Judy Malloy: Score for Junction of Several Trails
Authoring System: Judy Malloy: fiddlers_passage
part V of From Ireland with Letters

Máire's continuo ...
............ Maire's theme ............
...
............ Liam's theme..........
... Liam's continuo
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She came to the cafe
from a rehearsal. It was
the accordion player's turn
to call the songs.

"And there was music
and there was wine"

continuo_maire2.html=16
"And when I'm drinking,
I'm always thinking
How to gain my love's company"

I never should have
told them I was
meeting Liam O'Brien,
Máire thought to herself,
and it would be
Cormac's turn
to call the songs.

continuo_maire3.html=8
And it would be
Cormac's turn
to call the songs.

"upon his knee a pretty wench
and on the table a jug of punch"

theme_maire.html=16
pause
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At the hour when they were meeting,
the woods were darkly beautiful. 		theme_liam.html=32
pause 		continuo_liam.html=8
pause

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Neither of his grandparents
remembered which band was playing
or the name of the waltz
that they first danced to.
continuo_liam2.html=16
But they said over and over
(as if the memory was a song)
that the sound of the accordion
was the sound of the dance hall.
And there was nothing like
that music on that evening.
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The band played on
as if they were at a festival.
The audience sitting on blankets,
drinking draft beer.

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But no one said a word
about where she was going
after the rehearsal.

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And it would be Cormac's turn
to call the songs.

"And what's it to any man whether or no,
whether I'm easy or whether I'm true,
as I lifted her petticoat easy and slow".

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There were lanterns in the courtyard,
but they were not yet turned on.
"Down through the valley so shady" 		theme_liam1.html=16
There were white tablecloths
and baskets of rustic baguettes
on the tables in the outdoor courtyard
of the Farmhouse Cafe.

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In the foreground,
cars were pulling into the parking lot.

In the courtyard
of the New England farmhouse cafe,
people in casual dress
were choosing tables.

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"I think it was Tom Senier
playing the accordion".

"No, it was Joe Derraine."

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"It was a local tune,
a waltz with no words."

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"No, there were words;
they were about a woman
whom you met in Tralee
or Aranmore or a place
you had never been."

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Leading with the sweetly wailing sound
of his accordion,
Cormac kept calling the songs

"I'd go home to my parents
confess what I've done"

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until Frannie,
who was married to Cormac,
started playing the fiddle
out of turn.

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Drawing her bow wildly across the strings,
Frannie played the opening riff
of a song that Focluth Wood knew well.

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Echoing the opening notes
with the sound of her own fiddle,
Máire Powers joined her.

"A gypsy rover came over the hill"

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Máire Powers had followed
the road along the river
to the Farmhouse Cafe.

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An Irish ballad was on her mind,
sung in the early evening
by the legendary Anthony O'Brien

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In the distance, the sun was setting
on the dark green hills of early evening.

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It was with the memory of how Hawthorne crossed the Arno on the Ponte di Santa Trinita and in his notebook recorded that the palaces along its shores were perfectly mirrored in the calm river, that Liam had followed the road along the river that led to the Farmhouse Cafe.

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"But you were really
in Boston or Cambridge,
or Dorchester,
and there was nothing like
that music on that evening.

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They were about a woman
whom you met in Tralee
or Aranmore.
The hills were green;
her eyes were blue.

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"A gypsy rover came over the hill,
Down through the valley so shady.
He whistled and he sang
till the green woods rang.
And he won the heart of the lady." 		theme_maire5.html=16
in a boat with whiskey and friends,
and the people working in the fields
came down to the banks
of the Shannon
to hear his beautiful voice.

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There were lanterns in the courtyard
of the cafe where they were meeting,
but they were not yet turned on.
"Down through the valley so shady"

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And all along the banks of the Arno,
there were lanterns. 		continuo_liam8.html=16
A view of Florence
from San Miniato al Monte
that Thomas Cole painted
in 1837, the year
that Hiram Powers
and his family arrived
in Florence.
was on his mind
as he followed the road
along the river
to the farmhouse.

continuo_liam9.html=16
Green trees in the foreground.
Stretched out below,
the Arno River
flowing through the city.
In the distance, there was a view
of the misty hills at dusk.
Thomas Cole,
View of Florence
from San Miniato,
oil on canvas, 1837

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Like a fiddle tune
that continually returns
to the opening notes,
her family tree
was echoing in her mind,
as she drove along the river
on the road that led
to the Farmhouse Cafe.
In America,
it began in the 17th century.

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In Malden, Massachusetts,
in the year of 1661,
(or possibly 1660)
Walter Power
married Trial Shepard.
Their first son,
William,
was born that same year,
probably in the
Massachusetts township
now called Littleton,
but at that time,
a part of Concord.

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In their new home,
miles from the place
where Walter was punished
for the love of Trial,
Walter and Trial Power
became Walter and Trial Powers
when they gave
their children names
in their new home

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In the parking lot,
she brushed her red brown hair,
as if in a song
that Focluth Wood
never played.

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The Spanish Lady:

"Brushing her hair
in the broad daylight".

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Liam had arrived at the cafe
a few minutes before Máire.
With him, he brought
Wunder's two volume monograph
on Hiram Powers.
Together, the two volumes
were large and heavy.
He decided to leave them
in the car.

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(pause)

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Máire Powers was not there
when Liam walked into
the Farmhouse Cafe.
There were white tablecloths
on the tables,
and at the hour when they were meeting,
the woods were darkly beautiful.
"Down through the valley so shady"
continuo_maire17.html=8
William Powers married Mary Bank.
She was the daughter
of John and Hannah Jenkins Bank
(or Banks or Banke)
of Chelmsford.

William and Mary's
second child
was William Powers,
born in Littleton in 1691.

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William Powers II married
Lydia Perham of Chelmsford.

Their children included Lemuel Powers,
born on December 11, 1714,
in Grafton, Massachusetts.

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Lemuel Powers
married Thankful Leland.

Their children
included Ezekiel Powers,
born March 27, 1745

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Her fiddle lay
concealed in its case
on the front seat beside her.

Leaving the fiddle in the car,
she walked towards
the Farmhouse Cafe.

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(pause)

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He chose a table
at the edge of the courtyard
in a place where there
was a view to the woods.

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(pause)

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The cafe was
a popular University meeting place.
He looked around him
but saw no one whom he knew.

He hadn't told any of his colleagues
about breaking up with Cordelia,
or that
he was meeting an Irish musician
in the early evening.

continuo_liam11.html=8
Only a week ago,
hiking on a hillside
that he could see this evening
in the distance,
he had stayed on the top
too long
and had to use his flashlight
to hike back down the hill.

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Ireland was never a part
of the Roman Empire.
Seventeenth century Irish roads
were not very good,
and the countryside
was unfenced.

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And what had happened
to the rest of Walter Power's family?
There were 19 members
of the Power family
on the list of families
who had to transplant to Connacht
by May 1, 1654.
And what had happened?

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Ezekiel Powers
fought for the
American Revolution
and married Hannah Hall.
Among their children was
Major Abijah Powers,
born May 7, 1781.

It was probably at that time
that the family
moved from Massachusetts
to Croydon, New Hampshire.

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(pause)

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In the town of Croydon, NH,
Abijah Powers was a
legendary storyteller.
He married
Olive Melendef or Melendy.
Among their children
(or possibly his children
by Charlotte Rogers)
was a son, Elias Powers,
born May 1, 1808
in Croydon.

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In the summer, Focluth Wood
traveled the New England Coast,
playing at Festivals and Fairs.
Afterwards,
there would be beer
with other bands.
There was no reason
that this day was different.

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She walked purposefully into the cafe,
surprised that she was nervous.

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(pause)

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While he watched for Máire to arrive,
he thought about Walter Power.
Arriving in winter in New England.
Waiting. Waiting on the harbor pier.

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(pause)

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In the cafe, waiters and waitresses
were carrying trays of beer,
wine, Italian antipasto, Spanish tapas,
and platters of local cheese
from table to table.

continuo_liam17.html=16
In times of peace,
life went on in 17th century Ireland.
Before, in between,
after the wars.
Then, it should be remembered,
sometimes there was dancing
in the fields.

And "sometimes
on December nights,
when the air is cold
and the wind is right
There's a melody that
passes through the town."

continuo_liam18.html=8
There were oat cakes, potatoes,
boxty bread, honey, and milk.
Mead, ale, beer and whiskey.

There were orchards.
Women spinning and weaving.
The playing of the harp.

continuo_liam19.html=8
On Christmas Eve, after dinner,
Liam's mother still set the table
with a loaf of bread
and a pitcher of milk.
Beside the bread and milk,
she lit a candle
in symbolic welcome
for the Holy Family
and for all visitors
and travelers.

continuo_maire22.html=16
Elias Powers married
Orpha Emeline White,
a descendent of
Elder John White,
whose 17th century homestead
(or cowyard)
in Cambridge
is now a part
of Harvard University.

continuo_maire22_pause.html=16
(pause)

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Liam O'Brien was sitting by himself
at a table near where
the cafe patio met the woods.
She saw him at once.

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(pause)

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As the shadows of the trees lengthened,
the lanterns in the courtyard
came on in unison.

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(pause)

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He was looking at the mist
rising on the dark mountains
in the distance
and the way the light
from the lanterns
shone on the forest
and did not see her
until she was standing
beside his table,
saying his name.

continuo_liam20.html=8
"The Table Laden".
Living by lantern and candlelight,
in the dark nights.
with music and storytelling
(hiking back home
on a wooded trail
guided through the forest.
by the beam
of his flashlight.)

continuo_liam21.html=16
He returned in thought
to the Arno River,
flowing through the city.
In the distance,
there was a view
of the misty hills at dusk.
(Thomas Cole's
View of Florence
from San Miniato.)

continuo_liam22.html=8
And in the evening,
in 19th century Florence,
artists gathered at the Caffe Doney,
where their conversation
was not unlike the talk of artists
of any era.

Máire's continuo ...
............ Maire's theme ............
...
............ Liam's theme..........
... Liam's continuo

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(pause)

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"...she sat down beside him,
the grass was so green"

continuo_maire24.html=8
"the day was the fairest
that ever was seen"

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They began to talk,
exchanging words
as if they had known each other
all their lives.

He asked her how she knew
the circumstances
of Walter Power's arrival
in America.

continuo_liam23_intro.html=12
He was looking at the mist
rising on the dark mountains
in the distance
and the way the light
from the lanterns
shone on the forest
and did not see her
until she was standing
beside his table,
saying his name.

continuo_liam23_pause.html=8
pause

continuo_liam23.html=12
"...she sat down beside him,
the grass was so green,
the day was the fairest
that ever was seen"

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"Now as she went homeward, the words he had said"

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"And the tune that he sang her
still rang in her head"

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"It began with
my great grandfather's books."

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"Yes"

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"You mean the histories
of Ireland
on the table on the stage?"

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(pause)

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"And the tune that she sang him
still rang in his head"

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"As down the glen one Easter morn
To a city fair rode I"

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In April 1916, she told him,
her great grandfather
escaped from Dublin
with his Fenian brother
on a silent ship.

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"Yes, my great grandfather
was a Gaelic League scholar.
His brother was a Boston Fenian
who secretly ran arms
to the Volunteers."
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"And was not among
the over 3,000
Irish men and women
who were arrested
after the Easter Rising.
That is a story worth telling."

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"MacDonagh and MacBride
And Connolly and Pearse
Now and in time to be"

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"down through the valley so shady" 		theme_maire20.html=20
And with him to America,
her great grandfather
brought forty books.
A treasure of history,
music and poetry.
Forty books from the Gaelic Revival,
stowed in the crates
that had carried guns to Dublin.

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From peaceful hours
in the library of the Jesuit University
where he did his undergraduate studies,
he knew the books that she meant.

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"Oh, I know those books," he said,
and waited for her to continue.

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the dark green hills of early evening

continuo_liam28.html=8
"... where the lighter craft
of the olden time could easily glide in and out
with the full tide"

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and the countryside was unfenced

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...as if everything in her life
was linked to the moment

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"I grew up reading those books.
When I decided to write an Irish lay
I went home every weekend
and read them again."

theme_maire22.html=16
"One evening at dinner
I told my family
that I did not know how to begin.

And my father said,
'I am going to tell you a story
that has been a family secret
for 350 years.'"

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"I used to see in my sleep,
when I was a child,
a white female figure
across the river,
just below your father's house."

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"It stood upon a pillar,
or pedestal,
was naked
and to my eyes very beautiful,"
Powers had written to his cousin
about the genesis
of The Greek Slave.
"But the water was
between me and it,
too deep to ford."

continuo_maire32.html=16
The British slave ship The Goodfellow
docked first in Marblehead,
in Essex County, Massachusetts.
There had been 550 captive
Irish and Scottish young men and women
aboard the ship
when she sailed from Kinsale, Ireland.

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A waiter brought two glasses of beer
to the table where Máire Powers
and Liam O'Brien were sitting
at the Farmhouse Cafe
in New Hampshire.

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The beer was a barley and hops
Irish amber ale
that lay like honey in his glass.
He looked at the sun setting
in the hills in the distance
and then at the woman
who was sitting with him
in the Farmhouse Cafe.

continuo_liam32.html=16
In 1847, Hiram Powers crated
The Greek Slave in Florence
and sent her to America on The Hudson.
The Statue arrived
at the receiving agent
Goodhue and company
on the docks of New York
in August 1847.

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Winter evenings at home were the sound of the fiddle when her family played the old songs. Her mother's clear voice retelling legends.

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"It was known in my father's family,
handed down as secret knowledge
to the men in the family."

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She wondered if somewhere
in the genealogical chain
a man had told his wife,
in the quiet of their bed.

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"Your father knew?"

He asked the question slowly,
word by word,
as if she had not already
given him the answer.

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The Goodfellow arrived in January, 1654. Máire had walked beside the ocean in Marblehead in the Winter. Knew exactly the dark green color of the ocean and the sound of the waves on the icy shore. 		theme_maire26.html=24
"When my father
broke the silence in our family,
no one else knew.
No one knew
that the founder of our family
was stolen from Ireland
against his will.
No one knew.

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"At some point,
the knowledge of our heritage
was not usually passed on
to the next generation."

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""And the tune that she sang him still rang in his head"

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The name of the case made it clear that they were slaves:

"Law Case, Master Samuel Symonds against Irish slaves.William Downing and Philip Welch,Salem Quarterly Court, Salem, Massachusetts. June 25, 1661"

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"There were many times in America
when a heritage of slavery
would not be openly disclosed.
And there were many times in America
when Irish heritage
was not be disclosed."

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He was thinking of
the docks in Boston
when his family arrived
fleeing from the Great Famine
on a crowded ship.

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"with divers others were stollen in Ireland, some of ye English soldiers, in ye night out of theyr beds & brought to Mr Dills ship, where the boate lay ready to receaue them."

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Máire Powers
looked across the table
at Liam O'Brien,
as if he was a member of her family.

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"Do you think that Hiram Powers
was aware of his family's origins
when he sent the Greek Slave
to America?"

Word by word,
she asked the question slowly.

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psuse

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The Greek Slave arrived
on the docks of New York
in August 1847.
During the initial 447 days
it was on view
it was seen by more than 100,000 people.

continuo_maire38.html=16
& in the way as they went, some others they tooke with them against their Consents, & brought them aboard ye said ship, where there were divers others of their Country men, weeping and Crying, because they were stollen from theyr frends"

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The woods were dark.
On the distant hillsides,
the moon was visible.
"At the rising of the moon,
at the rising of the moon"

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The year that The Greek Slave arrived in New York was the year of the publication of the Narrative of William Wells Brown, a Fugitive Slave.

It was the two years after the publication of Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave.

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"The Goodfellow arrived in January, 1654, at Marblehead, Mass," Michael J. O'Brien wrote in his history of the Irish in New England, "where the master of the vessel disposed of part of his human cargo and then proceeded to Boston."

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In a New Hampshire pub
on a stormy night,
he heard the woman
sitting across the table
perform the story.
It was only a few weeks ago,
but it seemed as if
he had always known.
theme_liam32.html=8
And so had Hiram, he thought.
And so had Hiram Powers
always known.
It was not a scholar's answer.

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"I do not yet know," he replied."

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There were at least 80 slave narratives written by African Americans, he remembered. And we do not yet know them all.

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Together
Máire Powers and Liam O'Brien
looked at the menu.

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A waiter had arrived
and was standing in expectation
beside their table.

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To begin with,
they ordered
homemade bread and cheese.

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pause
continuo_maire41.html=16
In the distance, the sun was setting
on the dark green hills of early evening.
An Irish ballad was on her mind,
sung in the early evening
by the legendary Anthony O'Brien

continuo_maire42.html=16
"...and the people working in the fields
came down to the banks
of the Shannon
to hear his beautiful voice."

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pause

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The conversation turned
to family memories.
She listened while he told her
about his own family.
What was known
and what was not.

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At the hour when they were meeting
the woods were darkly beautiful.
He was thinking that
in times of peace, life went on
in 17th century Ireland.
Before, in between,
after the wars.
Then, it should be remembered
sometimes there was dancing
in the fields.

theme_liam36.html=16
"...she sat down beside him,
the grass was so green,
the day was the fairest
that ever was seen"

continuo_liam39.html=8
Neither of his grandparents
remembered which band was playing
or the name of the waltz
that they first danced to.

continuo_liam40.html=8
But they said over and over
(as if the memory was a song)
that the sound of the accordion
was the sound of the dance hall.
And there was nothing like
that music on that evening.

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"Down through the valley
so shady"

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replay?

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