Tinteán

by Eda Hamilton

Once Upon a Time In Edenderry

This morning while walking in Brown Hill Creek Park in Adelaide, I found a pair of handknitted patterned gloves hanging from a bush. I felt a shock run right through my body as I was transported back to my childhood in Edenderry.

I see my mother sitting by the fire, youngest children in bed, evening meal finished, grabbing whatever little time she could to work on a pair of gloves she was knitting.

She used a set of the thinnest steel knitting needles, size 13, that were so sharp they could pierce your fingertips and often did. The stitches were minute, the pattern, navy and white, based on the willow pattern.

I watched her through the process as her fingers moved so fast as to blur. Constantly she consulted the intricate pattern from a book by her side. I watched in fascination as one glove and then another took shape. Excitement grew as she neared the end point. I was allowed to stay up later as the finishing line neared. She stitched the necessary seams and there they were! She was so proud of them and felt that the evenings spent in their creation were worth it. She folded them neatly on top of each other and put them on the sideboard. They were beautiful.

‘I will wear them to Mass on Sunday.’ she said.

The day after they were finished a gypsy called. It must have been in the afternoon because we were home from school. We children were wary of gypsies who camped for a time in one town after another and could reign curses on your head if any of the rules were broken. They must never be refused entry to your house. They needed to be treated with respect, given something to eat and drink, and never under any circumstances be given money.

My mother called on me to help her make tea and cut bread and jam for our visitor, and then she sent me outside to keep my siblings in order. I could see the front door, and eventually the gypsy left. My mother’s smile faded after the woman was out of sight, and she looked ready to cry. My heart nearly stopped with fear because I thought the gypsy had cursed her before she left, and I had heard so many stories of the terrible things that happened to people if they were cursed by gypsies.

I ran to my mother and followed her inside the house.

‘What did she say!’ I almost shouted, afraid of the answer.

‘She told me my next baby would be a boy.’

‘What else, what else? Did she put a curse on you?’

‘Ah no. She just asked for my gloves.’

The following week the gypsy camp moved out of town, and my mother was taking my little sister for a walk through the back roads when she found one of her gloves hanging from a bush and the second one on the ground. They had been rained on, and all the colours had run together.

Eda Hamilton is a regular contributor to Tinteán. She is a retired teacher living in Adelaide, South Australia and has written many memoirs about her childhood in Edenderry, County Offaly.