The Scattering begins in the warm and pleasant days before five years of famine.  An “almost” 16-year-old Mary along with her ever present 5-year-old sister Maggie, always in tow with a firm grip of Mary’s skirt, have been setting the stage for romance with Michael, who initially sees her as a child, as he is several years her senior.

The ancient Celtic festivals of Samhain, Bealtaine, Lughnasa, and Imbolc were all well attended. The commons were the focus of contests, from hurling to horses.  The boreens were filled with the fruits of their labors, from butter and turf locally, to laver and kelp (edible seaweed) from the coast.

Five years of famine and an entire people subjugated by a foreign empire turns the story into one of horrors and hauntings as hunger fuels the desire to do whatever it takes to stay alive.  And when the Landlord decides to march Mary and 500 other tenants across the countryside and deposit them in the hold of a typhus filled ship heading to Canada. Michael tells Mary it is a good thing she is leaving. “You will be safer in America, there are just too many ways to die here.”

 Searching for word of the voyage for months, The Freeman’s Journal, a Dublin paper, would eventually report that the Virginius went down “almost in sight of land” and all aboard were lost.  

Michael lost his father to the famine, his brother to Australia and now Mary is gone. The locals rise to murder the landlord, a retired Major in her Majesty’s army.  

Retribution is horrific and relentless.