it shows its soul, the whole bush bursts suddenly into a magnificence of bloom.
There were like qualities in the hearts of the Irish women who were pioneering in the timber-lands of Upper Canada when Victoria began her long reign. In 1838, a young girl set up the first housekeeping on this farm. Her family were originally adherents of the Protestant Episcopal Church, and had settled as small farmers in County Armagh at the time Cromwell put the curse on Ireland. And I think, sometimes, that perhaps old Ireland also put a curse on them that settled within the pale. There was bred in their children’s children a hard, silent, stubborn pride that became pitiable as all Ireland fell upon evil days at the close of the Napoleonic Wars.
A high birth-rate and young folk who hung around home, instead of whistling themselves over the hills and far away, added greatly to the woes of the cabins and cottages of old Ireland,
… that mournful nation
With charmin’ pisintry upon a fruitful sod,
Fightin’ like devils for conciliation
And hatin’ each other for the love of God.
The result was rack-renting and the splitting up of small landholdings. Owing to its over-abundance, farm labour in that fertile land became less efficient than anywhere else in Europe.
The Irish Protestant families that pioneered in the backwoods of Upper Canada in the thirties were driven out of Ireland by forces as cruel and inexorable as were the troops of bloody Cromwell. Their womenfolk had learned in Ireland to skimp and suffer, and still endure; but they had endured there in a grim and haughty silence. I never met one of them, in the early days, whose grandfather had not apparently been the proud possessor of an entailed estate — I suppose of four acres and a cow. These landed gentry had dined on potatoes and hake, one day; but, to keep up the family standing, they varied to hake and potatoes the next. As for the rest of us in Ireland, we lived in those days on potatoes and point. You get that? The children stood around the table at mealtime, eating potatoes — boiled with the jackets on. To get a flavour, they pointed the tatties at the bit of salt herring their father ate. Nineteen years was the average life-span in rural Ireland; and only one soul of five passed the age of forty.
Coming to Canada, these women continued to suffer and endure as their menfolk cut homesteads on these stony hillsides — but there was a touch of hope thrown in. And where there is hope, there is joy. One of the finest things Canada ever did was to put a kindly twinkle into the blue-grey eyes of these proud, poverty-stricken Irish women.
Their tongues may have been tart at times, bur they wore their knuckles to the bone in the service of their love. The Scottish Presbyterians may have been the salt of the earth in Upper Canada; but the Irish women gave it sweetness and light. These mothers of Methodist families were quiet, tidy, capable women; and it was a pleasure to watch one of them making ready an evening meal. They were wholesome-minded because they were home-lovers and were busy home-making. And, among women, it is the home-keeping hearts that are happiest. The mother of a family was proud of her station as such; and, as a result, she was content to relax and drift quietly into the matron class. Her Irish eyes were smiling. One was not startled those days by seeing the worn eyes of an old woman looking out from a face made up to recall a youth that had fled. Has not every age of a woman’s life a natural beauty of its own?
The bodies of these Irish women may have been stiff-necked with a curious family pride that had nothing much to justify it; but that very pride fortified their unconquerable wills, and helped to keep their menfolk respectable. There was constant in their hearts a depth of love and loyalty; and, like my old yellow briar, it burst into bloom at times.
… for her price is above rubies.
She seeketh wool and flax and worketh
willingly with her hands….
She stretcheth forth her hands to the poor;
yea, she reacheth forth her hand to the needy….
She looketh well to the ways of her
household, and eateth not the bread of idleness.
Favour is deceitful and beauty is vain; but a
woman that feareth the Lord, she shall be praised.
THE WORDS OF KING LEMUEL
It was early in the spring of 1847 that I first got to know that young girl’s family, as I played around the Tavern Tyrone at Toronto. It is a long journey back, indeed, from life’s end to the little boy at the starting of it.
My family were of the poor Irish. A sailing vessel, returning to Quebec for timber, that year called at an Irish port to load its decks, as cheap cargo, with famished and wasted emigrants on their wild flight from the famine and the plague. Woe’s me! Unspeakable were the miseries of that long,tempest-tossed voyage in a filthy, fever-stricken ship. Half its human cargo were buried at sea; and, as the vessel sailed past Father Point, the waters of the St. Lawrence for miles behind were strewn with bedding tossed overboard by sailors making the decks shipshape for port. As a flat scow was being towed slowly up the river near Prescott, my poor father was stricken down. He went under shallow earth quickly, without benefit of clergy. My mother wailed after the manner of Irish women, and counted her silver. It was a handful of coppers she had, with a few sixpenny bits and a shilling. A steamboat brought the widow Slater and her small son to Toronto. How fortunate it was she had only one child.
My mother took lodgings with Mr. Michael O’Hogan in a small frame house that still stands, in tottering decay, on the east side of York Street, a few doors down from Richmond Street. Our living-quarters were upstairs in a small back bedroom, which we shared with a large family. She was only a slip of a girl, she was one of them black Irish. You know what I mean? There was the mop of raven hair, the swarthy skin, and a touch of down on the lip. Beyond the cruel, desolate ocean, there had been a sparkle of fun in her eyes, and the tongue of the laughing little baggage had been always on the wag. But the poor little Irish girl was fair distraught, now, with the outlandish ways of the crazy, new-world town, and sore afraid of its streets infested with Protestants and nigger-folk. She was sick at heart; she was homesick for the earthen floor of a sod cabin, with its friendly smell of burning turf and the sour buttermilk.
My mother got odd scrubbing jobs, day work like; and I ran about the street. A little lad of eight or nine years has some clear-cut impressions printed at that age on the tender, unscarred membranes of the brain; and they remain distinct and vivid to the end of his days. I got odd jobs myself, splitting kindling and doing chores in the morning for Mistress Kitty O’Shea, who lived in a little frame cottage where Shepherds Lane now is. She was a jolly, ruddy-faced little body, with silver always in her pocket; and she had fashionable ladies lodging with her. On fine afternoons, Paddy Casey would come round with his open carriage and spanking pair. Mistress Kitty O’Shea and her stylish guests were driven slowly up and down King Street to see the sights and take the air. Of course, I did not understand the business at the time; but no doubt my friend Kitty wanted other folk to know the sort of house she was running.
In 1847, there was plenty going on in Toronto to fill a young lad’s mind and keep his face agape. We had come from drippy Donegal where, in the little pockets and quarter-acre patches, “the praties grow so small they have to eat them skins and all.” Toronto seemed to me a stirring, big town; and things were in constant commotion. There were brawls aplenty for the seeing, and startling street fires by night. Then, too, there were the public hangings. Adventure bunted into a fellow round any corner; and there was lots to eat.
