Jimmy Kerr is a writer/performer. His internationally produced play Ardnaglass on the Air was staged at the Lyric, Belfast in 2017 and had a subsequent regional tour. He has performed, produced work in the Origins 1st-Irish festival in NY on four separate occasions, and is the recipient of the Origin Award for Special Achievement. During his time in Edinburgh, Kerr collaborated with the Edinburgh International Science festival on their touring show Day or Night. Giant Productions the Glasgow based, children’s arts development organization commissioned Kerr on three separate occasions to write and perform work for their productions. More recently he was shortlisted for the Abbey Works 2019, and long listed for Papatango 2020. His first work of fiction was recently published in the 2022 winter edition of the international literary journal, Trasna. Jimmy Kerr is a graduate of the Professional Actor Training program at the William Esper Studio in NYC, and holds a Masters in Creative Writing from the University of Edinburgh.

Rosie’s Rituals

The porcelain bowl, big and deep, full of readied milk Rosie would carry into the milk house. A small windowless room that housed the tumble-barrel churn, chair, two meal boxes, layers mash for the hens, feed for the sheep. 

Into the churn, she would toss a bouquet of nettles, scald with boiling water, scrub, and rinse. Once disinfected, the real magic would begin. In she poured the soured milk, sprinkled with a healthy handful of salt. On went the lid, tight went the fasteners. Taking her seat, she’d grasp the churn handle in her right hand and away the barrel tumbled.  

Regardless of the day, the door was always left open. Churning doesn’t need darkness. Prayers recited, as she stared out across the fields and up the hills towards the sky, the sloshing of the churn for comfort, always a cat, and sometimes a dog for company. All, but the churn and her right arm would be motionless.  

When the little glass porthole on the churn lid turned navy blue, it was time; the butter was ready, fasteners loosened, off came the lid. One hand scooped out great clots of butter into a large wooden bowl; slowly she would tilt the churn and strain the remnants through a muslin cloth into a chipped enamel bucket. What the bucket missed, the cat savored, buttermilk for the soda bread to be taken to the scullery. The contents of the bowl she would beat and slap with wooden paddles, until she had two perfectly ribbed little bricks of white butter.  

Soda bread, measurement by hand and eye only; no need for a jug or a spoon. The recipe was Rosie’s, and it was always the same. Into the bowl with the willow pattern went flour, baking soda, and the buttermilk from the morning’s churning. The mixture stirred till ready, dumped onto the baking board at the table by the window. Dough kneaded, sliced, and rolled on to the griddle on top of the ‘Modern Mistress’. The delicate aroma of the fields slowly released into the kitchen. The earth, sun, and rain had played their role. The first batch turned, four quarters of a circle, a cross separating each. Tapped, ready, hot, removed, stacked upright on the cooling rack. The griddle brushed clean with a goose wing, that had long since seen a Christmas past. The next batch on until the bowl was empty, the baker quiet, and at ease.  

Soup from her kitchen stores inside and out. Barley from the fields, young nettles from the ditches behind the stonewalls. There would be no stings, for she was taking what nature intended for her to have. A meaty hen, it would be one of her own; she never ran after them. ‘Walk! Don’t run.’ once a convent girl. 

For the chosen one, today was a different day. Today something had changed. Today Rosie wasn’t just feeding that hen or collecting its precious egg. Today, all the attention was on her, this one hen that never had a name. The hen bouncing from one leg to the other, scratching stones as it ran across the yard not knowing where to run too. The free range it never even knew it had, was almost over. Tomorrow there would be soup. The nameless hen all but forgotten for the odd feather that would float, glide, somersault, and slide across the yard, still running away, I guess. 

Held still the summer evenings when there wasn’t an air. Reek rising straight up from the neighbour’s chimney over by. Air, heavily scented with the smell of slow smoldering peat. The fading rose-tinted sunlight of the evening, turning the landscape into a painting and back again. Midges dancing erratically, a curlew scratching the silence, as the quiet cow taking her time dandered into the byre to be milked. And Rosie, taking her bucket and stool, would compose herself and then begin.  

Splosh, splish, splosh, splish, into the tin bucket the precious rich liquid would swirl and bubble. When done, the cow would get a pat, and a “Ta ta”, and the cat would get a drop in an old hubcap. The milk taken into the back scullery, poured into two big porcelain bowls: one for the butter, and one for the house. There they would sit in the cool stillness of the evening. Supper a feast of hot sweet milky tea, fresh soda bread, smeared with recently battered butter. A mighty reward, for an honest day’s work. The rituals complete, sin é for another day.

*Sin é is Irish for “that’s it.”