As Slow Our Ship

AS SLOW OUR SHIP BOOK 2 I As slow our ship, her foamy track Against the wind was cleaving; Her trembling pennant Still looked back To that dear Isle ’twas leaving Moore. Nell and I and I am sure our cousins too, had no intention of making Queensland the land of our adoption if we ever left Ireland. We would have gone to our aunts in America; Mother had four sisters there. We were used to people coming home on holidays from the USA every summer, some only a few years away. But in those days, a visitor from New Zealand or Australia was very rare. A few years before we left home, an old couple that had been reared in our village, returned from Queensland. They had lived in the Downs for about forty years – Mickie Brown and his wife Mary. Mrs Brown always spoke of Queensland as ‘out there’. Mickie used to say, “I’d go back tomorrow if Mary would come” but Mary did not share Mickies’ love for the open spaces. Mr and Mrs Brown would have known some of the people Bishop Quinn brought to the Downs in the sixties. Then in the spring of 1911, my father’s brother, Michael, returned from Queensland after an absence of thirty-six years. After a term in parliament he was appointed Irish Immigration Agent for Queensland. ‘Sunny Queensland’, ‘The land where Jack is as good as his master’, and ‘The working mans paradise’ – these were some of the slogans displayed on the Queensland government posters throughout the towns and villages. The Gaelic League, which had been organised in 1898 to save the old language from extinction and preserve the national spirit from becoming completely anglicised, had been trying to stop the great ‘Exodus’ to foreign lands and make our own country a better place to live in. But even when employment was available, the pay was low. In Ireland there were no big commercial establishments. The industries had to close down because of the high tariff imposed on exported goods. Agriculture was the main source of income. At first there was some hostile controversy in the press between the Gaelic League and the emigration agent from Queensland that deterred some possible migrants. My father’s brother, Michael, had been elected to the Queensland Legislative Assembly in 1904 as a member for the Lockyer district. In 1911 he was sent by the Kidston government in Queensland, to Ireland to induce young Irishmen (and women) to come to Queensland to full-fill the needs of a manpower shortage. 2 Uncle Mick was given a great welcome home from relatives and friends. I was in Reafadda with aunt Maggie at the time. When I came home, Nell had already made up her mind to go to Queensland and there did not seem much else left for me either. Nell had a nice little business with her knitting machine and was doing very well for a few years. Then so many other girls got knitting machines to work in their own homes and Nell’s machine was an old model, so she could not get needles when replacements were necessary and had to give up. Two of our cousins, Margaret and Nell O’Dwyer, decided to join us with their cousin, Jocie O’Dwyer and Jocie O’Hehir, daughter of my father’s cousin in Limerick. By September, the six of us cousins were all ready for the big break with all we held dear. Then we visited the aunts and uncles to say goodbye. Mother came with us to see aunt Annie in her convent in Listowel, Kerry. She was Mother Joseph and Superior of the convent for some years. She had her Diamond Jubilee before she died. This was a sad reunion for mother and her younger sister; they had not seen each other since Annie entered the Convent Presentation Order. Aunt gave us many devotional gifts including a dozen horn rosary beads for our cousins in Queensland. Uncle Dan drove us in his buggy to Mt Melleray to say goodbye to uncle Denis and get his blessings. The thirty-mile drive through the beautiful Golden Vale was on a calm sunny day in September. I remember the apple orchard, ‘fruited deep’, that we passed on the way. When we arrived at the foot of Knockmealdown Mts, we walked up the steep path to the Abbey. We were given dinner, waited on by a brown robed Brother. Afterwards, we were received by the Prior and our uncle, Father Benedict O’Keeffe. The Priest Monks wear a wide brown scapular over their white woollen habits; the Brothers wear all brown. We stayed overnight at Melleray in the ladies lodge outside the main gate. We attended benediction in the chapel that evening and Mass next morning. We had breakfast at the Abbey along with some other lady guests, some of whom stayed overnight at the lodge. The town of Cappoquin is only two miles from the Monastery. Mt Melleray is noted for its hospitality; all are welcome, regardless of rank, creed or race. At the end of your stay, which could be several days, you may leave a contribution if you wish but no one will question if you have not done so. At breakfast I was seated at the end of a long table and a brother placed a large teapot in front of me and said, “Now young lady, you pour the tea”. A nice elderly lady beside me put the milk in the cups and I poured the tea. Having to pour tea for all those strange people was quite an ordeal for me at the time. After grace was said, we partook of a delicious breakfast of eggs, bread, butter and honey, all produced on the Monastery farm by the Monks themselves. Throughout the year, men went there for weekend retreats. We wrote our names in the visitors book before leaving the kindly, hospitable Cistercean Abbey on the mountain. There were great Centenary celebrations at Mt Melleray in 1932. It was established only 50 years when uncle Denis joined the Order. Mt Melleray is on the Waterford border only thirty miles from Glenough. It is situated on the southern slope of the Knockmealdown Mountains and was founded in 1832 by a group of Irish and English Monks who were expelled from France by a wave of atheistic revolution. Melleray, their Monastry was suppressed. 3 ‘Thus it was that sixty-four Cistercian or Trappist Monks arrived at Cobh in December 1831. In Ireland they were to continue the traditions of Melleray and to revive those of Mellifont. The first Ciscercian Monastery in Ireland founded by St Malachy’. It was suppressed during the Reformation, along with all the other religious orders. Forty Cistercian Monks and their Abbot were beheaded at Mainister near Limerick in 1585. There were many Cistercian Abbeys in Ireland. The ruins of Holy Cross, near Thurles is one and the ruins of Hoar Abbey by the Rock of Cashel is another. The Monks have taken vows of extreme penance and prayer. They eat neither milk, meat, eggs or fish and have no salt or condiments of any kind. They have taken vows of silence and only take six hours of sleep a night. Their usual life span is into the eighties. All this , for the reparation of the sins of the world. The community of Mt Melleray have preserved an old wooden meal bin of historic interest in the Cistercean Order. Mt Melleray was founded in 1832 with the help of a great deal of voluntary labour from the local people who rejoiced to have Monks once more among them. There were several Cistercean Abbeys in Ireland prior to the Reformation. In that area in 1839 the potato crop was a failure and there was poor return from other crops, probably from excessive rain and the people around the Monastery were reduced to destitution and some were forced to give up their little mountain farms. During the enforced famine of the 1840’s peasants sold their produce to pay the exorbitant rents, as semi starvation was preferable to the loss of a cabin in the extreme cold. The Monks were also near destitution. About that time they had started to raise sheep and lambs but on that bleak, unsheltered mountain their sheep and lambs could not survive in the harsh winters. It grieved the Monks to see the people in such dire need, who had been so generous in helping them to found their Abbey only a few years before. After Easter that year, the Abbot had to leave for Mt St Bernard, their Head House in England. This was only ten years after Catholics in England, Scotland and Ireland had been given religious freedom. Before he left for England, the Abbot purchased, with what little money he had, a supply of oatmeal and potatoes, which he left with the Prior to distribute to the hungry people while it lasted. After three months, the Abbot returned with a good sum of money from friends in Dublin. He was amazed to find that what should, in the circumstances, have been consumed in a month, was apparently not lessened at all. Although the crowd asking for food increased daily to over eighty people, there was no reduction in the quantity of the supplies he had left. I do not remember if we were shown the miraculous bin. 4 II We were to sail on the S S Perthshire from Tilbury Docks, London. I have forgotten the date, it would have been about the middle of October 1911, a few days after my nineteenth birthday.

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