R.J. MacSween

Ironville

Ironville is a district of Boisdale Parish. On the way from Sydney, you reach it before Boisdale proper. Why do I mention it at all? It was my home up to the age of five, at least I think so. My family moved from there when I was about that age, so all my memories of Tronville come from those early years. Our farm, I used to hear, was one hundred acres, cultivated only in the area near the road. Beyond the road was the railway and, beyond that, the Bras d'Or Lakes.

When I think back to that early time, I am not conscious of myself as a human being, but as a camera. I seemed to walk around all alone. I was always watching and listening and mentally recording. I seemed to do nothing on my own. I know this is far from the truth. Blacked out of my memories are the times when I cried, when I suffered, when I felt alone, when I knew I was helpless. Fortunately those moments are gone, never to be resurrected. The brain takes care ofitself, and rejects what would be too much for a child to bear.

I have no memories of myself speaking. It is always others who speak and who act and who dominate events. When I feel I am back in the past, I find myself on the edge of some group, generally that of my brothers; sometimes I gaze at my father and mother. I am never alone, although I must sometimes have been alone. But my mind demanded some other personality to awaken it to memorize.

I have few memories ofspace beyond my immediate surroundings. I cannot recall looking as far as possible across land or water. I was always half conscious of Boularderie across the lake. Hills and humps of land were my other boundaries. It was the immediate that drew my attention. The world was very small around me, but it pulsed with life and interest.

There was a pond near the barn which was an object of fascination. There were frog eggs on the banks and strange creatures in the depths. It was too dark and also too small for bathing in, and the water was stagnant and appeared unclean. Once a brother called me over and pointed to what seemed a large grub twisting and turning in the water. Probably it had fallen in, but to me it belonged to the mystery of the pond. Later, when I was a teenager, I returned to the farm, and to my amazement the pond had shrunk to a puddle. I could have jumped from bank to bank. I was disappointed at this reversal of my childhood impressions. Next door, on my uncle's farm, there was a brook that came down from the hill behind the farm in a series of small waterfalls. It was a small brook as brooks go, but it was sweet and fresh and contained beautiful trout. I watched a number of times as my brothers fished. Invariably they caught a few but never enough for a full meal. Once when I was alone, my elder cousin came over and asked me to fish withhim. For ahookhe had abentsafety pin, and forline, ordinary string. When he would drag in a fish, it would fall off the hook and flop back into the water. 'Jump on them!" he ordered me. But I was only four years of age and just watched as they returned to the water. "You're no good," he said and went home in disgust.

On top of the hill, not far from the brook, two large pits had been dug in the earth, perhaps thirty feet in depth and ten across. When I first saw them they were filling in gradually, and bushes and vines were growing up and down their sides. These were part of an investigation that had been made into the possibilities of mining ore in the district. The iron underlay the whole hill that was back of the farms. Even digging post holes, the digger would come across rocks that contained ore. I saw my father pause at this work to examine what looked like a lump of mud and say, "Iron,' and go on with the digging. And so the name of the place, Ironville.

If I was merely spectator to the world around me, I was especially so in regard to my brothers. There were four older than myself and in those early years I watched them as children watch movies. They were separate from me, and autonomous whereas I was dependent; they thought out and acted out their own desires (I believed), and I was merely pushed about one hour to the next without will of my own. I was small and weak and they were big and strong. My role - my only role in regard to them - was to be spectator and to avoid harm.

One incident comes to my mind with the utmost clarity. It was bright midday in the summer. The boys were splashing water on each other around the well. By accident (I like to think) a bucket of water was thrown over my baby sister who was seated innocently to one side. She let out a scream of fear and alarm - and my mother appeared in the kitchen door, an anxious look on her face, At that moment there was a loud crackle of thunderjust above us in the clear summer air. It was so loud that everyone froze in his/her position. Then my mother said, "No wonder it's thundering - you boys are so badl' It is all so clear. I can see the corner of the house which held the kitchen door, my mother standing with her anxious face, my sister facing upward with her mouth open and her eyes closed, my brothers like guilty statues standing round, I myself squinting through my eyes at the wonder of it all.

In my early years there was something I only vaguely realized and that was that the general culture was still Gaelic. English was definitely on the ascendant and my brothers and sisters spoke English only. But the grown-ups, the rulers and shakers, spoke Gaelic to each other. As long as my father and mother lived, they spoke Gaelic when together. We were accustomed to wait until they would turn to us in English. One reason why we never heard anything gossipy or scandalous was that they had already exhausted those subjects between the two of them. At least so I thought. It made their English conversation rather bland, but their Gaelic was a matter of high mirth, of sudden outbursts, of roguish glances at each other and at us. The fun was buried deep in the language itself.

What remained ofgaelic culture was unsupported by any concerted effort by school or church or any local society. It existed as naturally as the air and its outward manifestations were in music, song and folktale. The prayers of the older folk were in Gaelic. When we had finished our night prayers, said all together and led by my mother, we repaired to bed. But my parents remained on their knees to say their Gaelic prayers. It was as if English prayers did not count for those who had learned Gaelic prayers in their early youth. They were good enough for the children - but not good enough for those initiated into the mysteries. My father entered into these later prayers like a diver entering the water on a hot day. He let himself go with relief into the comfort of the old forms after he had moved to one side the inferior rituals that impeded his way.

Their religion they took for granted. There was simply no other way to think and to live. Every iota had to be taken into account. The debts we owed God were to be paid back each hour, each day, each life. On Sunday morning the smart hordes could be seen trotting along before the crowded buggies, parents and children in a heap on the top. Every Sunday was a holy day. I was too young to be present in the church at Boisdale and I never heard the hymns that were sung there. What I heard all the time was my mother singing. She sang day in and day out - as she worked. Most of her songs were in Gaelic. They had a fine impetus and a strong beat, good songs to work to. Later on I picked their melodies up here and there - I never learned the Gaelic words. I found out that most of them were love songs that she in her turn had learned from her mother. To me, my mother was already old, but the incomprehensible lyrics spoke ofyouth, and love, and passion, and the fleetingness of summer.

I have no way of evaluating the literary worth of those songs but there's no reason to suppose that they are anything but excellent. If you glance through the song collection, 'Beyond the Hebrides," by Donald A. Fergusson, you will find a broad spectrum of human emotion and experience. The book contains many of the songs that were known on this side of the Atlantic and these are a literature in themselves, able to stand with pride beside other literatures. I have chosen to quote the translation of a mother's lament for her drowned boys (a few stanzas):

  Early Monday morning,
  On a day of bad luck,
  Sailed myjewels away to sea.

  Wet and windy the storm,
  And the night grew so wild.
  I was sure of my loss at dawn.

  But blinding the glare
  In the haze of the mist,
  Ocean's spume, when the wind's wild with rages.

  Beautifully you sailed
  When you went from the shore, 
  On the voyage of no return.

My father seldom sang at all. Once in a while he would feel the urge and sing a long ballad about a dog named "Pilate". But he loved to listen to the old airs and then would express his appreciation. Once, after he listened to some recordings of Gaelic songs, he said, "I don't want to listen to English airs again.' His statement was delivered with a quiet decision, but after we moved to town and the radio arrived, he was swamped, as we all were, in modern English or American music.

My father showed no desire to teach us Gaelic. He himself had gone to school for only about three years. At that time the children all spoke Gaelic. The classes were in English and he learned very little. Then eventually he got work in a mine in Glace Bay. I've been told that he was only twelve years of age at the time. With his poor command of English and strong Scottish accent, he was often an object of mockery for the older men. Hence he regarded Gaelic as a drawback and a hindrance. His English improved gradually all through his life. He read papers and magazines with facility, and the strong accent gradually wore away, an unusual change for a mature man. He must have been pleased at his conquest of an alien idiom. Nevertheless, in his later years, there were times when he felt that what he had left behind was more precious and belonged to his very blood and bone, and also that no substitute, however worthy, would ever replace it.

When I think of my last year in Ironville, I can think of nothing but the sun shining on a fresh world. My father was working in Winnipeg and my brothers ran wild. We lived on the beach at the front of our farm and the older boys swam like fish in the water of St. Andrew's Channel. To my memory we seemed to be nowhere else but on the beach all that summer. They all learned to swim in that first ecstatic week. One brother brought to the shore the end of the old chopping block for me. I was to grasp it and so stay afloat. I grasped it but did not float. I came to the surface gasping and afraid. Then I confined my activities to the shallow area where there was no danger. I caught minnows and pinfish there and marvelled at their tiny perfections. But in general I simply paddled around and watched the others closely, for after all they were the whole world as I knew it.

The time arrived when they wanted some sort of float. They dragged railway ties to the shore and nailed them together. They made a sail of potato bags, hoisted it up, and held it there with wire cables. Then they almost drowned: the wind caught the sail and the heavy raft moved swiftly out from the shore. Frightened, theyjumped off and dragged the raft back. It had been a near thing. They could easily have been snatched away and lost forever. After a while they attached a rope to the raft and when the wind caught the sail, they walked along the shore, holding on for dear life. But that was not fun, and soon the raft was firmly anchored and used only as ajumping-off place.

The summer dragged slowly on, seeming to last forever. All I can remember is the lazy warm atmosphere and the bright water of the lake. I was too young to recall other summers. There was only that one and no other. Later on in life, I judged other times and places by my experience of that early period of my life. Nothing else ever came near it. The Greeks used to talk of the Golden Age, a period in man's history, before later social organization, when all was peace and harmony. Of course, it never existed. However, it is a persistent echo in men's minds. Probably it is the dim recall of such early summers. As one writer put it: "Where there are children, there is the Golden Age."

The great industrialized farms of today do not have the intimacy of the small family homestead. It is an intimacy not only offamily, there is the intimacy of the animals as well. The horses, cows and sheep give food to the humans in many farms, but they give companionship too. Generally this companionship is not acknowledged and it is always a great factor in the lives of all. But even here my memories reveal me as a spectator only. I watched the animals and that was all. I was too young to engage myself with any of them. I merely admired and wondered.

I cannot forget my first sight of a wild rabbit. It was busily chewing something on the pathway where my brother and I were searching for the cows. When one of us made a noise, it dashed off at tremendous speed. My mind was thrilled at the sight; it was one of the rare occasions when I can remember my feelings. Later on we had a tame rabbit about the house. I'm certain that I must have caressed its lovely fur and tried to make it my friend, but there my mind is a blank. Two things I do remember. First, my father taking his Sunday shoes from under the bed and finding the upper edge bitten off by the rabbit. I examined the jagged rim of each shoe. What my father's reaction was, I am not sure. Later I watched while one of my brothers crawled underneath the house to rescue the rabbit. It simply sat still while he gathered it into his arms and brought it into the house. The rabbit had become the victim ofan attack from our cat. My mother tried to make it comfortable near the kitchen stove. It showed no reaction, there were no visible wounds, but the rabbit slowly died.

Of course the animal par excellence on the farm was the horse, a mare named Minnie. To a child like myself she was very imposing - so slow and deliberate, so powerful, and so aloof from humans. The last point may have been a delusion since animals generally show little emotion except when aroused by fear. In any case, Minnie did move around the farm in a very impressive manner. When I reached the period of memory, Minnie had a lovely colt, a thing of beauty. I can recall both of them being released into the open meadow in the spring. Minnie walked slowly forward to sniff the fresh grass, but the colt went into a series of rapid circles around its mother, at the same time breaking wind like a machine gun. My father and mother laughed and called to each other in Gaelic as they watched the colt. Gaelic was their citadel behind which they could 'oke to their hearts' content.

One day I wandered into what could be called our parlor and found my father lying on a couch, one of his legs exposed, while my mother put a hot compress on his thigh. With my camera mind I stood and gazed and discovered that he had been kicked by Minnie while they were plowing. Days later he and Minnie were still working together as though nothing had occurred. When I was much older, he told me what had happened. The large harness had broken and he had put poor Minnie, a huge horse, into a smaller harness - which could not contain her. Again and again he was forced to stop in order to lift one of Minnie's huge hoofs within the chain. Once when she would not move, he kicked her with the side of his boot just above the hoof Like lightning she kicked him on the thigh, and left him groaning on the grass. He made his way slowly and painfully to the house where my mother cared for him. Minnie had the better case and he knew it, and he never made that mistake again.

The sheep were a harmless but ever-present element on the farm. They were forever making a noise while the wool grew fiercely on their bodies. When they were sheared, they went away like chastised children to do penance in the fields. The lambs, of course, were beautiful with the beauty of all beginning things. For a while there was a ram too which savaged the boys from behind if they were not careful. Their revenge was to take him out on a field of ice where he was helpless and where they tumbled him around like a toy. By bad luck I was present once when the lambs were butchered. My brothers did not seem to mind, since they were farm boys. My own feelings I do not know, but the image of the helpless lambs, passive in the farmers' hands, has never left me. Katherine Tynan, Irish poet, has a lovely poem on lambs. Here is some of it:

 All in an April evening,
  April airs were abroad.
 The sheep with their little lambs
  Passed me by on the road.

 The sheep with their little lambs
  Passed me by on the road;
 All in an April evening,
  I thought on the Lamb of God.

The whole family finally went to North Sydney, at Archibald Avenue, the home of my grandfather, George Nicholson. I don't know how we travelled, but it must have been by train. I can still feel thejoy ofwandering about the large house, which made our country farmhouse seem very shabby indeed. The older boys went off to school and I and the younger ones were left to our own devices. I remember ambling around the back yard and investigating the sheds and outhouses. I was forbidden the street and the woods that came up to the back fence. Later on I went into the woods and became lost. A youngster met me crying and brought me home where I remained without any further desire to explore.

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Excerpts from a series of articles which first appeared in the weekly newspaper, The Casket.

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The Antigonish Review is a quarterly literary journal published by St. Francis Xavier University. The Review features poetry, fiction, reviews and critical articles from all parts of Canada, the US and overseas, using original graphics to enliven the format.

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