The light of the November day reminds
The sound of Huntsmen of a late November day is akin to the cry of the curlew in summer meadows of long ago; rarely heard in these present days and, as with the curlew, the huntsmen get fewer and fewer.
Oh how I love the dying light of a winter’s day for, in my mind’s eye, I can hear in the distance the beagles after the scent of a fox, running through the frost-bitten fields, their lonesome howl re-echoing across the drumlins. They chase after each other along far headlands, descending down the filigree patchwork of fields through gaps in holly and hawthorn bushes, in the dying light of that winter's sun, which dances on the ice-covered bottoms, flickering through the bare sally trees to bid a fond farewell to yet another day of traipsing. Oh to hear the huntsmens’ haunting call beckoning their beagles for home in the dying duskish of the day is, for a huntsman adrift from the crowd, like sweet music to his ears.
I can easily recall those November evenings when huntsmen gathered after a long day's trek o’er hill and flaggin’ bottom, following their hounds through the fields near Folias bridge along the River Erne. They piled into the Dublin Bar where once I worked, filling the lounge with the smell of the crisp frost air as the door opened and the cold of the evening crept in around the ankles of men in hunting boots, as they threw off their winter coats and the steam rose to mix with the smoke of the Sweet Afton cigarettes. There they congregated around the bar for hot whiskeys and rum and blacks and any half one going that might warm their inner souls; mediums and pints of stout and bottles of McArdle’s, the orders coming thick and fast.
Men in peak caps a clad, leaning over each the other with 5 and 10 pound notes waving in the air to grab the attention, the plates of egg and onion sandwiches carried through on arms stretched high; the big hands of starving men, straining to reach the plates to quieten the roar of their hungry stomachs. Lying up, each in turn, against the radiators until their frost-bitten bones had thawed and, as a hush went round the bar, the song of a huntsman belted out the Youths of Sweet Redhills and My Lovely River Finn.
Their faces, I remember them still, etched by the passing of time, faces that are now part of folklore, how I wish I could be in their midst again: Jemmy McCabe and Gerry Fitz who bought an ass at Carrigallen mart and brought it home on the back seat of his car and poor auld Sonny Maguire, names that were familiar twixt the hills of Derryerry and Derryarmush and beyond the bridge at Wattlebridge, where they met with men of their own kind to buy a bottle of plum poitín from the boot of a car for callers of a Christmas Day, in a time when people called.
I found my thrill on 'Blueberry Hill', sang by Bob Reilly, who lived in a caravan along the River Erne in which big men gathered of a Wednesday night around a paraffin lamp, to play a game of cards, as he teetered on the edge of his stool at the end of the bar singing with both eyes closed, imagining how it might be aloft on that hilltop where blueberries grew in the heady days of his youth as the men laughed and cheered and sent him down a pint of Smithwicks.
Gerry West from Treehoo cross sat in the corner of the bar ‘If Ya Ever Go to Heaven’ as the applause went up from all who gathered in on that November evening on Belturbet’s steepest hill.
For once a huntsman is always so, it’s in your very bones - the cry of the fox in the still night air reminds you that those fields have not yet being traversed and there with the call you learn to travel life’s paths, through bog and ditches over hill and whins, on wet days and bright sunny days, in the early winter and come the spring before the birds begin to nest.
Huntsmen who knew what it was to stand aloft upon a hill, their lungs filled with fresh air and look beyond at all that lay before them or who knew also what it was to get caught below in a mucky gap without the strength of an outstretched arm to pull you up when couldn’t get up yourself, lessons for a lifetime, learned by one generation after the next.
And there in that lounge bar we shared those precious hours, hours I oft times revisit in my mind’s eye as I light a candle in a darkened church in these late November evenings and recall their faces before me, men who laughed and sang and were full of life but now, like all the others gone before, are but names etched on headstones in graveyards around where one day we too will be... Eternal rest grant unto them Oh Lord...
As the lonesome call of the huntsmen re-echoes in my mind, I look on the flickering candles setting the shrine aglow; the shrine of twinkling remembrances in the time of year when all things remind, a time to stop and think on faces that once were as yet another year breathes its last, men who gather now in the dying light of the day... beyond the veil of our leaving taking. Remember them Lord, each and every huntsmen alike who traipsed these fields before us and let perpetual light shine upon them and forever may they rest in peace.
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