With the Irish 04

by Paul Gipe

The following is a report to friends from a lecture tour to Ireland, to Carrick-on-Shannon to be specific.

Weather like yesterday. Beautiful sunny morning which we expect will be followed by a blustery, cold, rainy afternoon. That's what it was like yesterday when Michael came by in the afternoon to pick us up for our mine tour: pouring rain.

Nothing like a construction site on an old mine after a week of heavy rain. Muddy sums it up. But there was a crew putting up the frame of their 2 million euro visitor centre, a hoped-for tourist draw to the depressed area around Arigna.

In a nearby construction trailer Peter, our guide, fitted us out with hard hats (you should have seen Nancy, a real fashion plate), and our battery-powered lights--miners' lamps, real ones. Peter was in a blue jumpsuit and wore it well, like he'd spent a lot of time in it. He had.

Sometimes we just have to pinch ourselves at our good fortune. Peter started mining coal at 11 when his father died. His story sounds like something out of the early 20th century in Pennyslvania, or southern Indiana: child labor in the mines. He needed a job to support his mother, and Michael's dad gave him one.

Peter looked surprisingly healthy after 38 years stooped over in "slopes" no taller than 4 ft in most places. Men in the village, he says, sometimes would walk to the pub stooped over with their hands clasped behind their backs, not realizing they were out of the mine. When miners congregated they often went down on their haunches because that's way they ate their lunch and conversed in the mine.

This mine was an experiment that failed, an attempt to mine a coal vein more easily mechanized than those of Arigna's other mines. But the coal wasn't as clean, too much shale Peter says, and it was quickly abandoned.

The most conveniently located and with the most stable roof rock the old workings made an ideal location for a mine tour. Of course they had to blast out a much bigger tunnel, install steel I-beams, and new wooden timbers or "props" to keep the tunnel from caving in on a group of tourists. "Insurance required it," says Peter. Yet it's still a wet hole in the ground and even though the expanded opening is only a year old there's an exotic white fungus engulfing the mine timbers, and water dripping from the roof, rust red slime growing from water high in iron and tannins that worked its way into the slope from the bog on top of the mountain.

And the coal seam, at most only a foot and a half thick. All that work, all those men, all those years, and that's all they they would take out. They even had to put a portion of the "gob" or waste rock back in place to minimize the subsidence. The earth above would begin crusing the timbers within months after the miners moved on.

Michael is right. The mine is a good example of what lengths we will go for energy, even today. They left a portion of the mine at the height the miners would work so you can get a sense what it was like and envision how men would spend a major portion of their lives in places like this to win a lump of black rock.

Peter was a fireman, miners' lingo for foreman. Peter was responsible for "firing" the explosives in the mine and thus origin of the term. He spoke with one hell of an accent and when he'd use specialized mining terms Nancy and I would just nod our heads and smile. Sometimes I'd stop him and ask him to explain and even then I'd get only part of it.

After thanking Peter profusely we left to take a walk on the "Miners Way". It was a brief--very brief--walk near still more "workings" of the Layden family's mines. Pouring rain, windy (of course), and where water wasn't running down the track it was pooled in shallow puddles. Waist-high rushes on the boggy soils either side of the track, a few sheep warm in their wool coats eking out an existence from the patches of grass growing through the spoil piles. Dark gray clouds overhead. Utter desolation. After less than 100 meters Michael turns around and says, "a miserable day for a walk." We couldn't have agreed more and we all turned tail and headed for the car. Surprising how much better you feel when the wind is at your back and the rain is no longer spitting in your face--almost tolerable.

We all agreed that if we had been walking for a half hour and the rain had come upon us we would have made do quite fine thank you as ramblers do in this part of the world. You're warm from the exertion. You're accustomed to the cold. You have no choice. And there's a pot of hot tea waiting at the end of the day.

We opted for the hot tea and headed for the Layden house-Arigna post office cum general store and onetime mine offices. As we got out of the car I could see the steam plume from the briqueting works across the valley shooting high into the gray sky.

Michael showed us into the living room where his mother was sitting close to the briquet fire. He then went back to set up the tea cart (yes, they really do use them) and get the water going. We had bought a tea bread at the crafts fair and after passing around slices for the four of us we sat down to tea.

Warm conversation by a warm fire with a warm family. Again our conversation was wide-ranging, touching Irish history, our Civil War, Irish politics, and more. Michael's mother kept offering Nancy more biscuits and tea. When Michael's sister Sheila came in from the Arigna office upstairs, the two of them gently teased their mother and had us all laughing. "They're just terrible aren't they?" their mother would said with a smile.

As the fire began to die down, the cold crept closer and closer. I stood up to keep my blood moving. Then Nancy stood up. Finally as the cold was upon us we all decided to head into Carrick for dinner where the banter continued--with a few necessary digressions for windmill talk. Sheila manages the Irish Wind Energy Association. She, Michael, and I share many of the same views about the business of wind energy. So we had to swap a few war stories.

While browsing in town, Nancy came across a just-published book by a local author, a Leyden, on Arigna. The author's father worked in the mines and the Layden family (the "a" makes a big difference) figures prominently in the opening pages of the book. It was quite a find by Nancy and we're anxious to read more.

Off to the briqueting works today.

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