Last of the Donkey Pilgrims

The Donkey Proposal
 
CHAPTER ONE
 
 
The Irish Midlands
MARCH 1979
 
It was at Rattigan's Pub in Kilrooskey, County Roscommon, that I first proposed traveling the coast of Ireland with a donkey and cart. The elderly patrons, biting at pipes and smelling of turf smoke, rolled in amusement.
"Ye're thinking of walking an ass about Ireland?" jawed Hugh Mannion from a high stool. "I have two at home that won't cross Derrane Bog!"
"Arragh, Hughie, now, be fair to your man," chimed Willie Cassidy from behind a hand of playing cards. "There'd only be the one ass that could circle the Ring of Ireland, and that'd be Johnny Rabbitt's jackass who swallowed the umbrella!"
I soothed my throat with a generous swallow of the black native Guinness, and sought refuge by the potbellied stove, flashing back to my inaugural pint here when I was seventeen. That long-ago summer, my younger brother Dermot and I were unwillingly sworn into the Celtic race in a drunken stupor. Now, on this cold winter night in 1979, thirteen years later, nothing had changed in this illustrious parish pub but the Harp calendar.
My uncle Vincent, to whom I had sketchily mentioned my plans, had warned that my "donkey proposal" would be greeted with ridicule by these age-old pensioners, who gathered every Friday evening at Rattigan's. But who else knew more about a donkey's strengths and limitations than themselves?
I took another gulp of the milk-warm stout, thinking back on that wondrous incident days earlier. Pedaling home to my grandmother's on the Knockcroghery Road, I was knocked off my bike like Saul from his horse when I saw a farmer smoothly tipping his donkey and cart down the road. "That's it," I gasped at the vision. "That's how I'm going to travel the whole of Ireland."
Now, taking a deep breath and another fortifying sip, I mustered the courage to speak above their merriment.
"But say, for instance, I was truly willing to go through with it. Could a donkey, a good one, travel the coast of Ireland? I'd take it easy, eight to ten miles a day, and I'd give myself eight months to travel the eighteen hundred miles."
Rheumy eyes glinted and glanced. The Yank wasn't having them on: he was dead serious. The house went silent. Playing cards were flattened. Miserable March rattled outside the panes. Pints were called for and collected as the old gentry of the parish circled their stools to gather their wisdom.
"A jackass, cut-jack, or a mare?" asked Mickey Owens, still eyeing me with suspicion.
"Never a jack," voiced Jack Rattigan, lifting the cap off his brow. "A jack would be braying sonnets in June, bugling day and night in August, and downright altogether mad in the snows of December."
"A cut-jack, then?" suggested Joe Hickey.
"A cut-jack is neither useful nor ornamental," mused Jim Tiernan. "A cut-jack has no heart. Nipped. Dry as polished glass. 'tis a mare the Yank would need, young and well-handled."
"The very thing," agreed the tall and scholarly Headmaster D'Alton. "A young mare sound of wind and limb, and a fine temperament. You wouldn't want her kicking the stars from the sky."
"A good mouth and square feet," added Hugh Mannion, "free of spavins, curbs, and sidebones. And she'd need to be well-shod with pony shoes and frost nails to cover those miles."
I stood among these wizened fellows--my mother's former schoolmates--nodding my head in agreement, but not having a blooming idea what they were on about.
"A double fistful of oats every morning would do her kindly," continued Willie Cassidy. "But don't go giving her a bucket of water after a good feed, or she'll cripple up and die with the gripe."
"Search Roscommon and Westmeath for your mare," offered Paddy Tiernan, "and don't go to any knackers or horse jobbers. With your Yankee accent, they'd sell you a mule without a tooth in its head."
"Better still," added Dan Madden, "if you're sincere in setting out on this caper, go see the horseman, Jimmy McDermott, in Kilteevan. If there's ever a mare that can circle Ireland, Jimmy Mac would be the one to find her."
"And keep a safe distance from the Spanish jacks," jabbed a smart aleck from the corner, "or your mare will be carrying extra baggage on the road home!"
The donkey seminar ended abruptly as the playing cards, itching in the hands of Willie Cassidy, were reshuffled and dealt again: the quarter-final round of "25" for an Easter turkey was at stake. Jim Tiernan, however, joined me by the stove. My grandmother's neighbor in the village of Ballincurry, he told me how his donkey could travel twenty Irish miles--twenty-five English miles--a day on a pinch of oats.
"An ass would go forever if you gave her her time," said old Jim, rubbing a plug of tobacco in his hands. "Pity is, too many farmers hurried and abused them. The only worry I see in you traipsing the world with a mare is that she could easily become homesick and lose heart. And when a mare loses heart, nothing will set her going again."
"What makes a mare lose heart?" I asked the affable man.
"'Tis easy enough, I'm afraid," he continued, packing his yellowed briar pipe with his thumb. "Mare asses worked a hard long day in Roscommon. But whether they were off to market with a sow, to the creamery with a can or two, to the bog for a cartload of turf, or to the fields to draw in the hay, they always knew they'd be home by nightfall to be fed and watered. Your mare won't have that luxury, for she'll be traveling the roads day after day, over mountain and bog, and at night be tethered in a different field or placed in some stinking byre. Nor will she be able to make any sense of your wanderings.
"I suppose a jack would be right for your journey if they weren't so ornery," he went on, lighting his pipe. "A jack is a common rogue, a rambler, but a mare likes her home. I heard a story years back of how a County Longford man sold his mare heavy in foal to a County Fermanagh man. The deal was settled over a jar of stout and the mare was boxed and carted up through Longford, Leitrim, and beyond the border town of Enniskillen. Fifty miles, if not more. Well, wouldn't you know, three days later this same Longford farmer was walking his fields, only to spot the sold mare feeding her downy foal. The poor creature had made good her escape and traveled fifty miles in two days to give birth on the third. Now, doesn't that give you some idea of their homing instincts?"
Of course, not everyone at Rattigan's was as helpful as Jim Tiernan. There was a scrum of old wags who brayed and whinnied throughout the seminar, asking one another if both my oars were cleaving the sea and other opprobrious remarks better left forgotten. But, all in all, it had been a fine evening. My proposed journey, however whimsical, now seemed at least plausible.
I sat on a wooden bench by the doorway, finishing my drink and tucking my pants into my socks for the bike ride home, when Hugh Mannion addressed the happy crowd, saying I'd be nothing short of a folk hero if I managed to circle Ireland with a donkey and cart.
"He'd be much like those wise men," he exclaimed, raising his bottle of barley wine, "who climbed Faerymount one clear night in June, all in hopes of catching the rising moon in a burlap bag!"
Everyone had a good laugh at that one, and they were still rolling when I left Rattigan's and mounted my bicycle for home.
On my three-mile spin back to Uncle Vincent's, I became so elated by visions of these donkey travels that I hopped off my bike and shouted up into the star-frosted night. But it was too early to go celebrating just yet. I hadn't a donkey yet nor the knowledge of what to do with one once I had it. And there were those donkeymen at Rattigan's, willing to wager their weekly pension check against any one ass completing the Ring of Ireland.
If this was true, would I have to...