By Anthony F. Hughes
It is the fourth Sunday of September in the year of Our Lord 1960. I am in the barn sitting on the stout beam of our horse-drawn mowing machine, its four feet six inches (approximately) long mowing arm is now in an upright position pointing towards the roof of the barn.
This two-wheel iron contraption, with its driver’s seat atop is now in its early hours of what will be another long hibernation – the last meadow of the year was knocked (cut) a couple of days ago and so the machine has returned to the barn where it shall sleep silently until its next awakening which, depending on a number of factors will probably, will come about next July or August.
A day has now all but passed since I gave my father a helping hand to manoeuvre the Pierce-made mower (which was born in Wexford before my time) back into its tin-roofed abode. When we had angled it into its place he, as has been his habit for as long as I can remember, spoke the words ‘for whoever is alive to take it out next year’, his spake, solemn and barely audible, seemingly directed at nobody in particular.
And so it has come to pass – the annual ritual of returning the mower to its sleeping quarters is over for another year. Whether or not I shall be a participant in this annual routine next year is debatable – my mother is talking about sending me to boarding school and, if the meadows should come in late again,
I doubt if I’ll be around with fork in hand to turn the last grass swathes, or ‘swarts’ as we around here call them, of the season.
As I sit here pondering, my father likely as not, is doing the same thing for it is Sunday after all – a day of rest! My guess is that he’s sitting on the headland in the Street Field, sitting on top of that old battered horse-drawn stone roller, or ‘rowler’ as we call it.
Yes, that is where he probably is, settled under an overhanging canopy of whitethorn bushes, he reflecting, smoking his pipe, the head of same filled with his favourite tobacco – Yachtsman.
His thoughts are probably centring around the meadow that is now rearing in the Far Field, which is the second field away from where I think he is right now. I have no doubt that he, in his rambles, after returning earlier from First Mass, inspected the mown meadow.
That inspection wouldn’t have taken place directly after his return from church of course, for there were a few more immediate chores to be attended to first …the herding and milking for instance.
The herding! Well that amounts to the counting and checking the wellbeing of our sheep and cattle and Neidín of course. Neidín is our great big lump of a workhorse which our father saw fit to call after himself!
My dad, unlike every other man I know around this locality, has not just one or two forenames by which he’s addressed, he has four!! When it comes to the Census Returns or any official Government correspondence, his first name is Edward, while my mother simply addresses him as Eddie. And while he’s best known as Ned by all around here, his dearest sibling, Bridie, and a few of his closest friends, affectionately call him Neidín.
And so it has come about that our much loved brown monster of a horse has been named after its master, just as his master was named after an uncle on the day of his christening.
The hour of one is now near at hand and soon the cuckoo clock in the parlour will make its presence known as is its habit on the hour every hour. The familiar aroma of our own home-grown cabbage cooking in a pot on top of the Rayburn range, is reaching my nostrils; my father having sowed, cut and washed it and my mother now in the act of cooking it.
Our dinner vegetable at this time of year is usually cabbage or turnip (swede) and while the ‘spud’ (potato) is also technically classed as a vegetable, we who live here don’t see it as such. A spud is a spud and a dinner is not a dinner if there is not a potful of steaming, floury tubers sitting in the middle of the table when we all sit down to eat…so our father says!
Anyways, back to the two Neidíns – the man and the horse that is. For the latter, it’s a day of rest also – no plough to pull today, no ‘rowling’ of an emerging oats crop, no carting and certainly no mowing of meadow, no having to keep in step with Rattigan’s black mare for hours on end as they pull our mowing machine through a meadow field.
No, Neidín the horse won’t be doing any work today but he is and shall continue to be busy just the same – busy eating his fill in that lowland place we call the ‘Bottoms’ that is. Our horse seemingly has an appetite that is never sated. Well, that’s Neidín the horse for you and while Neidín the man is not yet eating his fill, he soon will be.
And while my mother would normally rattle the tin on the turf shed, (beat it with an old broom handle) to tell him that the dinner is ready, there will be no need for her to do that today … he will know!
If he’s perched where I think he is right now, he is probably looking to his left, his eyes surveying the stubble ground, the sheaves of oats no longer in small ‘stooks,’ the small stooks (four to six sheaves) having been gathered up and made into large stacks.
The stacks, domelike in shape, seasoning out there in the tillage field, they awaiting their departure to the ‘haggard’ where they in turn will await the coming of Mike Ennis’ threshing mill on wheels.
Mike’s thresher is powered by a big blue Ford Dexta Tractor – the steam thresher is now a thing of the past. Mike’s tractor, and others like it, has also brought an end to the sight of Tommy Murray’s pair of horses pulling a reaper and binder up and down a cornfield. Tommy hails from Ballinasloe but is living just outside our local village of Ballymore nowadays.
Gone too is the day of the scythe man and he facing into a big cornfield. My father still has a little use for the scythe of course – he uses it to clear a narrow strip of oats inside the boundary ditch to allow the tractor and harvester to travel unhindered and so prevent a portion of the crop from being trampled into the ground.
Yes, things are surely changing from year to year for us farming folk who live in this here townland of Carraig na Gower (Rock of the Goats) and more will come about in time for those who will be alive to see them, as my father might say.
Hark now! I hear my father opening the street gate and while his mind is surely on his dinner right now, my thoughts are focusing on an event that will take place later this afternoon many miles away from here. It is, after all, the fourth Sunday of September (the 25th).
Yes, it’s All Ireland Football Final Day and come five o’clock this evening,
I have a hunch that a change of a different nature to what I’m used to will have come about. If my gut feeling about the outcome of this final proves correct, then a team from the County of Down will create their own special history by being the first team from the ‘Six Counties’ to win the Sam Maguire Cup. ÷
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