Living in the Past: A Northern Irish Memoir by Arthur Magennis Page B

one point, ran along the Coalisland road, and between the canal and the road, flax holes had been opened and were all ready full of water from the canal. The flax holes were about eight or nine feet wide and about thirty feet long – I’m guessing now. The flax sheaves were put on their ends, bottom end up, and packed in rows tight against each other. The sods would be cut from the surrounding area and placed on the flax to push them down and keep them there. Now, one could walk over them, if necessary.
    While the flax was retting – that was the name given to it – the smell of stagnant water would begin to permeate the countryside, but that was only a foretaste of what was to come. When it was thoroughly retted, which was when the outside layer of the stalk fell away from the centre (the linen fibre), a brave man was needed to continue the process. The sods were removed and replaced on the land and the brave man appeared with nothing on but an old pair of trousers and shoes. He had to get in there up to the waist in the stagnant pool and lift the sheaves out to be stacked and dried and taken to the scutching mill to be scutched: separating the fibre from the rest.
    Coalisland had its own linen mills and that is where it eventually ended. Afterwards the owner would wait for his cheque to arrive depending on the yield.
    Incidentally, the country would be stinking during this time, but we got used to it. The smell always reminds me of when I learned to swim or, rather, when I got my feet up off the bottom. There was a little river called the Tarn which ran parallel to the canal down to the Blackwater river. We who lived down in Derrytresk, that is young chaps, would go to bathe in the Tarn at a place called Proghy. It was only waist deep and the Tarn was fast flowing and always clean. Every Sunday I tried to swim but I could only ever get one foot off the bottom. I think I had a fear of drowning.
    One Sunday I came home and decided I would go the next day by myself and sort out this problem. It had been raining all night but I went anyway and when I got to the Tarn I couldn’t believe my eyes as it had overflowed its banks and was careering along like a mill stream. Worse than that, it had washed all the stagnant water out of the Coalisland flax holes and the water smelled very badly but I wasn’t deterred. I stripped off, went in and found the water was up to my neck and lifting me off my feet. I turned and went with the flow doing swimming actions and there I was swimming away in what I imagined to be the correct way, at break-neck speed with feet thrashing. After that, I could float and do a very poor breast stroke, but I never became a ‘swimmer’. It took me a long time to get rid of the stinking smell, as it clung for weeks and I got a lot of funny looks for a while.

Chapter Nine
    W hen I was thirteen I went to the Academy in Dungannon, a Catholic secondary school where an entrance exam was required in order to get a scholarship for two years. I don’t believe anyone did not get a scholarship; it was quite simple.
    It was seven miles from where I lived so, naturally, I travelled by bicycle and usually got home about four in the afternoon. There were about half a dozen of us who travelled home together and usually we would be larking about racing each other, so I didn’t look around much at the countryside. Then one day I caught the glimpse of a dog’s tail in the distance across a flat piece of grazing land. It was a few hundred yards away, hidden by rushes but it looked exactly like my dog Nora’s tail. When I got home she was at the door wagging her tail and I thought I was mistaken.
    When I saw it again in the distance a few weeks later I was intrigued. It was always about the same spot, about three or four miles from our house. When I mentioned it to my mother she said that Nora would be lying asleep in the kitchen and she would suddenly jump up and take off at the same time every day. She said she