Free Maggie's Breakfast by Gabriel Walsh Page A

Mouth asked, “Does anybody know who said, ‘To Hell or to Connaught’?”
    Half the class raised their hands and yelled out in unison, “Oliver Cromwell!” Everybody knew Oliver Cromwell said it because Brother Fish Mouth was always telling us. He was always
on about Oliver Cromwell and Oliver Plunkett.
    I got the Olivers mixed up one morning when I was asked about a date in Irish history and said Oliver Plunkett instead of Oliver Cromwell.
    Brother Fish Mouth jumped up from behind his desk and rushed towards me with his eyes bulging. “Don’t ever mix up their names. Oliver Plunkett is not Oliver Cromwell!” He
slapped me on the back of the head for giving the wrong answer. “Oliver Plunkett was the brave Archbishop of Drogheda who stood up to Oliver Cromwell!” He then turned around and, with
his face to the blackboard, he asked, “Who was Oliver Plunkett?”
    Nobody answered.
    The Brother turned around, faced all of us and yelled, “Blessed Oliver Plunkett was a Catholic! He was the Bishop of Drogheda who stood up to Oliver Cromwell. In the name of his Protestant
religion Oliver Cromwell pushed the Irish off their land and killed men, women and children, all because they clung to their Catholic faith. Cromwell was a scourge to our country. He was a scourge
to our religion!”
    He sat down as if to take a rest from his anger. About five seconds had passed when he got up and quietly addressed the class again.
    “When did the barbarian invade our country?” he asked.
    He pointed his bamboo cane at Éamon Quinn, the boy sitting in front of me. I was glad I wasn’t asked the question.
    Éamon shook with fear. “Nineteen-sixteen,” he answered.
    The Brother leaned over towards Éamon and whacked him on the back of the head. “No! No! Sixteen-fifty, you dope!”
    Éamon dropped his head onto the wooden desk in front of him and started crying. The brother walked up to Éamon and stood next to him. He looked around the class as if to warn us
about giving the wrong answer to his questions. He then placed his hand on Éamon’s head.
    “Did Oliver Plunkett cry when confronted with Oliver Cromwell?” he asked out loud to the class.
    “No!” we all said, knowing that was what he wanted to hear.
    After a second or two of silence, a boy with a new pair of shoes on his feet put up his hand. “Why was Connaught worse than hell?” he asked.
    “It wasn’t , you bloody git! Connaught was the West of Ireland. The West of Ireland had no houses or towns or farmland. No livestock, no nothing. Cromwell wanted to herd all
the Catholics who wouldn’t change their religion to the West of Ireland. That way they would all starve to death and he wouldn’t have to kill them off like he was doing in every other
part of Ireland at the time. Oliver Cromwell hated Catholicism more than he hated the Devil himself.”
    The Christian Brother urged everybody in class to visit Drogheda where Blessed Oliver Plunkett’s skull was in a glass case for everybody to see. He showed us photographs of the skull. It
was a brownish round bonehead with no eyes or anything. A bit smaller than the sheep’s head my mother often bought to make soup. We were to imagine the brave Bishop of Drogheda before his
flesh wasted away. I couldn’t imagine any kind of face on the skull. It had cracks and a few dents on it.
    * * *
    After a while I decided I was going to fight back a little bit. I couldn’t bear to be beaten any more. And the next time I was in his class I was determined not to let him
whack me with his cane or leather strap. He started to talk about something in Irish and I had no idea what he was saying.
    “Breathnach? Did you hear me?”
    “I didn’t understand, sir.”
    “Come up. Come up now!” He called me up to the head of the class.
    I went.
    “Hold out your hand.”
    I didn’t. I kept my hands behind my back.
    His face and neck began to swell up. “ Hold out your hand! ” he roared like a lion.
    I kept my hands