Tales from the travelling shop of yesteryear

Fr Jason Murphy's bi-monthly column, Let the Busy World Be Hushed, is proving a big hit. In the latest instalment, he recalls with great flair the wonders of the travelling shop...

The hum of the engine could be heard from within in Maggie the Whin’s kitchen below in Drumnalara, as herself and the brother Andy sat each side of the range waiting, as they did every Friday morning, with the enamel bucket set under the table in readiness for the green Austin Cambridge van, FIP 9, to pull up on the street outside.

The door of their little home would be left wide open, the soda bread and cups set ready on the table with the kettle whistling on the boil in readiness for their weekly visitor, bringing with her provisions of tea, sugar and butter, a package of Anadin tablets for Kathleen’s headaches and sudocream for the sores on Andy’s shins and whatever foosies they’d enjoy after the dinner over the weekend be it a package of custard and jelly, a barm brack at Hallowe’en or iced buns that’d be opened when all the groceries were brought in, in the enamelled bucket and set on the end of the table. After all was put away in the scullery, Andy took the steaming kettle off the boil and pouring the boiling water into the brown patterned teapot asked, as he did every week, ‘Ye’ll take tay, Maggie?’

Maggie ran her father Phil’s travelling shop from the back of the green van, a girl hardly 20 years yet who had an open, endearing way about her that made her the darling of all the houses she visited.

‘Ah maybe not this week Andy I’m in a rush to get to Tully’s in Kilnacreeva, they do be waiting on me when I call for they might have run out of tea or sugar.’

‘What hurry’s on ya, sure they’ll not die of thirst for the want of a tay for a half an hour, stay with us and tell us the news you have from around the country, sure we haven’t yet seen a Christian soul this day yet… and Friday wouldn’t be Friday if ya didn’t sit down and take tay with us, Maggie.’

And so the same entreaty was made in every house she called to as the people of Crosserlough, Drumkilly and Drumavaddy looked forward to her weekly visits. Everyone knew Maggie’s van as she drove along the winding roads with the window down and the breeze blowing through her hair, radio Luxembourg on the wireless and a big wave for all she passed on the roads around Ardlougher, Cornaseer and Creamfield to mention but a few of the townlands she visited, pulling in with the ‘Bishops’ the ‘Canons’ and the ‘Doctors’ and the Red Charlie Reillys, collecting eggs and blackcurrants in houses along the way, which knocked a few welcomed shillings off the grocery bill for women with big families. She knew well the houses where money was tight, where the egg money was very much welcomed and giving whatever was needed on tick to feed the hungry mouth was an act of charity.

‘How are you Pat and trotten tis you that’s lookin’ well and what about your bad knee and did that heifer that you were sitting up with ever go to calf?’ She had a word for everyone and, as the months passed, she came to know all their little stories and travails. Her green van pulling up on the street was a welcome relief for many every Thursday and Friday; just to see the sight of this lovely young lassie with the big smile stepping out onto the gravel pass and opening wide the back doors of the van was enough to cheer the heart of any lonely soul. For many it wasn’t for the want of provisions that had her calling, they just looked forward to her van pulling up on the street, the ensuing chat and her warming smile.

Indeed she had made a better hand of the travelling shop than her brother Jim before her. He wasn’t gifted with the same blonde locks or the endearing charm of his sister; the women of Drumeagle were always fighting with him for the small price he was paying out for good big Rhode Island eggs, some with double yokes in them.

‘Finnegan’s of Banaho are paying tuppence extra a dozen’ the women in Denbawn used to say and when he’d fall in the door of a Friday evening after his day traversing the highroads and byroads, he would shout out in despair ‘there should have been a ****** gate put at the end of Drumeagle to keep all the cross women of that townland in’.

But Maggie didn’t have that problem, she had that laid back approach of the Clarkes, that dreamy, take your time approach to living, a time for everything and everyone and everything in its time. She came across the trials and tribulations, the births, deaths and marriages of every house in every townland across two parishes on her rounds; every sow that was pigging and every hen that was clockin for which she was asked to find a settin’ of eggs, she knew about it. Indeed she brought letters from one house to another and swopped roosters from one townland to the next for the fear of interbreeding. She knew these roads inside out, every high way and by way, from the frost and snow of winter when the people depended on her calling to the high summer days when life was easy and the wild garlic grew in the shadow of the white thorn bushes.

And every Friday evening come rain, hail or shine, she ended her rounds with Sue and Paddy Hess above in Druminsclin and, if she hadn't found craic along the way, she found it at that kitchen table as again the tay and soda bread was brought out and the dessert put on the table after all was ate and there the three would tell yarns and laugh and laugh until her mother Mary, would begin to wonder if she was ever going to see the lights of the Austin van come down by Graddum cross for Maggie to bring the takings of Clarke’s travelling shop home.