Meeting the Other Crowd Read online

  But when he came above to the fort and reached in under the bush where the bird was—the feathers were scattered, now, and plenty blood around—there was nothing there when he touched it, only . . . stuff like frog’s spawn. ’Twas like jelly. Well, he pulled back his hand from it like he was burned, but the stuff stuck to him, and even already ’twas turning black. He tried to wipe it off, but no. He couldn’t.

  “Come out of it,” says Pat to him. “Why did you fire into the fort?”

  They went back to Quin, to their own places, and they didn’t see each other any more that evening. But the following morning Pat was up early. ’Twas a grand fine morning. And what he’d usually do on a morning like that, he’d stand at the door and smoke his pipe and be looking around him. And usually Seán’d be doing the same next door. But this morning there was no sign o’ Seán. The door was closed.

  “Begod, that’s queer,” says Pat. “He’d be there if ’twas raining.”

  After he had a drop o’ tea and there was still no sign o’ Seán, he said to himself he might as well wander over and knock. Just in case.

  You wouldn’t do that at a neighbor’s house today, or you’d be nearly took up for trespassing! But there was nature in them days, when people had nothing. And now, when they have everything, they wouldn’t give you the steam o’ their piss. Oh, it’s a different world entirely, boy.

  He went over, anyway, and knocked. No answer. He knocked again. Still no answer. So he tried the latch. Door locked.

  “Begod, that’s strange,” says he. Because in them days no one used to lock doors, no poor people, anyway. ’Cause what had they to steal?

  So, he went around the end o’ the house and looked in the bedroom window. There was no curtain. Seán wasn’t a married man, no more than himself, and you know the way ’tis with old bachelors, now: The last thing that’d be worrying ’em is something like curtains.

  So, he peeped in the room window—and, Lord save us, what did he see inside in the bed? Only Seán, and every bone in his body twisted. That’s what it looked like. Hands. Legs. Neck. And even his mouth and eyes.

  Pat, he tried everything he could to open up the window, but it failed him. He had to get a stone and break the glass to go in.

  And when he faced the man inside in the bed, sure, Seán wasn’t even able to talk, only croaking.

  “Don’t stir. Don’t make one move,” says Pat. “I’ll get the doctor.”

  That’s what he did. Into Tulla as fast as he could, and they came back together.

  Well, the doctor only took one look at him in the bed and he said, “ ’Tis the hospital for you, poor man.”

  They lifted him into the doctor’s sidecar and off to Tulla; the hospital was at Garruragh, outside the village. ’Twas a workhouse, but, sure, they’re the kind o’ places that poor people had to go to that time. The people hated ’em, especially after the Famine, but what could they do?

  So, Seán was landed into Garruragh, anyway, and when they arrived he was put into this big room by himself. And I s’pose the only reason he was alone was that ’twasn’t right winter yet. If ’twas the month o’ December, now, that place’d be full.

  Anyway, he was left there, and Pat says to him before he went home, “Don’t worry about the cow or anything. I’ll mind her. You’ll be out in a couple o’ days.”

  So, the night came on. But he couldn’t sleep. Would you be surprised at that? And the moon came up. And ’twas shining in the small windows—they were up at the top o’ the wall, near the roof. Oh, the lads that built them places, they didn’t build ’em for your comfort or so that you’d be looking at the flowers! And Seán, he was watching it—’twas about all he could watch—when, all of a sudden, some time in the small hours, he heard this scratching noise down along from him, below in a corner. And the first thought that came to him was that ’twas rats. And, Lord God, if they attacked you they’d eat you alive, man!

  He couldn’t move, only his head and eyes, but, by God, when he did, he saw enough—and ’twasn’t rats he saw, either. Only worse! ’Cause there, coming through the wall at the far end o’ the room, was a leg—and another one next to it, and another, and another. Four of ’em. In through the wall, side by side. But that was only the start of it. Slowly and slowly they came in, the legs, an’ then the rest o’ the bodies . . . until he saw the elbows and the hands. And ’twas then he saw the end o’ the coffin! Coming in through the wall, too! And that wall was built o’ stone, at least two foot thick! All he could do was try to cover himself up with his blanket . . . but he couldn’t. His hands wouldn’t work.

  They came in, and a third man holding the coffin behind. They started walking up the floor towards him, and he could hear every creak of every floorboard under ’em. Sure, he was near wetting the bed with fright.

  When they came to where he was, they put the coffin down next to the bed. And one of ’em, he started to unscrew the screws at the four corners of it. He pulled off the cover then, and he says, “Look what you did when you fired into Corbally fort!”

  Seán, all he could do was look down out o’ the corner of his eye. But he could see enough. ’Cause inside the coffin was a man, all covered with blood from his feet up to his head, like he was shot.

  “That’s what you did to our brother when you fired into our house. And listen, now, and listen, carefully. If you don’t get out o’ that bed this minute, and pick every single shot out of our brother before the sun comes up, you’ll be in that coffin with him, and we’ll let the two o’ you sort out your differences . . . after we screw on the cover again.”

  By the way the three of ’em were looking at him, he knew full well they were in earnest. But he was still crippled, so all he could do was roll out o’ the bed, out on the floor, and start rooting around in the dead man, trying to find all them pellets. And, sure, ’twas like handling dead meat. But he had to do it. They were standing there around him, watching him. Hour after hour he stuck at it, and the nearer ’twas getting to daylight the more they were getting impatient, “Hurry on! Hurry up!” and on like that.

  ’Twas just close before dawn, and didn’t he find the last o’ the shot—someplace in the man’s neck it was. But if he thought his troubles were over, they were only starting, ’cause at that very minute the lad inside the coffin, his two eyes opened and he started to rise up.

  Indeed, when Seán saw that, I tell you he wasn’t long getting back his movement. He made a dive under the bed and tried his level best to get out through the wall. But no hope.

  The man stood up, and came out on the floor. Sure, his three brothers had a great welcome for him, naturally.

  “Where’s the wretch that shot me?!” says he. “Show me him.”

  They all pointed in under the bed where Seán was.

  “What’ll we do with him?” says the lad.

  “We’ll carry him with us,” says one of ’em. “Wouldn’t he be handy for carrying the coffin?”

  “Him? A man that’d fire into a fort? Sure, a man like him has no religion at all!”

  “He’d be handy, all the same.”

  “He wouldn’t.”

  “He would.”

  “He would not!”

  And the argument started. For a finish they were nearly coming to blows about it, until one of ’em looked up and noticed that ’twas very nearly daylight.

  “Ahhh! Look! Quick.”

  And like that (!) they clapped the cover on the coffin, up on their shoulders with it, and out through the wall—the very same way as they came in.

  But d’you think Seán came out from under the bed? Indeed, he didn’t. And he was still there at half past eight when the matron came in with the surgeon.

  O’ course, as soon as they opened the door, the surgeon says to her, “I thought you told me you had a patient for me.”

  “Well, he was here last night, Doctor, whatever happened to him.”

  But, o’ course, Seán, under the bed, as soon as he saw the legs at the door, he t
hought ’twas the lads back again for him. All he did was to make one buck-leap out between the doctor’s legs, out the door, and legged it. He never stopped until he got to Ennis, and he didn’t even stop there, only kept going till he came to the pier at Clarecastle.

  There was a boat there, just about to sail for Limerick, and he jumped into it, caught a hold o’ the mast, and no amount of ’em could make him let go. Pure terror!

  For a finish the captain said to leave him there, or they’d miss the tide. That’s how he got to Limerick. And he got going from there to America. Worked his passage, I s’pose, like a lot more. And I heard he did well in America, too. Got married there. Had a family. But never came back. And you know why? ’Cause if he did, if he ever set foot in Ireland again, you know who’d be waiting for him, don’t you?

  That’s right. The three of ’em. And their box. And the second time they’d make no mistake.

  It is a much-overlooked fact that not all of the thousands who fled Ireland in former times did so to escape hunger, deprivation, and persecution. There were also those who went to escape the wrath of the Good People. Many stories illustrate this, the one here being typical.

  If proof were needed that the fairies can take whatever shape they wish, this tale provides it, and the relentlessness of their pursuit of the man who has violated their dwelling, and their ability to inflict ugly physical consequences, shows clearly why there was such reluctance among Irish people to have much contact with them.

  To cross flowing water (in this case, the tide) was one of the few known and proven means of escaping them. But for the unfortunate one who had offended them, it was a one-way ticket.

  “Can you tell me anything about fairy paths?” “They go from A to B, usually straight, from one fort to another. Maybe the fort, even, could be miles away. It mightn’t be the one in the immediate vicinity.”

  DRUMLINE, OCTOBER 19, 2000

  A House Built Between Forts

  THIS MAN AND HIS BROTHER—they were two elderly men when I knew ’em, two very nice men, two very nice, honest men. They had a house at the side o’ the road, and they lived very comfortable. And they had an outhouse for the horses and cattle, and the outhouse was facing the road. And the dwelling house where they lived, the gable of it, was out to the road.

  Apparently the outhouse was built between two forts. There was a fort at one side of it, up on a hill, about five hundred yards away. ’Twas known as Lios Árd, the high fort. And there was a fort at the opposite end, ’twas known as Crossa fort. That was a mighty structure altogether. There was a big mound and a big high hedge. ’Tis still there. The man that lives in that place today would no more touch that than he’d cut his right hand off.

  There was, I s’pose if you like, a passageway from one fort to the other. And the house was in between. ’Twas a fine long house and there was a door in it, and that door could never be closed. Opposite the door there was a window, and the window could never be closed. So what happened was, he put in a half-door and he left the top vacant. And at the window at the back, he done the same thing. He always left way, for whatever came, to go through without the door hindering.

  That’s the way ’twas, and that’s the way I always knew it. And that’s the way it was until the day the house was knocked.

  They had a little dog. Certain times o’ the day, if they came out on the road with the little dog, ’twould be like a fellow shadow-punching. The murder’d start with the little dog. And nothing there to back it up. No reason whatsoever! He’d have holy open murder with something, but no one knew what, and they’d have to get him away. He’d fight to death with whatever he was clashing with on the road.

  In later years they tied a dog near the door and he got involved, it seems, during the night. He got involved with whatever was passing through. He came out at the worst end o’ things, though. He got killed. He was stone dead in the morning.

  They maintained that in the month o’ May they used to hear the music and the people up in the air crossing from one fort to the other. Such sweet music and noise was never heard of!

  And they weren’t the kind of people that’d be telling a tall tale. Oh, God, no. They were two fine, decent, honest men, very sincere. And proof o’ their sincerity: We’d be there in the night, now. There’d be a crowd of us there, all the lads’d collect in, you see—they weren’t married—and we’d say for a joke, “D’you want to build up the window, Pat?”

  Oh, he’d go wild! He’d clear you, man. No way! On no account, don’t interfere with it. And he’d watch you in case you did. Oh, Lord, no. That was sacred to ’em. And the fort that was above at the back o’ that house, they’d have your life if you went near it, man. Oh, you need never go there again. They were out with you.

  That was the story o’ the house before ever they were born. The house was there maybe two hundred years. But ’twas built in the wrong place. ’Twas built on the track.

  The fellow that came after ’em, then, he built a new house, but by God, when he did, he didn’t build it across that path.

  Formerly, great care was taken in Ireland in the choosing of a site for a house, and not merely for its physical attributes. If there was any hint that it might be on a fairy path, or track, it was sensible to avoid that place and let them have free access to their accustomed route.

  The elders had their own ways of testing a dubious site. One such was to hammer down four hazel branches solidly at the four proposed corners of the house-to-be. If they were disturbed in the morning, it was unsafe to build there.

  Sometimes the presence of a fairy path might be deduced, as in this story, where there are two very visible forts—though its route would only have been known by consequences. At other times, however, nothing but the knowledge of a person wise in the ways of such things could alert one to the danger of building in the fatal spot—as the next story, “The Fairy House,” shows only too clearly.

  This very year, an old man who was most adamant on the point, told me that the reason Ireland was having such a plague of marriage breakdown, child delinquency, drug abuse, suicide, etc., at the moment was because so many big housing estates were now being built without any regard to “the paths.” What possible chance had families in houses on those paths, he asked, of a normal, peaceful life?

  “If you built a house in the wrong place, on a fairy path, you had company!”

  DRUMLINE, SEPTEMBER 19, 2001

  The Fairy House

  D’YOU KNOW, BOY, that this house is infested? With the fairies! D’you see that place there, just inside that door? Behind the plaster there they used to do their cooking. Frightened the living life out o’ my grandfather and grandmother when it started first. They got used to it in time, though. They had to. ’Twas either that or move out o’ the house entirely.

  Did your father ever tell you, boy, that this is a fairy house? Well, ’tis. And I’ll tell you how it happened, too, if you want to hear it.

  ’Twas after the Famine—sometime in the 1860s, I’d say—and my grandfather and grandmother were living in an old shack of a house, a mud-walled cabin you wouldn’t put animals into today. The thatch was rotten and letting in the rain. The damp was down along the walls in streaks o’ green moss. Now, my grandmother, she put up with that for a long time. But ’twas getting worse.

  At last she said to the husband one day, “Look, I’m sick o’ this cursed place. ’Tis damp and dark. D’you want us to get our death here? Surely to God, ’tis time to build a new house.”

  But no, he wouldn’t hear of it.

  “Have a bit o’ sense, will you, woman. Can’t you see the bad times that are in the country? Whatever bit o’ money we have, we need, so don’t talk to me about a new house.”

  But she had no intention of leaving the matter there. Day after day she annoyed him, more and more so as time passed. But he was a stubborn man, as well as all else, and as often as she asked, he refused. Until at last, she threatened him.

  “For the last time, I’l
l ask you. Build a new house. Or if you don’t, I’m going.”

  “Going? Where?”

  “Back home, to my own people. That’s where. Before I’m crippled by the rheumatism in this piggery.”

  With that threat he knew she was in earnest. He knew, too, that his back was against the wall now. And why? Because in them days the only reason a wife’d leave her husband was if he was beating her. If she went, what would the local people think—the men especially? There’d be ugly talk . . . “brave man, beating up a woman,” and gossip like that. A man’s reputation wouldn’t be in the better o’ that kind o’ thing.

  So he had to give in, even though he did it with very bad grace.

  “All right! All right! But it’ll have to wait until the new year.” She was so surprised that she agreed to that. She kept a close watch on him, though, so that there’d be no backsliding. And there wasn’t. In the month of April, the following year, he started. She told him what she wanted, too—how many rooms, the size of ’em, and all that.

  O’ course he objected. That’s the kind o’ man he was.

  “Merciful God, woman, what do we want all them rooms for? You’d swear we had ten children.”

  “You’d never know,” says she. “Maybe we might. Anyway, ’tis me that’ll be cleaning and minding ’em, so don’t worry yourself about it. Just build it.”

  That’s what he did. And nearly all on his own, too. He wasn’t going to spend money hiring workmen if he could do it himself.

  So he picked out this site here. He could have picked a lot of other places, too, ’cause they had plenty land—even though most of it was only bog and rushes. But he picked this, I s’pose, ’cause ’twas near the road. And this morning he started to mark out the plan o’ the house with a piece o’ rope on the ground. That was easy enough to do when he knew what she wanted.

  He was there on his knees, measuring away, when he heard a voice behind him.