Irish Gothic I
As promised last week, here's one of the many stories the Rainy Day team shared while shortening the roads of Spain earlier this month. The names of those involved have been altered to protect the living and the dead.
ONLY a small group of people knew who the father of the child was. And they weren't talking. The people of Banmore speculated that it might have been one of the labourers or a local farmer. Some malicious tongues even suggested it was her brother, but few believed that. No matter, the young Bridget Doyle gave birth to a baby boy, but because we're talking about the rural Ireland of some 60 years ago, when such an event was seen as a catastrophe, there was no question of her keeping the child, so it was given up at once for adoption. The holy trinity of Family, Church and State were all actively involved in the drama: from concealing the pregnancy to supervising the birth to disappearing the baby. The institutions played their parts seamlessly and then pulled a curtain of silence behind them once their tasks had been completed.
IF Bridget Doyle were alive in today's Ireland and in the same situation, she might decide to go to England terminate the pregnancy, or stay at home and keep the child and raise it as a single mother, or move in with the father and establish a family, or even get married. She would have options. But in the rural Ireland of six decades ago, different — iron — laws applied. A hegemonic Catholic Church, which saw sin in even the most timid displays of sexuality, dictated morality, and an agrarian middle class aided the Church in its control of society with a rigid code of conduct regarding land, the source of almost all wealth.
IF the child's father was a farm hand, marriage was out of the question. The Doyles owned 200 acres of the finest land in Tipperary and a union with a labourer would have meant an unacceptable decline in status. On the other hand, if the father was a farmer, the matter of a dowry would have to seen to, as a woman would not be taken into another farm without a sizeable capital transfer. With a brother and a sister at home, and each entitled to a share of the estate and their futures not yet settled, familial objections might have sunk any such deal. Of course, if the father was a married man, all such talk was pointless as Ireland was 50 years away from enacting divorce legislation and, anyway, a married man in Banmore would be committing social suicide by admitting to a child that was born out of wedlock.
