Sinead's Baptism of Fire.

This story reflects the moral code of the Roman Catholic Church in 19th Centry Ireland and of how women were treated by men in that era. Italics represent Gaelic speech, which include a couple of Gaelic swear words.

The peat in the large fireplace where a kettle dangled over the flames flickered red and gold. Candlelight flickered on the windowsill and the bone-white wooden table. The mingling light gave the room a warm soft glow. Padraig and Dermot, Sinead's brothers played checkers on a worn board. ‘Likely Da’s filling his belly with poteen again, Dermot.’ Padraig, his voice contemptuous, moved a checker. ‘ He drinks our money away, so he does.’

       Dermot, less talkative than his older brother, moved his checker while nodding his agreement

Ma and her two daughters had spent the day with a picnic by the lough, laughing at Scamp’s attempts to catch sticks thrown in the water. She had a unique way with words and spun a tale about a fairy who could change a girl’s dull hair to shining golden locks. Sinead, who had a strong disdain for her hair, listened with mounting scepticism. Scamp, the family fox terrier, crept from under the table and snuffled his wet nose into her bare toes. Sinead pushed him away, her shoulders tensed and gaze distracted.

            A farthing for your thoughts, Sinead,’ said Ma, drawing back her daughter’s attention.

           ‘Father Byrne said fairies don’t exist. They are made up.’The girl stared into the dancing flames.

         ‘Mo stor, our imagination can bring fairies to life.’ Ma stretched out a blue-streaked hand to touch her head.

            Sinead wanted to bat it away like an annoying fly but resisted as it might cause a scolding. Instead, she scrunched her face, glowering. ‘I want golden hair like you and Angela, but no fairy will come and change it.’ She thrust her hand through the red springy hair that encircled her head, her temper rising. ‘Nobody wants a girl with freckles and red hair. Padraig’s and Dermot’s friends call me Foxie, and I hate them. I should join The Sisters of Compassion. Maybe Da would be proud of me and love me more then.’ Sinead pulled up her bony knees and put her head on them to hide the tears that glistened on her lashes.

             Ma, wise to her daughter’s mood swings, said, ‘Sinead, you must control your temper because rage can get you into trouble quicker than a donkey in a bog. But I will speak to your brothers about teasing.’

         ‘Ma, how long till I grow up?’ Angela’s whining voice made Sinead cringe, and she struggled with the desire to tug out her sister’s shiny fair hair. Instead she lifted he head and gazed at her sister. ‘In 1852, you eejit. I will turn twenty-one in 1850 .’  The thought did not fill Sinead with joy, and she hid her wet face in her knees again.

Da was a grand man for playing games with a clear head. He taught his children to swim, fish, and steer a curragh and his sons to tend the land. But when drunk, his temper turned evil. Then he would take off his belt. ‘You feckin’ children, you try me with your wicked ways, so you do.’

  Sinead had opined avoiding his anger was like being a hunted animal. But unlike her siblings, who feared their father’s wrath, she rebelled at unjust punishment.' Padraig, why does Da spare Angela from beatings?’

‘She’s younger than us and maybe reminds Da of Ma when they wed.’

 Sinead conceded her sister resembled Ma, and hated the injustice even more.  Throughout the next few months, Sinead noted how often Da came home drunk and how often she got thwacked. Her sense of injustice grew along with her dislike for her father.

When Sinead was eight she had to prepare for her first Holy Communion.  Sinead’s brothers said the lessons were boring, with the priest droning on about the Ten Commandments. So, when Sinead’s turn came in the spring of 1838, she hid in a cupboard. Da, his anger at boiling point, found her, pulled her out, and frogmarched her to the church. Sinead’s anger matched his; she was angrier than a donkey in a bog. She sat down with a thump in the nearest vacant pew, folded her arms, and gave the priest a sullen stare that would have frozen boiling water from her almond-shaped green eyes.

The priest, oblivious, pushed his wrinkled face towards his pupils, his teeth bared like a braying donkey. He burned the catechism words into their immature minds, making them chant them back. ‘You’s children follow the Ten Commandments. Do not idolise false gods or dishonour your father or mother. Girls note the seventh commandment. Sinead’s sullen stare became legendary when he chose her to glare at with menace as he spoke words the girls did not understand.

‘Padraig, what do licentious and adultery mean, please.’ Sinead stumbled over the pronunciation. ‘Father Byrne keeps telling girls to avoid them. But how can we if we don’t know what they mean?’ She folded her arms and glowered, her brow furrowed.

Padraig gave her a contemptuous look. ‘Has the goat been filling your young minds with his rubbish again?’ He laughed. ‘Sinead, I doubt the priest has a clue, so do not worry. He likes the whiskey bottle.’

 ‘Do you mean the priest drinks like Da?’

‘Aye. The priest reeks of whiskey in the confessional. You will smell it when you confess.’  Padraig shrugged on his thick coat and left the cottage to visit his sweetheart Moira. It was a night to freeze the wateri n the cow's trough and as he opened the door a gale which could whip branches from the apple tree blew in along with some dead oak leaves. The flames flicked more brightly as Ma piled on some peat.

Sinead sat in a vacant chair her brows knitted. She loved her Protestant Ma with all her heart, and a question about Ma’s faith stuck in her mind like a thorn in a finger, pricking away. A few days later, she helped Ma peel potatoes for dinner. Plucking up her courage, she said, ‘Ma, is your Protestant God different from my Catholic one?’

 Ma smiled and shook her head as she peeled the last potato. ‘He is the same God, but people’s faiths have different rituals and rules. You follow your father’s Catholic faith.’

 Sinead studied her peeled potato like it was a priest’s head, ready for boiling. ‘But I want to follow you, not Da’.

 ‘Sinead, I promised to obey your father when we married. Da wants all his children to be Catholics, so you were baptised in the Catholic Church by Father O’Malley.’

Sinead frowned. ‘Father O’Malley; is he as horrible as Father Byrne who has yellow teeth and red veins on his cheeks? Ma, he brays the Ten Commandments with whiskey on his breath and doesn’t explain what he means.’

 Ma put the peeled potatoes to cook in the heating broth. Sinead put her last potato in the broth too wishing it were Father Byrne's head and pondered on how unpleasant men like him became priests. After she confessed in the autumn of 1837, she said, ‘Padraig, you were right. Father Byrne’s breath stank of whiskey like it does in catechism classes. He could go to hell.’

 Padraig laughed. ‘Hell will be full of priests then because most drink poteen or whisky.’

‘It is not a laughing matter, Padraig. Priests and nuns are supposed to set us an example, aren’t they? The beginning of disaffection with the Catholic faith took root like a stubborn thistle beside a bog. It became rooted in the fertile soil of Sinead’s developing conscience.

As they grew up, life for the two girls revolved around the home and housework. Sinead soon spotted that her parents were unlike those of her friends. Ma could read, write, and reckon in Gaelic and English. Da lacked the skills, and one day his face, red with anger, objected to Ma tutoring her daughters. ’ They do not need to learn gentlefolks’ skills, Susannah.' His blue eyes were blocks of ice.

Ma disagreed. ‘They may not be gentlefolk, Brendan, but knowledge is a powerful tool. I teach them to be literate and numerate, with good social behaviour. They may find the skills helpful in the future.’

 Her words infuriated Da. He spat on the floor at Ma’s feet and swore in Gaelic. ‘Yous feckin’ bint, Susannah. Yer gentlefolk skills never helped us any.’ Da swivelled to look at Ma’s treasured brass clock. ‘They don’t need no feckin’ clock, neither. The moon and stars do fer me and will do fer them.’ He stomped off to the shebeen, slamming the door behind him, which rattled crockery on the table.

 Ma sighed, a quiet sound filled with meaning. Disgusted with his swearing, Sinead wondered if Da understood Ma. She would not teach such skills without a sound reason. ‘If Da hates gentlefolk. Why did he marry you, Ma?’

 But her mother did not answer, and her eyes glistening, she turned away.  However, Ma did not forget to teach her daughters  household skills. Angela loved to milk the family’s cow Daisy. Sinead’s task was to churn the milk into butter. Both girls learned to cook, and Sinead enjoyed making pastries. She first baked an apple pie in the autumn of 1839. Da said, ‘This is tasty. Who made the pie, Susannah?’

 Before Ma could answer, Sinead said, ‘I did, Da.’ She glanced at Ma for confirmation, spotting Ma’s eyes glistening, before she lowered them. her heart sank.

   Da stared at Sinead, fork halfway to his mouth. Mo stor, you can cook all pies from today. You make pastry tastier than Ma’s.’ He smirked at his wife. ‘You’ll make someone a good wife one day, Sinead.’

     Ma left the kichen, dashing away the tears while Sinead blushed and curtsied. Her feelings were mixed:  joy and pride at the Da’s words of praise but sorrow for her rejected Ma.  However Ma owned a much-admired copper boiler, the only one in the village. It heated water to wash clothes, and Padraig said it was a wedding present from Ma’s aunt, who lived by the sea. The boiler helped Ma to make extra income. She charged three pennies a load for her washing when Da was out of the house or at the shebeen and hid them in her press.

      On a bright spring day when Sinead was eleven, the income her mother made saved the family from eviction. Da came home drunker than usual  He woke Sinead as he rolled into the kitchen singing a silly song in the early hours of Sunday morning. Sinead heard him slump on the sofa. His snores soon resonated through the thin walls. But in the morning, sleepless Sinead who had heard him cough in the night, found Da’s body cold. He had choked on whisky-flavoured vomit which stained his shirt and breeches.

Ma wept. ‘I loved him, so I did. I don’t know why he took to the drink.’

Sinead had a reason: Ma’s book learning. Padraig and Dermot planned his funeral, and a woman from the village came to sit with his body in a plain wooden box while villagers paid their last respects. Ma, her face covered with a dark lace mantilla, wrung her hands and wept.  The next day the rent collector knocked at the cottage’s door  Sinead opened it and stared at the man  ‘Why have you come today? This is a house in mourning.’

The obsequious eejit said. ‘I will have you evicted if you cannot pay Missy. The landlord won’t accept any excuses from you.’

  Ma, her face invisible, opened her purse, rifling it for coins. Sinead glared at the rent collector with a look that could freeze a dragon’s blood. He smirked back. From her press Ma took out some coins hidden beneath a tablecloth and paid the man, closing the door with  her back to it.  ‘Without my washing money, our stubborn landlord could evict us from our home, and throw us into the bog. I have barely enough left to pay for your Da’s funeral.’ Tears glistened on her lashes, and Sinead hugged her mother.

 ‘We will help you, won’t we, Angela? That evil-looking rent collector has not tangled with us yet.’

Two weeks later, after Da had been buried, the rent collector visited again, and Sinead awaited him. ‘Ma is sick, so she is and has asked me to pay you. I believe the rent due is four shillings.’ Sinead smiled, exposing her even white teeth and pushed out her young but ample breasts covered by her well-starched apron toward him.

    ‘Er, thank you, missy.’  The rent collector was nonplussed, and his eyes bulging at the expanse of flesh above her apron bib.

        ‘Could you tell the landlord we shall withhold our rent next week unless he mends the thatch.’ Birgid turned and pointed to the roof. ‘Up there, see the hole. Rain gets through and wets Ma’s bed. That’s why she is sick.’

      The rent collector nonplussed by a chastisement from a colleen collected his money from Sinead’s reluctant hand and collected his wits, too. That’s a job fer yer Da. It’s his name on the rent book.’

        ‘Did nobody tell you? Da died of a fever.’ Sinead had told no one the truth. ‘Make the tenancy over to my eldest brother unless you intend to evict us.’  Sinead’s eyes blazed with fury.’ ‘If you evict us, Angela and I will end up in the workhouse.’

         Angela, her fair hair shining in the weak winter sunlight, joined her older sister. She, too, smiled, but the smile did not reach her eyes, for she hated the rent collector more than Sinead.

       ‘I will see what I can do,’ he said. ‘Can’t have two colleens in the workhouse.’

        ‘That’s feckin’ right,’  thought Sinead. ‘You go back to that enslaving English Lord.’ As he walked away, Sinead raised her fist to the heavens. ‘Grandfather your grandchildren will starve ifyour factor throws us out like you threw out Ma.’ She turned to Angela. ‘Grandfather is a beast for what he did to Ma. One day I will get my revenge. He will pay for his arrogance.’