Playlist for this Post
The giant and I were friends, or so I like to think. She never spoke, obviously. Not in normal terms. But please believe me when I say that I could feel her. Her presence was real to me. I think she felt me too. I know she did.
The first time I ever set eyes on her, I was but just a pup. My father and mother brought me on a rare dander, ‘pon a Christmas eve when all work was off; the ground unforgiving and fierce cold but the joy of the season ever aglow in their faces. It was more like rock than soil beneath my unsteady four year old feet. The winter was at its work, frosting the grass and nipping fingers, reddening noses and scorching lungs. The mighty giantess was bare of all leafage, green, brown, ochre or otherwise but still she loomed across her kingdom all Queenly, branches twenty feet or more in circumference, stretching East to South and North to West.
You’d think my little body, for all its size, would tremble at the stature of such a rare monolith of nature. Her trunk was fourteen yards wide and I just a gnat of a thing in her court. A speck. Yet I felt no fear as I stood before her at all. I was but small and rather too swamped with thoughts diametrically opposed to the dimensions of my fuzzy haired puny noggin. I loved her, you see. My ornament tree, the moment my eyes first slid from her trunk to canopy. It was unavoidable. For hundreds of years she had watched these lands. Seen boys like me grow, live, breed and die. She watched us all, silent in her knowing. Birds roosting in her limbs. She watched their offspring too, fulfilling their designated cycle.
Her brothers, sisters, nephews, nieces and cousins, all across the island of Ireland were serving as tables, ships, housing or gallows to hang the felonious Irishman upon, because servitude knows no limits when your Master’s soul is black.
I would go at times, when I reached the outer limits of boyhood even, and sit beneath her, brushing the grass that seemed to thrive around her, as if it was hair, as if it were connected, because I believe it was. I’d lie on my back and talk out loud, the light between her leaves, being the twinkle of her eyes. She calmed me when nothing else could. Without a word. Just by being.
And then my Caoimhe came along. My macushla. The girl with eyes that would make angels cry and a heart that was so full of goodness, it is a wonder it did not implode. I made her my wife beneath that Queen of a tree and then made it good in the eyes of God in Ballinderry chapel. Children followed swiftly; one, two, three and four. Every single one we introduced to our Ornament Tree.
But then times became harder and money was scarce. Bellies complained hollow night after night. I sat with my Queen and told her my troubles, hat in my hand and back against her trunk. I know that she heard me, I know that she did. I know that she felt even what went unsaid.
Before I even set foot in my abode that day, the wind began brewing an an-chuid of mischief. The skies darkened and we threw the Queen’s kin on the fire to warm the aching chill in our bones. Arms folded, I watched Caoimhe settle the wee ones to bed. I was but a shell of a man, neither here nor there. My place was with the family but my family was the Ornament Tree.
She is strong! I reprimanded myself. Possibly a thousand years old or more. Some say fourteen hundred. A storm like this is nothing to her, to the Queen of bonny Portmore.
But it was not an ordinary storm. And those initial gusts were merely spring zephyrs in comparison of what was to come. It was in fact a full blown hurricane raging across this land by the second hour of morning. By the time this became clear, there was nothing to be done but sit. Sit in fear. Sit in indecision. Do we hide in the house? Do we flee from the house and shelter in the chapel? Surely God will protect us there? Won’t he?
As it turned out, the whole village was there, praying, chanting and holding hands. Bairns were crying while Father McKinley shakily lit more candles to compensate for those that got extinguished by the rogue draughts.
At some point between three and four in the morning, the quaking congregation of us heard the most unmistakable and hideous sound. None of us could pretend we didn’t know what it was. The impact of it loosened mortar from betwixt the stones of the hallowed chapel walls. Myrtle O’Farrell bit her tongue almost in half at the sheer shock of it and every adult present crossed themselves in mortal dread.
When the wind abated, we all tumbled out – most to their houses and some to check on boats. But I, I went to check on the Ornament Tree.
My hope was useless. I couldn’t have been more upset if the sky had tumbled from the very heavens. There she was, toppled, prone. My mentor, my quiet strength, instigator of deeper reasoning. I knew not what to do with myself or her. This righteous earth mother, sprouted from the ground, so full of dignity and a mighty span of days. I ran my hands across her every bough. Chest banded, I tried to form words. Could she hear me still?
‘Just look at her,’ a voice said.
Two women ran up and sank to the ground weeping. More people appeared of all ages and sex, grieving and mourning in their own particular way. It was in that moment when I saw half the village draped over her, that I realised she had been mother to us all. And it was never asked of her. It was never spoken of till now. She sacrificed her entire being to serve us and in death she had done the same.
Such was her colossal size, her timber was used for ships, houses and furniture and more. One branch was sold for nine pounds and her trunk for ninety seven. In the year 1760 that was an unheard of amount of money. But for our village it was a Godsend in such impoverished times. Did she somehow engineer this windfall? Did she do this for her fleshly children’s sake? If so, I am an ungrateful son. Because I refused to partake in of any of it. Not a penny. Not a moment did I seat myself on a chair of her wood. Nor allow a beam of her to prop up my house. All I have is one small piece of her left – a little brother, an acorn, growing in a clay pot I guard so fierce no one dares even peep. I tell him tales of her every day.
He says nothing of course, because he doesn’t even have to. He has mightiness running through him like a river without even possessing blood.
Just like the matriarch.
His mother.
Our mother.
The most stately of all the oaks.
For further information on the historic Ornament Tree of Portmore, Ballinderry (meaning Town of the Oak Wood), Northern Ireland please explore the link below.
http://lisburn.com/archives/history/down-your-way/ballinderry.html
© 2023, SamanthaJWright.com. All rights reserved.
Beautiful – sad, yet joyously hopeful.
I think I’d have cried for a week if I had seen her fallen. Such an inspirational and touching part of local history.
Thank you for reading.
There is a deep sadness to see the destruction of storm lavished on our woodlands.
Mother earth giveth and she also takes from us.
This story awakened fond memories of my childhood like a monkey in the trees.