Prose Michael Boyle

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE: MICHEAL BOYLE

Michael Boyle is a native of Lavey, Derry, Ireland .His poems have appeared in the “The Antigonish Review”. “ Dalhousie Review.” “Tinteain” and “New Ulster Writing.” He was awarded “The Arts and Letters” prize for poetry in 2014 by the government of Newfoundland and Labrador. Michael has also written articles for the Irish language magazine “An t-Ultach. He is currently completing his first poetry collection “Whin Bushes from Drummuck.” In June 2017 he presented a paper in Magee College, Derry, on the Irish poet Seamus Heaney. In 2018 he gave a talk entitled “Echoes from the Barn Barrel.” to The North American Celtic Language Teachers Conference in St. John’s, NL. He currently lives in St John’s NL where he conducts a historical walking tour. www.boyletours.com

AMAZING ESCAPE FROM DEATH.

‘Come quick little Meehawl has fallen in the well” sounded the alarm.

You would think it being my own story that it would be easy to tell. Not so, because

I was two months shy of my third birthday, when this event happened. And I have compressed into my memory all the countless retelling of this climatic event. Many of the people in the story sadly have died and indeed the old well has been cemented over. Still, I often wonder why I always carry in my wallet a well-worn yellow paper newspaper cutting. The headline reads.

“From Drummuck comes the thrilling story of a child’s escape from drowning at the weekend.”

This event is a well-known family story and retold at many family gatherings. However, I am now hearing newer versions of the story, which are seem slightly different from the original event. Adult memory can be a faraway place and this event has had an effect on my later life. So do we really know what happened?

One bright May afternoon the season rhythm of farm work took my father Paddy Joe and other workmen to the moss to cut turf to burn in our hearth for the following winter. Meanwhile my

mother got ready to go to Miko McGlade’s in Knockloughrim to buy groceries. Before she went she gave clear instructions to Ethnia the babysitter to look after my older brother Sean and Meehawl.

“Don’t worry about drying the eggs, because I tell you that looking after Sean and Meehawl is a full time job.” My mother continued,

“And they could be up to any kind of devilment if your back is turned. Keep them away from the half door. I’ll back in a couple of hours.”

The closed half door had a dual role in keeping the young children safe indoors and it prevented a roaming sow or a young calf from tramping into the kitchen.

I have been told that in local parlance Ethnia was slow on following orders but made up for this by being a good worker. Our mother slipped out the back door and locked it securely and got on her bicycle.

This day everything seemed calm and quiet. The lonely bleat of the goat in the front hill broke the silence of the afternoon. It appears my mother had hardly reached the

end of our long lane when Ethina got totally immersed into drying the eggs for market. She was so much involved in her task that she was completely oblivious to anything else in the world. After roaming around inside the house my brother Sean and I made a few attempts to get outside and we tried the back door and found it locked. We pushed the half door a few times and then we had little difficulty jimmying it open. We escaped and then we were free into the yard or as we called it the street. First, we wandered into the pig house and peeped through the railings to see a sow with her litter of small suckling pigs.

My brother warned me not to go close to the sow. We ran up to the milk house, but we could not get that door open. We chased some ducks but we were afraid of the chirping Rhode Island hens. At last, we came to the top of the street between the hawthorn tree that was coming into bloom and the one hundred year old ash tree, which towered over the well. From what I have been told workmen had recently sunk a thirty-foot well. They were waiting for a new pump to be installed the following week when they got the parts from Ballymena. As a temporary measure a rusty sheet of zinc covered the entrance to the well.

Of course, don’t you know, my brother and I wandered close to this yet as undiscovered hazard? Both of us ran to the edge of the zinc cover. Having no idea of any possible danger. I was roaring and singing as I jumped up and down on the zinc. Suddenly, the zinc gave way and I fell down with it into the well. There was about eight feet of water in the well and before the sheet of zinc could reach this water it ledged across the well with me in roaring and bawling my lungs out.

My brother Sean, who was only about six years old, raised the alarm and alerted Ethnia who was still in a robotic trance drying eggs. She had not realized we had been gone and only heard Sean

when he pounded on the door. Sean ran over to the front hill field and Ethnia followed. They both shouted and roared out to my father and the men working in the moss about three hundred yards away. On her way Ethnia grabbed a white sheet from the clothesline to let folks know there was an emergency and to come immediately. Within three minutes my father and the

workmen sprinted up the moss lane to help rescue the screaming Meehawl from the well.

Everyone was shouting and roaring and in panic mode, but my father got a tether from the hayshed. There was no time for elaborate plans, but the men put one end of the rope tied around the ash tree to act as an anchor hold. My uncle John stepped forward threw off his hob nailed boots and tweed cap. He grabbed the rope and made an improvised harness for himself. Then, he crouched down on his knees holding a side of the well. He edged his feet first into the narrow entrance and for a second kept all his weight on his hands. He directed the other workmen to ease out the rope and then he gradually took the full taut of pressure, as he was lowered further and further into the well. My father and the men held the rope tightly and they were glad to hear me still screaming. They released the rope slowly to avoid it jerking or indeed breaking. At first my Uncle John swayed back and forth until he straightened his perilous decent towards me. I clung to my zinc canoe, which was wedged some twenty feet below. John edged closer and I stretched out my hands. Years later John told me,

“I was afraid you might fall off the zinc and drop away from me, I could see you standing up and stretching out your hands. I took a deep breath and lowered my feet to the edge of the zinc and I had my hands free so I could scoop you up into my arms. You clung tightly around my neck .I felt the rope tightened as we were both pulled slowly upwards.”

It took four men to pull us to the surface and then there was enormous relief and celebration as they were able to pull my uncle and me to the surface. In the meantime the local priest and doctor had been summoned to come and attend to a possible tragedy. Some water had got in my “gutties” and my short trousers. I had no time to celebrate my rescue because folks were concerned I may have hit my head or swallowed some water. I was taken inside and put to bed in the lower front room just beyond the hearth. People say after all this Ethina once more resumed drying eggs again. Meanwhile, my mother was on her way home through the village

Gulladuff. She was flagged down by an over anxious Miss Nancy Convery, who startled my mother

by blurting out.

“Looks like some thing bad trouble happened down in Drummuck way for Father Mc Glynn and Doctor Johnston have just driven through.”

My mother had a sixth sense that something was wrong. Even with the heavy grocery bags swaying

across her bicycle she speeded up O’Kane’s brae and freewheeled down the plantation towards the house. Dr. Johnston came from Maghera even though he only did a cursory examination he was satisfied I was all right. Father McGlynn blessed my forehead and told me to rest.

Marie Mc Crystal our next-door neighbor met my mother at the foot of our lane and recounted what has happened and reassured my mother.

“Don’t worry Mrs. Boyle. Meehawl is fine.”

My mother left the grocery bags and bicycle with Marie and she ran up the lane to see how her little boy was recovering. She scolded and blamed herself for not going to the shop earlier in the week and in not getting a more sensible child minder. It has been said many times by those who were there that as soon my mother came into the kitchen I jumped out the bed and ran down shouting.

“Any sweets for me?”

My mother didn’t laugh or cry, but she grabbed me up into her arms.

Back then even in an age without phones, texts news of the rescue travelled all over the country. The local “Coleraine Constitution” had a detailed paragraph describing what happened. Members of my family today are still in awe of the last line of this report

“On examination it was found that the child was none the worse of his terrifying experiences.”

Indeed a local treasure hunt had my rescue as a rhyming couplet clues for their car rally event.

“Nearby a lad mishap had.

Which might have had an ending sad.”

When I went to school I came more fully aware of this story, which has never left me. On my first

day at school tall girls and boys in the senior classes tossed and rumpled my curly frizzy red hair and they regarded me as with some oddity and would say.

“You’re Paddy Joe’s wee fellah that fell in the pump. Hi .Did you see any monsters down there? “

Also some relations or good meaning folks referred to me as the wee boy that fell in the well and

they would slip me a half a crown. In a sense taking pity on me “the poor little thing”who had an amazing escape from death. So even from an early age it seems that my very existence was truly a miracle.

(Michael Boyle)