Danny Boy

You shall be taken to a place henceforth and hanged by your neck till you are dead!

The judge solemnly placed a black cap on his head to pronounce the awful words. My sentence was almost a blessed relief in comparison; Transportation for seven years.

From my heavenly rest, cradled in a comfy hammock slung between cumulus clouds, this is my story.

I’m Danny Boy, the Bastard son of a housemaid employed by a wealthy family, in Scotland. Delivering me in a hayloft on a soft day in the Spring of 1825, give or take a decade, I never heard of nor saw my birth mother again. Raised by Big Molly the house cook and wee Jim Flynn her husband who loved me from my first breath.

Childless, they lived in a cottage on the employer’s estate. She was the cook at the house and Jim worked in the estate smithy.

Plump, with a jolly round face under grey hair, pulled up into a cottage loaf coif, Molly was kind, with a lively wit and an innate ability to perceive. She was the best mother anyone could have.

From early on, she brought home books passed on to her by tutors hired to teach the children of the big house. This was considered a charitable gesture by the family to help the poor little bastard, me. A quick and eager learner, I excelled.

Molly studied with me, albeit much slower. She would laugh and make fun of the letters and numbers. A five, sideways, looked like a clothes hook. Eight, easy to write was the nicest shape.

 Jim felt he didn’t need to learn but enjoyed watching the good-natured ribbing between Molly and me. A bit of learning wouldn’t hurt me, he said. Picking up skills as I grew older, doing a variety of odd jobs around the estate, my earliest memory is of watching him in the smithy.

Like old friends greeting each other, Maudie the Clydesdale knew the drill to get new shoes. At his light tap, she’d obediently raise her left back leg, lowering her muzzle to caress Jim. The familiar smells in the cobblestoned smithy and heat from the fire tickling her nostrils caused a contented neigh, better than mere words could convey.

Looking after the cows my favorite job, I’d lie on my back looking up imagining shapes of racing chariots throwing up white streaky clouds across the blue sky

Other times I’d be a watchful eagle from my hiding spot on the attic stair where I’d sit dazzled by the fancy galas of the rich folk. The pillowy softness of the ladies’ ball gowns looked like bed sheets on a clothes line doubled and pegged at the corners, blousing and bouncing in a stiff breeze.

A rich new world was opening up from the books Molly brought home. Charles Dickens, Robert Burns, and my absolute favorite Ivanhoe. Molly loved the quote;

“Silence, maiden, thy tongue outruns thy discretion.”

She said it described the hot air blathering of the political orators on Glasgow street corners. 

An idyllic childhood, I couldn’t imagine a better one.

The end came as sudden and brutal as a smack in the head from an unnoticed moving swing

Several of the farmhands were caught stealing cattle. Rounded up as an accessory, completely innocent, I was shoved into a crowded train bound for Newgate prison, London to await a court hearing.

After the cattle scandal, the family decided to hold a thorough interrogation. Molly was caught with a paper screw of a few loose tea leaves and sugar. Slipped into her pocket at the end of each 12-hour day, she and Jim would share a cup of hot tea before bed. Such a mild infarction but the staff took sides against her. All had benefited from Molly’s kindness, with similar small gestures of leftover soup, and hunks of bread. Someone was waiting for her job.

Jim was automatically dismissed and both, unknown to me, were also in Newgate prison awaiting trial.

Frantically worried, I knew something must be amiss. Molly and Jim would know I was falsely accused, they’d never abandon me. But where were they? No one either knew or cared,

Cattle stealing was a capital offense. The only thing worse than getting sentenced was the agonizing suspense of not knowing what it would be. A bitter lesson I observed from those excruciating long days in prison.

Four of the ranch hands got capital punishment, and four were sentenced to fourteen years of Transportation and in my case seven years, on account of my youth.

Among the first few hundred chained prisoners paraded onto a train bound for Southampton docks, I saw Molly and Jim. Transportation for seven years was their sentence. I later learned their desperate pleas to know my fate went unheeded.

Shrieking with happiness and relief, we waved and threw kisses. Jumping up and down with such a feeling of lightness, I could have leaped over St.Pauls. Unfettered and on board, not even the grim, inhuman conditions in the filthy, dark, bowels of a dilapidated ship for 105 days at sea could lessen the utter joy of being crushed against the ample bosom of Molly in a coarse, hairy shirt.

Meager rations of food and water were passed down a dark chute once daily. Molly was the only one who spoke up for the convicts imploring titbits of news from an unwilling, faceless voice when that gloomy hole opened.

The first days were the worst up to the point of midway, after that was the relief of being halfway through the ordeal,

The endurance of the human spirit amazed me. Molly encouraged groups of nationals in song and prayer in their accustomed fashion. Achingly beautiful, Bread of Heaven, sung by the Welsh in that miserable place could assuage the mad shrieks, hunger, and thirst for just a little while. It was also noted and appreciated by the crew of the ship.

 Too weary yet desperate to believe we poor wretched, people began to live each day for that daily opening of the chute. Molly, again, with extreme patience, coaxing with sweet words, got news of the new Superintendent at Norfolk Island, Alexander McConnachie, and his radical ideas of penal reform.

Convicts could work off their sentences through good behavior and industriousness. He believed in trust, and in what sounded like a wild dream, a promise of early freedom, and a gift of a small piece of land. Each day, more and more that daily hole opening up with bits of information was like a gift from God making believers of the most embittered.

My salvation was inspired by all the great books I’d read. How would Dickens have described our situation? Giving a starving mouse a grain of rice, it becomes a feast, was my simple literary answer.

On a moonless night before dawn, we emerged from the stinking hulk of that wreck of a ship. As the sun broke the breathtaking beauty of color was like that grain of rice. A feast of blue ocean, golden sand, and immense deep green tree ferns so tall they brushed the clouds. Our lungs gulped the sweet fresh air, as each heart silently screamed in thanks for this merciful, miraculous day.

Early into our sentence, Alexander McConnachie determined to prove a point to his superiors In London and Scotland. His startling experiment was for one free day.

He’d open the prison gates, allowing games on the beach, bathing in the ocean, a barbecue feast, and to each a ration of lemonade and rum. Heavy on the lemon very light on rum. It was to be a glorious celebration honoring the popular young Queen Victoria and Albert her Prince

If one man tried to escape it would have ruined everything. At the end of that wonderful day, everyone was accounted for, and not one absconded.

Moving freely among the convicts, McConnachie stopped to compliment Molly ably assisting with the food preparation. Answering his questions she humbly told him our family’s history.

The very next day, Molly made breakfast of scotch pancakes for the family. Working daily as a cook she’d return to prison each night. Jim got the same arrangement working at the local smithy, returning to incarceration each night.

 My sentence was commuted immediately, working daily in the office. My reward was room and board at the official residence.

Molly and Jim worked off their sentences in a few months. Life was very good and best of all Mary Ann McConnachie, the spirited younger daughter had cast an eye in my direction. Initiating our first sweet kiss, I freely admit being a most willing recipient

Mary Ann and I married with me taking her surname. It was a public acknowledgment decided between Molly, Jim, and me to honor our savior, Alexander McConnachie. After a grand feast on the beach, the free members of the original Welsh choir from the ship serenaded at sundown with a rousing chorus of Bread of Heaven.

After a marriage blessed with love and fulfillment, we eventually returned to Scotland raising a lively seven children.

It’s an inspiring story of peasants and a prince who fought ignorance and cruelty dared to treat the oppressed and downtrodden with dignity and respect. Norfolk Island once a garbage dump of the unwept, unhonored, and unsung has blossomed into a little jewel of peace and harmony in the Pacific.

Molly and Jim joined the many permanent settlers descended from those early convicts, prospered, and never went back to Scotland.

Like many men before their time, Alexander McConnachie was politically undermined. His ideas were largely ignored and forgotten, only to be advanced later as the basis for penal reform.

The way of the transgressor is always hard, but once begun, progress will follow no matter how long and hard the battle.