Remembering Ireland's forgotten farming women

Sure, they may have been married to a farmer, but chances are they held the whole farm together at some stage or another. For many in modern Ireland, those farming roots may be several generations past, but if given a chance to dig a little deeper, you will find it.

There are acres on my mother’s side – Collinses, Connollys, Murrays, Luceys, to name a few. There are fewer on my father’s side, though I have traced the Mahoneys (back then, we had no 'O') back to Knockavilla, Cork, in pre-Famine times and the Verlings and Dinans to Queenstown, also in pre-Famine times.

But this piece is inspired in particular by my great-grandmother Ellen Connolly Collins from Drinagh in West Cork and her story, which I am proud to share.

These are names somewhat distant to me, because while her daughter Kathleen, my grandmother, was from Dunmanway, the family had lost the farm at that stage and moved away from the land.

Ellen, or “Granny Coll” to my mother, herself a mum of six, had long since passed away before my parents married, though I've grown up hearing my mother remember her as tall, elegant, quiet, and "a very hard worker."

What stands out for me, is that she basically ran the farm after her husband Jeremiah became too ill. 

The land is still there, and there is a substantial family plot in a nearby graveyard. Although the only photos I have of her are from her later years, she is indeed tall and slender. 

My mother tells a story that Ellen, then pregnant, once had to pull a bullock out of a ditch - and if there isn’t a better metaphor for how every woman in this country has had to drag a male out of doing something stupid, I don’t know what is.

Now, this was 1920s and 1930s Ireland — very different times. And sadly, she miscarried as a result.

But despite its tragic ending, the story tells me a great deal about her as a woman: One, she was a badass. And two, when a task needed doing, she did it because doing nothing was not an option.

But how many other women on Irish farms have lost children in a similar way, unremembered by the passing of time? And how many suffered injuries or other issues because of their farm work, yet were still euphemised by history as a 'farmer’s wife', aunt, or daughter, rather than remembered for their own role in running the farm?

The third thing the bullock story tells me is that the world was not fair. And as a nation we have a legacy of not being fair to women (putting it mildly). 

My wife’s ancestry tells a similar tale.

Her grand-aunt, Phyllis Reaney, in the early 1960s, was pregnant. She gave birth to one child in the usual way, only to… immediately go out and work on the farm and cook the dinner for her husband and the labourers... Only to go into labour a second time. Baby two having arrived successfully, she carried on cooking dinner and working in the farmyard. It was just was expected of farming women.

My wife’s grandmother, meanwhile, having given birth to a son, could not attend the christening because she hadn’t been “churched”. And if that wasn't enough to rub salt in her wounds, despite being unwell after the birth, she had to bake a sizeable cake and a full dinner for the returning christening party.

How we ever thought this sort of thing was acceptable is beyond me, yet rural Ireland's old stone byres are haunted by the memories of such stories.

So, men of Ireland, I challenge you to do one small thing to make sure the farm women of your ancestry are properly celebrated. What you do is up to you - it could be tracing them in the records, maybe even finding a story about them from your parents or grandparents. Perhaps you could write about them, tweet about them, put pictures of them on Instagram or Facebook.

But most of all, be proud of them, for you’d be nothing without them.

• David O’Mahony is Irish Examiner assistant editor and a historian.