Rag Bundle (He Said)

He had seen her coming over the boglands, he said. With his own eyes he had seen her, my grandfather said.

They owned all the boglands back then, every tuft and bloom and rath of them. Every sod of turf yet to be dug out. All the flames and the heat from all the peat of the wide, wide boglands that could have warmed our own village for centuries. The Luttons owned it all, and they knew it the least of anyone, he said. When the wind blew over the bog-cotton and the rippling gust-thrown peat pools, when the clouds gathered themselves and scattered themselves darkly over the wet hillocks, when in summer the driving rain ceased and the sun smiled down and melted the heart of the brown lakes so that they reflected back her shining portrait, none of this was known to the Luttons. They were not long enough here to know the place nor did they care to know it.

But they tried to tame it. They imagined that the land, with its own will and its own little folk, was theirs to tame. They built their house, a great stone thing glaring out as though displeased with the horizon, on the side of the biggest sliabh in sight. The heather was replaced by grass, for they felt they had to make the best of what they had. Where the fairy ring had been they put their tea lawn, and so the little folk were evicted from the boglands on the hillside.

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But the sidhe-people are not to be trifled with, he said. And he would know. He had seen her coming over the boglands.

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The Luttons owned all this and more. They owned dozens of cottages, he said, with us working folk living in them and they charged the rent. They added to this armada of buildings a workhouse which they funded and seldom visited and never once looked into the eyes of the inmates there. It closed down one day after the Famine, and its ghost still remains.

Many things had happened there before my grandfather’s time, he said. There were stories of when the potatoes had rotted there and folk had been thrown out on to the boglands for not paying rent. There were stories of the Luttons calling in soldiers to burn the cottages down so the families could not return. Stories of skeletal mothers wandering alone over the hillocks with their skirts soaked to the knees, smelling worse than anything you ever knew, rag bundles in their arms. Wailing like banshees for what had been lost, and fading there into the wind rather than go to the workhouse.

He watched the tinder and the petrol and the flames that came, and the punishing of the great house. The village folk all came and weren’t they all having a great time of it watching

This was before my grandfather’s time, long before, he said, but the memory does not go away. It lingers in the stories of the remaining, in the water of the peat moor, the charred rocks where a cottage was once. It lingers in the shadow the Lutton house casts as it darkens and deepens with the dusk. It lingers in the tales told of ghost-women like banshees on the moor, banshees who were once living women with rag bundles in their arms.

But what was in those bundles none would tell you.

It lingered, he said, until things came to a head and folks took the courage to say aloud what they had thought of the Luttons for a long time. Until there were shots and unrest in places other than here, and the Black and Tans could be seen on the bogland paths, smelling different to the turf-smoke. Smelling of guns.

Until my grandfather was a boy, almost a man, the gatekeeper’s son. In the gatehouse of the Luttons.

He had seen her, he said.

That day he was alone in the gatehouse, bent over on a stool, putting a bit of polish on his old boots. The smell of it like cold tar up his nose, he said. His father was out at the pub, as he was more often than was good for him, when there came a knocking at the door. He was a bold young man, he said, and opened it without fear. And it was the IRA.

“Let us through to the big house,” they said. “Let us through in the name of free Éire.”

He was only young, now, he said, but he knew well enough what they wanted with the house of the Luttons. He was only young, now, but he knew well enough that he could regret whichever decision he made, he said. And knew little else but that his father was paid too little for keeping watch as much as he did and that when his father was dead there would be nowhere for him to go, for the Luttons owned the house, not he. And he knew also the lingering in the wind over the boglands, and the memories with their bitter scent like thorn-tree blossoms.

And he wasn’t sorry even now, he said.

He followed behind them all the way up that sweeping drive to the house, under the rustling dark phantoms of the trees. He watched the tinder and the petrol and the flames that came, and the punishing of the great house. The village folk all came and weren’t they all having a great time of it watching. They cheered when they saw the Lord and Lady Lutton hoisted out at gunpoint with snowy napkins still tucked in their shirtfronts like the breast of a gull, and the servants all quivering and hiding, and the little lapdog kicked out of the way in the fun of the moment, and all down the path.

And the flames, he said. The flames and the sparks rose in the wind and were cast down all over the boglands, and all for miles around could see the greatest bonfire ever burnt on those peat moors, right up on the side of the sliabh. The tiny things flying like little glowing eyes, little watching eyes, those sparks. Like the eyes of the little folk returned to the sliabh at last. And the smell off them, he said. The smell of all that had lingered in the wind laughing. All the memories back again and in triumph.

He could have saved her maybe, but they only stared at each other through the roaring flames, with the defiance of youth which speaks through ages, from rich to poor, through burning walls

Some folk were almost dancing. But he could only wonder at it, and walk round and round it till almost he was dizzy, and he got a grand view from down there of the old place up in flames.

He was laughing as he walked round it, he said. And he kept on laughing until he saw her, standing at the top window in her white dress. The daughter of the house. The IRA hadn’t seen her nor dragged her out and she had stayed there watching, and now she stood looking out on the woods at the back, and at my grandfather, and feeling her home burn. He could almost smell the fear off her on the wind.

They looked at one another, him in his dirty cap, her in her soot-stained gown. She was no older than him and not a year younger neither. He looked at her and perhaps he could have saved her even then, but she looked back at him with bright eyes, unblinking, unflinching even in the heat, as if she knew why he laughed, and as if she would not apologise even now. And grandfather looked back at her, he said, at the way her hair was coming down in the wind all that high up, and now he knew why her mother had cried so loud. And he knew also that this was his doing, opening that gate, and he looked back at her with his bright young eyes as if he would not apologise even now.

And he could have saved her maybe, even then, but they only stared at each other through the roaring flames, with the defiance of youth which speaks through ages, from rich to poor, through burning walls. And then the tortured beam over the window gave way and collapsed in a shower of tumbling sparks, with the sound of glass shattering under the keening wind.

But he had known, he said. He had known really. He had known even as he had opened the gates there would be a death that night.

Because he had seen her, he said. He had seen her coming over the boglands in the driving rain, in her long cloak, yet gathering no water. The smell of the wet peat was with her, the smell of burning turf too, the smell of the mountains in winter, of sheep after shearing. The smell of the land.

He had seen her coming, the bean sídhe. The banshee of the peat moors.

But that’s nonsense, grandfather. Talk sense now. Talk some sense. What banshee would come for the Luttons?

No, he said. It was the sworn truth. He had seen her, he said. Coming over the boglands, a rag bundle in her arms.