Donkeys

Donkeys, represented in John McGahern’s memoir chiefly by a jennet, are not incidental farm scenery: they provide transport and labor through changing stages of family life. The jennet draws manure and turf, carries a cart on errands, and becomes one of the animals taken to Cootehall. Its strength is useful but not unlimited. Its pace, need for rest, and danger of injury set the terms of the work, while working beside it gives John practical tasks and, at times, a welcome solitude.

Farm Work and Everyday Transport

At Aughawillan, the jennet was part of the ordinary movement of goods between house, land, and town. On some Saturdays, when something heavy or cumbersome had to be collected, John drove the jennet and cart into town. His mother would have liked to accompany him, but as a teacher she could not be seen riding on the cart. Instead she took the train; they met at Maggie’s, spent the day shopping and meeting teachers who came to see her, and John left early. Sometimes he galloped the jennet to get home before the train. The cart made the outing possible, but its use also shaped how mother and son could travel together in public.

The animal’s labor was woven into seasonal work as well as errands. During spring ploughing, John and his father used the jennet to draw manure: first to the small vegetable garden across the road, then to the potato field, where the manure was spread over the ploughed ridges. John hurried from school to join his father. He dropped seed-potato pieces into holes cut in the ridges with a sciveen his father had made from a straight sally branch. The jennet was part of this coordinated work, alongside the cart, tools, and the family’s labor; the account records the practical sequence rather than separating farm life into human activity and animal background.

The Move to Cootehall

The jennet’s role changed when the family’s animals were brought to Cootehall. After a summer on the hill, where it had done no work and grown sleek on grass, the jennet squealed at the sight of John and galloped away. It eluded the searchers several times before they cornered and caught it. They harnessed it to the cart, with a bullock walking ahead, and set out toward town. Uncle Pat followed in his car until they turned for the town, then left them. At the railway gates he met them again; the animals were taken to the waste ground behind Maggie’s sheds and garden, watered and fed, and left there overnight.

The next morning they started before the shops opened. Uncle Pat accompanied them through town and said goodbye after they passed the convent. Cootehall was eighteen miles away, and Keshcarrigan lay roughly halfway along the route. John had to cycle ahead at first to guide the bullock through crossroads and turns while the jennet jogged behind at its own slow pace. As the bullock began to flag, John put his bicycle on the cart and took the reins. They reached Fenagh in a little over an hour, but the next six miles to Keshcarrigan took several hours as their progress slowed. There the jennet was unharnessed, watered, and left to recover in the barrack garden; John was given a substantial meal in the barracks. The journey makes the animal’s pace a material condition of travel: the distance could be covered, but not on a schedule detached from the animals’ effort and need for rest.

Turf, Risk, and Solitude

In the summer at the barracks, John and the jennet drew all the turf from the bank. The most difficult part was hauling it across the drains to the road. The gaps were bridged with sally branches and sods of heather, which softened in rain, and only small loads could be carried across them. When a wheel sank, the jennet went down with it. John had to unharness the animal and get it out of the cart; his greatest fear was that it would break a leg and be lost. He could not drag the empty cart clear alone, so he had to unload it and summon help. Men working their own banks would come to pull the cart free and mend the crossing, warning him not to stand on its lower side in case it overturned in a deep rut. Once back on the road, the crates could be filled to the top.

John did not mind the work. Its repetition numbed thought, and being occupied with the jennet and the load generally helped keep him in his father’s good graces. The short avenue to the barracks offered a recurring contrast: as John came in with turf, he often saw his sisters working in the garden under their father’s watchful eye and knew that his own task gave him the better arrangement. The donkey’s value here is concrete rather than symbolic alone. Its hauling makes the work possible, but the difficult ground exposes how readily that usefulness could be lost through an injury or a failed crossing.

Narrative Significance

Across the episodes, the jennet connects distinct settings and kinds of labor: carrying cumbersome goods into town, drawing manure for crops, making the long journey to Cootehall, and hauling turf over treacherous drains. Its repeated appearance gives the memoir a practical measure of distance and effort. Journeys unfold at the animal’s pace; farm work depends on its pulling power; and a moment of mechanical failure in the rut becomes a danger to both animal and cart.

The memoir also shows that working with the jennet could afford John a form of separation from domestic scrutiny without removing him from family obligations. He remains responsible for guiding, harnessing, freeing, and caring for it, yet the labor can leave him alone and quiet his thoughts. In this way, the donkey is neither merely a tool nor a sentimental emblem: it is a vulnerable working presence whose body and movement affect what the family can do, where it can go, and how John experiences the work of growing up.