by Susan Mangan
Crows hover over a straw-yellow cornfield in November: the sleek blackness of their coats stark against the dead paleness of the ground and the sharp blue of the late autumn sky. The farmer is nowhere in sight.
Tarpaulin covered hay bales sit like lonely sentries in the empty field. Even if you can’t feel the temperature from the climate-controlled car, you can tell the month by the color of the sky and the shifting of the distant clouds. A white farmhouse rests upon a small rise on an otherwise flat Midwestern plain. Smoke curls out of a red brick chimney warming the chill of the season.
Seemingly overnight, the golden leaves of October are stripped of their finery by a brisk Northern wind. In their stead, bare branches reach phantom-like into the slate blue November sky. I have always enjoyed this month: a prelude to the barrenness of winter. In November, squirrels dig for nuts and blackbirds peck the last kernels of dried Indian corn. We, in turn, find comfort in our threadbare Aran sweaters and a warm fire blazing in the hearth. Creature comforts, like a steaming bowl of soup and mug of hot tea, provide us with a familiar sense of home.
When I was a young girl, my parents had a stone fireplace built into the den of our Chicago bungalow. I loved helping my father crumple balls of discarded newspaper and watching him lay the foundation of the fire with crisp blonde kindling and fragrant logs. Admittedly, I was always a bit frightened when he first set flame to the folded torch of newspaper. For this reason, it was always my father’s job, not my mother’s, to start the fires in the fireplace when the last of the dried-out amber leaves of autumn flew across the chilly November skies.
When my husband and I first started our family and were searching for a larger home, we had two requirements: a room large enough to hold our grand piano and a wood-burning fireplace. There is nothing quite like the crackle of flame to log and the woodsy smell of a warm fire. On Sunday evenings, we enjoy family dinners and fragrant fires. The children roast marshmallows for s’mores over the flames. We play games and read books in front of the hearth. Even the flat screen television perched above the mantle takes on a homey air when flanked by a pumpkin or rustic lantern.
Somehow the old has become new again. High technology is paired with primitive art and shabby chic design. In an attempt to retain the integrity of the earth, home decorators are searching out discarded old materials: church pews, pine timbers, broken tiles. The result is a comforting sense of home and style.
Many a new path is paved with mismatched flagstone. Fire pits built of stone provide a welcoming circle in which to share a joke or warming libation while heating up your toes. In the custom of bonfires and campfires, we attempt to bring our frenzied world to a halt and enjoy the most basic of all nature’s gifts, fire.
Traditionally in the Irish cottage, the hearth was the center of the home. Bread was set to bake in an iron three-legged cauldron, and a three-legged stool sat by the base of the hearth. Entertainment began when the day’s work was done and firelight shone on fiddlers and storytellers.
In some ways, the old traditions are still found in the Ireland of today. The time our family journeyed to Ireland for Christmas, a kind relative had the foresight to stoke a welcoming fire in the hearth of our Uncle’s holiday home. The refrigerator was filled with fresh milk, Irish butter, and coarse-cut marmalade. A loaf of freshly baked brown bread was set out to cool on the counter, and the press was stocked with new boxes of Lyon’s tea. Dark though the afternoon was, the cottage was alight with a feeling of home.
Though we revel in the romanticized Quiet Man version of Irish country life, there are dark periods in Irish history when famine, political unrest, and economic woes both threatened and caused the death of already meager familial comforts. Artist Padraig McCaul illuminates the hardship of the Irish people in a series of paintings entitled Sentinels.
This past spring when my son and I traveled to Dublin, we sat enjoying lunch in an Italian restaurant near Trinity College. As my son devoured his plate of profiteroles, I watched the decidedly urban view outside the café window. Chic shoppers and bohemian college students hurried past my vantage point. When the view cleared, I saw a most welcome sight, an image of Keem Beach in Achill Island. The image was not a mirage in the middle of an urban oasis, but one of McCaul’s hauntingly beautiful paintings in his Sentinels series.
I questioned my son, “Do you recognize that painting in the gallery across the street?” “Sure, it’s Keem,” he replied. Unaffected, he went back to his chocolate cream, while I hurried to pay the bill. I had to see more of this artist and his captivating works.
McCaul’s paintings are modern and stark.
The images are not romantic portrayals of shepherds and rolling hills. These landscapes recall the imposing beauty of County Mayo and other coastal regions on Ireland’s Western shore, the changeability of the weather, her daring cliffs, the brilliant colors of her fields, and the steadfast quality of the houses. Though unpopulated with people, McCaul’s renderings underscore the sad times when sons had to leave heir mothers, and girls were sent into service to help provide for large families. The homes were left empty, standing as sentinels to a lost time of family comfort.
While many of the paintings exude a heartbreaking sense of loneliness, others radiate a sense of humility as powerful shadows creep across the mountains at twilight and dawn continues to rise over the western sea. All of the paintings speak of the perseverance of the Irish people: their strength of character and their ability to find hope in the simple beauty of the sun shining over a distant hill that one day will light the way back home for their sons and daughters.
The paintings are not unlike the farmhouse with the absent farmer. Evidence of the farmer’s labor exists in the leveled fields that lie in wait for spring tilling; evidence of the farmer’s harvest shines in the light illuminating wood-paned windows; evidence of the farmer’s simple notion of comfort escapes through the smoke softly curling out of his red brick chimney, welcoming his family home.
Susan holds a Master’s degree in English Literature from John Carroll University and a Master’s degree in Education from Baldwin-Wallace College. She may be contacted at
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