Second ReadingFr Kevin Hegarty
The Belfast born painter, Paul Henry immortalised Achill in his landscape paintings. He spent long periods there in the second decade of the twentieth century and remained in thrall to the place for the rest of his life. His paintings evoke, with poetic exactitude, the spirit shocking wonder of west of Ireland mornings.
He saw beyond the scenery. Among his work are also moving portraits of the people of Achill at work, play and prayer. They express the dignity of a hard working rural pre-industrial community. He did in images what Synge did in words for people on Ireland’s western fringe. The comparison is apt. He acknowledged the influence of Synge:
“There was something in Synge that appealed to me very much. He touched some chord which resounded as no other music had done.”
Henry was acutely aware of the burden of poverty that Achill people bore with stoic resignation. For a time he got employment with the Congested Districts Board and his work brought him into intimate contact with it.
“I have yet to see people who worked so hard for so little gain. It meant incessant toil with the spade; ploughs were useless on most of these stony fields. There were no roads into the fields for carts, and everything had to be carried on creels on the ponies’ backs in storm and rain to the widely separated fields; laborious and wearisome work because the subdivisions of the holdings for generations had been carried out to an unbelievable extent. There were fields no bigger than a large tablecloth, and a man might own a field or two beside his door and another bit of land, almost the size of a small suburban front garden, a mile or so away.”
By the late 19th century seasonal migration to Scotland to pick potatoes had become an economic necessity for the Achill community. A fascinating insight into this experience is contained in a recently-published pamphlet by Brian Coughlan, ‘Achill Island tattie hokers and the Kirkintilloch tragedy, 1937’. It deserves to be read by everyone interested in the modern social history of Mayo.
It was customary for young Achill workers, from the age of 13 onwards, to go to Scotland, from June to November to pick potatoes and send most of their wages home. They boarded the train at Achill for Dublin. After a nine-hour journey they embarked on a 13-hour boat journey to Scotland where they were met by their gaffer, often an Achill man, who transported them to the farms where they were to work. They lived in accommodation, known as ‘bothy’ houses, close by the potato fields. These ‘houses’ were converted sheds used in winter to shelter cattle and store farm tools.
Beds were makeshift structures composed of potato seed boxes, within which there were bales of straw, where up to three slept. Food was usually plentiful; potatoes, given their cheap availability, were the dietary mainstay.
The tattie hokers started work as early as 4am and they were usually in bed by 10pm. They worked in a format known as a ‘grape’, two in a team where one would dig the potatoes and the other would gather them into a basket. Other workers had the task of emptying the baskets and dividing them according to size.
It was strenuous work for which in the 1930s the average wage was 25 shillings. Conditions for the workers often depended on the honesty of the gaffer. Peadar O’Donnell, the socialist agitator and writer, campaigned to improve conditions for Irish potato pickers, with some success.
It was not all hard work. Once they received their first wage packet tattie hokers clubbed together to buy musical instruments. Céilis usually took place on Sunday afternoons where up to ten ‘bothy’ squads would meet at a selected venue. Anthony Kilbane, who first went to Scotland as a 13-year-old in 1924, recalled those days affectionately:
“But in Scotland we lived a great life and we were looking forward to November, coming home, and of course in June, we were looking forward to going. We enjoyed ourselves now as much in Scotland as people are enjoying themselves today going to discos.”
Disaster struck for Achill tattie hokers 70 years ago, this September. An Achill squad arrival to Kirkintilloch in mid-September, to work the adjoining farms. They were billeted on the premises of local potato merchants W and A Graham. On their first night there a fire broke out and ten men were first suffocated and then burned: in the poignant words of the Achill poet John F Deane ‘ten bodies boxed on Kirkintilloch farms where fire had sifted them into one ash’.
Ten years ago, a plaque, in remembrance of those who died, was unveiled at the site of the fire. It was appropriate that the Mayo delegation was led by the then Cathaoirleach of the Mayo County Council, Pat Kilbane, himself an Achill man, whose two uncles died in the tragedy. Along with the Provost of the district, he unveiled a new street name in Kirkintilloch, Achill Place Site. There is a corner of Kirkintilloch that will be forever Achill.
