A letter from my Irish Ancestor, March, 1876

Céad Míle Fáilte, and welcome to this week’s Letter from Ireland. The mornings continue to brighten here in County Cork, though there’s still a bite to the air as I settle down with my cup of Barry’s tea and write to you. Spring is making slow, cautious progress – the kind of spring our ancestors would have known intimately, full of hope and anxiety in equal measure.

This week I want to try something a little different. Instead of writing to you about Irish history and heritage, I want to see if I can let Irish history speak for itself. So, what follows is a letter that is fictional in its words, but faithful in every detail to the world it describes. I imagine it to be written by my great-great-grandfather, Michael Collins, who was a tenant farmer in the townland of Arduramore, near Ballydehob in West Cork. In the letter, he is writing to his son Jeremiah, who emigrated to join his brothers in Chicago the year before.

Michael could not read or write which was not unusual for a man of his time and place. So he did what many in his position did: he asked someone he trusted to hold the pen. In this case, it was his daughter-in-law Brigid.

The date is the 22nd of March 1876, almost exactly 150 years ago this week.

Let’s now meet my great-grandfather as he dictates a letter to his son Jeremiah in Chicago:

Written at the request of my father-in-law, Michael Collins of Arduramore, this 22nd day of March 1876, by his daughter-in-law Brigid Collins.

Dear Jeremiah,

It is late in the evening as I write this, or rather, as Brigid writes it for me, God bless her patience. Your mother has already gone to her prayers. The house candle is near spent, and I have more on my mind than there is light to say it by, but I will try.

Gale Day is in three days, son. I won’t say the thought sits easy. The rent is owed to Mr. Swanton’s agent and I have most of it, but the winter was long and the butter prices were poor at Skibbereen market. The amount that yourself and your brothers have sent home is much welcome, but I have had to ask your uncle Timothy to lend me the shortfall until the lambs are sold. It is not a thing I like. Your grandfather never owed a penny to any man in his life, and I feel the shame of it , though Timothy is a good soul and made little of it.

The land on the farm is waking slowly. I have been out on the lower field since first light these past few days, turning the drills with the spade. My back tells me I am not as young as I was. Denis Leary from up the road came down on Tuesday with his boy, and we made good progress together doing two rows by dinnertime. There is nothing like the meitheal for easing the work. Your mother had the stirabout ready for us and we sat in the yard a while eating in the thin sun. Denis was asking for you, as they all do.

We had the seed potatoes spread on the floor of the barn last week, cutting the eyes. I kept the finest for planting, a few of the old Lumpers still, and some of the Champion that Dwyer on the hill road has been trying these past years. He swears by it. After what our people went through in the Black Years, I leave nothing to chance with the seed.

The bay was calm this morning when I walked down to check the lower fence. You know the view , the way the water takes the early light like hammered pewter. I stood there a while and thought of you and your brothers, as I often do when I look at the water. Somewhere beyond it all is Chicago, but tis a hard thing for me to picture.

Your mother asks me to tell you that Fr. Crowley said a mass for you last Sunday. She is well, though she misses ye all something fierce.

I am glad the work is steady. The building trade is good, honest work. Your grandfather built this cottage with his own hands, and there is no shame in a man who makes things that stand. Send my regards to your brothers, I am proud of the lot of ye, though tis easier to write than to say.

Take care of yourself, boy. Stay away from bad company and go to mass on Sundays. Don’t forget where you come from. Arduramore will always be here, even when we who tend the fields are long gone.

Your father,
Michael Collins
(His mark, witnessed by Brigid Collins)

I will add one line of my own, Jeremiah, which your father did not ask me to write, but I don’t think he would object. The candle has gone out now and I am finishing this by the light of the fire. Your father sat quietly for a long while after he was done, looking at nothing in particular and letting the feelings settle.

I like to think he was looking towards Chicago.

Hold us all in your thoughts from time to time, for ye are always in ours.

Brigid

That last line from Brigid says more than Michael ever could. And what strikes me most about this imagined scene is how ordinary it must have been. Across rural Ireland in March 1876, there would have been thousands of cottages just like this one having a farmer with too much on his mind and too little light to say it by, a woman holding the pen, a son or daughter somewhere across an ocean, and a Gale Day looming. A small note on that word: Gale Day was the day in Spring when rent fell due.

How about you – do you imagine that there were letters back and forward from Ireland in your own family tree? You may even have been lucky to have one or two. Do let me know in the comments section below.

Slán for now,
Mike.