“Could I have your attention, ladies.” Tuesday April 18 1911. Campbell is the foreman.
Nan Rose, a child, is a doffer in the linen mill. With her sister and her mother they man their frames, change the bobbins and turn out linen to go around the world. She loves working with her friends and family, a family who share everything, who link arms on the way home and sing My Aunt Jane and the craic is great. So it’s a blow when Campbell spoke.
“If there was less chatter we’d get things done quicker round here and the new rule will make sure of that. As of tomorrow morning there will be no laughing, singing or talking during working hours. If I find anyone doing so I am instructed to fine them a farthing a time.”
Although they were little more than 12 years of age, for Nan Rose and her best friend Bridie this was so foreign to their natures that it sowed a seed to fight the unfair regime.
In her first book, Belfast Song, Mary Marken paints a vivid picture of family life in west Belfast in the early 1900s, a time of turmoil with the emergence of unions, women holding meetings at Custom House Square and working with trades union leader James Connolly to take forward their determination for better conditions and women’s suffrage. We experience the fight for Home Rule, the visit of Churchill, unrest in Dublin and Belfast between Catholic and Protestant and the shadow of a World War.
Looking Back
As I read I was reminded of Saidie Patterson. Born on the Shankill, she was a woman who also worked in the textile industry where children as young as eight started in the mills at six in the morning and after half a day were sent off to school, tired and dusty. Like Nan Rose Murphy, because of the treatment of the women workers she became deeply involved in trades unions and was famous as ‘the Irish Peacemaker’.
Nan Rose tells the story of poverty and fear, of a community under threat from so many sides; The Irish News brought them news from beyond before it was used to fill the holes in the window frames to keep out the drafts. Mass at Clonard offered a time of peace, and dancing was where the young ones met and matched.
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Mary tells me the book has been taking shape in her mind for years, through the memories of her great aunt Nan who was so instrumental in her growing up and whose spirit guided her through the story of the Murphy family.
“It was as if her voice was the narrator throughout the writing,” she says. The book is dedicated to her aunt who died in 1970 but spoke about her own youth, the hunger, the civil unrest, the Black and Tans and the closeness of friends and neighbours.
Mary knows the area well having been born in Campbells Row before it became Divis Flats. She attended St Dominic’s and then studied physics at Queen’s University. She worked in cross-community development and with youth groups in Belfast before moving to live in Sheffield where, since her retirement, she has worked as a part-time mentor and psychotherapist as well as graduating from Sheffield University with a certificate in creative writing.
The Irish News brought them news from beyond before it was used to fill the holes in the window frames to keep out the drafts. Mass at Clonard offered a time of peace, and dancing was where the young ones met and matched
Living In The Troubles
When she was 15 Mary moved to the main Falls Road to live with her great aunt and there experienced the height of The Troubles; throughout she organised play schools for children coming together from both sides of the divide.
All this was settling in her mind and a plot line began to form. It first came to light in a short story, Brothers in Arms, where Nan Rose and her Bridie were born. Bridie was full of craic. One night sitting by the fire she describes how an old woman, nearly 90 and not able to get out of her bed, had missed death by inches when a truck load of Black and Tans came clattering down the street firing all round them.
“Would you believe it? Seven bullets came in at the bottom of the woman’s bedroom window and passed over her as she lay in the bed. And as if that’s not enough of a miracle the bullets sprayed the wall in between the pictures of the Sacred Heart and the Blessed Virgin. Seven bullet holes and there wasn’t as much as a mark on either of them. Would you ever credit that?”
The story speeds along with letters between the two girls, Nan Rose in Belfast and Bridie from her position with a wealthy family in Sheffield. This is a history book as well as a story of human endurance, of heartbreak and humour.
