No Place Like Home.....

She’s Leaving Home, Bye, Bye...........

 Maggie was the eldest of seven children and lived in a small village in the heart of Ireland.   In those days and I am talking about the 1920’s, the entire area was one large bogland – known as the Bog of Allen.  It was a cold and desolate place especially in winter.   
Since those days, the Irish Government reclaimed the land by using the ‘turf’ (peat) to fire power electric generation stations in an effort to save on the importation of oil and coal.    Ireland has little or no coal of her own.    As a result, the land is now top quality farming land.

The actual power stations did very little for the village for they would not get electricity connected for another forty years.   Everyone cut and burned ‘turf’ which is more commonly known as peat.   There was no running water in the houses and it had to be fetched from the village pump which stood at the crossroads.   If one was quick enough and got there before the neighbours, rain water could be collected from the small schoolhouse down-pipes when there was heavy rain.

It was preferred by the women for washing clothes – especially underwear.

There were about fifty scattered small cottages in the village, a small church and an even smaller schoolhouse.  However, Maggie took a keen interest in everything she was taught and read books whenever she had a spare moment.    She had precious little ‘spare time’ as she had to help her mother look after the younger children, help with the cooking, tend the small garden and at harvest time, help the family in the fields.

Times were tough worldwide in the 1930’s and the village was no exception.    As Maggie came close to the age of sixteen she began to seek employment.   The other children were growing up rapidly and any earnings she could gain would be a great help to the family.

No employment could be found within cycling distance of the village, as there was absolutely no public transport, so a search had to be made further afield.   

She read an advertisement in a national newspaper for a junior housemaid in a small town not far from Dublin.  As she had never been more than ten miles away from the village in her life the prospect of being such a distance from home frightened her –notwithstanding that she would be no more than fifty miles away.   

In those days it might as well have been on the other side of the world…….

With the help of the schoolteacher at the village school, Maggie wrote an application and within days received a favourable reply.   She would travel in a week’s time…….

So..........one fine summer’s morning, having been given a ‘cross-bar’ on her brother’s bicycle to the local railway station six miles away, she stood on the platform with her two brown paper parcels containing all her worldly possessions.    Soon the steam train arrived and she left home for the first time in her life………….

    

In the reply from her future employer who was to meet her at the station in Dublin, it was suggested that she wear a ‘button-hole’ and when she asked her schoolteacher what that meant exactly, she was told to put some form of flower in her coat lapel.    The only thing suitable she could find was in fact a giant daisy.

Three hours later she stood on the platform in Dublin and became quite frightened by the hustle and bustle of city life all around her.   She had never seen so many people in one place before in her life.    So there she stood for the next ten minutes with her two parcels clutched tightly under her arms and the large daisy now sadly drooping due to the hot weather.    She cried......................

She was quickly collected by her new employer who wiped away her tears and made her feel at ease.    They travelled by bus to the ‘new’ town where Maggie discovered that she was to work in the living quarters above a bank.   “My God” she thought “sure I’ll be sleeping on top of millions of pounds in money”.    She was introduced to the Cook and shown to her quarters.   The ‘toilet-room’ was pointed out to her and she rested on her bed for a few hours.

After an hour of holding back, she decided that she must use the toilet and never having seen an indoor toilet before in her life, or in fact any sort of toilet for that matter, other than bushes, she quietly made her way to the small room.

Poor Maggie did not have the faintest idea of what to do.   She saw a large porcelain bowl and pulled the chain that hung down above it.   

“Jesus, Mary and good Saint Joseph” she screamed “I’ve flooded the whole house”.   She ran out the door screaming in total panic.

Luckily, it was the cook who was also upstairs having a rest who came running.   She took Maggie by the hand and showed her exactly what was what.

Maggie had arrived.    All there was to do now was to await the arrival of my father into her life.................

Addendum: In the early 1860s a young Canadian school teacher, George Washington Johnson, fell in love with his pupil, Margaret Clark.  They married in 1864; Margaret - 'Maggie' - was already seriously ill with tuberculosis, and was to die the following year at the age of twenty-three.  During her illness, Johnson composed his poem, 'When You and I Were Young, Maggie'.  And after his Maggie's death, JamesAustin Butterfield, a Britain living in the United States, set the poem to music.  Over a hundred years later, in the 1980s, the song was a hit in the U.K. charts for an Irish act, Foster and Allen.  In the years since its composition, 'When You and I Were Young, Maggie' has become a standard, performed by operatic tenors, folk singers, jazzmen and crooners.

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This is the song that my father would always sing to my mother whenever he had a few too many drinks:

Maggie....

We’ll wander again, through the hills, Maggie, and watch the scene below,

The creek and the creaking old mill, Maggie, as we used to long, long ago.

The green grass has gone from the hills, Maggie, where first the daisies sprung,

The creaking old mill, is still, Maggie, since you and I were young.

Oh they say that I’m feeble with age, Maggie, my step is much slower than then,

My face is a well-written tale, Maggie, and time all alone was the pen.

They say we have outlived our time, Maggie, as they did the song that we sung,

But to me you’re as fair, as you were, Maggie, when you and I were young.

When you and I were young...............

-------------Mike------------

No Pl