Paul Brown - Orphan Among the Irish: Hanorahs Story

Orphan among the Irish:
Hanorahs Story

PAUL BROWN

Copyright 2013 Paul Brown.

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ISBN: 978-1-4808-0427-2 (e)

ISBN: 978-1-4808-0426-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4808-0428-9 (hc)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013921337

Archway Publishing rev. date: 12/04/2013

Contents

This book is dedicated to Nora Martley
( Markley in some family references)
ODonnell, the authors great-grandmother.

Nora Martley ODonnell

Circa 1900

Young Hanorah was like any other poor girl in 1880s Ireland. Her dream was to one day see America, raise a family, and have the basic necessities of life: food, shelter, and clothes. Love she would provide in abundance. That she knew.

Hanorah kept life vibrant with music and reading. These pursuits and a stubborn hope helped her persevere as she saw her family members perish one by one. Ireland still suffered the effects of an gorta mor , the great potato famine, though it occurred a generation before Hanorahs time.

Elder relatives took in Hanorah, orphaned along with her sister, Katie. Lifes events eventually carried Hanorah to a new home across the Atlantic. She lived in various circumstances, employed as a restaurant worker, a housekeeper, and a cleaner, and stayed at a convent for a time.

Marriage fulfilled Hanorahs childhood dreams of motherhoodshe would have six childrenand life on a prosperous farm.

Hanorah was aided by her uncle Finn, her aunt Keira, and her aunt Deidre and by the legacy of others she did not know. She was helped in her quest for a new life by the persistence of local priests, who saw in her a good heart and soul.

This is the story of Hanorah, orphan among the Irish.

Morning Is What Becomes of It

Hanorah was born into poverty almost a century and a half ago in Ireland, a beautiful island steeped in sadness. From the very first moment that she could remember, she knew who she was and from whom she came. Her ancestors and her living relatives had their place in Hanorahs heart and gave her a clear ide ntity.

She knew that these people were a part of her makeup. The trees, plants, and flowers that sprouted from the earth started out as tiny seeds, but with the right mixture of sun, air, water, and soil, they grew tall and strong for all to see. Hanorah was a mixture of ingredientsa bit of everyone blended tog ether.

Years later, in a land far from Ireland, she would feel this blend of all her ancestors in the farmhouse where she would live and in the trees planted around it, as only an adult can sense these mem ories.

Rath de ort.

Hanorah awoke with these words upon her lips each morning, just as she fell asleep whispering them each night . Translated from Gaelic to the English of her later family, the words mean The grace of God be with you.

Hanorahs family spoke Gaelic, the language of Ireland. She knew no other language before learning to read, though many of the young people of her village were learning the language of the neighboring island, England. The villagers did not look kindly upon the English. The nuns and the parish priests kept a shaky truce between the two camps.

The faintest agitation could spark fighting. This happened now and again, especially when the Irish lost their homes to the English. The homes were leveled because the Irish had no money to pay the taxes on them. All the Irish were poor. Apparently the English are rich, Hanorah thought. Only the Irish have their homes dest royed.

Hanorah was starving, and there was little food to fill her belly each morning. This was the normal circumstance for the young girl and her family, the Martleys. They were accustomed to living this way. They understood their fate, one dealt to many people in Castletown berre.

The Martleys had suffered in the past and expected little change in the future. However, Hanorah was like none of her relatives; she always looked at the positive and was sure circumstances would somehow improve. Saint Patrick and Saint Bridget would see to it that life got better. Hanorah stood out among her friends; she carried an aura suggesting that she could change the fate of others. Hanorah felt thi s too.

Times were not good for the majority of working-class Irish. Many fathers were unemployed, and many families lived with the threat of starvation and death.

Many Irish had become homeless. Large families were often dispersed among relatives who were slightly better off. This diaspora caused a deep sense of loss for all concerned. Many of Irish heritage never got over this loss, even into ol d age.

Children were the ones most often sent to live with others. There were many mouths to feed, and parents wanted their children to survive. They would use any means necessary to make sure that hap pened.

Hanorah saw many of her friends lose their homes, which were pulled down before their inhabitants eyes. She was heartbroken when the father of one of her best school chums was killed while pleading with the levelers to spare his familys home until he could secure funds to pay the taxes. He was crushed beneath stone, sod, and wood, unable to cry for help before the weight halted his b reath.

Hanorah, schoolbooks in hand as she passed the site that devastating day, rushed home after class from then on, afraid that her own home might be buried among the stone and the sod and that her own father might be dead.

The Martleys were no different from most families in Ireland in the 1880s. They were poor, hungry, tired, and looking for hope. Ireland was a land of enchanting beauty; the land of Saint Patrick; the land of the shamrock, the symbol of the Holy Trinity, and the land of leprechauns. However, hundreds of thousands of her people suffered. What good was the beauty of the countryside if it brought so little prosperity or hope? Where was Saint Patrick when people were losing their homes? Where were the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost when the Irish needed rescue? Where were the leprechauns? Why were no pots of gold left upon the doorsteps of Irishmen? Families lost their firstborn, their second-born, and even their third-born to poverty, disease, and starvation. The Irish felt that Gods chosen people in Egypt had not suffered as the y did.