The Corncrake's Welcome: Memoirs of a Northern Irish Diplomat

By William D. Hanna

The Corncrake's Welcome continues the story of William Hanna’s family, introduced in Voyages with my Grandfather. Spanning a hundred years, these memoirs delve into the turbulent birth of Northern Ireland, wartime Belfast, and the 1960s, when Hanna was growing up in Windsor Manse, next to the Presbyterian Church where his father was the Minister.

Join the young boy, enthralled by both the orange sashes of Belfast and the green rugby jerseys of Dublin. See the teenager confronted by the Troubles, beginning to question his religious and national inheritance. Follow Hanna’s coming-of-age journey, from Ireland to Scotland, Switzerland, and France, and watch him set out on a diplomatic career in Dublin and in Brussels.

Share his joy and sorrow when he returns to Ireland, after many years serving as EU Ambassador around the world; recalls his father’s historic meeting with Pope John Paul II; and makes poignant discoveries about events a century ago.

Praise for Voyages with my Grandfather:

‘Beautifully written. Very moving’ Alexander McCall Smith

‘Extraordinary insight into life of Northern Ireland Presbyterians’ Gail Walker, Belfast Telegraph

‘Wonderful book. A remarkable family story very well told’ Sir Jonathan Faull

• Language: English
• Publisher: Troubador Publishing Ltd
• Release date: Jan 28, 2024
• ISBN: 9781805147275

William D. Hanna

William D. Hanna was born in Belfast and studied in Edinburgh, Limoges and Bruges. He was an Irish and European diplomat and served as EU Ambassador in Tanzania, Uruguay, Bangladesh and Ghana. His Italian wife was born in Tanzania. The Corncrakes' Welcome is the sequel to Hanna’s first memoir Voyages with my Grandfather published by Troubador in 2020.

Book preview

Contents

Prologue

Part One My Father’s Story 1921–1936

The Sky Ablaze

Covenanters

The Corncrake’s Welcome

Ballybradden

Wireless

A Matter of Life and Death

Ballymena Academy

Part Two Wartime Diaries 1939–1942

Everything Seems All Up

Honor’s Diary

Birthday Letters

Part Three My Family 1951–1975

The Lark in the Clear Air

Golden Hair

The Quiet American

The Windsor Question

The Twelfth

Angels and Ghosts

Words and Music

Ballybradden (ii)

A Foreign Country

Cockles and Mussels

Climb Every Mountain

Ein Aber Bitte

La Gloire de Mon Père

‘We’re Gonna Fix Yer Da’

Son of a Preacher Man

God Only Knows/I’m a Believer

The Big Man

Wearing the Right Collar

Maintenant on parle français

Part Four My Story 1975–1983

Goodbye Yellow Brick Road

Ulster Strikes Again

L’Été Indien

What a Difference a D Makes

The Road to Dublin

Iona

The Third Secretary

Solemnly Meeting the Pope

The Wearing of the Green

The Girl from Armoy

Walking with My Father

Part Five Echoes 2018–2023

Duke Street

Closely Related to Chester

Among the Savages

Covenanters (ii)

Partners

JRBH

British, Irish or Both

Dublin Revisited

My Pilgrim Journey

The Sky Ablaze (ii)

The Corncrake’s Welcome (ii)

My Belfast

My Windsor Framework

Caithness

Acknowledgements

Select Bibliography

Prologue

At the foot of the Lisburn Road in South Belfast, where it forms a T-junction with Sandy Row, is the spot where in 1690 King William of Orange tied his horse on his way to meet King James II at the Boyne. Nearby stands a red-bricked Victorian building, which used to house the Samaritan Hospital. This was where, a little before midnight on Saturday 31 March 1955, when Sir Winston Churchill was the British Prime Minister, and post-war rationing was still in place, my mother went into labour with her second child, me.

Honor Hanna, née Boyd, asked the midwife to alert her husband, Bill, by telephone, not to summon him for the event of my birth, for such was not the practice in those days, but so that he should at least be aware of her forthcoming ordeal and my imminent arrival.

To her dismay, the midwife could not get through to Windsor Manse, two miles up the road, for my father had taken the phone off the hook, lest he be disturbed from a sound night’s sleep before preaching at the Sunday morning service at Windsor Presbyterian Church.

My mother was herself a midwife. She had delivered hundreds of babies in the tenements of Edinburgh’s High Street, usually onto pages from the News of the World. So she simply got on with her heroic work in the Samaritan, with the assistance of the midwife and a physician. Five hours later, examining the jaundiced fruit of her labour, she agreed with the doctor’s observation that I was ‘as yellow as a duck’s bill’, but decided to love me all the same.

Later that Sabbath day, having completed his pastoral duties, my father dandered down the road to see us. My parents decided to call me William, gifting me the Christian name my father had inherited from his father and his father before him. Thus began my lifetime quest to impress my folks and live up to the family name.

Dad was born in 1916 and Mum in 1921, defining years in the history of Ireland. Dad first saw the light of day in Ballybradden, near Loughgiel in County Antrim, in March 1916, a few days before the Easter Uprising in Dublin, and a few months before the Battle of the Somme, at which many Ulstermen, including one of his uncles, were killed. Mum was born in Ahmedabad, India, in August 1921, at the end of the monsoon season. This was the year of the partition of Ireland, and the creation of the new place called Northern Ireland, to which her missionary family returned two years later.

Let’s leave me in my cot at hospital, sleeping off my entry into the world, recovering from the first of many All Fools’ Days, while my parents take centre stage. A clergyman and a nurse/midwife – I could scarcely have chosen a more caring couple to be born to. By nature, and by profession, they were bound to look after my spiritual and physical nourishment. Who were they? What were they like? Where did they belong in their divided country?

Fortunately, I have some written material to work with, so that my parents can explain things in their own words. First Dad will describe what it was like to grow up, the eldest of six children, on a small Co. Antrim farm, in a mixed community, in troubled times. He wrote some pages, with my encouragement, in 1981, when he had just retired and was looking back on his life, as one tends to do at that stage. Mum didn’t write memoirs, but during her 21st year she kept a diary. I found it in a blue case after she died, and although I don’t have her permission to print it, she didn’t tell me not to. In Part II I’ve included extracts from the diary, written in 1942, a fateful year for her family.

It is perhaps unfair of me to place together the considered thoughts of an elderly gentleman, aware of how he wishes posterity to remember him, and the unguarded private diary of the young woman who became his wife. But that’s what my parents left me, and since their influence on my life and thinking is second to none, their writing is as good a place as any to start my story.

Each of us lives out our life in places and times that may appear to be interesting or dull, permanent or changing, improving or declining. I happen to have grown up – physically, spiritually, and politically – in an industrial city at the top right-hand corner of a small island on the periphery of Europe, at a time when the place was about to explode. These circumstances forced me to question everything around me – the political, social and religious order. I believe that I am the richer for the experience, even though it wasn’t always fun.

The wee place I still call home, Northern Ireland or the North of Ireland, depending on how you look at it, has produced many writers of poetry and prose finer than mine, but that doesn’t prevent the rest of us from feeling compelled to tell our own stories. It just encourages us. So here’s my tale to add to the pile.

Once my parents have introduced themselves, I’ll be back, to take up my own story of growing up in Belfast in the 1960s, coming of age during the Troubles, discovering a wider world outside Northern Ireland, and eventually becoming an Irish and European diplomat.

My parents told me that the first word I uttered was ‘cheerio’. So ‘cheerio’ for now. See you later. WH Junior.

WH

Brussels, 2023

Part One

My Father’s Story

1921–1936

The Sky Ablaze

It was the Hallowe’en weekend of 1961, and we had taken a family break at the little County Down resort of Ardglass. On the Saturday evening, as darkness fell, I took two small boys for a stroll along a country road. We had no torch, and the only light on our path was provided by the occasional passing car. But happily, it was a night of stars. Millions of stars, it seemed, were sparkling from the edge of the sea right over our heads to the remotest horizons. The two lads simply stood and stared upwards at the heavens. Above them and all around them was a vast panorama of twinkling splendour. The breathless amazement of those two city youngsters sent me back to a time when I was their age, but from a very different background.

***

The small village of Loughgiel lies on the sheltered landward side of the County Antrim hills. The dozens of homesteads clustered along the brae-face look down on larger holdings stretching across a few miles west to Lissanoure Castle, home of the McCartneys, a family once enjoying power and prestige not only in Ireland but much further afield. The first British Ambassador to China was a Lord McCartney, the present family now living in faded echoes of former style. Ten miles to the north is the seaside resort of Ballycastle, and at the same distance west, the market town of Ballymoney. Our home stood mid-way between the brae-side dwellings and the estate. The plantation of County Antrim stopped thereabouts and could be traced in the religious division of the community. A few Church of Ireland families worshipped in the handsome well-built Anglican Church on the edge of the estate. Here on Sundays the voice of Captain George McCartney could be heard reading the lessons. There were a few reformed Presbyterian, Covenanting families like our own, but for the most part this was Roman Catholic country, a religious belt continuing north to Ballycastle.

The year was 1921 and things were not quite normal, nor, for a small boy of five years, were they easy to understand. Our elders largely kept current affairs to themselves, but it was clear even to the very young that the whole country was in a state of turmoil. We could hear talk of strange creatures called ‘Black and Tans’. Every lorry filled with men and racing along the road was closely scrutinised, for some carried Union Jacks and some didn’t, and we gathered the difference was a vital one. Our home stood at the end of a long lane, which helped to protect us from the full impact. But then, early one morning, the residence of the local Roman Catholic school teacher was seen to be in flames. We felt at once involved. That gentleman with his wife and family were held in high esteem in the district, and although we learned to our relief that they had all been moved to a safer place, it did mean that something was seriously the matter. Across the fields we ran that day to get a closer look at the blazing house. No fire brigade had been summoned, nor did we then know of the existence of such a thing. As darkness fell on that winter day we went off once again to get a final look through the hedge and over the road. There before our very eyes was the wreckage of a fine house and we could hear the sizzle of the smoking embers as the blackened timbers collapsed. It took us a long time to get to sleep that night.

This episode was an ugly business. It was like a bad dream. And soon it came again, ten days later, early on the Sabbath. After he had been out checking on some animals there was a whispered aside from father to mother, ‘It’s the Police Barracks this time’. A little later, on our way to church, we saw the devastation of the second building.

Things were puzzling. We heard the odd-sounding word ‘curfew’ being used regularly. And there were stories of strange men calling at farm-houses and taking possession of shot-guns, with a stern warning not to report the loss for a number of hours. This happened in our home when Mother was alone minding some sleeping children upstairs. She did not observe the warning and reported at once to the men milking in the byre, by which time darkness had enveloped the retreating visitors. Some people calling at our house talked about dark ominous deeds in places like Derry and Dublin. One phrase that lingered in my memory was ‘Dublin and the half of Derry’. I chewed over that phrase, but no light would come on the meaning.

Gradually it dawned upon us that the commotion in the country had some sort of religious connotation. That was hard to take in. For we had good and friendly Roman Catholic neighbours, many of whom were in the habit of calling regularly at our home. Was it not in a Roman Catholic house over at Glenbush that I had seen and tasted my first tomato? And did not the Parish Priest Father Healey greet our family most warmly every time we met him on the road?

On both sides we continued to meet and act normally. Moreover the Troubles were discussed with our visitors. On one occasion when the matter of the guns was brought up it was quickly pointed out that none of the men of Loughgiel were involved. The deed had been done by ‘fellows over the hill’.

One Catholic family had always been special visitors. Seven sons and daughters presided over by a venerable matron, a widow since the birth of her youngest. They visited us and we them several times each week. One son entered the priesthood, from a parish that produced five such candidates in my earlier years. When this genial young man came home on holiday he loved to make a parade of the Latin he had acquired at college. Young Father Daniel was also in some demand as a referee at any local hurling match that might befall. From time to time we saw him in action on the Sabbath afternoon, though we were not supposed to be watching any form of recreation on that day. But the sight was well worth seeing. Clad in his full cassock he paraded along the touchline blowing a vociferous whistle. Only occasionally, when some ruling was questioned by the players, did he slide imperiously on to the playing pitch. And that was that. His mother was a remarkable lady, deeply devout. She never allowed us children to leave her home after a visit without imparting a benediction on small, puzzled Protestant heads. She it was, years afterwards, who, with her own hands and her deft crochet needles, produced in time for my ordination my first and only silk cassock, a work of art and beauty. On receiving my profuse thanks her only reply was, ‘All I ask is that you remember me in your prayers’.

Winter always seemed to bring us frost and snow, which provided not only snowmen and snowballing but also a horse-drawn sleigh-ride through the undulating lanes and slopes of the fields. There was the cosy security of the farm kitchen in the long dark evenings, with oil-lamps and turf-fires and the jolly ‘craic’ as neighbours and visitors dropped in for a while — the younger children being packed off early to bed, while the older ones were permitted to listen for an hour longer. In the farm buildings outside there was the occasional distant stamp from a horse in the stable; the delirious excitement when a foal was born in the loose-box specially prepared for the event, or the birth of a calf in the byre. The lambs came later, sometimes as late as St Patrick’s Day, but their advent was greeted with the same emotion. The new lambs were steadily counted, until the knowledgeable among us could announce, ‘One more single and maybe a pair of twins, and that’s all for this year’.

If winter held these compensations, it was for summer we really lived. Summer brought the long school holidays and the long evenings, and hopefully the long carefree days. One never felt like climbing a tree in winter, but as soon as the foliage was full blown we clambered up among the leafy branches and built our own wee homes to which only the specially invited were welcome. Dream homes they were. We never used the words ‘Let’s pretend’. The whole business was quite serious, as far as we were concerned.

Around our farm-house there was a shelter belt of ash, sycamore and chestnut trees near the tall tops of which the crows annually nested. The fact that the nests were slung so high was sufficient incentive. We knew how to make a sling and there was plenty of ammunition. Mercifully casualties were few. But we had the satisfaction of causing much alarm among those broody crows.

Still less reputable was our venture into the mysteries of nicotine. Woodbine was the cigarette commonly in use in our district and the price of a packet was scarcely prohibitive. Secrecy from prying eyes was crucial. The secluded spot in a nearby stack-yard was our chosen venue. However, ‘the best laid schemes gang aft a-gley’. Our summer evening brought us a near disaster. A carelessly flung match landed on a hay-rick, and to our shock and horror in a few seconds we had flames and destruction of precious hay. Had it been one of the large stacks nearby, the mind boggles. As it turned out, our frenzied efforts to extinguish the blaze quickly brought us assistance. At this point the veil of memory kindly descends. But we do recall that our merited punishment was verbal rather than corporal.

Reviews for The Corncrake's Welcome

[cavantipp · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Excellent interesting considered autobiography honestly dealing with his upbringing in a part of Ireland which was effectively an apartheid state