Christine Brown - The Storytellers Child

My father, being Irish, enjoyed telling a good tale always an Irish tale. I enjoyed being his audience. There was nothing self-conscious or rehearsed about the telling of these stories. My childhood memory of it is that it just seemed to happen. This was not bedtime story telling since my parents never did that. We did not have books in our house, childrens books or books of any kind. These stories that my father told were never very long or detailed so they were ideal listening for a child. At least I found them so. For me much of the enjoyment was in listening to my fathers soft Irish brogue. His stories were unexpected, neither introduced nor given any explanation, and always told from the old armchair of his in our kitchen. His story telling was not strong on detail but for me it always conjured up a clear picture. There were no specifics about his leaving of Ireland or about his arrival in Edinburgh. There was nothing about his boat journey and absolutely nothing about his boyhood life in Ireland. Maybe he expected me to fill in the gaps by asking questions about that journey and how it came about. I never did. I enjoyed just being his audience of one. Here is how it went:

Once I got off the boat in Liverpool, I just began to walk. Whether my father had meant Edinburgh for his destination or he just stopped when he got tired of walking was never made clear. Since I had no idea of the distance from Liverpool to Edinburgh or how long it would take, it sounded to me like a nice kind of walk so I always pictured that day as being sunny. His one friendly encounter on that walk had been with a clergyman working in his garden.

He wore the collar, my father explained. He told this story more than once and each time he illustrated it in the same way by moving his finger around his neck.

He was not, you know That meant, as my mother would have put it that this clergyman was not one of us. According to my father, you could tell the difference between a Catholic priest, one of us, and a Protestant minister by the way they parted their hair. Any reference he made to the priesthood or the Catholic faith generally was always in the same flippant, joking, manner. My parents attitude to their faith was one of the biggest differences between them. My mother was a devout practising Catholic and brought her family up in that tradition. I cannot recall ever seeing my father in Church so I think it would be fair to describe him as lapsed. When the family left for Sunday Mass, it was taken for granted that my father stayed at home, relaxing in his kitchen chair reading the Sports section of the Sunday Post. No one questioned why he was not coming to Mass with the rest of us. When we got back home, my father set to and cooked fried bread for our breakfast. Since we had fasted from midnight, the taste of this fried bread, crisp on the outside and soft inside, is forever connected with Sunday Mass. The story about his long walk always concluded with:

He called me over to his garden and filled my pockets with apples.

It was the one clear detail he ever recounted of his leaving of Ireland. Presumably, that was the only kindness he received on his walk since he mused over that incident many times. Indeed, it had a long-lasting effect on him since he never passed a beggar in the street and passed that advice on to his children.

His arrival in Edinburgh was less joyful and any account I have of it came in bits and pieces from my mother. Whether my father had any idea of how his new life would be was never made clear but the first object lesson came when he started looking for work. Factories in Edinburgh at that time, the 1920s, displayed explicit notices which read No Irishmen need apply. To make it clear what the general feeling was then, one of the citys entertainments was at the Mound in Princes Street where a Protestant Action group regularly set up their stall. Their listeners were entertained with colourful stories of impoverished Irish Catholics having to pay priests hearing their confessions. There were always lurid accounts of what went on behind convent doors as well as colourful stories about the Pope. The message was that Catholics were different and were not welcome in a Protestant country. They were infiltrating Scotland and, of course, every Irishman was known to be Catholic.