It could be at just such a time as this that the Banshee’s warning would be fulfilled.
With all these thoughts pressing in on her, Ellen Rua threw her shawl round her shoulders, bade the children to stay indoors until she returned, and set off up the village. She would follow the high road until she came to the crest of the mountain. From there she would be able to look down on the Finny road, watching for a familiar figure winding his way homeward between lake shore and mountain.
The evening was cold, but no matter. Wasn’t she better off out here than sitting at home, not being able to settle her mind for thinking about Michael and what might befall him? Anyways, she liked being out under the sky, feeling the cut of the air, having the freedom to go between mountain and valley and lake. Sure, a thousand walled gardens of roses, built by an army of ten thousand gardeners, could never match what was here around her. Unbuilt since time began.
As she passed the Crucán and turned left to ascend the high, mountain path, she remembered her father bringing her to this high place under the stars. Once there, he would say to her, ‘Now, find me the North Star.’ And she would look up with her little-girl eyes at the vastness of the sky twinkling above her.
‘Wonder is a gift,’ he’d whisper into her ear. ‘Wonder is not lack of knowledge, wonder is not ignorance. No, wonder is a gift – the gift of knowing there are things we cannot know.’
Then the sound of his voice would swirl around inside her head, and she would understand without knowing she understood.
‘Never lose wonder,’ he used to say, before she even knew she had found it.
‘What is it – where does it come from?’ she would ask, looking into his wise Máistir’s eyes, seeing something there that she now knew was the answer – wonder. A smile would come over his face and he would say, ‘Wonder is here now, a stóirín. Wonder is here now.’ And then he would say nothing for a while, just letting the wonder flow between them, dance in the air around them, binding them forever.
She never realized – until it was too late, until he was gone – that she was his wonder. Just as Katie, with her wild, generous impetuosity was to her; and Mary, with her quiet ways; and Patrick – dear, concerned, Patrick – struggling to find his feet, caught between boyhood and manhood. They were her three wonders. They wouldn’t realize it yet; maybe not until she herself was gone. And the kick inside, slowing her down – that too was her wonder. And Michael, her great love, who she watched for.
She followed the faint line of the Plough to the place where the Plough-maker made a giant leap across the heavens. There, where he landed, high above the mountains of ice, he had cut and chiselled the highest point, shaping it on his star-anvil. Then he blew it aloft, with a puff of his cold breath, to be the brightest, highest star of all – the North Star.
Underneath the North Star sat the North Pole. There, at the far edge of the world, the Máistir had told her, the stars sizzled and flashed, whizzing across the sky, caught in eternal conflict between night and day. The ‘Aurora Borealis’ was what he called this storm-tossed day-star. The very name rang with wonder: ‘Aurora, Aurora Borealis.’
From under that far place, he told her, ‘the Northmen came down in their long boats. Fierce warriors they were, coming out of the mists to raid our cattle and our women.’
Nothing much had changed, she thought. Now the invaders came from nearer home, in their fine clothes, speaking the narrow language of the Sasanach, still plundering and raiding our lands, and – she thought of Bridget Lynch – our women. Only now they moved not under stealth of mist, but by stealth of laws made in an English Parliament.
And now the language, too, was being stolen. Language that set the Irish apart, that was the expression of their spirit. English, the tongue of the invader, was now the official language, a barrier to keep out the poor, the peasant, the uneducated. English was the language of politics, of the Established Church; the language of opportunity, and emigration. It was the language of those who held the land. The language of power.
The old language was now a badge of ignorance and backwardness, the language of the potato people and the landless. It was the voice of the dispossessed.
Now, she too must contribute to the extinction of the language she loved. She must teach her children English. For them English represented escape to a better world somewhere out there under the stars. English was a chance of survival. Without it, they would remain forever impoverished in a landlord-ridden Ireland.
She and Michael still spoke the old language to each other, but to the children they had begun to speak in English. Michael did not like this, she knew. He saw it as a denial of their Irishness. But he accepted that they had no choice. If things got worse they would have to leave – if they could.
When the people left, the language would go with them, and with the language would go the songs, the stories, the sean-fhocails – the ‘old sayings’ – the prayers. Maybe on the far-off shores of North America and Australia, the exiles would, for a while, speak the old language amongst themselves. But Ellen knew it would be only a matter of time before Gaelic was cast aside as the language of paupers, the language of failure. In time, too, the culture and the spirituality of the people which lived through the old language would be weakened, dispersed to the four corners of the world. Those who stayed behind would also have to adapt to the language and ways of the ruling class – else perish.
The Irish would become English.
A great sadness came on her, and she raised her head to the heavens and prayed.
“Ellen! Ellen, a stór!’
Michael’s voice cut through her prayer. She jumped up, all vestiges of sorrow lifted from her; no thought save that he was here. He was safe.
And there he was, his silhouetted figure hurrying up the hill towards her.
How could she be so foolish as not to be watching – and that the very reason she was there in the first place! She climbed down from the rock and made her way towards him, not knowing whether the tightness in her stomach was the baby or the love-knot, ever-present when she and Michael were reunited after a separation, however brief.
In a moment she was in his embrace.
‘Ellen! Ellen!’ he kept saying, as if, having lost her, he had now found her again. ‘Ellen, you shouldn’t be out here.’
‘I came for you,’ she said.
‘Oh, Ellen, my bright love of the dark night, it is not a time for you to be on the mountain, and you as you are,’ he whispered into her hair.
Overflowing with relief at seeing him, she buried her face in his neck. The taste of the sweet salt of his sweat put all else out of her mind. She gathered some on her tongue and swallowed. Then she found his mouth.
‘You’re home,’ she breathed. ‘Buíochas le Dia.’
With Michael’s arm still round her, they turned for home, leaving the night and its thousand wonders above and behind them.
The children hung on every word as Michael recounted the details of his journey to Clonbur.
‘Things are bad,’ he said. ‘The people are all fearful of the grave times ahead, thinking that God has sent a great calamity to punish them for their sinfulness.’
Ellen had heard such talk before. Some of it from certain of the Catholic bishops claimed the blight was God’s warning to the lazy, ever-breeding, Irish to observe the laws of the Church and not engage in the old pagan practices, as they did at Halloween, and at wakes and Pattern Days. London too was quick to see the Hand of Providence at work, as if this absolved the Government’s failure to act. Ellen wondered whether the Government would have stood idly by if the blight had struck with the same severity in England.
Nothing had changed since Ireland had become one with England in the Union of 1800. England, that great all-conquering country, master of the seas, master of distant lands, had left its nearest colony