The summer holidays had come at last and I couldn’t wait to get out on the farm. Jimmy Comerton had commandeered three of the men to help him dip the two hundred and fifty sheep we had at the time. It was a messy job.
One man would toss a sheep in one end of the dip and two more would drag it out the other. Two men were required at the far end, as the saturated wool would weigh a ton and the sheep needed help to clamber out of the water. Once out, they would start shaking frantically in an effort to shed the water, drenching anyone within a three-yard radius.
Fortunately, it was a warm day and everyone was in their shirtsleeves – and oilskins – enjoying the tepid Irish sun. There was an audible sigh of relief, however, when we saw my mother arrive with tea and sandwiches. We dropped everything and headed for some hay bales in the shed opposite. Sandwiches were grabbed but the tea ignored in favour of the stout that had been poorly concealed at the bottom of the basket.
That morning my father had been into Ross to see Dr Quighan about an annoying cough he couldn’t shake off. So, the conversation inevitably came round to doctors and quacks, which, in Jimmy Comerton’s eyes, were one and the same.
“That was a terrible risk you were takin’ now, Boss,” says Jimmy, popping the top of a bottle of stout.
“Oh, why’s that, Jimmy?”
“Goin’ to see that quack Quighan. Sure, you’d go in with a thorn in your finger and come out missin’ a limb. He’d as lief amputate your hand as take out the thorn. With that cough you have, you could have come away with only one lung.”
“I wouldn’t go near the fucker,” says Mylsey Murphy, the pigman who had been requisitioned into helping Jimmy. Mylsey had a weak arm and leg, which meant he walked with a hobbly-wobbly lopsided lope. “When I was on’y six, didn’t me mother take me into Ross to see Quighan. In those days, we had to take the ass and car. It took us about three hours to get there and then we had to sit another hour or two in the waitin’ room. That was terrible hardship for a six-year-old lad, I can tell you.
Anyway, Quighan’s receptionist finally calls us in and me and me mother stands there opposite his desk while your man spends five minutes writin’ in a big ledger. Finally, he raises his head, takes one look at me and says, ‘Jesus, you’re one miserable looking fucker, aren’t you?’ He got up and told me to strip. I was as thin as a sprong handle back then. No matter what I ate, I couldn’t keep the flesh on me. ‘Christ!’ says he, a look of horror on his face. ‘Where did they salvage you from? Auschwitz?’ He thought this hilarious and fell into fits of laughter. He took out his stethoscope, anyway, and held it to me bare chest.
A second later, his face went into contortions. ‘I can’t hear a fucking thing. Is he alive or only pretending? If so, he must have a heart the size of a midge?’ ‘He’s always been a bit wake, Doctor,’ says me mother. ‘Weak? Is that what you call it? Moribund is more like it.’ ‘What’s that now, Doctor?’ says me mam. ‘Well, I can tell you it’s not good.’ ‘Is it serious, Doctor?’ ‘All I can say, M’am, is that it’s in the hands of the Lord whether he lives or dies. I’ll prescribe a bit of ould medicine for him but the state he’s in he’ll be lucky to make it to his next birthday.’ ‘What can I do, Doctor?’ ‘Pray to God that he goes nice and gentle.’ Anyway, he scribbled out a prescription, shoved it into me mother’s hand and straightway lit up a cigarette.”
“Well, you’re still goin’ strong, Mylsey,” says Jimmy.
“No thanks to that fucker Quighan, I can tell ye.”
“There was a time when only the worst doctors would end up in a small country town like Ross. Did I ever tell ye about a doctor by the name of Brian Muldoon?”
“Oh, Jes’, wasn’t he a terrible man for the drink.”
“For the life of him he couldn’t function sober. If he could look ye straight in the eye and was able to stand straight, ye needed to watch out. You wouldn’t know what he’d stick into you, nor what poison he’d dose ye with.
Once, after visitin’ him when he was sober, I went into the Chemist’s and handed Cory the prescription. He took one look at it and says, ‘Ah, this must be from the sober Muldoon. If I were to give you this, you’d die a very prolonged and painful death. But I think I know what he’s getting at.’ Now, if he was drunk you were fine. He’d laugh and joke and give you a thorough examination without a word of slander out of him. A perfect bedside manner, you could say.”
“Do ye remember, Boss, the time when Mick fell and cracked his skull on the side of the harrow and ye took him to Muldoon?”
“Could I ever forget? It was past midday so Muldoon was already two sheets in the wind. He took one look at Mick and said, ‘I know you. You’re one of the Roches from that dirty back lane where all the babbies come from.’ ‘No,’ said Mick. ‘The name’s Kehoe.’ ‘All right, Roche. I’m going to stitch you up. Now, I don’t want any squealing out of you. It’s not good for my nerves.’ Mick told me afterwards he was in agony because Muldoon didn’t use any anaesthetic.
Mick didn’t dare make a sound, though. When he’d finished, the doctor put a net cap over Mick’s head. ‘Now, Roche,’ he says, admiring his handwork, ‘that is not for cosmetic purposes.’ He found this uproariously funny and was still chuckling away to himself when we left the room. But, as Jimmy said, when he’d had a few to drink he was an excellent doctor.”
“Oh, back then, Boss, ‘twas a terrible job bein’ a doctor. You’d be called out at all hours of the day and night and in all weathers too, all for a few rotten eggs or a mangy ould chicken or a lump of salty bacon. Sure, the people had no money in them days. They lived from hand to mouth, so to speak.”
“I’ll never forget the time ould Quighan was called out to Paddy Byrne’s place,” said Mylsey “The ould fella was on his death bed. There was nothin’ much anyone could do for him. Anyway, all Meg Byrne had in the house was a salmon.
Oh, a lovely big salmon it was too. Now, how Paddy Byrne come by it, I don’t know. Anyway, Quighan was delighted. He loved salmon. So, Meg wrapped it up in greaseproof paper and gave it the doctor on his way out. Halfway home, Quighan got a whiff of the salmon on the back seat.
He thought it smelt a bit high but put no pass on it. When he got home, he proudly presents Josey with the salmon, thinkin’ she’d be thrilled. But when she saw the fish, she nearly threw it back in his face. ‘What in God’s name do you expect me to do with that, Quighan? Sure, I wouldn’t give it to a starvin’ cat.’ They say Josey Quighan gave him a fair ould latherin’ after that. ‘You go out in the pourin’ rain,’ says she, ‘travel halfway across the country and you come home with a stinkin’ fish. Well, you can go to bed with an empty stomach now and maybe that’ll knock a bit of sense into you, so you won’t come home emptyhanded again.’ Oh, she was a cranky ould biddy was Josey Quighan. He was well rid of her when she died.”
“Now,” says Jimmy, getting comfortable between two bales of hay. “I’m goin’ to tell yez a story you may not know. Do your remember Nanny Burrows that did live next to the Ballagh bridge?”
“Oh, aye,” said Mylsey. “I remember Nanny well.”
“Well, Nanny Burrows was better than any doctor and she never took a penny piece from no one. You wouldn’t credit the number of people she cured.”
“Didn’t they say she was a witch?” said Mylsey.
“Ah, Father Malachy branded her a witch ‘cos she didn’t go to mass of a Sunday but she was no more of a witch than I am. I wouldn’t be surprised if the doctors didn’t put Malachy up to it ‘cos she was takin’ away their business. No. Nanny Burrows wouldn’t hurt a fly. And when I say wouldn’t hurt a fly, I mean it. Sure, one summer’s evenin’ we were sittin’ by the river, Nanny and meself. She’d given me a glass of her cherry brandy. Oh, she was very fond of the cherry brandy. She made it herself out of the cherries she had in the garden. As you can imagine, the place was hummin’ with all sorts of insects; midges, bees, flies, you name it. Well, a fly was hell bent on taking a sup of me cherry brandy. So, I went to squash it between me hands. But Nanny lets out a shriek as if I was about to murder someone. ‘Jimmy Comerton,’ says she. ‘Don’t you dare! That fly has just as much a right to this space as you have. If we don’t respect nature, it won’t respect us.’ Some said she wouldn’t even kill a spider. There were others too who said she kept them to use in her potions, but I wouldn’t credit that. You see, Nanny had great knowledge of botany. All the cures and potions she knew had been passed down from mother to daughter for generations. You’d see her wanderin’ the ditches and along the river bank all hours of the day and night in search of weeds and grasses that she’d use in her potions. The whole house was full of jars with liquids of all hues. To be honest with you now, they looked more like what you’d take to the microbiologist than somethin’ you’d dose yourself with, but anyway. Did ye ever go into her place, Mylsey?”
“I did not. If it was dark we’d take another route home and if it was day we’d make sure to pass on the opposite side of the bridge.”
“Ah, Nanny was a harmless ould soul. I often went up there to see that she and the lad was all right.”
“Didn’t she have a boy that was not all there?”
“Ah, Donal was a grand lad. He’d come up to ye and put his arms around ye and give ye a rare big hug, as if ye were his long-lost uncle. He was what they call a mongoloid.”
“Down Syndrome,” corrected my father.
“The very same. Nanny could have put him in a home, but she wouldn’t do anythin’ like that. She said, ‘I love that boy more than anythin’ in the world.’ Donal went everywhere with her, helpin’ her look for all those plants. Nanny had taught him how to read and he could write a bit too. He didn’t speak all that clear but he could talk the hind legs off a dunkey, if you gave him half a chance. Oh, Nanny and Donal were very close but she had a terrible fear that she’d die before him. Now, the mongoloids, or as the Boss calls ‘em, the Down Syndrome people, don’t live all that long as a rule. They’re very prone to illnesses. But Nanny was in her forties when she had him and she was goin’ on eighty-five at the time. I don’t know what happened to Mr. Burrows. Some said he died. Others said that he scarpered as soon as he clapped eyes on Donal. Anyway, Nanny and Donal were as happy as Larry together.”
“As you can imagine they got lots of visitors from all over, people who had tried doctors and got no results, or simply people who believed in the old medicine. Anyway, one day a grand car pulled up outside Nanny Burrows’ humble abode – a Bentley I think it was – and out got a very glamorous lady, all in purple silks and shiny furs. The chauffeur got out too and escorted her to the front door. ‘Is this the residence of Mrs.Nanny Burrows?’ the chauffeur calls out in a haughty voice. ‘It is,’ says Donal, jumpin’ up from behind a tree. The chauffeur gave him a quare look or two and says, ‘Is Nanny here?’ ‘Mammy,’ shouts Donal. ‘Some grand people are wantin’ ye.’ Well, it turned out anyway that the lovely lady was a famous actress from Dublin. She was in all the great plays of the time and in a good many films too. Apparently, she had been diagnosed with breast cancer. Now we know that that can be a killer if you don’t have a …what’s that called now, Boss?”
“Mastectomy.”
“The very same. Now bein’ a celebrity and all, she was loath to have her breast removed for fear it would ruin her career. She had a fine pair, so they say, that were the envy of many a young lady of the time. Somehow she’d heard of Nanny Burrows’ miraculous cures, so she thought she’d give it a go. Now, Nanny didn’t want to give her false hopes. So, she says, ‘I can’t guarantee you’ll get better.’ ‘But they told me you have cured cancer.’ ‘Tis true that some have got cured but I’m no miracle worker.’ ‘Well, I’ll be honest with you, Nanny. I’d sooner die than lose my breasts.’ ‘You can always wear a falsy,’ says Nanny. ‘Falsy!’ yelled the grand lady, makin’ Donal jump up in fright. ‘What’s a falsy, Mammy?’ says Donal, thinkin’ that it must be somethin’ terrible altogether. ‘Don’t worry yourself, Donal. It’s just somethin’ some women wear.’ ‘Not me,’ says the grand lady emphatically. ‘Now, when can we start treatment?’ ‘Are you absolutely sure? I don’t want you blamin’ me if it don’t work.’ ‘No, I won’t. In fact, I’ll grant any wish you want, if I get rid of the cancer.’”
“Well, they started the treatment, anyway. And, ‘clare to God, about a year later, didn’t the doctors give her a clean bill of health. Oh, she was over the moon. Now, you might think she’d forget all about her promise to Nanny, but she didn’t. She was a woman of her word. One Sunday afternoon the Bentley pulled up outside Nanny’s cottage. Nanny was makin’ some potion or other in the kitchen but she sat down by the fire anyway with the lovely lady. Nanny wet the tay and they began talkin’. ‘I owe you my life and my career, Nanny, and I’ve come to carry out my promise. I said that I’d give you anything you wanted. I know you won’t take money, so what is it that I can do for you?’ It appears that Nanny didn’t have to think long. ‘I’m eighty-six years old and Donal is goin’ on fifty. I don’t know which of us will go first but if I do I want you to look after Donal for me.’ ‘Is that all?’ says the grand lady. ‘I could get you a new house in the town.’ ‘A house in town. Now what would I do with that? A town is a sterile place. Where would I find what I need for my potions?’ ‘Well, can I do up this place? A fridge? A cooker? A television?’ ‘Now what would I do with a fridge. Don’t I have a larder that do be ten times bigger than a fridge? I don’t need a cooker either. Sure, I cooks everything on the open fire. And a television, ha! They says it do nothin’ but soften the brain.’ ‘So, all you want from me is to look after Donal, if you should pass before him?’ ‘That’s right.’”
“So, the lovely lady left her address and phone number and went away back to Dublin. And, sure enough, about four or five years later, didn’t Nanny get a bad flu that turned to pneumonia. She refused to go into hospital because she was sure they’d dose her with all sorts of poisons, but her own potions were not strong enough to cure her. And late one evenin’ Donal comes runnin’ into Maguire’s yard shoutin’, ‘Come, come, me Mammy is chokin’.’ Well, that was the end of Nanny Burrows. By the time Maggie Maguire got to the cottage, Nanny had stopped breathin’ altogether. You should have heard the wailin’ out of Donal. You could damn near hear him all the way to the Rock.”
“So, what was to become of Donal? Because as sure as hell he couldn’t live by himself and no one was inclined to take him in. There was talk of puttin’ him in a home run by the nuns but then I remembered Nanny tellin’ me about the grand lady from Dublin who had promised to look after him. We found her address and phone number but the phone was dead and no one replied to the letters we sent to Dublin. Somehow, though, I thought the message would get through to her. So, I says, ‘We can make a roster so that someone passes by the cottage every day and makes sure Donal is fed and kept warm until the grand lady gets one of the letters we’re after sendin’ her.’ So, that’s what we did. Donal remained in the cottage but he spent a lot of time in the houses all round. He seemed happy enough but I and some others were terrible afraid he’d forget to put the guard in front of the fire one night and he and the cottage would go up in smoke.”
“Anyway, as luck would have it, didn’t the Bentley turn up one day at the Burrows’s cottage. The lovely lady was distraught when she found out that Nanny had passed away. Maggie Maguire was over at the cottage at the time givin’ Donal the bit of dinner. ‘We tried to get in touch with you,’ says Maggie. ‘Yes, yes, I’m sorry. I live in London now.’ ‘So, you got our letter, anyway?’ ‘No, I didn’t. It must have got lost.’ ‘So, what brought you down then?’ ‘The cancer has come back. In the other breast this time. Without Nanny’s medicine I’m going to have to have a mastectomy.’ ‘I’m sorry,’ says Maggie. ‘Nanny didn’t have a daughter to pass on her knowledge to.’ ‘But she had a son,’ said Donal. They all laughed. ‘I know, Donal. She had a son and a lovely son too, but she didn’t have a daughter to pass the knowledge down to.’ ‘But she had a son,’ repeated Donal. They thought there was no point trying to explain to him that all the potions Nanny had on the shelves in every room in the cottage were useless if they didn’t know what each one was for. ‘I’m sorry,’ says Maggie to the grand lady. ‘You’ll have to rely on conventional medicine.’ Then, Donal shouts out, ‘Falsy!’ They looked around at Donal wondering what he was gettin’ at. ‘No falsy!’ Then, the grand lady clicked. ‘I know what he’s saying. Women who have had a mastectomy wear a breast substitute, what Nanny referred to as a falsy.’ ‘No falsy,’ says Donal, lookin’ very disturbed. ‘What do you mean, Donal?’ says Maggie gently. ‘That one,’ says Donal goin’ over to one of the shelves, pickin’ off a jar and handin’ it to the grand lady. ‘Drink that and you won’t have to wear a falsy,’ says Donal. ‘You mean that’s the medicine your mother gave me?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Are you quite sure now, Donal?’ says Maggie. ‘We don’t want to poison this lovely lady.’ ‘Of course, I’m sure.’ ‘All right, but will one jar be enough?’ The lovely lady looked worried. ‘I took it for about a year. I must have used about ten jars. One is not enough. What can I do?’ Donal’s face burst into a broad smile. ‘Nanny didn’t have a daughter but she had a son.’ They both looked at Donal in dismay, not understandin’ what he was tryin’ to say. ‘And so?’ says Maggie. ‘So, I have the knowledge!’ says Donal, clappin’ his hands like a child. ‘I can make more jars. I can make that many,’ says he, holdin’ up ten fingers.”
“Anyway, after Donal had had the bit of grub, they sent him up to Maguire’s farm to help with the cows. He loved the cows and could milk them too. Oh, he was a grand milker. When he was gone, the two women sat by the fire and discussed the situation. ‘I honestly don’t think we can trust Donal,’ says Maggie. ‘He might end up poisonin’ you.’ The grand lady thought for a bit. ‘I don’t think I have much choice. I would far sooner trust Nanny’s potion than do chemotherapy. My hair would fall out and goodness knows what it would do to the rest of my body. And there’s no guarantee that it will work either. No, I’ve decided. I’m going to take a chance on Donal.’ And that’s what she did. Sure, Donal had seen his mother make up those potions thousands of time. He knew exactly how to do it.”
“So, it was agreed that the grand lady would pay someone to live permanently with Donal. Sure, you remember Kitty Murphy, who was widowed young and her sons went off to England to become navvies. Well, she was only too happy to move into the cottage and look after Donal, and get paid for it too. So, Donal had a mission in life now. He spent most days searching the hedgerows for the ingredients for the grand lady’s potion. It took him a whole week, so Kitty said, to make just one jar. Anyway, after a year or so, didn’t the doctors declare that the cancer had gone, just as it had the previous time. The Bentley once again was seen parked outside the Burrows’s cottage. The grand lady got out, her cheeks all rosy with health. When she saw Donal she ran up to him and threw her arms around him and they hugged for a good ten minutes, so Kitty said. Well, she offered Donal everythin’ under the sun but like his mother he said he didn’t want nothin’. ‘All I want is Kitty,’ says Donal. ‘I love Kitty. Kitty’s my little woman.’ They all laughed at this. Kitty didn’t mind at all bein’ called Donal’s little woman. She knew he was harmless.”
“Donal lived for another six years. Many people wouldn’t trust him with the potions. Others would and I’m damn sure he cured a good many. Donal died just like his mother with a bad dose of the flu. Kitty called the ambulance but it was too late. He’d stopped breathin’ by the time they reached Wexford town. Well, there wasn’t one person in Shannagh that wasn’t in mournin’ for the next good while. The grand lady came down and wasn’t she very tearful throughout the ceremony. Oh, there wasn’t another man or woman in the whole townland that got a better send-off. The church was so packed many people had to stand out in the rain during the service. Oh, Donal was very much loved. Sure, he was in and out of every house, always laugin’ and smilin’ and wantin’ to hug you. ‘Twas a very sad day when Donal died. And, worst of all, the recipes for all them potions and cures died with him. Once, a good while ago now, I says to this doctor I met at the Shannagh show, I says, ‘Now, if you quacks had any sense in you, you’d go up to the Burrows’s cottage, take away some of them jars and see why they can cure cancer when you boys with all your edication and noledge can’t.’ Well, do ye know what he says to me? He says, ‘That’s nothing but gobbledygook.’ ‘Now, what do you mean by that?” says I. ‘Nonsense.’ ‘Well, let me tell you, Sir,’ says I. ‘There was no mumbo jumbo out of Nanny Burrows. She never slagged the doctors like they slagged her.’ Innocent until proven guilty, isn’t that what they say. Well, until someone proves the opposite I’d as soon call the likes of Quighan and Muldoon quacks as I would Nanny Burrows. What I know for a fact anyway, she never killed no one, but I wouldn’t like to say the same for them quacks of doctors.”
“Well, I suppose we’ll never know now,’ said my father.
“And more’s the pity,’ said Jimmy, nodding his head. “Tell me now, Boss. Did Quighan give you a prescription?”
“Yes, he did. He recommended a cough mixture. Cory said it should do the trick.”
“Next time, Boss, save yourself a journey. I could give you the name of a cough mixture that always works for me. Though I wouldn’t say it’s as good as anythin’ Nanny Burrows could have given ye.”
