“Good fences make good neighbors,” wrote Robert Frost. What he didn’t say was that porous fences can lead to murder.
In Ireland, farmers’ land is not just a spread of acres of soil. Down to their sandy bases, farms are saturated with the sweat, blood and identity of the owners—and of their ancestors. Irish farms do not have names like “Lake View Farm,” “Debicot Park” or “Primrose Acres.” Instead they are known by the surnames of the families who have worked the soil for generations. There is a sense of community, of expectation, and of obligation among farmers that is unique. One farmer’s difficulty draws in the immediate assistance of neighbors.
Successful farmers are most likely born, reared and educated in a farming family. They may have university degrees, but it is the farming lore acquired every day of their formative years that underpins their success.
Inevitably, a farm has to be sold because the proprietary family dies out or there is no relative willing to inherit the task of working the land. When this happens, neighbors grieve for the family that has always been there. They also live in anxiety, hoping for neighborly qualities in the new owner. In our townland of Laragh in County Laois the last of the Palmer family sold their farm in 1947. Fourteen generations of Palmers had worked their land, and my father spoke admiringly of the generation he knew. “They were always respectful, always helpful,” he said. When he was dying thirty years later, Dad was still referring to that farm by the name he called it as a child: Palmers.
In 1948 the new owner, Mickey Cohan, moved into the Palmers’ farmstead. Everyone in the neighborhood knew who Cohan was, knew he had been a laborer who wandered from one job to another. They knew, too, that Mickey’s sudden purchasing power had come, by default, from the will of a childless Canadian relative, Arty Bannon. Big money, it was said. Very big money, it was said. Many millions, it was said.
When Mickey moved into Laragh it quickly become evident that he was grossly ignorant about the virtue of neighborliness in farming country. That first spring, when he took to his fields with his new tractor and his new plow, Cohan turned over many acres in preparation for cereal seeding. Hugging the hedge in one of his fields was an ancient right-of-way giving Jimmy Connor access to one of his fourteen acres. Cohan intruded on this track with his plow and narrowed it by two feet. Sixty-five-year-old Jimmy, a dirt-poor bachelor, got down on his knees and replaced the sods Cohan had incorporated into his field.
“That’s my right of way, Mister Cohan!” Jimmy yelled. It was my grandfather’s right of way, too. You can’t steal it.”
“It’s wide enough for your uses,” Cohan threw back at him.
“Don’t touch it again!” Jimmy shouted.
“I’ll plough the whole thing up if I like and you can find a new way into your little field.” Then Cohan did exactly as he had threatened, and Jimmy with his hands on the front of the tractor pushed helplessly against the advancing machine.
“May God take your children before he takes you, you scut,” the defeated Jimmy shouted.
When the Laragh farmers petitioned the County Council to take over maintenance of their perennially potholed lane, my father was chosen as their representative. The council agreed to pave the lane, but the users themselves would have to bear twenty percent of the cost. All the neighbors agreed to their pro rata assessment. But when Dad approached Mickey Cohan for his contribution, Cohan took a wad of bank notes out of his pocket, waved it in Dad’s face and said, “It’s not that I don’t have the money. All I need to is a track for my tractor, not a fancy road. And as well as that, someday soon I’ll get rid of all you little muckers and hang a gate at the top of Laragh Lane. Then none of you will have to worry about potholes.”
Thirteen young heifers belonging to Billy Burke were grazing in a field abutting some of Cohan’s acreage, where a young unlicensed bull grazed. Since a bull can detect the estrus condition of a female from a mile distant, the signals given off by a nearby female sent a spate of lust into Cohan’s bull. Blinded by the imperatives of his maleness he burst his way through the fields’ fence. When Billy Burke saw the bull in flegrante delicto, he rounded it up, put it in a shed and sent one of his children to Cohan with a note: “One of your bulls is locked up here. Bring the vet to castrate him. Billy Burke
Cohan arrived with his tractor and trailer. “I’m here for me bull,” he announced.
“You mean you’re here for your bullock,” Billy said.
“Your child said it’s a bull.”
“It may be a bull right now,” Billy said, “but when it leaves my shed it will be a bullock. I told you to bring the vet.”
“The bull doesn’t need a vet.”
“He doesn’t need his balls either. You’re not getting him back till the vet castrates him. That way he won’t bull any of more of my heifers.”
Cohen went to his tractor. He shouted back to Billy, “When I hang a gate across Laragh Lane, the first thing I’ll do is bulldoze your house and all your sheds. Bloody mucker!”
Eventually, Cohan returned with the vet, who demanded payment before operating. The wad of bank notes was produced and splayed like a deck of cards. While the vet reduced the bull to neutrality, Mickey Cohan and Billy Burke stood at the shed door slinging angry words at each other.
“I hope he bulled all your fecken heifers!” Cohan growled.
“Those heifers are too small to be bulled, which any fecken eegit of a farmer should know. If any of them’s in calf, I’ll sue you for damages.”
“Sue me arse! I could buy you out in a second, you mucker!”
“Here’s one from a mucker,” Billy said, and he doubled up Cohan with a punch to the gut.
When Cohan caught his breath and stood up straight he threatened Billy with arrest for assault. “And you, Mister Vet, is my witness!” he shouted.
“I’m fondling a scrotum in here,” the vet said, “and I don’t have eyes in the back of my head. And, if you please, Mister Cohan, my name is not Vet.”
As Cohan loaded his emasculated animal into his trailer, Billy threw the two testicles after him. One landed at Cohan’s feet and one hit him in the back. “Don’t forget your balls, Mister Cohan,” Sammy shouted. “They make great soup.”
At one point Mickey Cohan introduced a small flock of sheep into his land. Sheep husbandry needs sheep fencing, which Cohan did not install. And so his sheep wandered into neighbors’ farms; they wandered onto Laragh Lane; they were driven into the town by irate neighbors; they were impounded by the Garda. Cohan’s wad of money bailed them out. Whenever a sheep died on his land, the smell of rotting meat permeated the townland until scavenging birds and animals reduced it to wool and bones.
With the assistance of trichinosis, Mickey Cohan died when he was fifty-four. For a few brief moments the local farming community sighed that the Cohan era was at an end. But they quickly discovered that Mickey’s oldest son, Ben, who inherited the farm, was made in the in the image and likeness of his father.
Within a week of Mickey’s funeral a young farmer, Sonny Lawlor, confronted Ben who contemptuously dismissed the accusation that his wandering animals had broken into Lawlor’s field and damaged his young sugar beet crop.
“Serves you right for being such an eegit for sowing sugar beet,” Ben replied.
“It’ll serve you right when someone gives you a good clattering.”
“And who’s man enough to do that, Mister Mucker?” Ben said, and he stepped in front of Sonny.
Sonny pushed Ben away. Ben stumbled backward and fell, his head landing on a loaf-sized whitewashed stone used to keep the farmyard gate open. An ambulance transported the unconscious Ben to Tullamore Hospital, where he died several days later.
At the conclusion of Sonny Lawlor’s trial for manslaughter the judge said, “Mister Cohan was instrumental in bringing about his own death. In effect, he was acting as an invader of his neighbor’s land by way of his animals. Mister Lawlor had the right to protect his farm and his livelihood from an egregious aggressor.”
After the violent death of Ben, the Cohan family sold their land. Between them, three families whose farms abutted Cohan’s bought the acreage. The Cohan house was bulldozed.
Tom Phelan is the author most recently of the memoir “We Were Rich and We Didn’t Know It.” For more details about that and his novels, go to tomphelan.net.
