For A Family Saga

                   They were happy then

                    his children brought friends

                    home     Mr. Mather would get out a fiddle

                    they’d roll back the carpet and dance

                     kindly but strict

                     great grandfather Mather

                     managed the rolling stock

                     at night in the yards

                     in his spare time    

                     Mather made violins

                     made music for his family

                     most able bodied men were then in France

                                   except Brugner with TB

                      Brugner born but a score and seven

                      years before young death

                      had hung his work in an art academy

                      and was much missed after…

                      Peggy and Jack     he had them sit for him

                      Rebecca and Lizzie     he painted their portraits

                      covering his canvases with varnish

                      in the manner of the masters

                      Lizzie told fortunes read palms

                      read King George’s hand

                      my grandmother helped her

                      their profits high in the hundreds

                      & Brugner dying at twenty seven

                      had painted fine things

                      portraits     landscapes     Tyne river scenes

                      nothing uglier than a storm cloud

                      Of the sisters Lizzie was most fond

                      but Rebecca lived longest     outlived all of them

                      Donnelly married her

                      of Donnelly little is known

                      emigrant Black Irish

                      came back for the fighting

                      he had a wife in Canada

                      unknown to all

                      my mother brought up by a "widow"

                      because Rebecca married a bigamist

                      but her child never knew

                      lived thinking Donnelly was killed in the First War.

                      kindly but strict

                      great grandfather Mather

                      killed by a train

                      one night in the yards

                      the night Donnelly was confronted
                      that same night

                      Mather’s distress left him heedless of danger

                      worried about his pregnant daughter

                      he walked into a moving train

                      of those violins that Mather had made

                      none were retained

                      for selling off his father’s fiddles

                      brother Jack was blamed

                      when grandmother lived with us

                      there were two large oil paintings in her room

                      Peggy and Jack

                      & two landscapes in water colors

                      there was also a small oil

                      of a Tyne river scene

                      later lent to a friend for safekeeping

                      destroyed by an IRA bomb.

                      © Dick Russell, 2013