~ A Disturbance in a Small Town ~
Daniel McKay was tired, hungry and thirsty – and only half-dressed.
“Sure ‘n’ I thought Sunday was supposed to be a day of rest,” he complained to no-one in particular in the line of people he had joined. Like the others in the line, he was making his way up Brewery Close, the narrow passageway that led from the High Street to Smith’s Land, which seemed to be the seat of all the commotion.
Usually of placid disposition, Daniel was an angry young man this afternoon. After working through the night helping to re-provision a naval ship moored along at Port Edgar, he had gone to sleep in his room in one of the crumbling tenements on the High Street. But because that single room, which he lived in with his wife Mary and two-year-old daughter Helen, was at the rear of the building, his sleep had been disturbed by the noise of the crowd gathering in nearby Smith’s Land. And when he woke up, he found that Mary was gone with Helen, presumably to the same place. So he had hurriedly pulled on his trousers over his semmit, tied his boots and left to find out what was going on.
Emerging from Brewery Close, he saw that a hundred or more of his fellow-Irishmen and their families had already assembled in the open space in front of the row of houses known as Smith’s Land, while more were making their way into the space from Brewery Close, as well as from other directions. Everyone’s attention seemed to be directed at the three occupants of a wooden platform that had been erected outside the door of one of the houses. He noted that the house in question was the building the Irish folk referred to as their “Chapel”, so called because the kindly owner of the house, one of the few Roman Catholic townspeople, allowed it to be used as such every fourth Sunday afternoon, when a priest from Linlithgow visited it to say Mass. His guess that today was one of those Sundays was confirmed when he heard someone mutter, “Fat chance of Mass being held now. Disgraceful, it is.”
When he began to scan the crowd for signs of Mary and Helen, he recognised immediately one of his neighbours, Hugh McNulty, who rented a room on the same landing. Unusually tall and well-built for an Irishman, Hugh stood close to the platform, arms folded, head and shoulders above everyone else. And standing right next to Hugh was a slip of a girl with a crop of fiery red hair. Daniel smiled in spite of his foul mood. There was no mistaking his Mary. But the baby didn’t seem to be with her. Then he smiled again. Of course, Mary would have left Helen in the care of Hugh’s wife, something she did on occasion.
After weaving his way through the crowd, he came up behind Mary. Gently, he put one arm around her waist and felt the swelling of her belly. Because she was hatless and coatless on this mild April day, the bump on her slender body from her six months’ pregnancy was more prominent than ever.
“I’m sorry you were woken, Daniel,” she said, her head snuggling into his chest.
His anger dissipated with the warmth of her nearness and the sound of her husky voice.
“Ach, you’re fine,” he replied. “Sure, it wasn’t your fault, darlin’.”
Then he looked up at Hugh and nodded.
“Any idea what this carry-on is all about?” he asked his neighbour.
Hugh had at least another foot on Daniel’s five and a half feet and probably another ten years on Daniel’s twenty-five. But contrasting sizes and ages aside, both men had travelled the same road from Ireland. Both had fled the Great Famine a decade earlier, Daniel as a boy with his parents and Hugh as a young man with his new wife. And both had eventually found their way to this little town known as the Ferry in search of work, Hugh two years ago and Daniel less than a year before.
Arms still folded, Hugh drew his eyes away from the platform in order to answer Daniel.
“Well now, young Dan. See those three fellas up there, they’re from the Christian Mission in Edinburgh. Missionaries, come to convert us heathen Irish. And that fella in the middle, he gives himself the grand title of District Missionary.”
For the first time since arriving in Smith’s Land, Daniel looked properly at the men on the platform. All three wore black hats and coats that served to accentuate their stern expressions. And all three held copies of the Bible. The one in the centre was taller and thinner than the others, with a long silver beard that seemed to dance in the soft Spring breeze.
“Sure ‘n’ not more than a year ago – before your time here, Dan – didn’t the same three stand on that exact spot? And did we not chase those so-called Christians all the way out of town? I was more than surprised to see them return, I tell you. But that was until I saw the thugs they brought with them. Their bodyguards. Degenerates recruited from the Cowgate in Edinburgh, I’ve little doubt.”
It was only then that Daniel noticed the four burly, shabbily-dressed and mean-looking men standing directly in front of the platform, each one ready to wield the thick cudgel in his grip.
Before Hugh could say any more, the District Missionary began his oration with the words, “Repent, ye sinners!”
Because of the loud, incessant hissing and booing that came from the crowd from that moment on, Daniel could make out only snatches of the rant that followed. But with each snatch, dark memories returned unbidden; memories of the hardships he and others had suffered over ten long years.
“…embrace the one true religion of Christ…”
Back home in Ireland at the time of the Great Hunger, he watched again as his younger brother and sister both fell ill and slowly, painfully became lifeless. And he remembered his mother and father dying a thousand deaths when they had to bury his siblings on that desolate moor.
“…the Pope in Rome is the Anti-Christ…”
He remembered the long journey in the cold and rain to the coast. And those wretched days spent on the quay waiting for a ship. And the stench of the cattle-boat that took them over to Scotland.
“…renounce Roman Catholicism…”
He remembered the three of them trudging through the big city, begging for food and shelter. And he remembered the cries of the local people ringing in his ears as they went from street to street, “Glesca toon is burstin’ at the seams wi’ yous Paddies. Awa back tae yer pigs in Ireland.” Pigs! If only they had kept pigs.
“…else you will be visited with fire and brimstone…”
He remembered the long trek eastwards to find his father’s Holy Grail. A gold miner by trade, his father was certain he would secure a top job in one of the new shale mines that were springing up in the east. And when they arrived at the little place called Ratho, both he and his father secured jobs in the shale mine there, but lowly ones like all the other Irishmen, with a pittance for pay.
“…ye are but blasphemers and heretics…”
He remembered that life in Ratho was better for a while. Their home was little more than a wooden hut, but they had work and they weren’t starving. And it was there that he met and married and set up home with the bonny Mary Durken, whose journey to escape the Great Hunger had been identical to his. They had a child, and all seemed bright. Until the mine was closed down.
“…repent now, ye followers of the Anti-Christ…”
He remembered the man who came to Ratho to tell all the now-idle mineworkers about the new shale mine that would open soon at a tiny village called Dalmeny, right next to South Queensferry on the shore of the River Forth. He remembered leaving his mother and father in Ratho, two broken people too exhausted to make yet another trip. And he remembered arriving with Mary and Helen in the place the locals called the Ferry, only to discover that there would be no work at the so-called new mine for many months yet. Since then, he had managed to find irregular work on the ships docking at Port Edgar. The work earned little, but it was enough to buy food and pay the rent of their room, a room in a rat-infested building, where one outside toilet was shared by twenty families and where water had to be fetched from a pump on the High Street.
“…repent now, ye sinners, or burn in Hell…”
While the tall missionary with the silver beard continued to harangue the crowd, Daniel remembered all these things. The hunger. The deaths. The suffering. The broken promises. And with each memory he grew more angry. Now, on top of it all, he was being told to renounce his religion. It was the final insult. He was ready to explode. Bodyguards or no bodyguards, he was going to drag this man down and shut his gob for good.
When he was on the very verge of stepping towards the platform, Mary broke away from him to stand just inches from one of the thugs. Unlike his slow-burning temper, hers was quick and as fiery as her hair. And her tongue sharper.
“Blasphemers, are we?” she shouted up at the missionaries in her distinctive brogue. “Sinners, are we? And what are you three, if not the sons of Satan?”
She spat out the word “Satan”. Then she spat full in the face of the thug. When the thug raised his cudgel to strike Mary, Daniel wrested it from him and beat him to the ground with it.
Legend has it that the single blow to the thug’s head by Daniel McKay was the signal for the riot that ensued. Whatever the trigger, it seemed that the whole crowd surged forward at that moment, sending the rest of the bodyguards flying, toppling the platform and smashing it to smithereens, and then chasing the missionaries, with their long coats flapping behind them, and their so-called protectors all the way along The Vennel to the far end of town, where their carriages were waiting.
The local Police turned up near the end of the disturbance, of course, but to do nothing except arrest the young man suspected of causing it. Daniel spent a night in the cells in Edinburgh, but was admonished the next morning in the Police Court, the magistrate knowing full well who the real culprits were. Returning to a hero’s welcome from his fellow-countrymen, Daniel vowed that he and his family would not be hounded from the Ferry because of their religious beliefs; they were there to stay.
The preachers from the Christian Mission never set foot in the Ferry again.
This story is based on an actual disturbance which occurred in the Ferry on April 25th, 1865, and which was reported in The Scotsman newspaper. It would be almost another twenty years before the first proper Chapel for the town’s Catholic community was erected in 1883, by which time the community had been significantly augmented by the influx of Irishmen eager to find work on the construction of the Forth Bridge. As Daniel had vowed, he and Mary continued to live in the Ferry. Later in 1865, Mary gave birth to a son called John. Sadly, Helen died in 1876 at the age of 13 and John died in 1883, aged 18. But the couple had six more children, one of whom, Daniel Durken McKay, was to marry a feisty lass, also of Irish descent, by the name of Catherine Begley. Kate McKay, as she became known, was a legend in the Ferry. She was my great-grandmother.
“Sure ‘n’ I thought Sunday was supposed to be a day of rest,” he complained to no-one in particular in the line of people he had joined. Like the others in the line, he was making his way up Brewery Close, the narrow passageway that led from the High Street to Smith’s Land, which seemed to be the seat of all the commotion.
Usually of placid disposition, Daniel was an angry young man this afternoon. After working through the night helping to re-provision a naval ship moored along at Port Edgar, he had gone to sleep in his room in one of the crumbling tenements on the High Street. But because that single room, which he lived in with his wife Mary and two-year-old daughter Helen, was at the rear of the building, his sleep had been disturbed by the noise of the crowd gathering in nearby Smith’s Land. And when he woke up, he found that Mary was gone with Helen, presumably to the same place. So he had hurriedly pulled on his trousers over his semmit, tied his boots and left to find out what was going on.
Emerging from Brewery Close, he saw that a hundred or more of his fellow-Irishmen and their families had already assembled in the open space in front of the row of houses known as Smith’s Land, while more were making their way into the space from Brewery Close, as well as from other directions. Everyone’s attention seemed to be directed at the three occupants of a wooden platform that had been erected outside the door of one of the houses. He noted that the house in question was the building the Irish folk referred to as their “Chapel”, so called because the kindly owner of the house, one of the few Roman Catholic townspeople, allowed it to be used as such every fourth Sunday afternoon, when a priest from Linlithgow visited it to say Mass. His guess that today was one of those Sundays was confirmed when he heard someone mutter, “Fat chance of Mass being held now. Disgraceful, it is.”
When he began to scan the crowd for signs of Mary and Helen, he recognised immediately one of his neighbours, Hugh McNulty, who rented a room on the same landing. Unusually tall and well-built for an Irishman, Hugh stood close to the platform, arms folded, head and shoulders above everyone else. And standing right next to Hugh was a slip of a girl with a crop of fiery red hair. Daniel smiled in spite of his foul mood. There was no mistaking his Mary. But the baby didn’t seem to be with her. Then he smiled again. Of course, Mary would have left Helen in the care of Hugh’s wife, something she did on occasion.
After weaving his way through the crowd, he came up behind Mary. Gently, he put one arm around her waist and felt the swelling of her belly. Because she was hatless and coatless on this mild April day, the bump on her slender body from her six months’ pregnancy was more prominent than ever.
“I’m sorry you were woken, Daniel,” she said, her head snuggling into his chest.
His anger dissipated with the warmth of her nearness and the sound of her husky voice.
“Ach, you’re fine,” he replied. “Sure, it wasn’t your fault, darlin’.”
Then he looked up at Hugh and nodded.
“Any idea what this carry-on is all about?” he asked his neighbour.
Hugh had at least another foot on Daniel’s five and a half feet and probably another ten years on Daniel’s twenty-five. But contrasting sizes and ages aside, both men had travelled the same road from Ireland. Both had fled the Great Famine a decade earlier, Daniel as a boy with his parents and Hugh as a young man with his new wife. And both had eventually found their way to this little town known as the Ferry in search of work, Hugh two years ago and Daniel less than a year before.
Arms still folded, Hugh drew his eyes away from the platform in order to answer Daniel.
“Well now, young Dan. See those three fellas up there, they’re from the Christian Mission in Edinburgh. Missionaries, come to convert us heathen Irish. And that fella in the middle, he gives himself the grand title of District Missionary.”
For the first time since arriving in Smith’s Land, Daniel looked properly at the men on the platform. All three wore black hats and coats that served to accentuate their stern expressions. And all three held copies of the Bible. The one in the centre was taller and thinner than the others, with a long silver beard that seemed to dance in the soft Spring breeze.
“Sure ‘n’ not more than a year ago – before your time here, Dan – didn’t the same three stand on that exact spot? And did we not chase those so-called Christians all the way out of town? I was more than surprised to see them return, I tell you. But that was until I saw the thugs they brought with them. Their bodyguards. Degenerates recruited from the Cowgate in Edinburgh, I’ve little doubt.”
It was only then that Daniel noticed the four burly, shabbily-dressed and mean-looking men standing directly in front of the platform, each one ready to wield the thick cudgel in his grip.
Before Hugh could say any more, the District Missionary began his oration with the words, “Repent, ye sinners!”
Because of the loud, incessant hissing and booing that came from the crowd from that moment on, Daniel could make out only snatches of the rant that followed. But with each snatch, dark memories returned unbidden; memories of the hardships he and others had suffered over ten long years.
“…embrace the one true religion of Christ…”
Back home in Ireland at the time of the Great Hunger, he watched again as his younger brother and sister both fell ill and slowly, painfully became lifeless. And he remembered his mother and father dying a thousand deaths when they had to bury his siblings on that desolate moor.
“…the Pope in Rome is the Anti-Christ…”
He remembered the long journey in the cold and rain to the coast. And those wretched days spent on the quay waiting for a ship. And the stench of the cattle-boat that took them over to Scotland.
“…renounce Roman Catholicism…”
He remembered the three of them trudging through the big city, begging for food and shelter. And he remembered the cries of the local people ringing in his ears as they went from street to street, “Glesca toon is burstin’ at the seams wi’ yous Paddies. Awa back tae yer pigs in Ireland.” Pigs! If only they had kept pigs.
“…else you will be visited with fire and brimstone…”
He remembered the long trek eastwards to find his father’s Holy Grail. A gold miner by trade, his father was certain he would secure a top job in one of the new shale mines that were springing up in the east. And when they arrived at the little place called Ratho, both he and his father secured jobs in the shale mine there, but lowly ones like all the other Irishmen, with a pittance for pay.
“…ye are but blasphemers and heretics…”
He remembered that life in Ratho was better for a while. Their home was little more than a wooden hut, but they had work and they weren’t starving. And it was there that he met and married and set up home with the bonny Mary Durken, whose journey to escape the Great Hunger had been identical to his. They had a child, and all seemed bright. Until the mine was closed down.
“…repent now, ye followers of the Anti-Christ…”
He remembered the man who came to Ratho to tell all the now-idle mineworkers about the new shale mine that would open soon at a tiny village called Dalmeny, right next to South Queensferry on the shore of the River Forth. He remembered leaving his mother and father in Ratho, two broken people too exhausted to make yet another trip. And he remembered arriving with Mary and Helen in the place the locals called the Ferry, only to discover that there would be no work at the so-called new mine for many months yet. Since then, he had managed to find irregular work on the ships docking at Port Edgar. The work earned little, but it was enough to buy food and pay the rent of their room, a room in a rat-infested building, where one outside toilet was shared by twenty families and where water had to be fetched from a pump on the High Street.
“…repent now, ye sinners, or burn in Hell…”
While the tall missionary with the silver beard continued to harangue the crowd, Daniel remembered all these things. The hunger. The deaths. The suffering. The broken promises. And with each memory he grew more angry. Now, on top of it all, he was being told to renounce his religion. It was the final insult. He was ready to explode. Bodyguards or no bodyguards, he was going to drag this man down and shut his gob for good.
When he was on the very verge of stepping towards the platform, Mary broke away from him to stand just inches from one of the thugs. Unlike his slow-burning temper, hers was quick and as fiery as her hair. And her tongue sharper.
“Blasphemers, are we?” she shouted up at the missionaries in her distinctive brogue. “Sinners, are we? And what are you three, if not the sons of Satan?”
She spat out the word “Satan”. Then she spat full in the face of the thug. When the thug raised his cudgel to strike Mary, Daniel wrested it from him and beat him to the ground with it.
Legend has it that the single blow to the thug’s head by Daniel McKay was the signal for the riot that ensued. Whatever the trigger, it seemed that the whole crowd surged forward at that moment, sending the rest of the bodyguards flying, toppling the platform and smashing it to smithereens, and then chasing the missionaries, with their long coats flapping behind them, and their so-called protectors all the way along The Vennel to the far end of town, where their carriages were waiting.
The local Police turned up near the end of the disturbance, of course, but to do nothing except arrest the young man suspected of causing it. Daniel spent a night in the cells in Edinburgh, but was admonished the next morning in the Police Court, the magistrate knowing full well who the real culprits were. Returning to a hero’s welcome from his fellow-countrymen, Daniel vowed that he and his family would not be hounded from the Ferry because of their religious beliefs; they were there to stay.
The preachers from the Christian Mission never set foot in the Ferry again.
This story is based on an actual disturbance which occurred in the Ferry on April 25th, 1865, and which was reported in The Scotsman newspaper. It would be almost another twenty years before the first proper Chapel for the town’s Catholic community was erected in 1883, by which time the community had been significantly augmented by the influx of Irishmen eager to find work on the construction of the Forth Bridge. As Daniel had vowed, he and Mary continued to live in the Ferry. Later in 1865, Mary gave birth to a son called John. Sadly, Helen died in 1876 at the age of 13 and John died in 1883, aged 18. But the couple had six more children, one of whom, Daniel Durken McKay, was to marry a feisty lass, also of Irish descent, by the name of Catherine Begley. Kate McKay, as she became known, was a legend in the Ferry. She was my great-grandmother.