Life in rural Ireland in any townland in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century was far from easy. There were few opportunities for any kind of work outside farming. And few were the farmers who could remunerate anybody to help on the farm.
We are in danger of forgetting the struggle these people had to eke out a living from the reluctant soil, which only answered to the best weather conditions and even then, only too frequently in a poor fashion.
By painstakingly tracing the routine of the seasonal tasks like putting in the potatoes, saving the turf and hay, Patrick Mc Dermott gives us a memorable account of their lives in Blackmountain.
But, he does much more than that: he gives us the names of the last inhabitants of the whole area which was popularly known as Dubh; asks why rural Ireland should be left behind; considers the influence of the Catholic Church, the EU, the future of agriculture and a host of other topics.
Blackmountain is also, significantly, the ancestral townland and home of Seán Mac Diarmada, executed after the Easter Uprising in 1916, and the author discusses the often conflicted attitudes of the inhabitants to this great Irish patriot.
This book is a veritable mine of information for everybody, but especially for emigrants who may look back nostalgically on their early days in Blackmountain.