THREE PINT MEASURES

THREE PINT MEASURES

The little stream which flows southward through Ballyhoy must be one of the smallest contributions accepted anywhere by the sea, so insignificant in quantity is the water trickling over the smoothed stone step under the low arch on the shore. Yet the course of its channel can be traced, when the tide is out, in gleaming sky-coloured loops far across the mud-flats. As a rule the tide there is out: some of the neighbours indeed, have a theory, no doubt scientifically untenable, that it comes in only about once a week. For this narrow creek, cut off from the Bay by the great grassy sandbank of the North Bull, is steadily silting up, so that its soundings grow shallower every year, and rarer the occasions when we see a plain of sapphire or mother-o’-pearl, threaded with paths of silver rippling, spread all the way between us and the cliffs at purple Howth. It looks as if the Bull would ultimately join the mainland without intermission. Even now, at low water, the passage to and fro can be effected fairly dry-shod by well-chosen routes. These are known to the cattle who graze on the salt herbage among the bent-grown sandhills; and at the fitting time and place, a procession red and white and black may be watched making its way thence in single file towards the strip of common-like pasture beside the sea-road. But the transit, if undertaken by the unwary or ignorant, is beset with serious peril, owing to sundry treacherous mud-holes, which lurk around. Their smothering toils have in time past engulfed much vainly floundering prey, both man and beast, and at the present day several of them are called by the names of their respective victims—Byrne’s Hole, Clancy’s Hole—obscurely commemorating tragedies not less piteous perhaps than those of the Kelpie’s Flow and the Sands of Dee.

I have never heard of any such disaster befalling a class of people who might be supposed peculiarly liable to it, since so much of their time is spent on the dangerous ground. All the shore from Ballyhoy to Portbrendan is haunted by cockle-pickers, who come out from Dublin, where they lodge among the Liberties or other purlieus, climbing down into subterranean cellars, or perhaps mounting wide oaken stairs to spacious upper chambers with the carven panels and mantelpieces and ceilings of the past commenting ironically on the inartistic rags and squalor and famine of to-day. They time their arrival to correspond with low water, so that when you meet a batch of them jogging along the road, you can infer the state of the tide from the contents of the baskets they shoulder, according as these include a heap of grey-fluted shells and a trail of brown seaweed, or nothing except a dull tin measure and a grimy little pipe. Nobody ever sees a cockle-picker apart from his or her basket, yet one of them would be recognised without it, so constant is the type in the species. All are neither young nor old, all are wind and weather-beaten, all are short of stature, any original excess in height being compensated for by a more pronounced stoop, and the garments of all reproduce the tints of blackish mud and greenish slime as accurately as if the wearers were animals whose existence depended upon the power of going invisible. This is not the case, however. Unaggressive and inoffensive in their habits, the cockle-pickers have no especial enemies save the seasons’ difference, and the dwellers by the shore regard their proceedings with hardly more suspicion than those of the white sea-gull flocks which sprinkle the neighbouring dark fields, when the lea is broken up and disturbed grubs abound. A favourite fishery is the strand along by the Black Banks, a little to the eastward of the Ballyhoy river; and on most days of the year sombre figures are to be seen there, paddling and poking, barefooted, in the mud, even when the pools have ice at the rim, and the green weed is stiff instead of slimy.

Very differently does the little Black Banks settlement view the coming of some other visitors, who put in an appearance more seldom. But the tinkers are quite used to cool receptions, and if they went only where they were welcome, would find their journeys much restricted. So as this nook offers them a camping-ground conveniently accessible from the high road, they occasionally guide their jolting donkey-cart down the shingly track, undeterred by the disapproving eyes that watch them from the adjacent cabin-cluster. One row of these has for some time past been standing roofless, a circumstance which points it out as appropriate quarters for all manner of vagrants, who have forfeited, if indeed they ever possessed, the right to expect the luxury of thatch overhead. And here the tinkers are wont to spend a few weeks every summer, seriously to the discomfort of their temporary neighbours. It must be allowed that they have righteously earned the evil repute which dogs them. Seven ordinarily ingenious magpies would be less grievous to the owners of hen-roosts and other portable property than a single tinker. On many a night odours of savoury cooking, wafted from within the ruined mud walls, have roused rueful suspicions in the proprietor of some “grand young pullet” or “iligant fat duck,” which has been mysteriously absent at the last feeding-time; and the stealthiness wherewith a youthful tinker will creep in the small hours of the morning, tin-mug in hand, to milk somebody else’s goat tethered behind a rickety-boarded fence, would discredit no Blackfoot on the hunting-trail. Also the tinker men drink and brawl, and the women storm and screech, and the children interminably romp and quarrel, while the whole confraternity use language so wildly bad that it is “fit to rise the hair up off of your head,” as scandalised matrons observe standing at their doors, and calling Biddy and Pat and Larry and Rose to “come in out of that and not be listening to such ungovernable talk.” And to atone for these causes of offence the tinkers bring no social advantages, if you except now and then the excitement of a stand-up fight between a couple of the men, who have grown pugnacious over their whisky, or the thrilling spectacle of an arrest, which sometimes occurs when the proceedings of the band have come under the consideration of the constabulary in the whitewashed barracks above at Ballyhoy. Dramatic incidents are, be it said, very highly valued hereabouts; but the price of the tinker’s performance is more than can be paid without repining.

One day in the course of their last visit, it did seem as if they were going to produce a satisfyingly strong sensation. It came about in this way. Foxy Cullen, their recognised chief, had returned late in the warm afternoon to the Black Banks from a tramp round the district with a basket of tinware. He had not invidiously omitted to call at the various “publics” which he passed, and the consequence was that he now “had drink taken,” a state more perilously conducive to rash and reprehensible acts than downright drunkenness. On the present occasion, however, nothing more erratic suggested itself to Foxy than an idea that he would before he went home “just step across to the Bull and see what sort of a place at all it was over there.” He had often wished to do that, and as the tide had gone black out, leaving no water visibly intervening, save the river’s fine-drawn thread, the opportunity appeared favourable. So he set down his basket on the wayside sward, kept close-shaven by the goats, and he called to his daughter Peg, whom he saw at hand, to come along with him. Peg, a queer, monkey-like little figure in a scarlet print frock, wore gleeful grins as she obeyed, for her ragged red-bearded father was to her the flower and sum of things; and the pair walked on over the grass until its daisies turned into sea-pinks, and until the seaweedy shingle which succeeded them gave place to a breadth of glistening mud.

By the time they had got so far, Bill Duffy came round the turn of the road, faring homewards with his load of cockles. Bill had had good luck with his fishing that day, and had filled his basket almost before the tide was at its lowest ebb, and it should perhaps be accounted a prolongation of his luckiness that the shimmering tin things in Foxy’s basket now beckoned to him from the sunny bank. He concluded that some of the tinkers were about, but he saw nobody near. The tinkers were slight acquaintances of his, and he had in fact just been trying to negotiate the sale of some of his stock with Mrs Foxy up at the roofless cabin. Unsuccessfully, for she told him with regret that she was “stone broke, and until himself come home, you might all as well be lookin’ to find a penny in a cockle-shell as in her ould pocket.” To which Bill replied, “Och sure you don’t get that on’y in an odd one or so,” and departed acquiescent. But this derelict basketful of tinware proved to be a matter less easily dealt with. At first indeed he seemed about to pass it by with merely a casual glance, which, however, suddenly took on fixity and meaning, as he stopped short and stood looking earnestly at the contents. These were mostly tin pint measures, a dozen of them, maybe, all very new and clean and shiny.

Now it so happened that at this time Bill badly wanted such an article. Anybody might have inferred as much from the dingy, battered aspect of the little vessel lying atop of his blackish-grey cockle-heap. In truth, ever since an accident which it had sustained a good while ago, it could only by sheer courtesy be described as a measure at all. For a dray-horse in Capel Street had set his shaggy foot upon it, treatment which no bit of white metal could be expected to endure, and it had accordingly collapsed into a great dinge, rendering its capacity henceforth a question of intricate calculations, far beyond the tether of Bill or his clients. This unchancy distortion had only the night before lost him a customer, a housewife who had “priced” his wares as he passed her half-door, and showed every symptom of coming to terms, when an over-officious friend nudged her elbow, observing “Laws bless us, woman, look at what he’s be way of measurin’ them wid. Sure it wouldn’t hold a skimpy handful, let alone a pint.” Bill protested that it held the biggest pint in the County Dublin, and that he, inconsistently, always allowed the half full of it over and above, to make up for any possible deficiency; nevertheless the prudent matron transferred her patronage to Mary Cassidy, who just then came by, and he was left in the lurch with his damaged mug. But now, when he felt keenly alive both to its shortcomings and to the difficulties of mustering the few pence needed to replace it, here he was all at once confronted with an assortment ready to his hand, nothing apparently interposing to hinder him from acting on the principle that Heaven helps those who help themselves.

Bill Duffy was, as things go, at least indifferent honest; yet his integrity made but a brief stand against the assault thus suddenly sprung upon it. He cast a furtive glance around, and then, with a rapid dive, clutched a measure, and thrust it over his shoulder down deep among his cockles, which rattled clatteringly together to hide the stealth. The next moment he started violently, and felt certain that he was caught. For at no great distance there rose up a skirl of shrieking shriller than had ever issued from sea-fowl’s throat, and looking in the direction of the sound, he saw a small and gaudy figure running towards him. It advanced in short rushes, now and then stopping to dance up and down as if in an ecstasy of rage or terror, but it screamed unintermittently, so that Bill could not be sure whether or no he did hear basser shouts the while proceeding from a point somewhat farther off. Presently, however, the note of terror grew predominant enough to change his opinion about the cause of the outcry, and set him off trotting to meet it. This red-frocked screeching child turned out to be Peg Cullen, and the burden of her lamentations was something unintelligible concerning “Daddy,” whose bawls in the background here became, fortunately for him, so distinct as to furnish an explanatory note. Foxy had evidently blundered into a mud-hole, which was now, in conformity with its agreeable custom, taking prompt steps to secure and secrete him. Bill rapidly grasped the situation, and unhitching his heavy basket he detached its long strap, and sped to the rescue, which, as Foxy was not yet very deeply engaged, he found himself able to effect. A few frantic plunges and desperate hauls set Foxy on firm ground, exceedingly miry and alarmed, and quite sober; Peg left off screaming and dancing, and they all returned to the road, stepping gingerly while they were on the mud, but stamping boldly once they felt the dry sod under their feet.

When they came where the tinker’s basket was, Foxy fell to emptying his black-oozing brogues, whilst Bill, case-hardened by much wading, began to splice his strap, which had nearly marred all with symptoms of fracture during the last critical tug. He had for the time being forgotten all about the pint measure. By-and-by, however, Foxy, flinging away the grass-wisp he had used to wipe off the mud, and shuffling uncomfortably in his soaked boots, said with a dissatisfied grunt, “Augh, bad luck to it for a deceptionable ould brash. I may go now and get another sup of somethin’ or else it’s destroyed I’ll be wid the could creeps in me bones agin mornin’; wud you take a glass, man?”

“Sure, no,” said Bill; “I’m shankin’ into town meself as soon as I can get th’ ould strap mended.”

“That’s not much of a concern you’ve got there,” said Foxy, pointing to Bill’s old mug as it lay dinted side uppermost on his cockles; “past mendin’ it is, I should say. Look-a, here’s a somethin’ better quality you’d be welcome to.” He held out one of his measures to Bill, who shrank back as if its glittering surface had been incandescent with white-heat. The consciousness of what was hidden in the depths of his basket seemed to scorch his face and dazzle his eyes.

“Och, not at all, thank ’ee,” he said; “sure this I have usin’ does grand; it’s the handiest one I ever owned. And I have a couple or so of spare ones lyin’ about at home if I would be wantin’ them. Och, not at all.”

“It’s a quare fancy you’d be havin’, then, to go about wid the likes of that,” said Foxy. “Musha, man, how ready you are to make a lie and tell it. Sure it’s no compliment to be takin’ such a trifle off me, when I’ve got a basket full of them, and more-be-token I couldn’t say how many quarts of the bastely black mud I mightn’t be after swallyin’ down agin now if it wasn’t only for you lendin’ me a hand out—bejabers it was the sizeablest cockle you ever landed. Bad cess to the could wather, it’s at the bottom of every manner of mischief. I’m steppin’ along for a drop of spirits, and I’ll lave the bit of a mug wid you, whether or no.” He thrust it into Bill’s basket and went off, followed jealously by Peg.

For a moment Bill stood staring blankly after them, but then an idea suggested itself, and hoisting his basket on his arm he started in the opposite direction.

At his goal, which was the tinker’s cabin, he found Mrs Foxy stooping over her smoky driftwood fire, in a “quare ugly temper,” as her family could have told him. “Whethen now and is it yourself botherin’ back agin?” she said upon seeing him; “didn’t I tell you a while ago as plain as I could spake that we weren’t wantin’ cockles to-day?”

“Ah whisht, honey, and don’t be strikin’ up ahead of the fiddler,” said Bill suavely. “Amn’t I just after meetin’ himself out there, and he biddin’ me be bringin’ you up three pints for your suppers?”

Mrs Foxy’s countenance cleared up. “Well, tubbe sure,” she said; “it’s not often the man has the wit or the money left to do anythin’ so raisonable wid this hour of the evenin’. But they’ll come in oncommon handy, for it’s cleared out we are to-night intirely. What all I have for the supper wouldn’t pacify a scutty wren.”

The whole Cullen family looked on with a sense of brightened prospects while Bill dropped the cockles resonantly into a tin can. It is part of Fate’s irony towards the tinkers that, however plentiful may be the lack of viands in their larder, they are always abundantly provided with cooking utensils. He meted out his three pints with a reckless liberality which convinced Mrs Foxy that her husband must have ordered, and paid for, a couple of quarts at least. And when he took his departure, he successfully accomplished the stratagem, which had been the main object of his visit, by laying down, unperceived, Foxy’s glowing gift upon a nettle-girt stone just inside the threshold. This done, he went on his way greatly relieved and self-conciliated.

But he had not trudged many paces before scurrying feet pursued and overtook him. Somebody had espied the purposely forgotten measure, and had remarked: “Och, he’s after lavin’ his mug behind him”; upon which somebody else rejoined: “’Deed, then, we’ve slathers of them litterin’ about widout it, so there’s no good keepin’ it on the man. Skyte after him wid it, Lizzie.” And Lizzie skyted, sped by a desire to be but briefly absent from the scene of preparations for supper, so that she tossed the mug into Bill’s basket with scant ceremony, and was off again ere he well knew what had befallen. When it grew clear, a leaden conviction dumped down on him that he might give up setting his wits against Destiny. “Sure it was to be,” he said to himself drearily, as he resumed his plodding, bent dejectedly under a heavier weight than his moist basket. He resorted rather frequently to this obvious truth, whence we may infer that his stock of consolatory reflections was not extensive.

When he came once more where the road crossed the river, he, according to custom in warm weather, climbed down the grassy bank for a drink. On this occasion, however, his first act was to take all his three pint measures out of the basket and set them in a row—the one he had been given, and the one he had stolen, and the battered old one that had, in a manner, caused the whole difficulty. Bill eyed them gloomily as they glinted in the long rays. “Troth, it’s themselves are the iligant lookin’ collection,” he said to himself with some resentment, “and a grand ould slieveen’s trick it was to be thievin’ a poor man’s bit of property, and he all the time widin two twos of dhrowndin’ dead, scarce a stone’s-throw away. Ay, bedad, it was so. But, musha, it was to be.” As he mused mutteringly, he picked up a mug at random and dipped it carelessly in the stream, but something surprising followed. For the water it scooped up straightway plashed out of it again, as if poured through a funnel. Of course, Bill investigated the reason of this, and the result was a discovery which lit up his face with a broad grin. Through some defect in the soldering, the bottom of the vessel had almost detached itself from the rim, and flapped out like a swing door at the slightest touch. It could, clearly, hold nothing; and it was the stolen mug—he recognised it by the handle.

“Bless me ould bones, look at that now,” Bill said gleefully, “you might all as well be axin’ wather to stop aisy in the holes of me ould basket here. Sure it wouldn’t hould e’er a hap’orth of anythin’ wet or dhry”—he dropped a handful of cockles into it, and triumphantly watched them slip through and fall with tiny thuds on the grass. “Ay, begorra, it’d ha’ never been a thraneen of use to man or mortal; ne’er a brass bawbee was it worth all the time, glory be to God.”

He gloated over its dilapidations for a while longer, and at last poked it in behind a stone under the arch, where, for aught I know, it may remain to the present day. Then he gathered up the rest of his effects, and finally resumed his interrupted journey Dublin-wards, facing a sky where the sunset grew as golden as the light in a crocus-cup. But he no longer muttered: “It was to be.” The burden of his meditations was: “Bedad now, it’s a good job I happened to be widin hearin’ of their roars, or else they might be lettin’ them yet. And belike I wouldn’t ha’ been, if it wasn’t only be raison of me stoppin’ to—to—to look at them pint mugs.”