The Road to Caramee

By L. E. Hartley

Straight from the horses mouth?

Sullivan tells it like it isor wasback in the days when the highways and by-ways of Ireland were home to a new wave of horse-drawn travelers enjoying the twilight years of the long acre and the open road.

Between overheard conversations and communication with the other animals he encounters, Sullivan recounts and recalls the misadventures and mishaps, along with the new experiences of his first year as a working horse.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Feb 20, 2017
• ISBN: 9781524677732

L. E. Hartley

“Some are born great. Some achieve greatness. Some have greatness thrust upon them.” And some go through life inspiring greatness in others.

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© 2017 L. E. Hartley. All rights reserved.

Images are property of the author

Illustrations by Colm Kenny

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse  02/18/2017

ISBN: 978-1-5246-7771-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5246-7772-5 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5246-7773-2 (e)

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

Chapter One

•   Changing Hands.

•   Meeting Bumper.

•   A New Pony Joins the Herd.

Chapter Two

•   First-time in Harness

•   Moving Camp.

•   Pulling a cart.

•   ‘Shadow’

Chapter Three

•   The Derrynaflan Chalice Incident.

•   First trip to Town.

•   The Party at ‘Mary-Ellen’s Bog’.

•   The Roadside Fight.

•   Kildorrery.

Chapter Four

•   Kilorglin.

•   Untimely ends.

•   Puck Fair.

•   ‘Service’.

•   ‘Rose of Tralee’

Chapter Five

•   Road Works.

•   Wheels and Deals.

•   A Bad Hill.

•   ‘Tetanus’

Chapter Six

•   Recovery.

•   New Arrivals.

•   The Devil’s Punchbowl.

•   Serious Miscalculations.

•   Ready for the road.

Chapter Seven

•   On the Road Again.

•   Trouble with Sunny.

•   Lissyvigeen

•   The last few miles.

and finally, Caramee Fair

Dedication

To those who travelled the roads before us, and the few who continued to live the life after us.

Special thanks to the memory of Aimi Becket Richardson and Tim Higgins for the gift of our grandsons Jed and Erik.

Foreword

Twelfth Night approaches and the specially commissioned play is ready for performance. Still no title has been decided. Arguments amongst the cast haven’t helped Will come to a final decision. In exasperation he presents it with the working title, and adds the subtitle ‘Or What You Will.’

Four centuries later, on the eve of publication, I’m being bombarded by alternative titles for this long-awaited book. Originally written twenty-five years ago, I had no hesitation in calling it ‘The Road To Caramee.’ Except possibly the spelling of the place name, more correctly ‘Cahirmee’.

Now family members, who feel quite rightly that it is their story too, have other ideas.

Should we cash-in on the ‘Big Fat Gypsy’ craze by including that in the title?

What about ‘Sullivan’s Travels’?

Or ‘A Gypsy Horse’s Tale/ tail/ trail/ trial’?

Stop! Should I just throw in the Shakespeare cop-out?

So, if anyone reading this thinks they have a better title, feel free to let me know. Meantime, the little-changed manuscript can go to print with its original title.

Be lucky,

L.E. Hartley,

February, 2017

Introduction

Ireland in the early 1980s was a very different place. Different to the Ireland of today. Different to anywhere else.

When the actual counterparts of the fictional characters depicted here arrived with a young family and an old dog, they left a Britain made intolerable by the changing laws introduced by the Old Iron Lady.

Having played their parts in the Free Festival movement, including the instigation of the infamous ‘Convoy’, they had already been horse-drawn for several years before taking The Boat. Living under canvas symbolized a kind of freedom. Ireland offered a decade-long extension of the chosen lifestyle.

Roadside verges, the Long Acre, stretched the length and breadth of the country. Overgrown hedgerows provided abundant firing. Water was rarely refused. In the days before Charity Shops became the norm, people were happy to pass on their unwanted clothes by the bag-full.

The seasons rolled by under the wheels of various horse-drawn vehicles. The Fairs were the meeting places of traditional travellers along with an ever-increasing band of ‘New Agers’. Halcyon days we thought would last a lifetime.

Rocking and Pounding signalled the End for most.

Rocking? The practice of closing off every roadside camp with massive boulders.

Pounding? The snatching of horses from the remaining verges, usually during the night. The Pound they would be taken to was often far from the camp, in another part of the country. Gardai would accompany the impounders, so that even if they were heard and seen, there was no way of stopping them. The next day would begin the heartbreaking task of first of all finding where the horses had been taken to, tracking them down with the help of friends who had motors. Reclaiming them from amongst the tragic collection herded together in concrete yards. This involved presenting ‘official’ documents signed by Justices of the Peace, and the further expense of paying considerable sums of money for their release.

So, let Sullivan tell the story of just one year. Close to the time when the song prophesied Your travelling days will soon be over… but still filled with an optimism inspired by the freedom of the Open Road.

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Chapter One

"Sullivan John down the road you’ve gone,

Far away from your native home.

You’ve gone with the tinker’s daughter,

Down the road for to roam."

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The woman’s voice was anything but melodious as she chanted out the words to the song in time to my hoofbeats, but it was a voice that reassured me of my place in her life, and I was always happy to hear it close by. Until I heard that voice, I never understood the bond that other horses formed with people. No one had ever spoken to me the way she did, communicated with me in the way that only other horses had previously.

The first time I heard that voice was at the end of a long day in a ramshackle horse-box of sorts. I had been driven round the country all day. Through towns and villages, along lakeshore and between hills. I was cramped and uncomfortable and longing to just be out of this situation. Every time we stopped, I looked around hoping to see a lush meadow waiting for me. A cool stream to quench my road-dusty thirsty. Most of the stops were in traffic. Lights, junctions. Others were at camps like the one I left, or farmyard entrances.

But the last stop of that weary day was the one that changed my life. It would be a long time before I’d ever see the inside of a horse-box again.

The brake-lights of the old van twinkled, and the dilapidated contraption it was towing juddered to a halt.

I tentatively poked my nose out through the gap in the fence-wire and baler-twine that crisscrossed the top of the box, and shifted my weight.

Driver talking to the woman at the fire.

She lifts the black iron disc, with its mouth-watering-fresh bread onto the grass and hangs her kettle over the flames.

Stands, a good hand taller than the man stepping out of the van.

‘Would you buy a good horse, Ma’am?’

‘We’ve too many horses already. I’ll sell you one!’

‘What have you?’ He has to know.

So they talk on for a while.

I struggle to turn my neck and see where I might be. It’s a quiet lane, trees and bushes along both sides. Two curious-looking vehicles parked up on the narrow verge. A half-grown girl taking the bread from the fire-iron and spreading it with some other delicious smelling food before handing it to a pair of much younger girls.

I’d been inside this cramped space for most of the day; my hunger was genuine.

‘Hey!’ I called out to the girl. ‘Give me some, please!’

‘He’s talking to you, Blue,’ said the woman. ‘Sounds like he wants a taste, too!’

The girl came over and shared her bit of bread with me. I thanked her most sincerely, then called to the woman, ‘Is there more?’

She obligingly started to break another slice, the one from the bottom of the stack. Its smoky flavour was the best thing I’d ever tasted up to that time. I whickered my appreciation as the woman and I looked steadily into each other’s eyes. Even the driver seemed to understand what I was saying:

‘You’ve a friend for life now,’ he told her.

‘You like my burnt bread?’ she asked me, and I licked her hands all over and rubbed them with my lips for another taste of the floury dough.

‘Shall we get him out of the box?’ she asks the driver, at which the two younger men climb down from the Hi-ace and start to untie the ropes and strings and wires that are holding the door on.

The clattering and jolting put the fear in me again as I think of having to step backwards as the floor tips; and the drop onto the road that always takes the skin off my knees, as the men lash me about the face with their whippy sticks. And there they are, in the hedgerow, tearing branches from a young ash-plant.

‘Help me!’ I give the woman my most pleading look. It sounds like a note of barely concealed panic in my throat as the men start waving the branches right in front of my face.

I throw my head back before remembering that I have it stuck through the entanglement over the top of the box. I’m stuck fast, and being lashed about the ears doesn’t help me think of a way out.

‘Wait! Wait!’ The woman puts my plea into a language they seem to understand

‘For godsakes! You’re only frightening him. Just let him be quiet for a minute! I’ll see him in the box.’

She stepped up off the road, tipping the trailer slightly. My feet start to slip, but it’s more skittishness than real danger. I’m looking over my shoulder as she gently rests a hand on my back and walks steadily towards my head.

‘Pass me a knife!’ she calls to the girl, and talks quietly to me, rubbing behind my ears to ease my head away from the baler twine cutting into the top of my neck. A moment later the pain is gone and my head is free, but I’m still in the box, and the men with their sticks are still in front of me.

The woman is berating the driver about the state of the box: he’s making some excuse about only having borrowed it.

When she talks to me, her voice overrides my fears; ‘Come on, now. Brave boy! You can do it. That’s right, give me your head down here, and…’ pushing me firmly on the shoulder with one hand as she holds my nose down with the other, ‘Go BACK!’

I really want to trust her, want to believe I can do it. A short step back, another. Then the box starts to tip, my head rears up and hits off one of the bars over the middle of the open ‘roof’. The branch is in my face immediately and the panic takes over again as my first foot slides back into the nothingness above the road. The woman is still beside me, shouting ‘No! Stop!’ to the man waving the branch, and ‘Go on! Good boy!’ to me.

Both back feet hit the road and she keeps the steady pressure on my shoulder to persuade me backwards. My front feet tremble and wobble uncontrollably as the rickety old trailer tips and rattles about me. Really there’s no choice: my back feet have found firm ground, front feet make the cat-leap necessary to join them.

‘Good boy, brave boy!’ she murmurs in my ear as she pats my forehead with her floury hands. I rub my face against her shoulder and shake a cloud of dust from my coat to express my relief at being on solid ground.

The woman takes me by the forelock and saying ‘Walk on!’ leads me onto the verge behind the larger of the two parked vehicles. The grass is long and sweet and all I can think to do is pack as much as I can into my empty belly as she runs her hands over me, talking all the while to the little man who brought me here.

He’s telling her how he paid ‘twenty-eight hundred pounds’ for my mother, and how she and I won the prize at Ballinasloe the year before last for ‘Best Mare & Foal’ at the show.

I don’t remember that, but I was very young then!

And how I was ‘cut’ as a yearling because I was left running in the field with the mares and fillies. Ah, yes, I remember that day well enough! Being taken from the field and stood against the barn wall, calling all the time to my mother and the others. But they just ignored my calls, or worse… jeered at me, while the men held me with strong ropes about the neck and legs. A sort of numbness crept over my whole body then, and all my muscles relaxed at once so that I had no power to fight or run, but could only lean against the wall to stop myself from falling over.

Next thing I knew the men were all walking back to the road, and behind me a couple of lurchers were squabbling over two big lumps of steaming hot meat.

Some time later I was turned back into the field, a dull ache between my hind legs as the feeling came back into muscles.

I hobbled straight over to tell my mother, but she was busy suckling her new foal and just lashed a kick at me. The other mares and fillies were no more sympathetic. The two geldings who shared our field came over to me then and talked to me in a way they never had before. I’d never bothered with them, much preferring the company of the fillies, but now it was as if they understood what had happened to me. They were commiserating and at the same time offering me membership of a different ‘club’.

The pain gradually subsided, and by the end of the week I was running around the same as before. But the mares and foals didn’t let me forget. I’d lost all status within their herd; the mares no longer treating me as a foal, the fillies soon tiring of my attentions. The games we used to play had become somehow pointless now.

The seasons had rolled on since that day: through the cold dark hungry months when I had to suffer the bites and kicks of the mares for every mouthful of hay that was put over the wall.

They were all in foal, most were still suckling too: I had to content myself with whatever was left spread in the mud when they’d finished. The gnawing hunger was never really satisfied till the days started to get longer and the new grass showed around the edges of the field.

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Changing Hands.

The woman is running her fingers around the corners of my mouth and asking the man if I’ve ever been ‘tacked’. She disappears inside the vehicle beside us and comes back carrying a big leather object, saying ‘I’ll just see how he takes the collar.’

With a hand under my chin she lifts my head from the sweet grass. Still chewing on a mouthful, I’m introduced to the collar. She lets me have a good look at it, turning it every which way and then holding it in front of our faces so that I can see her framed by it. Next she puts her head right through the hole in the middle and the collar is on her shoulders.

This is all new to me, obviously.

She says ‘Think you can handle that?’ and looking me steadily in the eye, slips the collar off her own head and slides it up my face. I let it past my eyes; it feels slightly tight as it goes over my ears, but then it’s on my neck.

‘Good Boy!’ she tells me as she twists it the right way up.

‘Fits him perfect,’ she says to the man.

When I put my head down for another mouthful of grass the collar slips down and bumps my ears, so she turns it again and takes it off me.

‘Try the rest of the harness.’ Suggests the little man, but ‘No, its okay, so long as the collar fits, the rest will all adjust.’

The woman is looking at my feet. Picking them up, one at a time, and digging into my hooves with a bent piece of metal. Shifting the mud and bits of stone that lodge themselves around my soles. No-one has ever done this to me before. It feels strange at first, standing on three legs, the slight tickle as she runs the metal up the middle of my hoof. As she lowers each one back onto the road it feels good to be rid of all the muck.

‘His feet are well over-grown.’ She tells the man.

‘Aye, that’s because he was never shod.’

Leaving me to the grass, the woman picks up the collar. The little man follows her back to the fire. Their voices are indistinct now, blending with the sounds of hedgerow birds and the hum of bees. The edge is gone off my hunger when I look up again at the call of another horse.

I hear his metallic clip clop as the woman leads him along the road. A chain about his neck, a long coil of rope looped over the woman’s shoulder. They stop at the fire and I suppress the urge to call to them. The horse is uneasy, jibing about the road as the three men look him over. He’s a bay pony cob, maybe a hand shorter than me, lighter all round.

Next time I lift my nose from the grass it’s to watch the woman walking him round the back of the box I arrived in. The men start waving the sticks and the pony jumps nimbly aboard. The woman recovers the chain from around his neck and climbs down onto the road. The two young men are tying the door back on as the woman and the driver stand beside the van in earnest discussion. With a slap of their hands they part company; he hops up behind the wheel and starts the engine. A puff of black smoke as they rev off down the lane.

The woman comes over to me, still carrying the chain. She unties the leather belt from her waist and fastens it around my neck. Then she clips the chain onto the buckle.

‘Well, mi-laddo,’ she says to me, ‘Looks like you’re my horse now. Think I’ll call you Sullivan. You can call me Liz.’ And she gives a little laugh as she leads me onto the road. ‘Come with me, Sullivan; we’ll go find you some nice grass, and I’ll introduce you to Frankie. He’ll tell you all about living with us and what you’ll be expected to learn.’

I like the sound and the smell of this woman and I follow her quietly, trustingly down the lane away from the camp. At the crossroad we turn left and then I hear for the first time the call of the horse on the wide verge, away down the lane. He’s obviously heard me on the road, looked up from his grazing to give me a sort of ‘Who goes there?’ call.

I answer him in my friendliest voice. Of course I’m on the defensive. This is his territory, I’m the stranger here. I feel very vulnerable and unsure of myself away from the familiar company of my own herd. As we walk closer I realise from his stance, his call, his smell, that this horse is a full stallion. I’ve met his kind before. As a tiny foal I was badly kicked by the horse who was left in our field for a few days. He bullied and seemed to fight with all the mares, savagely driving all of us foals away, rearing and screaming at our mothers. As a yearling, I still hadn’t forgotten. I ran away and avoided him when he visited the mares again.

Now I was expected to meet with this massive white horse, already lashing out with his front hooves and half rearing on the end of his chain at our approach.

In reality, he was little over a hand taller than me, but as he crashed his great hairy iron-shod feet on the road and gave voice to his stallion-scream he had me rooted to the spot in blind fear.

‘Don’t mind him, Sullivan,’ the woman told me, ‘he’s just showing off!’

Sensing that at any moment I might turn and run, she led me onto the verge and tied the rope attached to my chain around a road-sign. Patting my neck, saying ‘Good boy. Stand up, now!’ she left me there and walked on down the road to where the stallion was prancing and calling. Realising that he couldn’t reach me, I felt brave enough to take a look at him.

His white body had only one black mark, a large almost-circle on his right flank. Over his ears a black mask fell down both sides of his face, covering his eyes, which were both bright blue. The broad white stripe down his nose was overhung with a long black forelock.

The woman strode right up to him, her hands outstretched, as if she were offering him something. He gave a dismissive snort as my scent told him I wasn’t a mare, or even another stallion.

‘Easy now, Frankie,’ I heard the woman saying. ‘This is Sullivan, and he’s going to be travelling with us, so you just be nice to him, okay?’

Frankie tossed his great head back, mane flying from his powerful neck and gave a call that left me in no doubt who was Boss around here.

I spoke softly to the woman as she walked back towards me, seeking her reassurance, but she just walked right past me, back to her camp. She soon reappeared carrying two buckets of water. Leaving the first one beside the road sign she carried the other on to where Frankie was tied. He dipped his nose into the water, splashed it around. When he lifted his head, his luxuriant moustache was dripping wet.

This was the first time I’d ever been offered water in a bucket. I was used to wading into the river to get a drink. Sensing my uncertainty the woman came back to me and lifted the bucket to my nose. My thirst overcame my fear of putting my face into the tight space and I drank about half the bucket of water. It had an unfamiliar, earthy taste; the same taste was in the grass here, even in the air. I realised then that I must be in a different part of the country. I could no longer taste the salty air of my birthplace.

‘There you go, Sullivan,’ the woman was saying to me as she put the half-empty bucket back on the ground ‘You’ll be alright now?’

I watched her walk down the road till she turned at the crossroads. Frankie had turned his attention back to his grazing, so I just did the same.

Having discovered that the rounded corners of the road sign I was tied to were just the right height for scratching my back, I was giving myself a leisurely rub when two sounds simultaneously broke the quiet of the lane.

One was Frankie’s high-pitched whinny, the other the distant clip of shod-hooves at a steady trot. Soon afterwards the other horse came into view. He was moving steadily along the straight road towards the camp and as he passed the crossroads I saw that he was pulling a two wheeled vehicle loaded up with dead wood. A man and a boy were sitting on the ledges on either side. They slowed up and looked down the lane to where Frankie and I were tied.

The horse called out ‘Hey, who’s the new boy?’ and Frankie called back, something like, ‘Nobody of any importance!’

There was a hedge alongside the camp but we could see the people moving about, separating the horse from the cart, taking off his harness. It wasn’t long before he was coming to