Short Story 1: Bogmen and Blackmen

Bogmen and Blackmen and other Matters

A Short Story by Cal Ward

Owen Holohan was absorbed in his work on the stub axel of the "Little Grey Massey" tractor.  The tractor was the family pet.  It hauled gravel and turf and hay, "foddered" the cattle in the Winter, turned the cement mixer and performed hundreds of odd jobs around the place. The children had learned the rudiments of driving on it and once a year they still cleaned it up, repainted the wheels and entered it for the annual Killoughey Vintage Tractor Rally where it paraded with a load of turf and a squad of terriers perched on top barking noisy defiance at all the sheepdogs along the Kinnitty road.  The wheels of a car crunched on the gravel and Owen looked up.  The parish Curate often called by on his rounds to hear Granny Holohan's confession - (she was over eighty and slowing down).  He liked to linger for a while to talk dogs and guns and wildlife with Owen.  "God Bless the work".  "And you too, Father".  They chatted for a while and the Curate said: "The Parochial house above in Ardboe phoned.  That's in Tyrone.  Father McFlynn said a man called Sammie Winter wants to see you. That's all".  "You're a curious man, Owen.  I won't ask what strange dealings you've had with a man with a good Protestant name like that, the priest laughed.  "Indeed, Father; you should not - I wouldn't want to offend the ears of a saintly man!  I'll contact him and thank you for passing on his message."

While the priest visited Granny Holohan and soothingly scratched the ears of the near-hysterical terriers who assumed every visitor was a foxhunter, Owen recalled his acquaintance with Sammie Winter.  The year was 1984 and it was a hard one.  Work in the midland counties was scarce and people were emigrating again.  The bogs were closing down and the little knot of men gathered outside Clonloum Post Office every Tuesday to hand in their dole chits was growing.  Ever the provider, Owen made sure there was venison and vegetables, rabbit and pheasant as well as turf and timber. The little household on the edge of the bog was warm and ate well.  Some things required hard cash though; shoes, books, clothes and so on and it was finding the wherewithal for these that occupied Owen's mind and energies that Summer.  Some men were unequal to the challenge of supporting a family in difficult times and sought escape in drink and the "Bog Barrow" in Clonloum village had it's resident shirkers who drank their dole and went home only when hunger forced them.  Owen enjoyed a drink and a natter with old Huey Guinan but only when he had surplus cash which was rarely in 1984.

A chance early-morning encounter while trout fishing and rabbit hunting along the Clodiagh River  near that village brought a lucky break. He had seen a man in the distance struggling to drag a heavy object up the hill from the river bank and had offered to help and the man had gratefully accepted.  The heavy object was a huge eel net and the man was Sammie Winter from Ardboe, County Tyrone and his story was a sad one.

Sammie Winter, was of proud Loyalist Protestant descent.  His ancestor, Dan Winter of Loughgall owned the tavern where the first Orange lodge had been formed after the famous battle of the Diamond in 1713 when the God-fearing loyalists of that village had taught their Catholic and lately dispossessed neighbours a lesson they would never forget that would reverberate down the pages of history.  His father, "Aul' Wullie" had fought in the Great War of 1914-1918 and after being "demobbed" had returned to Ulster to claim his share of Harold Macmillan’s "Land Fit for Heroes".  At the docks in Belfast he had been approached by a wide boy in a bowler hat and a suit who tried to "buy" his £1-a-week pension off him for £40.  He decked the man and spent a night in a Crumlin Road police cell for his trouble.  The sergeant threw him out the next morning.  Many were less fortunate and parted with their pension rights, drank the proceeds and emerged from police cells around the city with only sore heads to show for their years in the trenches.  The  "Land Fit for Heroes" never materialised and Wullie spent years in occasional employment in "The land of hammers and rivets" as a labourer in the docks before returning to Derryadd and the family farm on the shores of Lough Neagh.  He never forgot his shoddy treatment by the government and in 1953 on the occasion of the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth, got roaring drunk in Dan Winter's Pub and made his way to the Orange Lodge for the tail-end of the Coronation celebrations.  The organisers, sensing trouble from the ancient warrior who had fought at Arras and Passchendaele, closed the proceedings early and sang "God save the Queen".  Undeterred,  Aul' Wullie stood up and addressed the assembled shopkeepers and farmers thus:  "ladies and gentlemen I am gratified to hear yez proclaim yer loyalty to Her majesty the new Queen.  I also hope ye serve her better than the last two Monarchs although I suspect yer loyalty is less to the Crown than to the half-crown".  He was not, by virtue of his advanced age and proud military record, physically assaulted but he had worn out his welcome.  His piece said, he went home to Derryadd via Dan Winter's Pub where he furthered his heretical rampage by embarrassing the Grand Master of the Orange Order (A shopkeeper from markethill) thus:  "When our Sammie was a wee fella in school, his teacher Mrs. Farmer taught a lesson on Africa.  She said the animals were big and fierce and the jungles big and green and the people were all black.  "Would any of you like to go to Africa"; she sez.  Our Sammie pipes up and sez " But Ma'am I HAVE been to Africa with my Granddad!"  "Isn't that wonderful"; she sez;  "And how did you know it was Africa?"  "Cos my granddaddy said they was all Blackmen"!  (Sammie had been to the annual march of the Royal Black Preceptory - known universally as "The Blackmen"- sister organisation to the Orange Order)  at Scarva, County Armagh. 

Aul' Wullie was by now on a roll and rounded off his scandalous performance by reciting for the near Apoplectic Grand Master some off-colour music hall doggerel, popular at the time:

'T'was Christmas Eve in the workhouse,
The happiest day of the year.
The paupers, they were merry
And their bellies were full of beer.

In stepped the Workhouse Master.
As he walked through the grimy hole,
said “Boys, I wish you a Merry Christmas.
The paupers answered “Balls!

His brow grew dark with anger
As he faced the sullen mob.
You'll get no Christmas pudding
You dirty Irish sods'

He continued in this vein for several verses of the type not usually heard in church or chapel and dwelt with gleeful relish on the final verse in which an old pauper summed up Aul' Wullie's anti-establishment sentiments nicely:

'Up stood one ancient warrior,
who fought in Khyber Pass.
“You can keep yer Christmas Pudding
And shove it up yer jolly arse”'

The scandalised Grand Master who was a 'good living' member of Mr Paisley's church in Armagh was beside himself at such irreverence and cheek but again Aul' Wullie's wartime heroics saved him although some questioned his loyalty as he slobbered his beer and cackled with laughter at the poor man's discomfiture. When the story reached Reverend Pickering he remarked with the dry wit for which he was renowned; "William was not exactly at his Protestant best, Was he?"

On a later occasion his loyalist credentials had been called into question in Vallely's pub by a farmer from Tullyroan who maintained he had never "called" the Pope.  Now Aul' Wullie had no great love or hatred for that personage and thought it no big matter to fling a few diplomatic insults in his direction.  On the next occasion he had a "few in" he stopped his bicycle outside the gate of a Catholic neighbour in The Birches for whom he had no love and denounced the Pope and the Papacy and Rome in general in colourful language.  He enjoyed the experience so much he decided to repeat it a week later.  This was too much for the neighbour who "shopped" Aul' Wullie and a third performance landed him in Portadown Assizes on a charge of incitement to violence and resulted in a half-crown fine.  This met with such universal approbation in Winter's that Aul' Wullie added papal denunciations to his repertoire of infamy and happily paid the occasional fine.  A retirement from the Bench and the appointment of a younger more socially aware member of the profession resulted in an increase in the fine to a five pound note and Aul' Wullie, in a commendably Protestant move, placed fiscal considerations before religious ones and ceased his tirades.  When asked in Winter's whether he had given up insulting the Pope he answered that "Aye it's got too dear altogether".

Sammie had grown up on the southern shore of Lough Neagh and had lived by eel-fishing, a bit of farming and blocklaying but mostly by his wits.  His marriage to a very pretty Catholic girl from Ardboe had tarnished the lustre of his Loyalist credentials (or what remained after Aul' Wullie's indiscretions) and cost Sammie the loss of the odd blocklaying job but there was the eel-fishing he shared with his brothers-in-law around the bay at Maghery and also the jobs he picked up in the Catholic villages.  The northern troubles were a difficult time and he had emigrated for a time to Manchester.  While there, his wife inherited her aunt's thatched cottage in Washing Bay.  This posed a problem for Sammie who didn't relish the thought of returning to what was now being called "The Murder Triangle" to claim the family inheritance, particularly as there were hotheads in both tribes who would have happily shot him as a traitor/collaborator.  Then one Friday afternoon after work he took a flight to Belfast and a taxi to Ardboe and having told the driver to wait in a quiet laneway, went to the cottage where he positioned a lighted candle in a basin of petrol and quickly returned to Manchester.  Burnings were common at the time and an overworked RUC found no cause for suspicion and in time, the government paid out compensation.  Some locals had their doubts and a Loughgall wag was heard to comment in Dan Winter's pub: "Thon Sammie's a hooky boy".

Sammie’s reputation for “hookeyness” was reinforced by an unfortunate incident during the 12th of July holidays that saw him return to his Armagh roots for a short sojourn.  He was in the Parkside Inn on the Garvahy Road in Portadown where, given his Loyalist background, he really shouldn’t have been but he was no bigot and the “Taigs” tolerated him as a character.  If the truth were known he might have been safer there than in Loughgall or Edenderry.  It was getting near the end of the holidays and Sammie was running short of cash.  He had once owned a racing donkey until it had died of old age.  He had often entered it in local “donkey derbies”.  His daughter was the jockey.  And as Sammie would often say himself, “trot mare, trot foal”.  All he owned now was a photo of his daughter mounted on top of old “Njinsky”.  So being Sammie, who was as “cute as a cut rat”, he devised a plan.  There were a few well heeled boys having a holiday drink in the bar.  He approached them all individually and embarrassed each into buying the donkey as a present for his children for Christmas.  They were all well oiled and Sammie managed to draw a deposit of twenty five pounds from all ten of them, which amounted to £250 - not bad for a night’s dealing, considering all he had was a photo.  But the next day when Sammie awoke from his intoxicated slumber and realized what he had done, he knew he was in a bit of a fix.  The Catholic Garvaghy Road is unforgiving of Loyalist wide boys.  He got out of bed and was in the process of making some breakfast when a knock came to the door.  He approached the door with some caution and on opening the door, there to his disbelief was one of the fellows he had sold the donkey to.  While Sammie was trying to think up an excuse, the man said; “Look here Sammie, I bought a donkey of you last night in the pub, I want no donkey.  If I go home to the wife and tell her I bought a donkey, there would be a divorce”.  Sammie could not believe his luck.  “If that’s the case”, says Sammie, “you’ve lost your deposit”.  “To hell with the deposit”, says the man and away he went.  Each and every one of the boys who bought the donkey came by and it was the same story with them all.  Sammie was in funds and had a wonderful “Twelfth”  Not content with the money he bragged the story in the Loyalist Anchor Inn in Edenderry for days on end – the Garvaghy Road having become too hot for him.  The story got around and the ten boys didn’t dare show their faces in the Parkside Inn for a while and Sammie made good his escape back to Manchester with enough funds for a further tootle in “The Big Alec” and the “Little Alec” as the two famous Irish Pubs on Alexandra Road were then known.

Around this time Sammie met some Northern Loyalists in Moss Side and as work was now getting scarce in Manchester, accepted their invitation to join the local Orange Lodge.  This led to his being appointed as a supervisor in a transport company and the Winters enjoyed several years of prosperity and stability.  Eventually a loyalist from Armagh who would have known Sammie and the destroyed family reputation joined the Lodge and Sammie deemed it prudent to make himself scarce again.  It seemed a good time to return to the land of his birth, which he did.  His wife sold the burned-out cottage as a site for a handsome sum to a Belfast publican who wanted a  “place in the country” and the family built a comfortable modern bungalow in Ardboe.  If the new neighbors in Ardboe knew of the donkey incident they probably thought those clever “townies” in Portadown deserved to be fleeced anyway.

He soon returned to his former professions of blocklaying and eel-fishing.  One of his wife's brothers had moved to "The State" ie the Republic of Ireland and he got the blocklaying job on his house in Offaly.  This led to other jobs and the family started spending holidays in the South.  Lough Derg in is renowned for its eel-fishing and it was only a matter of time before Sammie's main business in the south was the netting of eels and transporting them to his brothers-in law around Lough Neagh and from thence to Europe.  Since the fishing rights of Lough Derg belonged to the Electricity Supply Board and the border crossed his transport route, Sammie was technically committing the twin crimes of poaching and smuggling neither of which are regarded as morally wrong in Ireland.  Yet again the Winter family prospered and Sammie even employed a few boyos from Derrytresk to help out with his various enterprises.  Sadly he chose his helpers badly and one proved to be both greedy and indiscreet.  A tank of eels was ready for transportation to Lough Neagh and the truck driver used the opportunity to indulge in a little moonlighting on his own account.  He stopped off at a forest near Longford  before driving north and loaded up with "Christmas" trees which, if one were to be pernickety, were the property of "Coillte", the state forestry company.  The truck laden with eels and "Christmas trees" was spotted by an alert young Garda on a morning patrol near Navan and the Gardai impounded both.  Sammie vainly tried to get the tankfull of eels out of Garda custody but because of the ignorance of most policemen on such matters, they all suffocated.  Smelling promotion, the Navan Garda launched an investigation into theft, eel-poaching and smuggling and Sammie commenced a damage-limitation procedure which explained his presence on the bank of the Clodiagh River at dawn, hauling an eel-net to safety - eel nets are expensive.

A distraught Sammie Winter wisely decided he could trust Owen Holohan and that afternoon the "Little grey Massey" hauled a tarpaulin-covered load to Clonloum where it was concealed in the little tin-roofed stable built at the bottom of the field for Boggy the pony.  Boggy spent most of his time around the house anyway, mooching for scraps and only used the stable in cold weather or when he fell out with the terriers over grub and they ganged up on him, nipping his legs and swinging out of his tail. One of the more amazing sights around Clonloum was a fleeing pony trailing a terrier on his tail like a kite. In time the truck driver was "done" for stealing trees.  Sammie informed the very formidable lady boss of the Mullingar RSPCA of the disgraceful, cruel and inhumane treatment of his eels by the Gardai who quietly returned both truck and putrefying eels.  The Electricity Supply Board Bailiffs found nothing when they raided various premises along the Clodiagh Valley.  The Winter and Holohan families went on hazlenut-gathering trips in the sandhills around Ballinagore and Sammie and Owen ensconced themselves in the snug at "The Bog Barrow" where they enjoyed a few "scoops" provided by the relieved and grateful Sammie.  The result of their huddle was a plan that would see both families through several hard years.

At that time, Bushmills Whiskey sold for three pounds a bottle less in Northern Ireland than John Jameson in the South, despite the fact that, as some claimed, both were manufactured in Bushmills in County Antrim.  The trick was to connect the Northern supplier with the Southern buyer without informing either Her Majesty's Inland Revenue or The Republic's Revenue Commissioners.  Many had tried their hands at this temptingly easy profit but had eventually been careless or unlucky and had been caught.  Getting caught meant the loss of both vehicle and whiskey plus a hefty fine.  As an occasional poacher, Owen Holohan understood the importance of risk minimisation. Confidentiality was important.  Both the supplier and the buyer must be reliable.  Blabbermouths always drew the attention of the law.  Sammie took care of suppliers while Owen knew the character of every publican in the midlands.  Routes, too were important as was knowledge of the cross-border back-roads and the movements of the inspectors.  A dummy run was always a good strategy.  Common-sense things like legal tyres, vehicle MOT, legal diesel, Insurance, tax and a current driving permit should never be overlooked.  Drinking on the job was the undoing of many whiskey-runners and should be avoided.  Greed too landed many in trouble and making too many runs risked suspicion and carelessness.  Concealment was another matter and here Sammie came up with an ingenious solution.  He acquired a supply of wooden barrels to which he added false bottoms.  The cavity thus created held twenty bottles of whiskey.  The space above could be used for a legal load of fruit or whatever. 

On a typical Saturday night, Owen and Concepta would visit a customer's licensed premises to deliver and take orders for whiskey under the guise of having a quiet drink. The whiskey was stored in a specially constructed loft and Sammie or Owen would quietly top this up once a month.  They generally managed a return load of fruit or even eels which were now traded legally. They occasionally hauled cattle for people who wished to avail of the export subsidy paid by the Irish Government and then smuggled the unfortunate beasts home again to be "exported" again a few weeks later. When her Majesty's Government introduced a similar export subsidy for whiskey they sometimes drove the same load of whiskey round in a huge circle for months.  Diesel and heating oil could be smuggled and sold profitably when the north-south price differential and the Sterling exchange rate were favourable.  Those were good times and they combined their activities with quite a bit of shooting, fishing and socialising together. 

Owen's first intimation that something was afoot came when the parish Curate passed on Sammie Winter’s message.  It concerned a bank manager who had made enquiries about buying some whiskey.  Approaches from outside the “trade” were unusual.  The man worked in Longford and Owen, suspicious and curious in equal measure called to see him.  After some small talk the man inquired if Owen was a visitor to Northern Ireland and if he was, would he be willing to procure some whiskey?  Owen, extremely suspicious now agreed to look into it and enquired how the man had come to know his name.  The bank manager mentioned "The Skinner Brady" a well-known and less well-regarded midland publican who would have considered himself as something of a "Cute Hoor"; that is someone who could live well by sharp dealing.  The Skinner and Owen were not on the best of terms since Owen had beaten the former in a shootoff at the annual Clonoum Gun Club Clay Pigeon Shoot several years before.  The Skinner had bragged he intended to win the shoot and Owen who normally did not compete since he was the acknowledged best local shot had unexpectedly shown up and trounced him.  The Skinner was not a customer of Owen's and had not benefited from smuggled whiskey.  Owen concluded that the Skinner was attempting to repay him by shopping him to the Revenue Commissioners.  There was the further matter of a deal involving fox-skins some years previously that had resulted in the Skinner defrauding Owen.  The mention of the Skinner's name confirmed his fears; Owen promised the bank manager to look into the matter of the whiskey and went off to think.  Firstly and most importantly it was essential to dispose of the stockpile of whiskey.  This was not difficult.  He then tipped off Sammie Winter who cancelled all current operations as a precaution.  He next approached Dr. Ahmed who knew everyone's secrets and asked him to check the bank manager's credentials.  When Dr. Ahmed reported that several clients of the Longford bank where the man worked had received unexpected and costly visits from the Revenue Commissioners, he knew his suspicions were correct.

When Herbie Gacquin of the Tullamore Revenue Commissioners with his team of boys in suits arrived at the Holohan farm he "Interrogated" Owen and searched Boggy's stable while the terriers bounced on their hind legs trying to get a look into the Mercedes in the hope there was a foxhunter in it.  There was a moment of farce when a kid goat nosed open a rear door and terriers and goats forced an entry and panic-stricen revenue officials had to shoo them away and remove the muddy hoof and paw marks from the upholstery with gleaming white handkerchiefs.  They found only a single bottle of "Black Bush" that Owen kept as a 'little drop' for Granny's visitors.  Herbie looked longingly at the bottle of Bush which Owen slipped to him unbeknownst to the younger team members.  The whiskey smuggling operation was over at least until things settled.  Herbie would let them know when it was safe to operate again. It had been a good run and the Holohans could still go fishing in Lough Erne with their friends, the Winters, and defray the cost by bringing something home that could be sold profitably.  It was a pity that The Skinner's perfidy should go unpunished and in the months following the raid, Owen often found himself pondering the means of teaching Skinner a lesson.  It was not that he had merely bettered Holohan in a deal – in the times that were in it you expected to be “codded” occasionally.  He had humiliated Holohan and had almost deliverred him into the hands of the Law. Skinner would pay sooner or later.

 (Holohan's revenge on the Skinner is the basis of Short Story 2:  "The Skinner and the Government Goat")