Sean Cannon

It was a kind day on the Island. Wonderful clouds cast shadows on the mountains and they moved silently away pushed by the gently morning breeze. People were gathered in groups at almost all the small thatched cottages. The sound of the sea on the shore was like time itself, relentless. It was September. For many of the families in Keel Village the dawning of this day was tempered with excitement, anticipation , fear and a sense of adventure. The magnificent Minaun Cliffs outlined against the rising Sun would soon be a memory for many in the Village.  The familiar things in Village life, the well known faces, the images of Island life fixed in their minds, were almost unnoticed  in the day to day routine.

The harsh reality of economic necessity was that they must leave to earn a living for the family and for themselves. Remaining on the Island through the Winter would mean little or no income and a heavy dependency on the small potato crop, fish from the sea, a few animals and some turf saved from the bog for their fires.  Those who did not or could not go and gain employment outside the Island were condemned to a harsh existence.

One of the small thatched cottages close to the sandy shore was the home of the Lavelle family. There were six children. There was the Father Tommy who was a very tall and handsome man and their Mother Annie. Annie was a most beautiful woman. She too was tall. Her long red wavy hair brushed gently on an elegant face as she went about her preparations that morning. Annie’s fair youthful looks were those of a happy and content person who enjoyed life. Her eyes had nothing but kindness in them. She was a generous person well known and admired for her kindness in the Village.  Many came to her with their letters from relations abroad to have them read. Annie’s Father was a teacher in Louisburgh which was on the South side of Clue Bay and she met Tommy on the train from Westport to Dublin twenty years earlier while on their way to Scotland to pick potatoes.

This September morning her eyes were fixed as she kept herself busy packing. She was packing for her husband Tommy, their sons Sean & Michael and their oldest daughter Ann Marie. Today was the day when they would, like many others on the Island leave to get work for the Winter. Tommy had been going away to work for the Winter for many years and Sean and Michael were heading off for the second time. This was Ann Marie’s first time to leave home to get work. Her bright eyes danced with excitement as she prepared to leave.  She nervously avoided direct eye contact with her family, she was not going to be sad leaving, she was not going to cry in front of her brothers, after all her Father didn’t cry when he left.

It would take two and a half hours to walk to the train station at Achill Sound.  One of the bags was packed with food for the journey. There was bread baked earlier by Annie, some mackerel from the chimney where it had been curing for weeks in the smoke of the turf fire.  There were several bottles of milk for drinking. The milk  was still warm from the cow that morning. Tommy nodded quietly to Annie to come down to the bedroom where he gave her a small package wrapped in old brown paper. ‘’Give these to the children on Christmas Day’’ he said and slipping a second small package in his pocket, after a short intense embrace, without another word he was outside the small door with his bags.  ‘’Come on, we will be late if we don’t get started’’ The whole family walked together to the edge of the village at the Sandybanks. By this time many family groups were bidding farewell to each other. Annie with her three youngest children watched as half their family made there way along the Sandybanks on the first part of their long journey.

After their long walk they were happy to see the train at Achill Sound. Smoke rose from the engine before the wind caught it. Just a few minutes more and they could rest on the comfortable seats of the Westport train.  With tickets in their hands they boarded the train and made their way through the crowded carriages until they found four seats together. Ann Marie sat next to the window and she placed her head firmly against the cool glass.  She was tired but excitement at the impending train journey kept her wide awake.  The walls of the station building mingled with the reflections of people as they moved about in the train carriage.  Her breath formed a magical mist as the sun light caught it on the cool glass. She was just finished writing her initials AML in the mist with her finger when the man outside in a uniform shouted ‘’all aboard’’.  The poster on the wall which displayed the train times had The Great Southern Railway in big letters and was dated 31st. December 1934. It was September 30th 1935 and their train was due to leave at 11.00AM.  The time of arrival at Westport was given as 12.37PM.  Ann Marie was still reading the poster when the steam whistle sounded several times, the carriage lurched and slowly they started to move. The poster and the building were soon replaced by green fields and mountains.  The rhythm of the engine, the smoke and the clatter of steel on steel slowly lulled Ann Marie into a trance like mood as she stared out the window to the South. As she looked around she noticed her Father raise his hand to wipe away a tear.  She had never seen him shed a tear before.  Quickly as though not to notice she stared out the window again.  She was startled.  Then she looked around the carriage.  There was no conversation and heads were hung low.  She stretched forward until she could see the receding mountain tops of Achill behind them and quietly remembered her Mother and sisters standing in the distance waving to them as they left the Village. As Ann Marie had her first inkling of the culture of the emigrant she recalled some lines from a poem about Achill which her Aunt in America had sent home.  The poem hung in an old frame on her Mothers side of the bed and each Christmas Annie would read the poem to the family as they sat around the fire.

‘’The people young and old gazed East and West
   And eyes linked hearts and minds with tears
   And this land yielded up it’s young to
   Tides of time and farewell waves of kin.’’

Ann Marie was starting to understand the love that would mature deep within her for her Island home.  A love she would share with all on this train journey and many that had gone before.  A love they could not speak of without emotion.  She would recall many times in years to come the atmosphere in that train carriage and the lines of her Aunt’s poem so treasured by her Mother.  Ann Marie had taken love for granted on Achill and soon she would learn how precious and illusive love was in the World she was travelling into.  She did not realise it then but love was the common bond that they all shared on that train, love of family and love of Achill, their Island home. Ann Marie would soon find within her that same bond that still today brings the people of Achill together all around the world.

 ‘’Is it time to have some milk and bread yet Dad’’ she said quietly, they were hungry and thirsty after their long walk.