Emerald Magic_ Great Tales of Irish Fantasy - Andrew M. Greeley [51]
And the men of Glencar could not see the color green.
After many of them sickened and died from eating the blighted crop, the tenant farmers that remained gathered together one evening at dusk in Donovan McNamara’s barn to talk about the unthinkable—leaving Glencar and the rocky lands beneath Macgillicuddy’s Reeks, the tallest of Ireland’s mountains, where their families had farmed for centuries, both before and after the English came.
“The landlords are sending troops to evict anyone who’s in arrears in County Limerick,” said Oisin McGill nervously. “The village of Coyt is empty, the whole town of Ballincolly has gone to slave in the workhouses of Tipperary.”
“They are starvin’ down in County Cork, I hear,” whispered Eoin O’Connell. “The priests there said there were to be no more burials in coffins, to spare the money for food. Families are to put the dead in the ground in but the clothes they were wearing when they passed.”
“Landlord Payne says he will forgive our taxes and pay for our passage in exchange for leaving the lands,” McNamara said. “The crop may not be entirely lost yet, but how can we tell the good from the bad? Not one of us has color in his eyes. I’ve decided we will emigrate to America. I don’t know what else to do, and I won’t stay here to die on another man’s lands.”
“Nor will I,” Colm Martin, Patrick’s uncle, agreed. “I have children to think of.We leave after Mass on Sunday for Dingle. There are ships sailing from there every week or so now.”
Patrick’s father, Old Pat, cleared his throat. The noise in the barn fell away in the whine of the wind; Old Pat rarely spoke, and when he did, the men of Glencar listened carefully. Old Pat had been a sailor in his youth until two decades before,when he came home to farm his family’s ancestral land in Glencar. His wisdom was never doubted, especially regarding the sea.
“Those rickety ships be naught more than floating coffins,” he said, his voice gruff. “They’re packin’ three times the number they should be into ’em. You’ll be lucky if half of you live to see New York. I’d rather die here and be buried in the blighted soil of Ireland than be food for fish.” He rose slowly to leave, then turned back to his despairing neighbors and younger brother. “But then, that’s me. My son is grown, and can decide for himself. Aisling and I will stay. The rest of you, do what you must.”
The door of the barn creaked mournfully as it opened, and he was gone.
Patrick rose to follow him, only to be stopped by the hand of Donovan McNamara at his elbow. He looked down; Donovan’s hand had withered to arthritic bone covered with sagging skin.
“Young Pat,” Donovan said, “you must think of your mother.Ais-ling’s a young woman still; she’s not aged a day since your father brought her to Glencar before you were born. Old Pat may be ready to go to sod in Ireland’s arms, but your mother, now—”
Patrick nodded. He had been thinking the same.
All the way home in the darkness he wondered as he walked what he could say to his father that could possibly change the most stubborn mind in three counties, knowing full well that no such words existed. The stars winked bright above him in a sky that held no trace of moonlight.
The warm glow of the hearth fire shone in the windows as he came over the hill to his mother’s house where he still lived. Old Pat’s prized Irish draft horse, Fionnbar, was nowhere to be seen. Patrick opened the door quietly, in case his mother was already to bed.
Aisling sat before the fire, mending Fionnbar’s bridle. Her eyes sparkled upon beholding Patrick, and she smiled her customary slight smile, but she returned to her work without speaking. Both of his parents were given to using words sparingly.
Patrick hung his hat