Meeting the Other Crowd Read online

  The story he then tells is meant to leave us in no doubt whatsoever that interference with such places will lead to certain and appropriate punishment, and that the best policy is to respect them, leave them be.

  “They was in dread o’ forts a lot in my time. They wouldn’t even cut a bush.”

  CORLEA, DECEMBER 21, 1989

  A Sportsman Who Won’t Interfere

  THERE WAS twenty-five or thirty people demolishing Ballycaseybeg fort. If ’tis wrong, what was the county council going to do for you? They dropped you in and paid you to demolish it, but they didn’t do it themselves. I think it was pure, sheer pigheadedness. Obstinacy. What does a government official know about a fairy fort?

  Well, the man that owned it, his father before him, and his father before him again, they lived up against it. The house is still there.13 Any o’ them people—and they weren’t superstitious, ’cause they weren’t that kind o’ people at all—’tis the last thing they’d dream of, to interfere with it.

  Now, one of ’em was a hurling fanatic. You couldn’t hear Mass with him of a Sunday. All through Mass he’d be talking hurling. As a matter o’ fact, I changed my chapel so I could hear the sermon and hear Mass.

  There was a nice ash tree with a curve on the bottom of it growing out o’ the side o’ the fort. The hurling lads went up to him, and they had a great hurling debate. He went back fifty, sixty, seventy years o’ hurling matches—he lived to be a man o’ ninety, actually.

  But they said to him, “What about the hurley that’s growing up the side o’ the fort above. Did you see it?”

  “Oh,” he said. “I did. I saw it.”

  They said, “What d’you think of it?”

  “Ah,” he said, “sure, ’tis a right one.” ’Twas a grand clean stick. It grew out clean, turned and all. Nothing to do, only cut it. And he knew a good stick when he saw it.

  They said, “Will you cut it?” He had a chainsaw.

  “Will I what?!” he said.

  “Will you cut it for us?” they said.

  “No,” he said. “I will not do any such thing. Look, if you want it, do what you like about it. I won’t give it to you, nor I won’t refuse you. I won’t have hand, act, nor part in the removal o’ that hurley. I won’t refuse it, nor I won’t give it to you. Look, the option is yours.”

  I own to God, d’you know what? They didn’t take it. Wasn’t I looking at it above when the county council sawed it up.

  “Me, nor anyone belong to me, we never brought as much as one stick out of it,” he said. “I went over to Derramore to Kilkishen, fifteen, sixteen miles, and I drew a half hundred o’ turf out of it, bought it, every year, a thing I could ill afford to do. And there was plenty wood there, up to my ear, to go up with a hatchet and cut it. The wind even blew it down. But I didn’t. And I’m here today, and I have no worries.”

  That was his version of it. Now, I’ll give honor where honor is due. He was anything but superstitious, any o’ his family. I never heard ’em passing any remarks on the fort. But I’ll tell you, what I know to be a fact: They had very good reason to be respectful to it.

  There was a black dog parked at the gate there. He was known as the Knockane dog and he used to come down from Knockane. He used to go in over the stile beyond at Macs at the Grove, just come nightfall. And they used to come out in the summer evenings to view him—big black dog—for a lifetime. If he was a local dog the most he’d live’d be ten or twelve years, not fifty, sixty, seventy years of a man’s lifetime. You don’t get dogs living seventy years.

  There was a noble spring well there, and they’d no more go out to that well at nightfall for a bucket o’ water. They’d just do without it, if they hadn’t it. They wouldn’t clash with that dog. It didn’t ever harm anyone, but different people had queer stories about him.

  The man telling this story had every reason to feel indignant. A fairy fort he knew as a fixture all his life, and the many tales attached to it, was demolished in 2001 during the building of the same new highway that almost caused the destruction of the Latoon sceach. Not only that, the very hill on which the fort was situated, as well as the farmhouse, all have been swept away.

  Yet, according to this man, the powers of the modern, new Ireland of surface glitter may have disturbed something here for which it has no answer. Already at this place there have been some tragic occurrences, including deaths, that might perhaps even give cynics some pause. And when the new road is built over the site of the fort? Some local people look with trepidation to the future at this place.

  “I s’pose, if a fairy is molested, if you go tampering or meddling with ’em, well, they’ll retaliate. ’Tis only kind o’ natural, retaliation when you’re interfered with. Nearly everyone in Ireland is aware that it isn’t the done thing. Was never the done thing. The most ignorant people in Ireland, people that were illiterate, wouldn’t bring a thorn out o’ them forts.”

  DRUMLINE, SEPTEMBER 19, 2001

  Let Very Well Alone!

  WE HAD a very healthy respect for them forts, I can tell you. And I know that our generation would not interfere with ’em on any account. In day or night you’d hardly visit ’em, day or night.

  Now, as you see abroad there, I have any amount of fancy stones. I have stones from every part of Ireland. As a matter o’ fact, I have stones from every part o’ the world. I have stones from Beijing Square. I have a stone off the Wall o’ China. I have basalt rock and the stone for the stone axes. I have all them things, but no way have I stone out of a fort.

  If I did, how do I know but my lace might trip me and put me standing on top o’ my head? By God, if people want to laugh, I can make jokes. I can be jocose. But I don’t want to make ’em cry, either. If I only tore the backside o’ my trousers wouldn’t half the country laugh at me. I’m not worried about the laughing. But definitely, for my own peace o’ mind . . . live and let live. Let very well alone!

  I have three forts in my land. I never took a hatchet or a saw to them forts to cut ’em down. No way! Even now that there’d be government restrictions and orders to leave forts alone, not to demolish ’em or do anything with ’em, as far as I’m concerned the orders don’t have to be there at all. I just won’t interfere with ’em.

  Didn’t I tell you about the man that demolished the fort, and his two daughters? One of ’em she died laughing and the other one died crying. Got a fit o’ crying.

  I was talking to a man last Sunday and he was telling me about three of his neighbors that bought a bulldozer between ’em when there wasn’t hardly another bulldozer in Clare. But they had a lot o’ land and they decided that they’d spend a couple o’ thousand between ’em for the bulldozer. They had young fellows growing up, and the young fellows would demolish all the banks and mounds and moots, and level ’em all out—which they did!

  From that day to this, no one could ever go in with a machine to the forts they demolished, and cut the hay out of ’em. The machine’d break. This man that was telling me about it, he went in with his machinery to cut the hay there, and for the third time in succession it failed him.

  The next year they didn’t go near it at all. He had a difference with the man that owned the hay. He wouldn’t cut it. He says, “There’s no point in me taking down my machine and breaking it, and it costing me a heap o’ money to repair it, for a bit o’ hay. I couldn’t cut that hay,” he said.

  “Ah,” the man said, “I’ll get it done.” But, faith, he didn’t get it done.

  A neighbor arrived on the scene and he said to the man that had the machine, “Did you cut the hay?”

  He said, “I didn’t.”

  “No,” said the neighbor, “nor you never will.”

  He knew the score. He never did. There’s several instances o’ that.

  In the face of all the evidence—rumor, coincidence, skeptics would say—that interference with forts brings no rewards, and most likely misfortune, it may seem remarkable that there are still people who will do so. But we
must remember that human nature may be homogeneous, but human society is rarely so. There will always be those who will “try their luck,” for whatever reason.

  In days gone by we might have seen fairy stories as a way of “keeping people in their place,” but in a modern age of machinery this view becomes more difficult to sustain. And yet, it persists that no matter how modern-minded or well-equipped with up-to-date technology you are, some things should not be done; some places are out of bounds . . . if you have sense.

  That the Good People should have anything to do with machinery may seem on the surface odd, given their aversion to iron, but look more closely at the story and you will note that whether it is a case of the madness of two daughters of a man who interfered with a fort or the self-defeating stubbornness of a man in a more technological age, one thing they know well: how to take advantage of our nature. They punish where it hurts most appropriately. They direct their vengeance at our weakest point, whether it be our affections or our greed.

  In fact, one of the most depressing aspects of human/fairy contact seems to be that they need never be too troubled about those things that frighten them so much—such as iron. They will always get some human to do for them any dirty work that might need to be done, should it be necessary . . . despite the consequences.

  “Do you know, there’s a subterranean linkup between ’em all, between all the fairy forts? They couldn’t come out, you see, that time, because o’ wild animals, but they could travel to each other underneath.”

  CROOM, OCTOBER 12, 2001

  Mysterious Sounds from Two Forts

  BOTH FORTS over here are in Derryulk, and there’s a different story about each of ’em. There was music attached to one of ’em and churning to the other.

  The near one here, there used be music played in it, and three lights would leave it and continue on down for a mile and cross the road. I often saw the three lights myself, and lots o’ people besides me, in my time. The lights’d come across the road, and if they were coming, you’d make sure you’d let ’em cross before you’d come in contact with ’em. They went on for about a mile, and them three lights finished up in an old big gentry’s house. They’d go into that house—’twas all knocked down, only the shell of it there. But them three lights’d disappear inside that house. Time and again they came there. And they’d be about two feet from the ground, coming along as if they’d be three people coming with three lanterns.

  But the music . . . McNamara that lived over here—the fort is at the back o’ the house—he often sat on the stile before he went inside, listening to the music playing the finest. He was a poet himself, and a singer, but he never heard finer music than he used to hear before them three lights’d start out.

  Then, the other fort is over here to the left. My father—the Lord have mercy on him—he had a brother seven or eight years of age, and he was sent for the cows one evening. And a woman caught him, a small woman, and struck his knee against a stone. He told ’em when he came home. The stone is there yet to be seen. He had a pain in his leg, and he was crying. They couldn’t do anything for him, so they sent for the doctor. The doctor came and he couldn’t do anything for him. In four days he was dead.

  They used to always say that the fairies took him.

  In that fort, there used to be churning heard at certain times. Even my own brothers and sisters heard it when they’d be over there working in the garden late of an evening. They’d hear the churning inside the fort. There was a wall, and the big fort was inside under the ring o’ bushes. And they used go to the wall to hear the churn. They’d think ’twas someone making the butter inside the fort, same as they would here at home. You’d hear the dash o’ the churn up and down. You know, the dash churn they had long ago—the very same as the one they’d use at home. They’d come home then and they’d be around the house talking about “the churning in the fort this evening.” Just like that!

  This man came out to that fort one evening, cutting a big whitethorn with his saw, and a voice spoke out from the bush to get away out o’ there, not to be “cutting the jamb off o’ their door.” So, he went away and left it there.

  If proof were needed of the otherworldliness, yet uncanny ordinariness, of forts, surely this story provides it. Strange in the comings and goings and the lights, where no one was seen. Equally strange, when one of the inhabitants was seen—but with tragic consequences.

  Then, also odd in its everydayness, one of the basics of life—churning of butter—seems to be going on in the fort. But then . . . when humans seem to be taking the place so much for granted that they take advantage, a sharp shock is administered: Beware of what you do in a fort. It is often repeated in Irish stories that the branches of whitethorn bushes in forts are the jambs of the doors to the world of the Good People.

  “There was a man in Kilfenora, an’ he rooted a fort. An’ his mouth was turned back here the following day. His mouth was turned back. But, he went to the friars in Ennis . . . an’ the friars told him to go back an’ settle the fort, put back all the clay that he took out of it an’ make it the way it was again. An’ he did it. His mouth came all right.”

  LISCANNOR, SEPTEMBER 2, 1999

  A Pregnant Woman Goes into a Fort

  WOULDN’T YOU THINK, when people are living near a place like that all their lives, they’d know something! Now, I wouldn’t want misfortune on anyone, but, d’you know this? I think a lot o’ people bring their own misfortune on themselves. A woman expecting a child, now, shouldn’t she know better than to go into a fort in the first place, in the name o’ God! What was she thinking of ?

  But, what happened was, she was well gone, six months and more.

  The house was only a small distance from the fort. One morning, after all the rest of the family were gone doing whatever they were doing, she went lighting the fire. But she had no kindling, so the nearest place to get some was the fort. She went up and started collecting. But she was there only a few minutes, working away, when she got some kind of a weakness and had to sit down for a minute. ’Twas nothing serious, only a kind of a blackout. She came to herself, gathered her sticks again, and went off down home.

  There was no more about it. She told no one. Why would she? Not then, anyway.

  But, a couple o’ months later the child was born. And he was a hunchback. Oh, he lived, but he was a hunchback.

  The misfortunate woman had plenty of time to be telling about it after, but what good was that?

  Them places . . . if you have no respect for them, you have no respect for yourself. ’Tis as simple as that. And ’twill come back on you, sooner or later.

  The tone of this story is what is important, more than what actually happens. If there is sympathy for the woman in her misfortune, or for the child, who was, after all, innocent of any wrongdoing, it is not shown. What comes across, rather, is a tone of “How could she have been so stupid? What other outcome could she have expected?”

  And so it is the mother, not the Good People, who is blamed for the tragedy. It is almost always so in cases like this.

  Fear of antagonizing the fairies? Or an unshakable belief that some things just are not done, and no more about it?

  “Know your place” would seem to be the golden rule—the only rule!—when dealing with the Other People, since there is no leeway for error.

  “But you can’t tar ’em all with the one brush.

  There’s some o’ them forts an’ you could take your bed

  into ’em an’ sleep in ’em with no ill effect. But there’s

  some of ’em an’ they’re dynamite. They’re highly dangerous,

  for whatever reason. An’ you won’t know until you’re burned.

  An’ what can you do if you have the damage done?”

  DRUMLINE, SEPTEMBER 19, 2001

  The Man in the Coffin

  YOU OFTEN HEARD IT SAID, did you, that there’s no luck in interfering with forts? I heard that myself, and I’d believe it, too.

 
There was these two men living near Quin one time, poor men; they had only the grass of a cow each. They were next-door neighbors—we’ll call ’em Seán and Pat—and there was nothing they liked better than to go out hunting in the fall o’ the year, when all the leaves were gone and they could see what they were doing, you know. But they had only the one gun between ’em—’twas Seán had it—and Pat’d go with him just for the company, any time the day was fine in the month o’ September or October. You’d often get a nice hardy spell o’ weather at that time o’ the year.

  So this Sunday they were out, ’twas in the start of October, and they were after walking miles, and shot nothing. Didn’t even see a rabbit, or a pheasant. Nothing. They didn’t mind, though. ’Twas a grand fine day for being out, and they met several people to talk to on the way.

  In the evening, anyway, they were coming back, chatting away, Seán with the gun over his shoulder. And they were passing Corbally fort—’twas there on the hill overhead ’em, a big double-ring fort, about a mile and a half from the village. And when Seán looked up, didn’t he see a white thing above on one o’ the bushes in the fort.

  “Lord God, look,” says he, “look at the goose!” and he loaded up the gun quick, and fired. Sure enough, he hit it, ’cause he saw the feathers scattering and the bird falling down through the branches.

  But Pat was looking at him.

  “What’re you talking about?” says he. “I don’t see nothing.”

  Seán wasn’t listening to him at all, only in over the ditch with him, and off up the hill to get the goose.