There were also those who came back from America, those who only went over to see the time.
And such a man was Mick the Fiddler.
He said the climate over didn't agree with him.
He got a crick in his neck from looking up at the tall buildings.
The day before his sail for America, Mick helped his brother and his brother's wife,
Mal Phil, to set the barley in the high field.
He was home again in time to cut it.
His brother went to the railway station to meet him,
and when Mick the Fiddler got off the sidecar above the gable of his own house,
he looked around at the countryside and said,
So this is Ireland.
Bad scram to him, he'd only gone six months.
He had a crease in his trousers that'd shave a gooseberry for you,
and the tie he had around his neck.
I wouldn't like any bull to see it.
He didn't know anyone that came to meet him,
even those who were in the same book as him going to school.
He went straight into the kitchen,
and he said to himself,
His brother's wife,
Say, Mal, what's this long-tailed * in the corner?
Wish him, Mick, says she.
Is it how you don't even know the cat?
But of all the people ever to come back from America,
Mick the Fiddler gave the best value,
for he answered all questions appertaining to the nature of New York.
And signs by,
The house used to be packed every night,
and the brother and the brother's wife, Mal Phil,
pusses on them,
for they used to get to bed until all hours.
Another thing, Mal Phil was very house-proud.
Her kitchen was shining.
You could eat off the floor,
and it killed her to see all of us streaming in every night
and bringing the mud of the locality on our shoes.
Mick's first night back,
he was telling us about the boat going over.
He said they must have saved the company of fortune and food.
It was four days before they could keep,
anything down.
At that time all immigrant boats had to pull in at Ellis Island,
where they had to undergo a very strict medical examination.
A newspaper had to be held up in front of you,
and you'd be expected to read a skein out of it.
They were all good scholars going over at that time.
But again, there might be an occasional man that would not be from a bull's foot up on the gable of a house.
He'd be questioned to see how the talk was going,
and he'd be asked what was a cloud,
or to explain a mountain.
Mick said one of the Hannah Finns,
they're up there from near Lubridge,
that he made a very poor hand of the reading.
Ah, poor fella.
I suppose he got excited.
So the American said to him,
say, the American said,
can you tell me what a lake is?
And Finn says, I can and will tell you what a lake is.
It is a hole in the * of a kittle.
When it came to the medical examination,
Mick told us you'd be prodded and poked the same as if you were a bullock at the fair.
The way the doctor had looked through the hair of your head,
and under your fingernails.
You wouldn't be one bit surprised
if he looked up a certain place to see was your backbone straight.
All the clothes, Mick said, had to be taken off,
even the socks, and put into a little carboosh,
a kind of a closet.
And then you walked in naked to the doctor.
When Mick was walking in,
naked,
who should he meet charging out against him with one of the cases of tournoneau,
making a fig leaf with his two hands.
Mad with fright.
Where's my trousers?
Where's my trousers?
Tis a lady doctor that's inside.
Ah, the cases were ever virtuous.
Mick said he'd be better off if he covered his face instead.
She might know him when he went in again.
Mick's first job over was drawing water in a big barrel in a four-horse car
for baptising small babies.
At that time it seems the population of New York was mounting,
and in the chapel where Mick was working there were four priests,
their sleeves folded up to their elbows,
baptising all day,
and the water flowing out the front door.
The same as here, those babies were baptised in the bottom of the church,
but wakes were held in the funeral parlour.
Mick was at one of these,
and he told us the man was laid out in a coffin,
with the lid off,
and he dressed up in a new suit.
No habit in him.
He was the same as if he was going to a dance.
Mick thought it a shame burying the new suit with him,
until someone called him aside and told him there was no back to the suit.
I tell you, says Mick, the Yanks teach you how to live.
The wake he was at, he was a denny hereby,
from the butt of the paps.
He fell under a train at Penn Station,
and Mick took the day off to go to the wake.
And on the way he called in to a speeding,
speakeasy.
It was during Prohibition,
where he struck up a friendship with an American barden,
Killarney Man.
They used to call those narrowbacks.
So the two of them set out for the wake,
the American barden.
He didn't know Denny here, the guy over him,
but he said he'd go along for the fun of it.
They called in to a few more saloons on the way,
and when they arrived they were biflicated,
parlatic,
and missed the funeral parlour by inches.
They went in next door, and knelt down,
and mustering up all the reverence they could,
they began to pray.
Where were they kneeling but in front of a piano
with the lid open?
They got up and, walking away,
the American barden says to Mick, he said,
I didn't have the privilege of knowing your friend,
but I must say he sure had a fine set of teeth.
And I'll never forget, as long as I live,
one night we were in the house,
and Mick the Fiddler was on to his favourite subject,
skyscrapers.
There was a man there that night
that had been on an excursion to Cork,
and he said,
Well now, Michael,
would those skyscrapers be as tall as one of the spires
of St. Finbar's Cathedral in Cork?
Mick looked at him.
God help your head, says Mick,
they'd go down that far in New York
before they'd ever think of going up,
and they go up so high
they had to take a brick off a chimney one time,
to let the moon pass.
All those buildings go up so fast.
Mick said that he was going to work one morning,
and they were digging out the foundations
for a high-rise apartment,
and when he was coming home from work that evening,
the tenants were being evicted for non-payment of rent.
That went down well with the company,
and there were so many questions to Mick
about the topography of New York
that he decided to draw a map.
There was no piece of paper in the house big enough,
so what did Mick do?
Only put a coating of ashes on the flag of the fire,
and with the top of old Dindonovan's walking cane,
he drew in the ashes
the outline of the island of Manhattan.
Ten miles long, Mick said,
and three miles wide,
bought by the Dutch from the Red Indians
for less than fifty dollars.
Don't you think, says Mick,
there were bargains going in those days?
With the top of Dindonovan's walking cane,
he drew the avenues
running north and south,
and the streets running across,
and he said the number of buildings
between two streets was called a block,
and that there were eight blocks to the mile,
if you could believe him.
He began to show us the places,
and the names of those places
were as well known to us
as the townlands of our own parish,
the Bowery and Chinatown,
and he said that there was a Kinmare Street in Chinatown,
weren't they cut short for names,
Riverside Drive, Hell's Kitchen,
Columbus's Circle,
and Central Park West.
Well, there was a poor man there,
and looking at the map,
a tear came into the corner of his eye,
and he said,
I'd know where in the middle of all that ashes
is my sister, Hannah.
Do you know her number, says Mick?
240 West 84th Street,
writes, says Mick,
pointing down with the walking cane,
between Amsterdam and Broadway.
There is where she hangs out.
You could be right, says the man,
for she works in a laundry.
Well, he began to laugh,
and the cat sat up on the hob
and began to wash her front.
Then, arching her back,
she opened her mouth wide,
and you'd swear that she was laughing too,
and the dog, he was lying down on the floor,
a bit down from the fire.
If he only knew,
half of him was inside in the Hudson,
and there he was with his snout down
and his two front paws,
a few inches away from the ashes of Mick's map,
and he was barking in his sleep,
and isn't it lovely to hear a dog barking
like that in his sleep?
Whatever little images are running through his mind,
I suppose that he pictures himself
after sheep in the mountain,
or maybe mixed up in some other carrion.
The dog took a deep breath,
filled himself up,
you could nearly count his ribs,
and then,
all of a sudden,
he let it down his nose in one snot
and demolished three-quarters of an acre of skyscrapers.
You could see the little particles of ashes
rising up between you and the light of the lamp,
and you could see Malfil's face,
and it was like the map of South America.
Well, there were Bresnahans there that night
who had brothers in the Bronx,
Sheehan's who had sisters in Staten Island,
and the Coe's who had cousins in Queens.
Not to mind those with relations in Brooklyn,
Yonkers and the Jersey Shore.
T'was like a pantomime,
they all wanting to know where their people were living.
But Mick told them,
as all these places were outside the island of Manhattan,
up the Hudson and down the bay,
turn to Coney and Rockaway,
the chairs had to be pulled back,
and more ashes brought out.
In the middle of this activity,
the cat hopped off the hob
and marched up Fifth Avenue.
You'd think it was Patrick's day.
We began to call the cat
in case she'd bring the ashes and her pads all over the house,
and the dog woke up when he heard us talking to the cat,
thinking that he was being left out of something.
The dog got up and walked over
and sat down in the middle of the Bronx
and began to wag his tail.
Now the ashes began to rise,
and Mick the Fiddler knew the fat was in the fire,
so he started to call the dog,
says, says, says, says, says, says,
nice doggy,
nice doggy,
and the dog,
a big, soft, half-full of a sheepdog,
to show his friendship,
he sent his tail around like a propeller,
churning up the ashes
until you couldn't see your finger in front of your face.
Out of this dense fog came Moll
filled with a sweeping brush,
and as I was the nearest one to her,
I got the first crack of it.
Ha ha, says she,
I'll give you the Bronx,
and I'll give you Chinatown,
the same as if she was the Mounted Police.
She cleared the kitchen.
We all spilled out the front door
like dirty water out of a bucket,
bringing to an abrupt ending
Mick the Fiddler's graphic description
of the island of Manhattan
and the state of New York
and the continent of America.
They went the low road.
I came the high road.
They crossed by the stepping stones.
I came over the bridge.
They were drowned,
and I was saved,
and all I ever got out of my storytelling
was shoes of brown paper
and stockings of thick milk.
I only know what I heard.
I only heard what was said,
and a lot of what was said was lies.
Subtitles by the Amara.org community