Castles and the land of the Pigs

My parents often argued over heritage. Not in a nasty vindictive fashion more in a jokey jesting way. For example, my mother came from a region in rural Northern Ireland called Ballymacaramery (which loosely translated means the land of the pigs). My mother’s family were all farmers with a few acres, some cows, pigs, a vegetable garden, chickens and a greenhouse of fragrant tomatoes whose familiar smell is a potent part of my childhood memories. They lived along a muddy country lane and the further you went down it the poorer the people you seemed to find.

The last tenant, Bessie, on the lane lived in a ramshackle caravan and had five children whose noses always ran and who often took to riding the backs of pigs. I was terrified of my grandfather’s pigs. They were huge dinosaur-like monsters who routinely killed their own offspring by squashing them.  Sometimes they would get free of the field and chase me down the lane. A trauma I have only excised after a 40-year period. Betty's children were fearless of the beasts and used to use them like miniature headstrong horses. Whenever Bessie stole vegetables or eggs or (more commonly) tomatoes from my grandparent’s farm she would hide them behind her back. I remember long conversations with my grandmother catching Bessie in the greenhouse, her hands full of tomatoes carefully concealed behind her. My grandmother would have long polite conversations about Bessie's well-being, her children, the weather. All the while, the thief stood answering reluctantly, head nodding guiltily while she spoke. My grandmother never called Bessie out on the goods she stole. I suspect anyone desperate enough to steal from poor crop farmers were more in need of sympathy than judgement.

Looking back, I can understand that, but in the colour blindness of childhood, I saw only black-and-white. I wanted to point out the stolen goods held hidden in the sweaty hands of the wrongdoer. In those days, children took direction from the adults around them and did not speak out of turn. I knew better than to point out the tomatoes and shame Bessie. I resented it but I followed my grandmother's lead. If she choose to deliberately overlook the theft, I was duty-bound to do the same despite my own misgivings.

Now, I can understand that, in those days of no Social Security, poverty was a life-and-death affair. If you had nothing the benevolence of a neighbour could keep the wolves from your door. All Betty's five sons grew up healthy, tall competent men. I'd like to think my grandparent’s tomatoes, vegetables and eggs played a small role.

So, when my father teased my mother he’d say, "You come from the land of the pigs, what more needs to be said!" To this day, when people tell me about their ancestry/landed/wealthy I retort by saying I come from a long line of poor pig farmers. It has come to be my totem and one to which I cling in the face of the elite.

I remember an ancestor of mine being horsewhipped for allowing a stag to get past him during a hunt. The landed gentry on their horses with hounds yelping excitedly had cornered a huge stag in a small lake. Locals were called in to guard one side of the lake while the hunters and hounds waited restlessly on the other. Three times the stag swam to and fro, from one side to another, terrified to leave the lake but unable to escape. My great-grandfather could feel the animal’s despair and exhaustion as it floundered briefly under the surface of the water. He ran from his post allowing the magnificent animal to escape the trap. One of the hunting party lashed him from the back of his horse with his whip for allowing the quarry to escape. I remember being outraged by the injustice when told the story, but my grandfather pointed out, “Many a one takes a whipping for what they feel is right!” So, when I think of my mum's family all these memories flood back. Of suffering and struggles mixed in with nobility and conviction.

This then was “The land of the pigs!”  My father would then grandly explain “My people came from a castle!" To which my mother would snort in amusement. Years later, my brother did some research and he found the aforementioned castle! He even travelled down and explored the ruins of this edifice.

By this stage, he had completed an extensive family tree and discovered the family connections leading back to Magheramena castle in Fermanagh.  These relatives dated from Walter Roe Johnstone (1679) (High Sheriff of County Fermanagh) to the more recent Captain James Johnston (born in 1880). This last owner of the castle, Captain James Johnston was killed in Gallipoli on the 9th of August in 1915 on the battlefields of World War I. It's strange to discover your family history the good, the bad, the poor and the rich.

It seems a universal truth that all of these material things pass into dust eventually. What remains are the deeds of heroism big and small that tell of all those who have passed before. If there is anything to learn from our past, it is that destiny lies in our own hands. We must grab the opportunity to do some good in this world before we too are effaced.

“Thou art even as a finely tempered sword concealed in the darkness of its sheath and its value hidden from the artificer’s knowledge. Wherefore come forth from the sheath of self and desire that thy worth may be made resplendent and manifest unto all the world.”

Bahá’u’lláh

Uniquely worried, snotty and wise

Children are so unique.  When you have more than a couple you begin to sense how much they can vary one from the other.  You’d think coming from the same family there would be much more similarity.  I was ever an inexperienced mother and so was continually aware of my deficiencies in all things to do with child rearing.  Learning on the job so to speak was a necessity for me.  

I still remember the look on the midwife's face at hospital when I rang the bell for her to put my first son back in the glass container in the corner of the room.  When she asked me why I didn’t do it myself, I told her I hadn’t learned how to walk carrying a new born baby yet.  I was deadly serious!  Perhaps I would knock his head off while crossing the room.  Their necks are not strong enough to support their heads, maybe he would slump and choke as I tried to carry him.  To say I had never held a baby in my entire life was not an exaggeration. It seemed ridiculous then to be expected, a day later, to take this tiny fragile baby home in such a state of dangerous ignorance. 

My inadequacies as a mother left me particularly vulnerable at the baby clinic which I would have to attend regularly.   Here they examined the baby and weighed them.  Since I was breast feeding in those days when bottle feeding was more common I would find myself in a queue with huge burly babies and mine was like an underweight chicken.  The midwife would look at my tiny baby and say, “Well, what is happening here, he’s not thriving is he?”  Then, she would weigh him and say how underweight he was and I would slink back home the incompetent mother.  My failings recorded in neat script on the baby weight record card each week.

By the time I had my second I was more confident.  Babies can survive incompetency, I told myself.  I was no longer thrown by the huge fat babies around me.  One mother had a thin baby like me and stood crying as the midwife lectured her on the importance of giving the baby enough milk to sustain him.  I, by now, was made of sterner stuff and stood stony faced as she lectured me too.  Am I bothered? Written across my face.  Then when she took his nappy off I was scolded because his poo was liquid in nature.  “Your baby has diarrhoea and this is serious, he needs special electrolytes to protect him from dehydration.”  Thankfully, by this stage I realised that all breast fed babies had constantly runny poo so was not alarmed by either his weight or the consistency of his nappy.  

With my third son at the baby clinic I was resigned to being lectured on runny poo and low weight and stood in line watching mothers reduced to tears by their fears.  It didn’t take much.  A comment as innocent as “She doesn’t grip my finger really well does she?” would have a new mother’s eyes watering in concern.  When you are feeling inadequate, any criticism is a bridge too far.  Mothers are ever prepared to feel responsible and/or guilty where their children are concerned.  I was then completely thrown when the midwife measured my third son’s head and showed me that he was off the chart in terms of head circumference.  Not sure what to make of this comment I asked what that meant.  She answered that his head was so large they suspected water on the brain and would be monitoring him carefully in the weeks ahead.  I wept all the way home and viewed my third son for months expecting his head to expand like an inflated balloon.  It didn’t and although finding hats to fit him was a challenge he thrived and was a normal child.  I wish someone had taken me aside and said worry less and love more.  But when you are parent, the truth is you are usually doing the best you can in the circumstances.  If you could do more you would.  Worrying is part of loving, I suspect.

There was one other difference with my third son when he was a toddler and I have no idea if it is linked to head size or not. When he sneezed he would blast with his mouth closed and huge snots would invariably stretch down like long mozzarella drips extending to his feet.  His brothers would lecture him “when you sneeze open your mouth!” This however was beyond him and we grew accustomed to his ‘nose to toes’ snot connection.  It became one of his party pieces for the family accompanied with cries of “That’s a thick, green one!”

Of course mucus/snot/catarrh is actually part of the body’s immune system’s response to infection.  Mucus moistens and cleanses the nasal passages, traps foreign particles and stops them filtering into the respiratory system.  As well as fighting infection it humidifies the air reaching our lungs.  The glands of your throat and nose produce between 1 and 2 litres of mucus a day!  An unsanitary reality. 

An early expert on sanitary conditions in London, a certain Sir John Simon, had fought to apply new theories of public health to cleaning up the foul smelling sewer that was London in the mid nineteenth century.  He also is reported to have written bittingly about one lady,

“Sandy Davis has balanced her post nasal condition with something like prefrontal lobotomy, so that when she is not a walking catarrh she is a blithering imbecile.”

Sir John Simon (English Physician 1816-1904)

However, since Sandy Davis, the actress mentioned was not born until 1937  (April 27, 1937 – March 2, 1992) Sir John Simon is unlikely to have actually been the source of this quote.  Sir John Simon’s name does however feature on the frieze of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in celebration of his many outstanding contributions to public health.