ept
in the other bed.
There were six of them, and after the death of her husband she had to
fend for all. The little croft was hungry land, and to make a sufficient
living she used to weed for her more prosperous neighbours. It was
ill-paid labour--ninepence a day fine days and sixpence all weathers,
with a can of milk twice a week and a lump of butter thrown in now and
then. The ways were hard and the children were the first to feel them.
Five of them died. "They weren't willing to stay with me," she used to
say. My father alone was left to her, and he was another Daniel. As he
grew up he was a great help to his mother. I feel sure he loved her.
Difficult as it may be to believe it now, I really and truly think that
his natural disposition was lovable and generous to begin with.
There is a story of his boyhood which it would be wrong of me not to
tell. His mother and he had been up in the mountains cutting gorse and
ling, which with turf from the Curragh used to be the crofter's only
fuel. They were dragging down a prickly pile of it by a straw rope when,
dipping into the high road by a bridge, they crossed the path of a
splendid carriage which swirled suddenly out of the drive of the Big
House behind two high-spirited bays driven by an English coachman in
gorgeous livery. The horses reared and shied at the bundle of kindling,
whereupon a gentleman inside the carriage leaned out and swore, and then
the brutal coachman, lashing out at the bare-headed woman with his whip,
struck the boy on his naked legs.
At the next moment the carriage had gone. It had belonged to the head of
the O'Neills, Lord Raa of Castle Raa, whose nearest kinsman, Captain
O'Neill, had killed my grandfather, so my poor grandmother said nothing.
But her little son, as soon as his smarting legs would allow, wiped his
eyes with his ragged sleeve and said:
"Never mind, mammy. You shall have a carriage of your own when I am a
man, and then nobody shall never lash you."
His mother died. He was twenty years o
Notka biograficzna
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