Still excavating remains from the journal. 500+ pages - remember what you paid...
Twas 1844 and I was a simple Irishman with children taught the landowner's language at the "hedge school", so-named because education was forbidden and they had to hie thee to the hedges. I learned some too, and with my youngest Bridget’s help, with whose help I do write this now. My wife Bridget has been gone most of a decade, lost giving birth to the one who took her name.
I was born two miles from the Irish Sea, where oft I would go to catch perch and clams. We’d smoke aged seawood in leeward winds and run-sail in our grand papa's crude dingys. I’d stare at the agate sea until my mind was blank and the waves became as music. We would go to Mass at the church built in stones ten centuries old and dream of the Hill of Tara and hero Patrick’s burning the Druid altars. Sometimes the Sheridan girl would come with us, named like every other Eirean girl for the Blessed Mother. So fair she was that the Blessed Mother herself might be jealous, such be the beauty of this blackhaired Iberian.
In the daily toil we found the work man was meant to do – we free’d our mind from mental hardships and strife by dint of sheer effort. Work all day with your body and your mind is oddly satisfied, like a child’s by a mother’s lullaby.
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