The Madonna of Slieve Dun

How an Irish Girl Believed the Miracle Might Happen in Liscree, and What Came of It

LENNOX ROBINSON

SHE had always been the same.

When she was only a little child, brought in by her father and mother to the fairs and markets in Liscree, she would often come home in the evening crying, sitting on a sack of hay in the bottom of the cart, all because one or two lads in the town had taken a drop of drink and were quarrelsome and rowdy, or because her mother had had words with her aunt Peg about the price of eggs. A little thing like that would spoil her day's pleasure and, as she grew older, she shrank more and more from the roughness and ugliness of the world.

Once or twice in the year she would go to see her other aunt—Sister Anastasius in Lis-cannon convent. It was the only place she knew where life was uniformly gentle and pure and when she was fourteen years old she told her aunt that the secret wish of her heart was to become a nun.

But it was never anything more than a wish. To begin with, she was an only child, and her mother would have found it hard to do the work of the house without her, and then she wasn't much more than sixteen years old when Joe Brady began to want to marry her. She struggled against the thought of marriage at first, but she had always liked Joe and, her dreams of becoming a nun fading, she half regretfully made up her mind to marry him. She went to Father Kearney about it, and he said that life was like a wheel,—that life in a convent was one spoke and life on a farm another, and that maybe there wasn't much difference between them after all. The match was made after that and they were only waiting to be married till Joe would come home from England in six months or a year.

LISCREE was a very wicked place. There was no doubt about that. It was not only Mary Creedon that thought so, the place was a byword to the whole country for fighting and drinking. Father Kearney was too old and feeble to keep a watch on the lads, and every year they grew wilder and more lawless. They had to have an extra policeman at the barracks and there was never a Petty Sessions that there weren't men had up before the magistrates for assault or poaching or maybe something worse.

Little Mary Creedon thought it must be the worst place in the whole world. The wickedness of it appalled her. She had heard of God destroying whole cities for their wickedness, of Him smiting men dead for their sins, and she brooded over the possible destruction of Liscree until it seemed a doomed town clinging to the edge of a crumbling precipice.

Father Kearney got a stroke and died in the early spring, and they sent down in his place a young priest by the name of Brannigan. Father Brannigan was a dark fiery man, a man of plain speech and good courage, and before he was a month in Liscree he told the people very plainly what he thought of them. He preached against the drinking and the swearing and the fighting and the poaching, he called down the judgment of Heaven on them; he spoke to them of Hell torments till Mary Creedon grew cold with horror listening to him, but for all that the people didn't improve their behaviour—indeed they seemed to be getting worse.

There were always races in Liscree on Lady Day and Mary Creedon and her father and mother drove in to them. First, of course, they went to Mass, and Father Brannigan preached a terrible sermon about Liscree and the people in it. "I sometimes think," said he, "that if the Blessed Child was bom again into this world and the miracle took place in the parish of Liscree, even that wouldn't turn you from your sins."

BUT Mary Creedon was sure it would. She was sure the people werenot bad out and out, they were only thoughtless. If the Child were born in Liscree, up among the Slieve Dun hills, it was impossible to think that the people wouldn't get gentle and kind; even still, about Christmas time, they got softer and more quietly spoken until the drink they took on Christmas night sent them raging again. Oh, if only the Child might be born in Liscree. It was impossible, of course, but the miracle had happened before and maybe it might happen again, maybe . . . She stayed behind praying in the chapel long after the others had gone away. She prayed with a passion of feeling that the wonderful miracle might happen again, that the Blessed Child might come and save the poor sinful people of Liscree.

Afterwards she went on to the race-course and stayed there for a while talking to her friends, but she wasn't thinking of the horses and the leaps, or the jocks in their gay jerseys; she was thinking all the time of Father Brannigan's words, she was praying in her heart for the Saviour to come. Then about five o'clock there was a disputed race and blows and bad words and she ran off the field frightened. She met her father in the village street, but he had taken drink and was having words with the blacksmith; suddenly she felt that the blasphemy of the place was crushing her, and she started to walk home by herself.

Slieve Dun—where she lived—is about three miles from Liscree, up among the hills. As she walked up the road the shouts from the race-course below grew fainter and fainter, till at last she turned a comer and there was silence. It was a fine soft April evening and the ditches along the road were full of primroses and the hedges were yellow with furze. When she got within half a mile of her father's cottage she turned into a field to rest herself. She sat down under the hedge facing west and remained there till the sun went down behind the mountains and the blackbirds were, flying from bush to bush in the twilight.

She sat in a sort of dream, thinking of the Blessed Virgin whose holy day it was, and how on a spring evening—perhaps just like this one —the wonderful message had come to her that she was to be the Mother of God—she, a poor ignorant country girl called Mary, just like herself ... It wasn't until the sun had gone down and the rising wind made her shiver, that she remembered where she was, and found that it was nearly dark and got up to go home.

She stepped out on to the road just in front of a wastrel who was coming up from Liscree, lurching as he walked. He bade her goodnight and took her by the arm. She struggled to free herself but he held her tightly, and then she saw his face close to hers, felt his thick lips on her mouth, smelt the heavy smell of porter. She felt herself being dragged into the field again. Then she fainted.

When she awoke it was quite dark and a soft rain was falling. She was frightened when she remembered the tramp, but a light was shining in her father's house. They were home from the races, and she ran up the road as fast as she could without meeting anyone. Her mother was putting her father to bed and she made them a cup of tea, then put out the lamp and went to bed herself. The rain had stopped and the moon had risen; she drew back the curtain and let it shine into her room. It shone on the bed as she lay there quietly in the moonlight.

She felt very happy, as if something most wonderful and tremendous had happened to her, something that would affect her whole being and her life. What it was she did not know, but she lay in perfect contentment with the moonlight streaming down on her. It seemed a miraculous light, which came straight from God. She wondered what it could mean, this radiance which filled the room with ineffable glory. She lay on her back with her hair loose on the pillow and her little girlish body stretched out straight in the bed. A breath of wind rustled outside her window, a bird gave one clear call, and at last she fell asleep.

SHE dreamed it was a winter's night. The sky was brilliant with frosty stars and the road hard under her feet. She was walking with a great crowd of people up the road that led to her father's house. There were Christmas candles in all the windows so that every hill twinkled with them. There were candles in her father's cottage too, and the whole house glowed with a radiance of light. She pressed through the crowd, through the outer room, into her own bed-room. All the neighbours, men and women were there; Timothy Foley who kept his sheep up on the Derry mountains and his two brothers; the Nolans from the Cross and the Caseys; her mother was there and her father and Joe Brady and they all kneeling round the bed; and there in the bed she saw herself lying, a baby in her arms and a light around her and very bright light round the child and above the bed bright angels.

It was morning when she awoke, but she remembered her dream and she felt she now understood everything. God had heard her prayers. There was to be a miracle. The Blessed Child was to come again, not to Judea this time but to Liscree, and she, Mary Creedon —about to be married to Joe Brady—was to be the chosen of God. She was not frightened, she was not excited—she was only very calm and very happy.

Her mother thought she was ill and let her stay in bed, and she lay there all day quiet and smiling. But in the evening she called her mother and told her her vision and how God was going to save Liscree.

Her mother bade her hold her tongue and not talk blasphemy and nonsense, and Mary was silent but she knew in the end she would be proved right and she only told a couple of the neighbours and her aunt in the convent. She persisted in the story, and at the end of a few months her mother grew anxious about her, and got Doctor Scott to come and see her, and he told her that Mary was going to have a child. The poor mother went crying to Mary, and all Mary would say was, "I know, sure I told you. It's on Christmas Day it will be." The mother sent for Father Brannigan then, and he tried to make her tell him the name of the man; but she said there was no man and that the child was going to be born to save Liscree. He could make nothing of her at all, and they wrote to Joe Brady to come home.

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Joe was an honest, simple man and he couldn't understand all this, and at first he wanted to have nothing more to do with her. But she reminded him of Saint Joseph, and then he grew frightened and the priest said he'd better marry her anyway, so they were married about October.

At first the neighbours were scandalized and the men and boys in the village used to laugh at her as she went along the road to the chapel. But you couldn't laugh at her for long, with her peaceful, gentle face, and she wasn't ashamed of herself at all, only proud. Believe her story or not, you couldn't take her for a bad woman, and soon everyone was afraid to say a word against her, for how did they know what they might be mocking? To be sure, it wasn't possible that her story was true, but queer things had happened in the world from time to time, and it was better to be careful. Soon nothing was talked about except Mary Creedon, at first with a laugh, then in tones of awe. The boys gave up drinking and fighting and went about quietly and decently, the women kept a watch on their tongues, and the very children playing in the street seemed more gentle and civil. Already Mary's child was making Liscree a better place and Mary felt very, very happy.

She had always said that the child would be born on Christmas Day, and it was felt in the neighbourhood that that would be the proof. As it came near the time it looked as if what she said would come true.

Christmas eve was frosty and bright stars were in the sky, and towards evening a crowd of people gathered near the cottage, for it was known that the child was coming. The women were in with her and the men were sitting in the outer room or standing in the doorway, the shepherds from Derry mountain were there and their sheep dogs lying on the hearth.

It was just a few minutes after midnight when the child was born. They all crowded into the room. They knelt round the bed, the candles shone on Mary and the child.

Mary lay back on the pillow. She opened her eyes, she saw all the people kneeling, she stretched out her arms to them, she laid her hand on the child.

"Behold—" she whispered, and she died.

But the child was a girl.

That night in a public-house in Cork a wastral was telling a story to two young men.

"Will you believe me now?" he finished.

"Well, you're the boy!" they said admiringly, and laughed.