Free Living in the Past: A Northern Irish Memoir by Arthur Magennis

put my bait as deep as it would go, until it was probably lying on the bottom. Suddenly my cork bobbed up and down then disappeared under the water and I snatched my rod up and flicked it back onto the bank and there was a black snake, as I thought, wriggling through the grass.
    I jumped up and ran but Peter shouted, “Holy boots, you’ve caught an eel.”
    It was about two feet long. It was my first taste of eel and was certainly worth waiting for. We skinned it and then hung the skin in the crook of the fire because when it was dry it could be used as a strap around the wrist or leg if anyone had a sprain. However, if this didn’t make it better, you could always go to someone for ‘the charm’.
    In Ireland there are people who have a charm for a certain disease. This charm has been handed down through the generations. It is frowned upon by the Catholic Church but it goes back a long long way and people with a charm are very sincere about it. They do not accept any reward and if you gave them a reward then the charm would not work.
    The first charm we came in contact with was when we were very young and got a stye, which we used to do quite often. My mother would send us down to Mrs. Hughes who had the charm for a stye. When we got there Mrs. Hughes would send us out to the gooseberry bushes to break off nine prickles and bring them to her. Then she would take the prickles and point each one in turn at the stye then throw each one over her shoulder and the job was done. I suppose the stye would have got better anyhow.
    Once when I was playing football I went over on my ankle and it came up like a small loaf. I couldn’t put my foot to the ground and my mother said to go down to Jane Donaghy who had the charm for a sprain. Having nothing else to do except sit in the house with my foot up, I was glad of the break. I must admit that I was an unbeliever but down I went to Jane, walking on a stick which took all the weight on that side. Jane got a potato, which she cut into a number of pieces, and then she rubbed each piece gently on my foot and put them back again on the table. She then gently caressed my ankle with her cool hands and, I must say, it was soothing.
    “There,” she said, “It will be better soon,” so off I hobbled again. I had to pass Hughes’ about fifty yards up the road and when I reached it I stopped to look up their street at I don’t remember what, but it must have been interesting because I forgot about my foot and when I looked down I had my toes on the ground. As I walked home I was able to put a little weight on my toes. When I told my mother about it she just said, “I told you Jane would fix it for you.”
    “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio.” Shakespeare said that, I think, meaning we don’t know it all.

Chapter Seven
    R eligion played a big part in our lives when we were young. When I sat on my mother’s knee being dressed every morning I had my face washed and my hair combed. Then I had to say my prayers which were, “Mother Mary, Queen most sweet, Lead us safe to Jesus feet.”
    Then one morning I said, “I can say it, Mammy.”
    “All right, you say it,” she said.
    And I said, “Mother Mary, Queen most sweet, Lay an egg at Jesus feet,” which shows the influence that hens already had on my life.
    Hens wandered all over the farm until we eventually erected a pen. They would even sneak into the bedroom and lay an egg on the bed. Often we got a shock in the bedroom when suddenly we became aware of a beady eye watching us from the bed.
    At school, when we were about seven years old, we prepared to make our First Communion. We rehearsed everything but first we had to go to confession and confess our sins to the priest. But we had to think of our sins ourselves.
    So Saturday morning we all arrived at the church to go to confession. I don’t remember anything about mine, but after we had all finished and were waiting to go home, one girl called Mary Ellen