in the morning before them and put it forward again. I didn't see any harm in it as we weren't doing anything untoward.

AS THE PACKED
train chugged through the pleasing landscape of Gweedore in the Donegal Gaeltacht, where the native Irish language is spoken, I didn't dare blink for fear of losing sight of Owey.

My heart was full of sorrow and my face a soggy mass from crying as the island became smaller and smaller in the distance.

I let out a big sob as it shrank to a mere dot on the horizon. I was taking the train to the boat, which in turn would take me far away from the island. It would be several months before I'd set foot on Owey again, not until Hallowe'en.

My poor mother and father hadn't been able to conceal their heartbreak as I'd headed down to the currach on the shore. My father would never cry, but I could see in his eyes that he was suffering pain. Three of the family were leaving that day. My older brothers, James and Edward, were travelling with me, as they had got jobs to do with fishing too. My
sister
, Maggie, and younger brother, Owenie, were the only ones left behind. And Maggie would soon be going off to work in a Scottish hotel.

Emigration, no matter for how short a time, always brought pain to families. It tore loved ones apart in the struggle to survive and put food on the table. After my first experience away in Derry with Mr and Mrs Foley, I thought it wouldn't be such a wrench. But it was much worse. I was now nearly 16 and a new job awaited me at Lerwick, one of the Shetland Islands off Scotland. This time it wasn't housekeeping at the other end of the journey but the daily grind of fish gutting. It was a lovely summer's day in June as I set off, but there was no sunshine in my heart. I was filled with foreboding as I had no notion of what lay in store for me, other than being guaranteed hard work and lots of it.

As the boat journey neared an end, the outline of the houses and the church spire around Lerwick harbour came into view. Lerwick, Shetland's only town and Britain's most northerly one, was a hive of industry at the time thanks to the wealth the herring fishing brought to the local community. One of the community's most notable features was its fine town hall.

I didn't have time to take full stock of my surroundings because I was immediately introduced
to
my new ‘family' – the ‘herring girls', as we were known – and given a demonstration of the work that was required. Growing up on an island, I was no stranger to fish gutting, but doing it as part of a team of girls who came from Scotland and many parts of Ireland was a strange, new experience and a lot more demanding. I set about working in a crew of three people, with two of us frantically gutting the fish and the third girl packing them into barrels between layers of coarse salt. As it is an oily fish, herring deteriorates quickly, so it was essential that we swiftly removed the insides with a razor-sharp knife and preserved the fish in the salt. The target was to gut and pack a minimum of 30 barrels a day. Each barrel contained 80 to 100 herring, depending on their size, so you really had to concentrate on getting the job done and there was no slacking off.

As we diligently sliced open the fish and scooped out their insides, we wore oilskin skirts with bibs over our own clothing to save our bodies from the mess of the entrails, the water and the salt. The protective layers of clothes had to be long enough to cover the tops of our boots so as to prevent fish scales and raw pieces of gutted fish slipping down inside our footwear. Our tall rubber boots had wooden soles to cope with greasy surfaces and the corrosive effects of the salt.

Unbleached cotton which came from empty flour sacks was cut into strips, wound round our fingers and fastened with cotton thread in a desperate and mostly useless attempt to protect our hands from the sharp knives and stinging salt. During our dinner break we'd replace the strips, but they were a poor source of protection, and I regularly got excruciating cuts as I went about my business. After a couple of months, my hands looked like they'd been through a bloody battle. The marks of the knife carved out a pattern. Raw wounds were a torture when the coarse salt got into them. I had no choice but to endure the stinging pain and get on with the job. Otherwise I wouldn't get paid.

We did our work out in the open on the quayside in all kinds of weather. The stench from the innards of the fish was often overpowering. This was one of the fishing industry's most gruelling jobs. Our contracts committed us to begin work when required and to continue as long as we wanted; if you put in the extra hours you'd get more pay. We'd normally start at 7 a.m. and finish at 6 p.m., with just a one-hour break for our dinner. In the busiest time you could end up doing 14 or 15 hours and working by lamplight until all the fresh fish had been processed. Standing in the same spot working with the fish at night is hardship I'll never forget.
In
particular, the cold I experienced was almost beyond human endurance. The only source of heat was a wee lantern with hot coals in it. Every now and then we'd take turns going to the lantern to warm our hands. But that only made the work harder because once you put your hands into the cold fish again it was torture. At the end of a hard day you'd only be fit for bed. At night we slept in basic wooden huts.

As the weeks wore their way into months, I settled into this tough routine. It's amazing how the human mind and body can adapt and cope with the most difficult of circumstances. But the long-term effects of this work could be seen in some of the older people who suffered from arthritis in their hands caused by working in wet conditions. There were people with chest problems and others affected by sclerosis of the spine from bending into barrels and over fish troughs for long periods.

Owey was never far from my mind while I was working in Lerwick. Every week without fail I would write a letter home to my mother and father, to reassure them that I was safe, healthy and doing just fine. I would never complain about my terrible life. It would have been unfair to trouble my parents, as I'm sure it was a constant worry for
them
having their children working abroad. They missed us just as much as we pined for them.

James and Edward never wrote a line home, of course. They were men, and it wasn't expected of them. I would always mention them in my letters, saying how they were safe and doing fine at their work. The three of us got on well at work. It was James who took care of the money. Whatever Edward and myself earned we passed on to James. He in turn would post the money home to our mother and father. Although the two boys were older, I adopted the role of mother when we were away. That included washing their stinking work clothes. It was what women did.

After five long months in those conditions, our stint there was over, and, with a light heart, I packed my few bits and pieces, stuffed my final earnings into a sock and headed off to the boat with Edward and James for the journey back home to Owey.

As I stepped out of the currach on the island, I crossed myself in thanksgiving for a safe passage; then my legs took off at a gallop on the short route to our home. It was a thrill to walk through the doorway of our little cottage and see the faces of my mother and father light up with joy at my safe return. In those days families didn't hug and kiss
like
they do in these modern times, but you knew by their body language that there was great love for you and that they were delighted to have you back in the house.

Sometime later on Owey, Daddy was struck down by a severe bout of flu and had to take to his bed. He was shivering and sweating. He was a very sick man. My poor mother tended to him with hot drinks and cool clothes, and I could see that she was terribly worried about him. At this time Maggie and the three boys had gone away again to find work, so it was left to me to do all the chores around the farm. It was time to harvest the potatoes, and I dug out and filled 13 barrels with them. There were four big sacks of potatoes in every barrel. I took them home on a donkey and put them into a pit and covered them to protect them from the winter frost. And I was the first person on the island to have the potatoes harvested. It was a busy time for me. There was turf to be brought in and water to be fetched from the wells. And I milked the cow twice every day. My poor father felt terribly helpless, but there was nothing he could do. He'd been raving and sweating and delirious for several days while going through the worst of his illness. And it was a relief to us all when he began to show signs of improvement. It took a couple of weeks for my daddy to get
back
on his feet again. When he came to inspect my work, he was so proud of me.

‘Y'know, Julia, I don't know what I'd have done without you,' he remarked as he made his way back inside the cottage.

The following year I was back on the chain-gang when I joined a big crew of Owey people, including my brothers James and Edward, for the first of many trips tattie howkin' on the big farms of Scotland. It was June when we set out for our destination, leaving my beloved island and my parents behind. And even though I was travelling with my brothers and many of my neighbours, the homesickness was as bad as ever.

Our destination was Ayrshire in Scotland, and on my arrival at the farm in Kilwinning, where acres of potatoes awaited us, I was shown my sleeping quarters. I now had something in common with the farm animals: we were sharing the cowshed. The pungent smell of hot cow dung and the peculiar odour of the animals which had just been milked was still heavy in the air, even though the area had been washed out with water and swept with yard brushes. As I stared at my spartan new sleeping quarters, I could hardly believe it. I hadn't known what to expect as I'd set out for this land so
far
removed from Owey, but the cowshed had never been mentioned. It's not that I was accustomed to the finer things in life, but this was as basic as you could get.

‘It's certainly no home away from home,' I remarked to Mary, one of the other girls.

‘Julia, you'll be so tired you'll be happy to bed down anywhere,' Mary pointed out.

‘I suppose you're right,' I replied, as I got set to make up my mattress. Our employer had thrown us some straw, and each of us had to make up our own mattress using bags that had been stitched together. There was a black blanket for every worker and two of us sleeping on one mattress. All the girls slept in one shed, and the men were in a separate one. On the positive side, it was June as I started into this, which took the sting out of having to rough it in these primitive surroundings.

The next morning a lorry arrived for us at 5 a.m., and we all piled onto the back of it. We were like the inmates of a prison camp being driven off to do hard labour. The vehicle was packed with young men and women. We were transported across rough terrain, and the bouncing up and down made me feel sick that first morning. Finally, we reached the fields where we had to reap the tatties. As I jumped down to the ground and walked around to the front of the
truck
, I glanced across the huge expanse of land that swept before me. There seemed to be no end to the field. It spanned out as far as the eye could see, and I wondered how many weeks I would spend in this field crawling on my hands and knees as I gathered the potatoes.

Tattie howkin' was laborious, painstaking work. It was done by hand at a snail's pace, with the spuds being dug out with three-pronged forks and then collected in baskets. It was back-breaking work, and every day was the same that summer. I'd get to the fields shortly after 5 a.m. and go straight to work. We were under pressure to make as much progress as was humanly possible before the heat of the sun became unbearable. I'd spend hours on my knees, gathering the potatoes into a basket that I pulled along after me. The ground was rock-hard, and as I crawled along through the drills the friction blistered my knees, making the tedious task even harder. My hands were soon decorated with welts and cuts, and clay was caked under my fingernails. Sometimes small, sharp stones would pierce underneath my nails, sending a stinging pain up my fingers and leaving them sore for days. The cuts, punctures and blisters hurt like hell as you worked, and there was never any time for them to heal.

Sometimes the heat in the field was unbearable,
but
you couldn't go off to the shade of the trees because there was a job to be done. At 2.00 p.m. the lorry would return to take us back up to the farm where we'd eat and then rest for a time. It was the same routine day in and day out. Later in the year, as the weather changed, we'd go out at 8 a.m. and come home at 5 or 6 p.m. I'd spend hours riddling the potatoes, sorting them and putting them into different bags out in the open. At the end of the week I'd be handed £3 for my labour. It was a small amount of money for such hard work, but that was the going rate, and it was considered to be a good wage. It was either take it or leave it. There was no union fighting for your rights in those days. Whatever money I earned I sent home to my mother and father.

Sometimes after a day in the potato field and a break in the afternoon, we'd go out in the evening to farms to gather up stooks of straw that had been tossed around; you'd make some extra money doing that. You'd spend three or four hours at that work for a wage of half a crown. In the wintertime we'd get extra work in the fish houses, putting fish on skewers. There were two dozen placed on each skewer, and then you'd hand them up to another worker who put them on a rack to dry out before they were taken away to be sold.

When it was time to retire for the night, the stark and smelly cowshed seemed the most welcoming place on earth because I'd be so exhausted from the day's work. The straw bed felt like a deluxe mattress. Mary had been right. I couldn't have cared less where I laid my head down at that stage.

Apart from working on the farm, I also did the cooking and washing for myself and five men: my two brothers, James and Edward, the gaffer and two other men. There was no pay for that. I was a woman and that's what was expected of women. I never questioned it. It's just the way it was.