THE IRISH MONTHLY

APRIL, 1906

"Y

“YELLOW DAN"

MEMORIES OF A FAMINE EXILE

ELLOW DAN" was a quaint and very holy little handful of a man, who had been half fisherman, half crofter, somewhere Bandon way, till the "bad times " came. Then the great hunger drove him to England, and he eventually drifted into an orchard district of the Thames Valley, with many other famine exiles. Most of this particular batch had endeavoured to settle in Kent, where they came under the influence of the saintly Father Young, of Dublin. If I mention that I possess that truly apostolic priest's signature, with the addition "Apud Maidstone . . . 1850," on the marriage certificate of my parents, enough will have been said to show how intimately my life was lived among the dear old Irish "neighbours" (they clung to the word; they were always the "neighbours "), in the Thames-side village, where they settled towards 1851.

When I first opened eyes on a Saxon world-a small exile of Erin at one remove-the village was almost an Irish one. The "neighbours" had put the saw through the cottage doors of their quarter, and made “half-dures" over which to chat the more conveniently of warm evenings. In colder weather you fumbled vainly for the latch from without. That is, if you were not wan o' the neighbours' childher." If you were, you

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sagaciously pulled a thong hanging through the latch-hole. The door opened as by magic, and you walked in, saying, "God save all here." "God save you, kindly," was the response, and you sat down, unbidden, and as of right, on the best seat, and nearest the fire.

Were you "Englified" (i.e. anglicized), and thus un-Irishly self-conscious and Saxonly shy? You were cured. "Yerra, 'tis Phil Rearden's little b'y! Come in out o' that, Phileen! Come an' have an air o' the fire."

On Sundays you sat to the right or left of the altar according to your sex. But this didn't count in babyhood, of course. Thus my first memory of Holy Mass recalls only a silver-white head upon gold-robed shoulders, seen fitfully across a swaying sea of old plaid shawls.

Perhaps the strength of our Irish atmosphere in the 'seventies and 'eighties may be gauged from traces left to this day on the speech of English-and Protestant-villagers. One example must suffice. In speaking of the dead-especially of the dead "neighbours "-you will be astonished to hear them say, "Gawd rest their souls," and to repeat the prayer whenever the dead names recur.

This blending of England and Ireland will explain my first reminiscence of Yellow Dan.

"I tell you her name is Pathriarch! he was saying, excitedly. She's Princess Pathri-a-arch!"

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It was after Mass some Sunday, in the autumn of about 1878. Another breath from the green hills of holy Ireland; the "neighbours " would stand "shanachussing" outside the church door for half an hour after divine service.

Pathriarch," said Yellow Dan, his black eyes blazing, his gipsy-like face, tanned by sun and sea, puckered into a thousand queer wrinkles.

"Bayathriss!" corrected a quiet grey-haired man, who was a "scholar." He and one other were alone among the old neighbours in the power of reading prayer-books at Mass.

It was referred to my father, who referred it to me, if you please. I fear he took little interest in the Royal House of England.

"Spell the word," he said.

"B-e-a-t-r-i-c-e," said I.

"That settles it," said my father, looking quizzically at Dan. "Sure it does," said the grave, grey-headed "scholar." "'Tis Bayathriss, plain as print."

"Beatrice," I piped out, being "Englified" after eight years of it.

My father took me by the hand, and led me homeward, for the neighbours believed it better for gorsoons to be seen than heard by their elders.

As we moved up the winding street that led out through the red roofs into the high road, we could hear Yellow Dan, with fine scorn, declaiming fiercely: "Their Beeathrisses and Bayathrisses. 'Tis Prr-incess Pathriarch!"

His ferocity was from the lips outward. None feared him; some teased him; all loved him. There was much deep compassion for him, too, for there was heavy sorrow in his life, which I have not heart to set forth in these pages of innocent recreation. It was wonderful, for one whose Christian patience was well-nigh heroic, how harmlessly petulant and explosive his speech and gestures were. Perhaps it was the Spanish blood in his veins, for his people were from the West coast.

"I will be patient!" he thundered at me one day in after years. "Yerra, why shouldn't I be patient? I will be patient!" This at the top of what sounded the angriest of voices. And patient he was; beautifully and silently so; for he spoke never, save to God, of his sorrows.

"Please God, I'll never be rich," was another of Yellow Dan's sayings. Some of the "neighbours" smiled; but these were not the older ones, who had been purified, ennobled, refined, by the crucible of the Famine. They understood. They knew that St. Francis of Assisi could have peered into Dan's white soul as he prayed thus beneath the swaying apple-boughs, during his day's long toil, and beheld him enamoured of the Lady Poverty.

"Sure, 'tis a prayer that's like to be granted ye, Dan," said teasing friends, but very gently.

"Please God it will," Dan would grunt. "I don't ever want

to be rich. I want to die poor. Oh, the rich, the rich! God pity them. I want to die poor, please God."

His prayer was heard. He was past his labour when my own dear father lay dying, and was unable to come to his bedside. I am glad that it befell so. The love that bound the survivors of the "neighbours" was a love surpassing the love of women. The grief of parting would have been too heavy a cross for the two aged exiles-almost the very last of that band of brothers.

But he struggled to the house some days afterwards, when his friend lay dead. He was ill, and shaken, and the weatherbeaten face was wan and white save where the suns of many summers had burnt it.

He looked down upon his fellow-exile's face, and prayed. Then he lifted beseeching hands, and I was thankful, for I knew what would follow. Lifting his voice, he raised the caoinethe traditional wailing of Ireland for her dead-raised it again and again. Then he spoke to my father by name, while I wept grateful tears, for my grief had been as yet dry-eyed-feverish and benumbing.

Many's the hard day's work I've done with ye-and many's the pleasant hour I've spent with ye. And now you've gone on before me and I'll follow soon after."

He would take neither bite nor sup, but went weeping from the house, and moved feebly down the lane, that once wiry and erect little figure bowed now with years and a crowning sorrow. But he was not to follow after " yet a while.

I had to earn bread for the household after my father's death, and Yellow Dan's prayer of poverty seemed granted for his friend's widow and children as well as for himself.

At length the blacker clouds lifted, and I returned to the village one day with a fuller pocket than for years.

Whom should I meet, a mile out from home, and near the relieving officer's house, alas, but Dan. It was mid-winter. Someone had given him a huge sou-'wester oilskin hat. Incongruously, he wore a pair of light canvas boating shoessome other one's cast-off summer gift. The blazing eyes were

now pathetically soft, and very gentle. Our greeting was affectionate, and we spoke much of old times, and more of my father. Then he told me casually, as who should say. "I shall go to Italy next week," that he was soon about to die, He showed me, with the fine pity of the Irish peasant for the red-tapeism of the Poor-law, a blue slip of paper, entitling him to so much milk and so much meat. "'Tis little time I'll be needing it," he added, with a big sigh of relief, and a touch of his olden triumph. The sou'-wester seemed St. Francis's cowl to me; the canvas shoes were as sandals.

A little more talk of the old neighbours with their sole survivor, and I pressed the biggest coin I could afford into his brown small hand, and hurried on my way with many misgivings.

They seemed justified at first, for as I stole a glance towards him at a bend in the road, he had turned in my direction with the old furious face and flashing eyes. I could see without being seen, and watched, and was sorry. At length he lifted clenched hands and imprecated-no other word may serve—imprecated blessings on me and mine-a volley of prayers hurled up to the lowering sky, beseeching the sweetest mercies for here and hereafter, in the savage tones of Semei reviling David.

Very fearfully, very holily, he rejoined the old neighbours some days afterwards, in that land where there is no more parting, nor sadness of farewell.

Will those who have read these lines generously remember, once in a way, to say a prayer for Yellow Dan and all the "neighbours"?

JOHN HANNON.