Short Story 6 - The Pedlar Canny

The Pedlar Canny

A short story by Cal Ward

"I am going to a place called Powl-a willy" said the young officer struggling with the unfamiliar Gaelic placename. "Do you know it?".

"Not enough wood to hang a man nor water to drown a man nor clay to bury a man"

The horseman allowed his horse to set its own pace as he surveyed the peaty loneliness around him.  Peat bog with the occasional grove of birches or a crag sticking out of it like a carbunkle on a spinster's backside.  He was assailed by an oppressive doubt.  He would make a decision when he saw the place but he feared the worst.  He had left his father's farm near the Wash on the east coast of England the previous year to join the New Model Army of the Lord Protector - the regicidal and devoutly charismatic Oliver Cromwell.  He was not overly Puritan in his outlook although he believed, as his family did, that their Protestant faith combining respect for hard work and a strong belief in God was the best path to eternal salvation.  The Catholic Irish were slothful and rebellious and disloyal and needed to be taught a lesson and the Lord Protector was the man to deliver that lesson.  He had more personal reasons too for leaving.  The family lasehold would go to his older brother Seth Bailey, for such was the law of primogeniture, while he the youngest, Jonathan Bailey, must make his own fortune.  Their father had arranged a marriage for Seth to the daughter of the local miller and the time had come for Jonathan to vacate his room in the attic of the thatched farmhouse which presumably would soon be required to accommodate a young family.  Such was the way of the world.  In the normal course of events Jonathan would have been apprenticed to a master tradesman and would in time have risen to owning his own workshop and perhaps by marrying well to a landed heiress or widow could have returned to the life of a farmer.  Something restless in his nature prevented him from taking this road and he had remained at the family farm helping out as his father became too feeble for farm work.  He loved his brother but he was still a younger son without an inheritance and when, one Winter's evening, the Pastor called to visit and talked about the Lord Protector and the possibility that he was looking for young men of good family to officer his New Model Army which was preparing for an Invasion of Ireland the old man from his cosy nook by the huge fireside said to his youngest son, " Ye'd do well Jonathan, th' heed his Reverence and go into Richmond town tomorrow and visit your uncle Thomas at the barracks".  So it was decided.  His uncle, an officer of foot in the local regiment, arranged his recruitment.  He could already ride a horse and shoot a matchlock and he quickly learned swordsmanship.  Having had a good education at the local school, he could read, write, perform arithmetic and recite scripture.  He was personable and tall, quite handsome in his own way and with his uncle's help soon received a commission.  He'd been too young to participate in the early part of the terrible civil war fought between the Houses of York and Lancaster but gained military experience pursuing the remnants of the royalist army in the hills around Richmond.  His men liked him, being mostly farmers sons themselves and many came from his own district.  The Lord Protector Himself had complimented him on his courage and military decisiveness after a successful skirmish which resulted in fifteen royalists being conducted to Richmond jail to await trial.

"To hell or to Connaught"

Here in Ireland, he had participated in several major battles and had been lightly wounded in the thigh at Drogheda by a boy with an ancient,  rusty sword who had attacked him from the vulnerable right and could easily have killed him but lacked the knowhow.  He had quickly parried the attack and killed the youth with a slashing blow to the neck.  It was his first close encounter with death and he prayed afterwards; unsure if the taking of a life was cause for celebration or remorse.  This much he knew; the slaughter at Drogheda was not the way.  The old testament was full of slaughter done in the name of Jehovah and at His command but these people at Drogheda  had not been idolatrous Philistines.  They were just misguided papists who lived lives similar to what his own had been.  They farmed, reared families and prayed and if they were poorer than his old neighbours and perhaps less devout, their slaughter was abhorrent to him.  Now he was  crossing the desolate Cratloe Mountains with a deed in his saddlebag from the Lord Protector that entitled him to a thousand acres of land near the village of Kilkishen in the County of Clare - his payment for his military services in the previous three years.  Was this a place to which he could bring the youngest daughter of the Miller of Richmond whose sister had married his brother?  He was unsure.  The bogs and craggy hills were filled with disposessed o'Dwyers and Macnamaras who seethed with resentment against those who had stolen their land and livelihood.  Strange people these; some dark and foreign looking, the descendants of sailors who had been washed ashore from the ships of the stricken Armada a century before and who had survived the massacres that awaited some of them on the beaches.  A land of wild beauty and unpredictable climate and seemingly endless rain followed by sudden sunshine.  So different from the rich agricultural region of the Wash with its balmy Summers and sharp frosty Winters.  He was lonely and longed for the convivial company of his brother and his old uncles with their clay pipes and toothless gums and stories of ghoulies and hobgoblins.  Ice along the ditches mirroring the sunlight in Winter and evenings fishing for mackerel on the Wash in Summer.  An ordered and safe existence.  Here in this beautiful wild land he would always be the hated conqueror.  Perhaps in time his sons or grandsons would be accepted by these untamed people as their rulers but he thought not.  At Clonmel he had known a papist prisoner who spoke English.  An educated man, a schoolteacher and poet.  He could quote from the Latin and Greek classics.  More importantly he was an historian and told Jonathan about the Vikings and the Normans and how they had at first fought and later joined the Irish - a process that had taken several lifetimes to complete.  At Wexford the Cromwellians had attacked and taken castles  whose occupants were fairhaired and fairskinned and spoke a language that sounded like French.  The prisoner schoolteacher said they were descended from the Normans who had come to Wexford five hundred years before.  It didn't matter now; they were all dead or scattered and their castles occupied by men from Richmond and York.  He hoped the prisoner poet had escaped with his life for such men were a treasurehouse of human experience.  How could one justify the killing of a Plato or a Maimonides?

"A godforsaken place fit only for foxes and crows"

These were the thoughts in Jonathan Bailey's mind as he approached the summit of the Cratloe Mountains with their magnificent view West to the Burren and the Atlantic.  A sudden squall blew in from the ocean and he faced his horse toward a grove of birch trees near the road.  No point in getting wet.  As he approached the grove he saw that another human had found shelter from the wind and rain.  The contrast between the handsome young officer and the other occupant of the grove could not have been greater.  The Pedlar Canny as he was called, was ugly in the extreme and he stank like a billy goat.  The mare shied at the odour of sweat and smoke that emanated from him.  Regarded as an odd character even by his own people he hawked his wares, which he carried on his back, about the villages of the Shannon Valley.  His route took him from the port of Limerick with its ships and taverns to the lovely rural villages of Corofin , Kilkishen, and the busy town of Thurles.  He was reputed to be immeasurably wealthy and owned land and horses near Ennis which were managed by his old crone of a wife and his six sons.  He preferred the life of the road and reportedly had illegitimate children scattered all along the Shannon.  He spoke English after a fashion since it was the language of trade.  He eyed the young Cromwellian speculatively and greeted him with a hearty "Beannacht o Dhia ort a dhuine uasal and what brings a gentleman like yourself to such a place".  The young man, grateful for any company to distract him from his dark thoughts replied "If you weren't an old and useless wreck of a man I'd whip you for your insolence in not minding your own business; besides my mare is a gentle creature and hates violence".  The pedlar cackled at the sally for he enjoyed a joke and offered the officer a cup of the contents of the little pot bubbling over a fire of twigs.  He had something more potent in his pack but these puritans were known to be funny about “uisce beatha”.  The famished Englishman accepted the cup gratefully and tried not to dwell on the ingredients of the soup.  Overcome with curiosity as to what brought an English officer to the lonely Cratloe Mountains, he risked rebuff by asking again; "And be ye goin' far Sir?"  "I am going to a place called Powl-a willy" said the young officer struggling with the unfamiliar Gaelic placename. "Do you know it?".  The astute pedlar knew that an officer of Cromwell's army would go to “Poll na h-ola” or the little valley known for the making of oil for only one reason.  He owned it.  It had happened throughout the country.  English officers who had not been paid for months or years were granted the lands of dispossessed Irish landowners in lieu of currency.  Some, endured and stayed and others who could not tolerate the loneliness and danger sold out to the hardier ones and left.  If the pedlar knew anything, and he was of necessity a competent student of human nature having dealt with Gael and Gall all his professional life, this kind looking young man belonged to the latter category.  Taking his life in his hands he replied; "I know it for we're in it and it's not a good place only for foxes and crows".  Jonathan Bailey looked about him at the windswept hill covered in peat, thought of furrows half a mile Long in Anglia and reached a decision.  "It's a godforsaken place to be sure.  Who would want such a place?  Growing more confident by the minute the pedlar said.  "If I had such a place I could pasture a few horses here in Summer and maybe sell them to a strong farmer down in Limerick".  Jonathan looked at the pedlar, amazed that a man could see economic opportunity in poor land.  He asked "How much would you be prepared to pay for it?"  Realising that this was an opportunity that occurred only once in  a hundred years, did a quick mental calculation and taking care not to offer too much said "thirty pounds, Sir, is all a poor man could pay for a mountain like that".  Knowing something of land values the farmer's son from Anglia said.  "You have wit, pedlar, and I doubt you are poor either.  Make me an honest offer before I go on my way and don't waste my time."  "Forty pounds said the pedlar, in gold, now, before I come to my senses."  "It would not buy the earth thought Jonathan but it will see me settled and comfortable enough to marry.  Perhaps with Rachel's dowry I might even be considered tolerably well off".  His heart thumping, he said to the pedlar "Done, pedlar; here are the deeds" and he produced the documents from his satchel.  The Pedlar Canny offered a silent prayer of thanks to God for sending a gullible farmer's son and not a murderous robber who would have killed him on the spot for forty pounds in gold and delved into the pocket of the odoriferous inner garment where he carried his coin.  Jonathan took his money, politely thanked the Pedlar and turned his horse towards Limerick  where he knew a ship could be found that would take him to Bristol.  He wondered if they would take the mare on board.

Oliver Cromwell; the regicidal Lord Protector

Thus in the autumn of 1649 honest, kindly Jonathan Bailey who had served in the army of Cromwell in Ireland acquired the wherewithal to return to Anglia with enough to start a modestly decent life and the Pedlar Canny came into possession of a thousand acres of better class pasture near Kilkishen, ten miles away from the scene of the negotiations.  He moved his old wife into the former home of the dispossessed Macnamara clan and proceeded to install his sons and tenants on the farms on the estate.  Having plied his trade for thirty years in those parts, he knew who was honest and could pay rent.  Many, like the o'Dwyer family, had been dispossessed previously east of the Shannon and their land given to soldiers.  They were grateful to have land to farm even as tenants.  He prospered as did his descendants who soon acquired the arrogance of the landed gentry.  In time the estate would pass from them as easily as it has come to them but that was two hundred and fifty years into the future.  The family remained nominally Catholic and often entertained the clergy thereby maintaining a degree of social approval among the tenant class.  They survived the great famine of 1847 without undue distress.  Their tenants couldn't pay during that sad time but they tightened their belts and survived until better times came.  They behaved in the manner of the squireocracy of the time; they drank and roistered; fornicated and hunted; married and procreated and died and gave an appearance of loyalty to the Crown.  In short they survived.  They never enjoyed the affection of their fellow landlords but they never desired what they never had and thereby didn't miss it.  They produced no brilliant scholars, scientists or even farmers, but they retained some of their native past and the big house was a centre for Gaelic music if not the higher expressions of that threatened culture.  Sons of the big house were settled on freeholds in various locations and the family became widespread and numerous.  There were sexual scandals and occasionally the clergy had to discipline errant members of the clan but generally relations with clergy and tenants were good.  Occasionally  a maid would become pregnant and frenzied efforts would be made to find a suitable spouse for her before the Parish Priest got wind of it.  When he did, as often as not, he connived in the coverup for at the end of the day priests were human too and enjoyed a glass or a bottle of Claret in the Parlour of the big house after a day’s hunting the foxes of the surrounding birch woods.  The Bishop never visited preferring the company of the more respectable Catholic gentry.

Prosperity for the Pedlar's descendants

Sometime in the mid 1880's a parish priest came to the village of Kilkishen.  He had an unusually strong fondness for foxhunting and Claret and spent more time about the big house than his predecessors had.  He often stayed for days on end and his constant presence in the house meant he came to be too intimately familiar with the goings on there.  Inevitably the sexual shennanigins of his hosts came to his attention and after the manner of his calling felt compelled to intervene and condemn.  This suited not at all the sons of Squire Canny or indeed the old Squire himself who was no saint.  To have a priest as an honoured and influential guest was one thing but to have him appoint himself as a watchdog was quite another.  A maid happened to be pregnant at this time and the priest was on the warpath.  The perpetrators, a couple of younger sons decided to silence this bothersome priest for once and for all.  After a particularly enjoyable and successful foxhunt followed by an equally enjoyable night's roistering the sleepy drunken parish Priest was laid to rest in the maid's bed.  The young woman presumably had either no objection or no choice in the matter.  In the morning the hungover priest realised the predicament he had been placed in and took the ultimate sanction available to a priest in those days.  He walked down the avenue and, with the heel of his boot, described a cross in the gravel of the gateway and cursed the entire household and it's descendants for all time.  He prophesied that the rabbits would inhabit the house of the Squire Canny.  This was indeed serious for the family and led ultimately to their demise.  Within a generation, sickness, death and infertility saw the big house devoid of occupants and ultimately it fell into disuse.  A later generation of hunters noticed that whenever a hare was risen in the birch woods she would run through the partly ruined house to escape the hounds.  So it was not the rabbits that came to occupy the house of the descendants of the Pedlar Canny but the hares!  Sic Transit Gloria Mundi.

He prophesied that the rabbits would inhabit the house of the Squire Canny.