THE SINS OF THE THIRTIES

An excerpt, set in the 1930s, from Mollie Moran's unpublished memoirs of fifty years lived in the shadow of a large Midland's estate. By MOLLIE MORAN

The parish priest carried a horse-whip. Protestants went straight to hell. But at feast there was uncle Sid, poaching and poetry.

Irish Society

My mother was a very bitter and old-fashioned woman; she was as hard as nails but I guess life did that to her, it dealt out nothing only hard blows. Our father died while we were still young. My sister was only ten months old. I being the second youngest hardly remember him, mother had to provide and be father to us ten children, eight boys and Elsie and me.

God alone knows how she did it. There was no Social Welfare or widows' pensions in those days, only what was called Home Help Relief and that was the princely sum of 15/-. I never remember seeing herlaugh or be happy, only all the time strung up. She was deeply religious and would flay us alive if we did not say our morning and night prayers, on our knees.

We had to go to Holy Communion every Sunday, walk six miles there and back, and in those days, one had to fast from midnight the night before, dare one of us ask for even a drink of water - We kids often used to ask Mother why was God so rotten to us and we always rraxing? Why did he dish up such hard rules and take our rather from us? She always told us that it was God's will and we had to acept it. As children, this was not easy. I often pictured God in my own. mind as a tall bearded wicked-looking man with fire coming hom his eyes, waiting to grab us kids if we stepped one bit out ofline.

Our Uncle Sid, he was our paternal uncle, lived in one of the rows of houses beside ours. He was really the sunshine of my life. He worked on the big estate where our father had worked. It was owned by Sir Dudley and our family had lived and worked here for over a hundred years.

I can see Sir Dudley's house from here, it's a huge house, about five stories, the attics at the top for the maids. The walls are so high, st~ne walls. Old people said that slave labour built them, the time of the famine; a penny a day the men got and a bowl of watery soup. He now employed a lot of men, gardeners, herds, a milk-man, ploughman, and a good big staff in the big house, cook, housemaids, parlour-maids, dairy-maid, kitchen-maids, butler and pantry boy, also a dog-boy. Everyone of them had houses around the estate, except of course the house-staff.

We always had to bow to Lady Grace and my brothers took off their caps, or saluted. One day we met and, of course, forgot to do the honours, and that night we got a mighty thrashing. He must have reported it to our mother. After that we never forgot. If you were going up to the big house with a message, and met Sir Dudley, you would never walk beside him, always a respectable distancebehind him. Lady Grace never was like that, she would often take us kids by the hand and maybe have an apple for us. She had only one daughter herself and she was at school.

Sir Dudley did everything for us. When our father died, he buried him and gave my mother a pension of 5/- weekly, a free house, potatoes, milk and also firewood. He was an English Protestant and was settled on his Estate back from the time of Elizabeth 1 of England. He was a great man and never forgot us, he paid a weekly visit every Friday to-our door. He always came on horse-back. He would turn the horse around at the door and give it a rap with his whip, give us our money and ask if everybody was alright.

His wife Lady Grace always came at Christmas. She would bring us warm blankets, a toy each and a pound of roast beef per person. That would total 11 lbs of beef for Christmas dinner and that was a whale of a lot of meat. We would have beef for breakfast, dinner and supper until it was gone but that would finish us with beef for the rest of the year. We would see no more of it until next time around. It would be Dip for us hereafter unless we were lucky enough to get a bit of Danish bacon.

When the farmer down the road, Mr. Lamb, would kill his own pig before the thrashings, us kids used to walk the salt into it for him. When the entire proceedings would be over, he would bring up the pigs feet and the head to us and all the blood we wanted. We'd be drinking water after it for days and Nannie Boyle down the end house would get all the used bones to grease her cabbage after we were finished with them. It was the custom then to 'loan the bones' and I often knew a good bacon bone to do the round of all the houses.

Children were real hardy in those days. We never suffered from boils or scabs. Come early Spring every year, we had to gather the young nettles. With old socks on our hands we would gather all day. My mother cooked those like cabbage with salt and for the first four 'weeks of Spring we ate this. Mary Kelly breast-fed her children until they were. hardy, in fact they could pull up the stool themselves and drink away and the mother would be talking away to our mother as if nothhing was going on. We always took fried bread to school fried in lard, hogs lard, and it kept our hands warm all the long journey to school.

The Rosary was a must in our house every night before we went to bed, be we full or empty and the trimmings were always offered up for Sir Dudley, Lady Grace and Mr. Lamb. Still to this day I say a silent prayer for them, they brought such comfort into our otherwise hungry lives. Even though the good nuns at school always told us that Protesstants went straight to Hell and that if we kids looked into their church the Devil was there and would grab us, those fine ladies in those days had not an ounce of Charity in their veins for us poor kids.

The time I was going to school, to the nuns, the oldest part of the Convent was set aside for orphans. They had to work hard for the bare bit they got to eat, from six o'clock in the morning and after school until eight. Winter and Summer they had to clean out the old ranges, rake out all the ashes and the coal cinders to bank the fires at night. The place would have to be kept warm for the good Sissters. The nuns would nearly lift the hems of their gowns passing them by, for fear of coming in contact with them.

Every year come Spring, the nuns blessed the land. They would start from the school and walk through the convent ground, praying and sprinkling holy water. That time, a nun could not walk out of consecrated ground, she had to stay on the convent or school grounds. We all walkked in double me after the nuns; the toffs walked after the nuns, we poor children next and the orphans last.

One girl had a sore head with scabs all over. She had to have her hair shaved off and wear an old woollen cap. During prayers one day, for a wrong answer, the nun whipped the old cap off her sore head in front of the whole class. She looked terrible, bald as an egg and head all scabs and blood where the cap stuck and she was told to stand in the corner bare-headed until school was over and to make it worse, she would have to clean the classroom and the church vestry and wouldn't get a bite to eat until five o'clock. Two sisters, Molly and Susie had beautiful curly hair, the envy of the whole class. The nuns cut the entire lot off both of them and said it was vain and vanity was a grave sin against Holy Purity.

When their Feast Days came around all the shopkeepers' daughters and glass-arsed farmers' daughters used to bring them writing-pads, toilet sets, hankies and slippers, but we poor kids could bring them nothing so we had to sit in the back desks while the present-givers were treated to sweets and soft talk.

I will never forget the day Elsie and myself got ourselves into their bad books. They found out that she and I went into Sir Dudley's Church. He had his own private Church on the estate. We went in to help the old woman to do it up for the Harvest Thanksgiving, we carried in turnips and sheaves of wheat and corn and the flowers and dusted the altar and the pews. We_'Ner~ iILour glory and thought ourrselves quite important, it was the barest place I ever was in, just the pulpit and the biggest Bible I ever saw laid on top.

How and ever, our glory was short-lived when we came face to face with the nuns. The parish priest was brought over to gloat over us and the Reverend Mother. She was a fierce big woman with a terrible severe face for all the world like Jane Murdstone. The parish priest carried a horseewhip.

He was a small white-haired man and used to ride a horse. He ordered us to kneel down on the bare floor and I can still feel the small pebbles on the floor eating into my bare knees. We were quaking with fear and waiting to feel the crack of the horse whip on our heads every minute. I could stick the fear no longer and started to cry and he told me it was a bit late in the day for weeping and asked us all sorts of questions, on what we saw and what we did and finally told us we would be damned for all eternity for what we did.

He said there was nothing he could do. We would have to be sent to the Bishop for forgiveness. We thought he meant the Pope. How in God's name could we get to him? He lived such a distance away, we would surely be eaten or lost on our way. But maybe all to the good, weren't we lost one way or the other. We were ordered to kneel on that boarded floor at the back of the class and rio-one was to speak to us until the parish priest made up his mind on what was to become of us.

We might never have been there for all the notice was taken of us, kneeling there like outcasts. I can still smell the mice and stale chalk. On the wall over our heads hung a picture of Job on the Dunghill, sitting there full of sores and the dogs licking him. I thought as I used to look at that picture that in a wa.y he was better off than we were. My sister and I even carried two old string bags of blocks for the school fire, dragging them all those miles every mornning for a week thinking to get back into their good books. They were fir dale and they used to crack and blaze up the chimney and we were told 'this is how you two will burn in Hell for your sins'.

After about two weeks of kneeling with the mice and chalk smells and the inhuman cold, we were set kind of free. My mother had to come in and have a talk with the parish priest and the Reverend Mother first.

Uncle Sid was the only one in all my childhood who made me feel wanted. I never knew much about love because there was so little around. I only knew the kind of love I had for Uncle Sid, I felt - I could do anything when he was around. He always dished out a bit of praise and good advice.

He lived on his own and never married though I often wondered why. There was a lady up the road who was sweet on him, Lily Mack. She spent a lot of her time in England and was comfortable. Her house was like Heaven. She had a real whole set of cups and lovely pictures. She had a beautiful table in front of her fire with a beautiful oil lamp with a great big white shade and it had to have a lever on it to put it out. She was especially nice to me beecause she knew I was Uncle Sid's favourite, I often used to pray Uncle Sid would marry her and I could go to stay. She used to give me a huge lump of 'flannel cake' with butter dripping off it and was always enquiring about Uncle Sid. He really never could abide her and used to call her Empty Fork. We knew it must have meant something awful beecause when we told her, to our grief, she marched us down to him and what she said to him could never be printed and so put an end to our beautiful evenings and flannel bread.

Uncle Sid knew all about Sir Dudley's ancestors. They served with William of Orange or Dutch William as he called him; he painted pictures of him with a hooked nose and a hunch back. it was he who crossed the Boyne and took the North with Sir Dudley's ancestors. How we gloried in his tales. He spent his life in England and was there the time Jack the Ripper was on the prowl; he'd tell us such stories about him. Uncle Sid rarely came over to our house, only when as my mother used to say, he was looking for the 'rissing of the latch', that was sixpence, to get him into the pub.

Uncle Sid always got merry at Christmas and he'd be at our blazing fire on Christmas morning, soot on all the hobs. That day, my mother even appeared to be happy, Molly Pender would come in and the two of them would be talkking of the good old Christmasses of their time. But mother always hated to have Uncle Sid in as he'd be merry and she used to run him with the brush to his own quarters.

Even though he was a boozer, Uncle Sid, he had green fingers. He always had his first new potatoes before 29th June, the first on the market. He'd yoke up his old ass and cart and bring it loaded to town to sell his wares, new potatoes, scallions, leaks, cabbage. I always made sure I was right there with him, to help him dole out his wares. The high light of my selling was when I reached the convent; I put an extra bit of clay in their measure of potatoes and gave them the smallest leaks and scallions.

He never believed in any form of religion much; mother used to say England did that to him. When the Missionaries came every three years, firece men, even the 'hard chaws' used to be rounded up and made to see the error of their ways. They used to ring the Chapel bell halfway through the sermon. This was called the sinners bell and woe betide anyone who would not answer this call. I faked sickness to stay at home with Uncle Sid and we started to saw the sticks with a crosscut saw. This was a long saw with two handles, and I got hold of one handle and Uncle Sid the other and sawed away like mad. We had a huge pile sawed up when the Mission Father appeared on the scene and got on to Uncle Sid, preaching a sermon on the pit of Hell that was yawning and he on the brink.

Uncle Sid was as cool as you like. The Reverend Father got mad and told him that if he liked, he could turn him into a pig. Uncle Sid said as calm as you like "Now Father, if that be the case, you'd have the country full of them and the price bacon is."

But looking back he must have believed in something, because his garden was his God and in the dry days he and I would go to water his seeds in the evenings and he used to quote a verse for me -

Nature's school of peace,
and yet the fool contends,
That God is not ...

When the family returned from the Mission everyone was appalled when they heard what took place with the Reverend Father and Uncle Sid did feel in the 'dog-house' so the next evening he decided to go. Going into the church, one paid a penny on the front door and threepence on the side door. Now, halfway up the church, they had this railed off and it cost sixpence to sit near the pulpit .. Uncle Sid was late and there was no room outside this rail and he, being what he was, flung his leg over the rail and sat with the nabs under the pulpit. How everybody stared but he sat there as cool as you like and said the chapel, every pat o.f .it, was for the poor as well as the nabs. That was his last visit.

In the Spring, Uncle Sid always brought us to poach. We would start out at daybreak on May mornings. First off, he'd check his rabbit snares. He always insisted on dead silence. This way, we would not miss one thing. - With nature all around us we would walk dead into the deep woods, creeping through the tall grass. One morning, he brought me to a hare's nest, she had two young, bare as any babe. But he only went for the rabbits, he often had as many as twelve slung over his shoulder and he'd sell them for 2/- a pair.

But he always kept the livers for frying with a Danish rasher and a few leeks, in the baker, over a roaring fire. On our travels, we once saw a weasel's funeral. While we were eating our bread and goats' milk on top of a hill, a party of weasels passed under us, a big one carrying a dead one and five or six all in line behind.

When the big house had their fox-hunts, he was detailed to bank up the fox-earths so he and I again took to the woods. It would be early November and the wood would be bare and ghostly, no birds, nests or weasels. Uncle Sid and I had to check that all the hunting-gates on the Estate were open; every field had these little gates just wide enough for a rider to pass through. Lady Grace and her friends used to ride side-saddle. We'd always listen for the hounds to catch up with a poor fox. Uncle Sid always left an earth or two open and that way, some of them escaped the hounds, but of course if he was found out, he'd lose his job.

Another big event in our lives was the Threshing. We used to wait at our gate for the steam thrasher to arrive and we used to follow it to the farm. It would be chucking smoke to the heavens and there were great black belts going from the engine to the elevator. Just before the threshing would commence, the quarter vessel would be opened and a tap put on it. Uncle Sid always sidled down at dinner-time to get a sample and if Mr. Lamb was not around, he'd fill a pin t bottle to bring back to work.

I used to go into Mrs. Lamb's to see the dinner table being laid. A great big white flour-bag spread for a tableecloth, pepper and salt. Of course, she always paid special attention to the parlour table. This would be laid with a white twill sheet, best knives and forks and mustard.

Mr. Lamb would stand at the parlour door and see that no labourers got in there. Perhaps if you were the owner of a cow or a pig you might be lucky enough to get inside the door.

Four or five women would be cutting sheaves. Often, they made six shillings a day and then could bring down their mattress covers and fill them with the oaten chaff and be sure of a good bed for the whole year. When the thresher would move ~onto the next farm, there would be a bit of offal left for the women, a few bacon bones and a bit of cabbage.

For First Communion, I was in false colours, I wore Eileen Ryan's clothes. When Confirmation Day dawnned, was I glad I had my own clothes. Uncle Sid saw to that. His sister in England sent me a beautiful white - dress. White satin with two pink roses at the sides. It had three flounces at the hem and frilled long sleeves and a lovely veil held in place with a knitted well-fitting white lace cap. And a pair of white shoes that Uncle Sid said were buckskin.

I made sure to rub against Eileen, was she green with envy. I felt six feet tall and was not one whit afraid of the nuns. I would have faced a lion. I answered up my question for the Bishop in double quick time, he smiled and I smiled back ... I prayed sincerely to God that day and asked him to bless Uncle Sid. When I got back home, I hadn't to strip either. Next day at school, I wore my white shoes and did I feel big, though the shoes cut me, on account of always being barefoot.

Time flies and change comes to us all. Two of my elder brothers got jo bs with Sir Dudley, one in the garden and one taken on as a pantry-boy. Shortly after, my brothers got jobs one by one and, accorr- dingly, Sir Dudley cut my mother's pension. I would have loved to get a job even as a kitchen maid but as I had no clothes to speak of, I couldn't go outside the door, and hid if any relations visited.

As the years passed, I became more unsettled. Sitting at our window upstairs, I look out and wish to God I had a pair of wings to flyaway from all this - One room has nothing only the bare old bed, covered well down with a blanket, we had no sheets in those days. As far back as I remember, it was jump in and jump out, year in, year out. Only an old cracked piss pot under the bed and wallpaper that my mother just hung up the way it caine from the roll, with the border down the middle 'Made in Ireland'. Uncle Sid used to say it was a railroad for the flies.

Billy Duffy lived with his grandmother at the back of the big house. His father was killed in the 1914 war and his mother died shortly after during the big 'flu. He was a fine strapping lad, about seven years older than me and he and I spent a lot of time together. He was fed up with things like myself and we had a lot in common.

My mother was ever going on about being immoral and keeping your skirts down and if you sat anyway at all showwing a leg, you got the beezan across the back. The bee zan was my mother's most powerful weapon, she used to make it out of box hedge into a brush of sorts. I was strictly forrbidden to see or talk to Bill. I got to sneaking out ...

If Bill was lucky enough to snare two or four rabbits, we'd go to the weekly supper-dance, me in a handdown dress, a pair of runners and ankle socks. The hall was four miles away and everyone walked except the few lucky enough to have a bike. We often walked home in the early morning and many is the prank we played. Tinkers used to camp by the way-side in old tents and early as it was, some of them would be around their camp-fire, drinking tea and playing an accordeon. If the men had the butt of a cigarrette, they'd play the finest tunes and get out and dance on the road.

One particular morning, we overdid it and when I reeturned home, my mother was up with the beezan. I got an unmerciful whacking and it made me so depressed it took all the fun out of the dance and when I met Bill that night, we made up our minds to run away.

Bill had six shillings and he took his mother's weddinggring that his granny kept in an old jug on the dresser. We set out into the outlying parish, Nancy my friend and her boyfriend with us, and arrived in our old clothes at the priest's house. He advised us to wait and get our paren t's permission, which we'd never get. There was nought else to do but go back home, the last place on earth I wanted to be. But going past the Rector's house, we had an idea and went in.

He made us very welcome, such a beautiful little house he had, what would I have given at that moment to own such a place. Well, he brought us into the church and put on his white robe, pronounced us man and wife there and then and told us to come back the following Sunday. To tell the truth I never bothered about the outcry that was to come.

Bill and I were abed when my mother stormed into our room. She demanded me to get up, to be brought home and smothered between two mattresses. I can still see her, she was in her old slippers and had an old cardigan draped over her shoulders, a big white flour bag apron with Oldum's Finest Flour 112 lbs. printed over her stomach; and the old ass was tied to the gate outside, pawing the ground and raring to go.

The very next morning, she had the parish priest at the door and we were well and truly married like decent Chrisstians, as she put it. Well, I was the talk of the countryside, married twice in one week, first with the Rector, and then with the priest, took some beating, and if I had to take Nancy's advice, I'd have gone and had a Tinkers' Wedding just for good measure. •