Mallacht an Ghiorria by Sean Fitzgerald

Malacht an Uireagh by Seán Fitzgerald.

In Ireland, we traditionally start a story with the words, meaning long, long ago, or sometimes in Hiberno-English as long ago.

There's a warmth to those words.

However, when telling old stories about where you live, under armed occupation, Opening words like that do not resonate in the same way, as there are layers and layers of pain and suffering when you tell stories of how people had no food in their bellies, or for many, not even a shirt on their back.

Every word spoken or wrote is a heavy load with echoes of survival, sorrow and suffering.

in olden days this reality shaped storytelling even the shawl over your shoulders was more than just cloth it was a lifeline when the wind and rain blew the shawl was pulled over the face like a poquine with nothing showing but the tip of the nose and the white of the eyes the same shawl was your blanket at night or it was used for carrying apples, spuds, or any other commodity, lifting them by the four corners and raising it onto your back like a rucksack.

This story begins when the shawl was ripped from you and the earth beneath your feet taken by the crone's forces.

Only the voice of the bailiff could be heard this month in Derivaha, the terrifying shout of the eviction decree as rain poured down over the ribs of the mountain, showing through the rough skin of Pete and Heather.

A battering ram suspended from a heavy wooden frame loomed over fallen dry stone walls and thatch.

On a height above the destruction and dispossession of her family's house stood Kitty.

The dry stone walls of her home below breached, praised apart by crowbars with the roof now sagging like a broken back.

The peelers stood in dark coats, boots sunk in the muck.

As the landlord's agent watched in his caped overcoat, neat as a pin with his face pinched in distaste, as if they were tearing apart a rat's nest.

Above them, Kitty had let her hair down.

Her hair fell in a grey sheet, coarse and long, striking the earth when she bent.

Women did not wear their hair so.

Hair was boned, braided, hidden beneath the shawls or caps.

To loosen it was to announce danger.

A stepping beyond the rules that kept the world from tearing.

The old people knew this.

The peelers did not, though they felt it in their guts.

She stuck the ground with her bare hands again and again, hammering the earth with mud, splashing up at her face and shawl.

Her mouth worked words the men did not understand.

Irish curses thick and bitter as slow juice.

Breed, Natina, she cried, calling on Bridget of the Forge.