DANCING ON THE FULL DOOR

An Irish Story of Enchantment and Fear across many Divides during Partition 1920s.

 (Please be aware that this is a complex mystical story posted in two parts. It is a work of fiction taken from my novel and play set at a turbulent time of Irish history 1920s and does not reflect anyone’s life-story, personal or political views, nor does it have reference to any real incident within the Irish dancing community.)               

PART ONE                                                                                                                                                     

Tír na nÓg: The Otherworld

Just before dawn, when the dim light dances blue and the moon sits still in the sky, the large grey stones stand vigil in the ancient stone circle, sentinel to the sleeping Woman of Beara. She stirs, drawing the shawl back from her face, and watches as the day begins to break, the stars become invisible, and the moon fades when the sun stretches golden fingers across the tips of the stones.

The Woman of Beara stretches, the rattles on the hooped circle tied to her waist clattering as she does so.  They make everything awaken, all around.  The life of the night transforms to the life of the day.

The Woman of Beara turns towards the cromlech in the middle, the flat stone balanced on two others, and she hesitates, fearfully peering at it.  A small bundle of red has caught her eye.  She draws back, clutching her breast in anguish.  Then she rushes forward, gathering up the still bird, one outstretched wing of red feathers stark against her pale hands.  The Woman of Beara weeps, cradling the creature against her breast.

“The rare bird has fallen.

The rare bird has fallen, and it bodes ill upon me, for I am the land and all-seeing.

No measure of pain is greater than this, no still water here will assuage my thirst

Nor ripe enough grain to feed my hunger. I am as one, alone, forgotten, and fleeing.

The breath of the wind will imprison me, the fire of the sun will be my binding,

I’ll be clasped and anointed by the sea and in Earth’s presence from tears, I’ll be free.

I am the soul of Ireland and the rattler of the Fates, all the elements of life are mine.

I am the all-seeing Woman of Beara.

Earth spirits, be friends with me, after the wars, bring peace to me,

Breathe life into the rare bird for me.

Spirits of air, be friends with me, after the wars, bring peace to me,

Breathe life into the rare bird for me.

Spirits of fire, be friends with me, after the wars, bring peace to me,

Breathe life into the rare bird for me.

Spirits of water, be friends with me, after the wars, bring peace to me,

Breathe life into the rare bird for me.

Spirits of Night and Day be friends with me, after the wars, bring peace to me,

I am the land and all seeing, I am the past and the future,

I am the Woman of Beara.”

She stretches her hands up into the air and releases the bird.  The red fluttering wings take to the air as the bird chirps its new song of life, and then disappears into the blinding horizon.

“She lives!  She lives! The rare bird has flown! 

Go to the world, to the new and old. You are the omen of freedom!”

The Woman of Beara unclasps the large hoop rattler from around her waist and begins to make great circles with it above her head, bending low and arching back to swoop the circles faster and faster, and as she swoops, she cries out as she turns to stone, and the rattling and the wailing is heard from the other side.

Tír na mBeo: Land of the Living

There was a rare bird outside, a rare bird on a bleak morning, calling, calling…  and Mariah Lynch knew exactly what was being said.  “A cushla mo cree, A cushla mo cree.”  (A chuisle mo chroi).

“Oh, pulse of my heart, Oh, pulse of my heart,” sang the bird, but not in a joyful voice, in a plaintive almost weeping kind of way, a way that tore the heart out of strangers who heard it and thought themselves lost in the land, lost and the bird knowing.

It made Mariah think of the new stranger, and it made her own pulse race and her heart thump like a drum, like her feet when she danced.  The new stranger was a fiddler who played tunes the likes of which Mariah had never heard before, but she knew them, oh heavens, did she not know them through and through?  They caught at her soul and tugged at her feet like invisible threads from the past, and she wanted to jig and horn-pipe and swirl and sweep right off the door.  The half-door was not big enough for these new sounds.  She’d have to tell her brother Shaunny, ask him to take off the full backdoor and let her dance on that.

 Old Pat Kelly did not like the new stranger, did not like her at all, and he was usually partial to strangers, especially females, but not when they encroached on his expertise with the fiddle. 

Mariah had overheard him talking to her mother. 

“Mrs. Lynch, it’s a damned disgrace, it is, so it is!”

“Quit your swearin’! What’s a disgrace, Pat?  That the lass has taken to the fiddle?  I never thought it was a man’s domain myself, Pat.  Fancied I could do it as soon as knit.  Good for her, I say!”

“Aw, sure she can fiddle till the cows come home!  I won’t deny her the pleasure of the fiddle.  Has it not served me well over the years?”

Mariah had been flat against the wall in the scullery listening to all this.  ‘Aye,’ she thought to herself, ‘served you well, and paid you well too, you scut!  You’ve been bribed blind with feeding by our mothers and had your share of secrets with the daughters just to play your best in the ceilidhs!”  But that was the way of Kelly, ‘good-looker in his day’, especially when the competition grew thick.  

‘The more heart in the musician, the better the dance’, he used to say.

“Aw, I wouldn’t begrudge anyone the pleasure of the fiddle, Mrs. Lynch, that, I wouldn’t,” continued Pat Kelly, his watery eyes partially closed like he was in some furthered state of bliss.  But there was a sly turn to his lip, almost spiteful.  Mariah could see it, and her in the half-dark.  “It’s the fact that she digs with the other foot!  She’s not even one of us, for God’s sake!  What right does she, a Prod, have to our strains of music, now?  Has she ever played in a Ceili band? Tell me that, eh?”  His face had two russet apple spots high on his cheeks.  “Reapin’ off the land and now stealin’ the music?  Ireland’s foster children have not the same rights to our songs, the Sean Nos dances, or the Faery reels!”

“Your words are vexing me, so quit taking the Holy Father’s name in vain for he will not hold you guiltless!  We’re all wains of the world. What’s all this fosterin’ nonsense? I have nothin’ against her, Pat,” said Mrs. Lynch, “except maybe for the cut of her hair…  she looks too much like a cub.  But music and dancing are beyond crib and creed.  She doesn’t have the tongue to steal the songs, but we cannot stop the lilt of Heaven coming through her, can we now?  Neither the Good Father nor his Mother would like that!  Leave her be!”

Pat could say nothing to match that, and so he sat by the hearth and his eyes smouldered dark, with the turf burning away in a licking fire, roasting at the heart of him.  Time sat heavily upon his shoulders like an old woman rolling away at the wool of his life, the ball getting heavier and himself the more stooped with the weight.  There had been no-one to match him before.  Had he not trained all the lads, the would-be fiddlers?  Had he not taught them their stuff over the seasons, over the years?  A third of their pay was his… for their teaching…  for the secrets he imparted to them about the bribes.  Let the mothers pay, that was the way.  The girls were only too happy to eye the best fiddlers.  And did not the finest musicians in all of Ireland come out of this County?  And the finest girl-dancers!  Aye, indeed!  And now some strumpet stranger was willing to play, and play for free!  Pat Kelly got up from the hearth and left, without as much as a by-your-leave.

Mariah spoke with her mother the next day.  She didn’t want to bring up the converse so quick upon the heels of Pat’s discourse.

“Ma, I think that we should pay her something, eh?  The fiddler…  what was her name again?”  Mariah knew darned well what her name was already.  Had she not sampled the stranger’s name upon her tongue in the blanket hours of night?  Had she not crushed the pillow to her face and whispered her name into the coarse linen?  “Kirsty Bell,” she had murmured into the cloud of darkness, “Kirsty Bell, please be my music-maker,” she begged softly into the night.

“Miss Bell, aye, Kirsty Bell is her name,” said her mother, thoughtfully.  “Aye, she beats the boys, that’s for sure, even if her ways are different.  I think you’re right, Mariah.  We ought to treat her the same.  She’s an orphan, you know?  Her parents were killed in the civil riots, though nothing civil about them, if you ask me!  It’s hard enough being an orphan in this world without being slighted by those only consumed by their greed…  no names mentioning, of course.  But didn’t she say you were a fine dancer, Mariah?  I’ll bring her a basket, and she can play for you at Kelly’s ceilidh.”

Mariah flushed with pleasure, remembering the ice-blue eyes as they had watched her dancing on the door at the crossroads on May Eve, remembering the strain of music that burst from the fiddle, remembering the clover-soft brogue of the girl’s Northern tongue as she complimented her on the dance.  “You flow well to the music, Miss Lynch.  You dance a fierce good jig, so you do.  Sure, I could knit with your ankles.”

Mariah knew exactly what she meant, that Kirsty Bell’s music could make her dance fine patterns, but Mariah’s eyes had been suddenly drawn to the slender white hands of Kirsty Bell.  A rush of warmth filled her mind at the thought of Kirsty Bell steering her ankles in the intricate patterns of knitting.  Oh, it would be a grand new stitch in a cable moss they would make!

And now the day had come, hailed at dawn by the rare red bird, the ceilidh planned for that night.  Dancers from miles around would traipse to Kelly’s backyard.  The barn cosy with hay, well-lit with the tilly-lamps strung high on the rafters, the dancers one or two in embroidered dresses, most in simple frocks.  The fiddlers, tin whistlers, and bodhran players, well bribed by the mothers, in flirtation with the daughters, smiling and joking, eyes flashing, and the dancers fawning and gloating.  Pat Kelly, his purse fattened for it was the end of the season and the final ceilidh.  The dancer of girl-dancers was to be chosen this night.  And a fine gold sash was hers for the keeping. Mariah at eighteen and three quarters was the best half-door dancer.

Mariah leapt out of her dreaming.  She went to the back door and ran her fingers over the oak.  It was heavy and deeply ingrained.  She knocked on the wood and liked the sound: a good round sound for the tap of her feet.

She ran out in the yard to search for her brother.  “Sean!” she yelled, “Shaunny!”  She tried to find a silence for him to answer back, but the hens clucked, and the cows lowed, and the horses whinnied to her call.  “Shaunny! Sean Lynch, answer me!”

He came from the depths of the byre, two pails filled with the newly drawn milk, the cats chasing his ankles for spillage of fresh cream.

“What are you hashin’ about, Mariah?”

“Shaunny, I need the door, the full door tonight, for Kelly’s ceilidh.”

“But the half-door is easier to get off.  You’ve always danced the half-door, Mariah!  And how in blazes am I to get that to Kelly’s barn?  Old Kelly will go mad!”

Mariah pouted and pleaded.  “I want to win the gold sash, Shaunny, please?  Can’t you take it on the trailer or the turf-sled?  I’m sure Bobbins won’t mind.”  Bobbins was Sean’s best shire horse.

She managed to coax Sean to take off the back door.  He shook his head.  “We’ll have to turn the wake-table on its side and wedge it in the doorway, or we’ll have every darned piece of livestock from here to Tullymore in the house!”

Mariah laughed.  “Thanks, Shaunny, I’ll see you later.  I’m taking the bicycle.  I need some ribbons for my hair tonight.  Tell Ma I’ve gone for ribbons.”

And Mariah pumped up the front wheel on the bicycle for it was as flat as a pancake, and she mounted the bike to ride into town for the ribbons.

But as soon as she was out of sight of the house and the lane, Mariah turned the bicycle the other way and rode to a cottage on the brink of the border of Tyrone.  She stared at the white-washed wall and the slated roof, bland and grey, not at all like the thick blond thatch on their own farmhouse, a thatch that looked like a crooked haircut.  And there was no half-door, or welcome stone with a hollowed middle where feet had trodden over plenty of years.  A red painted and polished step reached to the red front door. ‘Keeps away famine ghosts,’ she’d been told. She shivered.

Mariah tapped with the brass knocker.  No-one knocked at her own house, they stuck their heads through the top half of the door and called inside.

Kirsty Bell answered on the third knock.  “Sorry, I didn’t hear you there.  Come in.  It’s Mariah Lynch, isn’t it?  The dancer at the crossroads.”

There was linoleum on the floor, smooth and shiny and patterned with little flowers, like a flat flowerbed, not like the stone floors in Mariah’s house.

Mariah was almost afraid to step inside.  A gas-mantle light hung from the ceiling and two on the wall.  “You have the light!” she said, astounded.

“Aye, my parents put it in…  just before…,” she sighed, unable to finish the sentence.  “Well, let’s not talk of that.  I’m glad to see you, Mariah Lynch.”

“I’ve never been in a Protestant house,” said Mariah, shyly.

Kirsty smiled.  “It’s just a house.  Maybe a bit different, but just a house.”  She had a dimpled smile that gave her a cheeky look, what with that haircut that looked just like a boy’s crop, and her eyes blue and dancing with amusement.

Mariah hung her head.  Was she laughing at her?  She had better get the business done quick before she lost her nerve.

“Kirsty Bell, did my mother come to see you?”

“She did, and she brought the finest soda bread and apple-pie I’ve ever tasted, so she did!”  Kirsty smiled.  “She didn’t have to do that, you know.”  Kirsty’s voice had softened into a sort of lilt.  It was true she had the voice of the Good Father… or his Mother.

“There is a tradition to uphold, Kirsty Bell.  It is usual for the mothers of the dancers to…  line the stomachs and the pockets of the fiddlers.”  She stared, wide-eyed.

“Is that so?”  Kirsty Bell pushed her fingers through her shorn locks.  “And is there anything else I should know before tonight?  Your mother was the only one to visit me.  She was all smiles and she fed me well.  I found a silver florin in the apple-pie.  That was far too much, a sixpence would have done.  Told me it was an honour to hear me play and perform so well, she did.  She said she hoped I would have the opportunity to play for you.  Do you think she meant tonight?”  Kirsty cocked her head to one side, her whole body a question mark, knowing of course there was no other night.

Mariah knew it was now or never.  “Pat usually…  well, he says, you know, he usually…”  She couldn’t finish what she had to say, her face flaming with the embarrassment of it all.  Instead, she blurted out angrily, “Why do you look like a cub?  Why do you have your hair like that?  And you’re wearing trousers!  You don’t pick spuds on a farm! If your father and mother were alive, they’d skelp you!”

Kirsty Bell’s eyes were ice-blue, ice-blue and hurt.  Mariah was mortified.  Why did she have such a caustic tongue?

Kirsty’s voice was steady, barely steady.  “I…  Miss Lynch, I-I find I am not bothered so much if I dress as a boy…  dress as a man…  it keeps them away from me.  It’s easier to work too.  There’s good reason for the trousers.  Look, I’ll show you.  I wouldn’t show anybody else, Mariah Lynch.”

She hitched up the trousers to her knees to reveal terrible burn scars and welts on her legs.  “There!  My parents died in the Partition riots… Belfast… in the flames.  I lived but am scarred for life as you can see.  For a long while, I wished I had gone with them.”  She closed her eyes, caught in eternal pause, her mind pained in another time.

Mariah could not stop the tears flowing down her cheeks as she listened.  She was appalled that she had brought up the subject at all.  “I’m sorry!  I didn’t mean to…  oh, Heavens, forgive me, I’m so sorry.  Mammy told me you were an orphan.”

Kirsty quickly rolled down her trouser legs and came over to Mariah.  She offered her a handkerchief.  “It’s okay.  You weren’t to know.  I’m still a stranger, with only rumour and gossip as acquaintances.  They are better company than misery though.”  Kirsty asked in a soft voice, “Mariah, tell me truthfully why you came?”

Mariah wiped at her eyes with the hanky and said quietly: “After I heard your music, I whispered your name in the linen pillow on May-Eve, and I thought you answered me.”

Kirsty reached out her hand and touched Mariah’s long black hair, wing of the raven, blue-black.  “Look at me,” she ordered gently.

Mariah’s dark blue eyes locked with ice-blue, see-through pools, beckoning pools of loneliness in which to drown.

Kirsty Bell’s voice was a sweet refrain to her ears.  “I believe I heard you that night.  I hoped you would come to see me. I want to play the music for your feet.” 

Mariah spoke in a sigh.  “Pat’s tradition is:  to see… to flirt a bit, to hug.  Just a little, not anything else.  It makes the fiddler play better for the dance, so says Pat to me.”  Mariah’s cheeks flared pink, and her eyes never left Kirsty’s as she hitched at the hem of her dress to expose white flesh of muscular dancer’s legs.  She unbuttoned a couple of buttons on the front of her dress and caught at Kirsty’s hand.

Kirsty instantly removed her hand.  “Don’t! You don’t have to do this!” she said, firmly admonishing her.  “I cannot believe this! Pat Kelly is a sly disgrace, so he is!”

Mariah quickly smoothed her dress.  Her mouth trembled and she bit her lip to stop crying again.  “You’re angry. You won’t like me now?”  She nervously brushed at the material. Her shoulders hunched as if she had done wrong. Her eyes fixed on the floor.

Kirsty put her arm around Mariah, gently tipping her chin to make her look up. She stared for a moment at the questioning eyes, and then she pressed her mouth softly to Mariah’s forehead as if she would soothe her soul to make her feel better.  She whispered into the shell of her ear: “My anger is not for you, but for Kelly. Honestly, this is not the way, Mariah! Pat Kelly is very wrong, and why would I not like you, eh?”

Kirsty frowned and roughly buttoned up the top of Mariah’s dress, too roughly, so that one of the buttons fell and rolled upon the linoleum with a thin distant sound.  It made her stop suddenly, then quickly draw Mariah into the next room, lowering her to sit on a big horse-hair stuffed couch scattered with cushions.  “We need a wee chat!”

Mariah had only time to think that this was not like her settle at home, wooden, upright, and hard with a thin cushioned seat.  She felt bewildered and lost, until Kirsty Bell sat down beside her and held her hand. 

“You are precious, Mariah, but this is not the way. You know it isn’t. You must feel that.”  She stroked her fingers through Mariah’s black night of hair and down her tear-stained cheeks. “Don’t cry for me, for I have done enough of that to fill a lough. Cry for yourself. It kills me to hear that anyone would sully you,” she said, “and later, when you win the gold sash, we will celebrate, be friends, and get to know each other.” 

Mariah wept softly with the waves of deep pain of knowing within her.  “Don’t tell,” she whispered. But Kirsty Bell brought her back from that precipice of sorrow where she was about to fall off in shame, about to tumble into the unknown.  Kirsty breathed the breath of fire upon her, kissing the pods of her weeping eyes, wiping away the salty tears on her cheeks, consuming the sorrow of every moment.  Kirsty’s arms enfolded her closely.

“Cry if you like, Mariah, but know that your tears are tripping you, and me.  Smile. There’s no guilt. You didn’t know, but I do, and he can’t wrong you now. I’ll be there tonight, and you will dance like no other, and I will play like no other, I promise you.  Our pain and pleasure will be in the ascension of the music and the weaving of the dance.  We will tell the story of our lives.  Now go home, pet, and worry no more.”

Then Kirsty Bell stood up and righted herself, her own face wet with perspiration, her eyes bright, her breath ragged.  “Go!” she croaked.  “Mariah Lynch, please go!  I will play for you tonight…  only you…  no other will have you!”             

Mariah’s long raven hair was tousled, her eyes wild and dark blue with the desperation of unrequited something or other, a murmur in her soul she had never experienced before.  She felt free. Her face was flushed with the anticipation of their performance later tonight.  She stood up, trying to hold together the top of her dress.  “I need a safety pin,” she said, biting her lip.

Kirsty groaned.  “Mariah, have some mercy, get out of here.  It’s getting later already!”

“I can’t go home like this.  And a brush…  do you have a brush or comb?”

Kirsty went into her bedroom and came back with a pin and a brush.  She put them beside Mariah.  “I’ll wait in the scullery,” she said, unwilling to acknowledge the sight of the sheer vulnerability of Mariah Lynch.

Mariah brushed her hair, pinned her dress, and righted herself.  But the flush never left her face nor the brightness her eyes.  She vacated the room and stood at the door of the scullery, observing Kirsty bent over the sink, washing her face in cold water, splashing it on the back of her neck, and sleeking back her shorn locks.

“Aren’t you going to say good-bye?” she asked. “Here’s your hanky.”

Kirsty sank her head into her hands.  “Keep it! Now, please go!” she gasped.  “You’ll not see me until it’s your turn to dance.  It’s your turn to shine tonight.  My word to you. I’ll be there.”

Mariah stuffed the hanky into her pocket, pursed her lips, touched her fingers to them and blew softly into the air, gracefully tossing her hand outwards.  “You are not looking, but I am throwing a kiss goodbye to you, Kirsty Bell,” she said.

And when Mariah left and cycled off down the road home, only then did Kirsty Bell uncover her face and lift her hand to scoop up the thrown kiss, and she threw back her head and pressed it to her mouth.  Then, scrambling onto her hands and knees, she searched the flowered linoleum for the missing button of Mariah Lynch’s dress.

Later, the night was crisp, and Bobbins clip-clopped slowly down the country lane, the wheels of the trailer rumbling and rasping behind him.   Sean sat on the edge of the trailer, steering the course with a tug of the reins here and there.  Mrs. Lynch sat neatly beside him, many rugs and blankets strewn upon the top to make it more comfortable, but Mariah had thrown only one coarse blanket over the door, and she lay sprawled upon it, her eyes closed, thinking of Kirsty’s leather horsehair-stuffed couch. An uncontrollable rush coursed through her spine thinking about the night ahead.  There was a faint smile on her face, for she had half-completed a ritual of sorts and Kirsty Bell had swallowed her tears.  All was right with the world.  This ardour, however it manifested, never let her down if she kept to it.  There were no ribbons in her hair, but her brother never asked any questions, so he heard no lies.  Mrs. Lynch was not entirely in favour of dancing without hair ribbons, but she bided her tongue for she did not want to interfere in the quest of the dancer.  If Mariah did not wish to wear ribbons, it was because of some sacred doing or other.  A rare bird with a flash of red had sung that morning. Mrs. Lynch was prepared for anything, anything at all. As long as the bird stayed out of the house.  It was a harbinger. Someone would leave.

The dusk was falling from the heavens and rolling itself like a dark grey rug across the hills, and the fire of the sun had almost gone out with a last bright blaze bludgeoning the western sky, like a lone flaring turf in the dark hearth.  Mrs. Lynch asked Sean to hurry before the night smoored the sun altogether.

As soon as the horse began his trot, Mariah sat up, no longer relaxed, sprawled as she had been against the rough blanket and hard wood of the door.  She agreed with her mother, the quicker the pace, the faster they got there, and better to be jiggled about in the half-light than to go a sorry pace in the black.

Torches lit the way up Kelly’s Lane, all the way to the yard and the barn.  A row of horses was tethered to a fence, and the horses stretched their heads through to munch on the succulent grass on the other side.  Traps and trailers were all unhitched and lined up against another fence.  

When Sean Lynch entered Kelly’s barn with muscles bulging, carrying in the hefty backdoor, a full backdoor, everyone gasped.

******

DANCING ON THE FULL DOOR; PART TWO: (Continued: Saturday.)

DWINA***