Meeting the Other Crowd Read online

  “Father,” says he, “isn’t it a strange thing, but I was just thinking about that same thing myself.”

  “I’m glad to hear it,” says the priest. “But can you give me an answer?”

  “I can.”

  “Do so, like a good man.”

  “I will.”

  “Ah, God—” He was going to swear, you know, but he didn’t. Cool man! “In God’s holy name, will you tell me whatever you know,” says he.

  Silence for a minute, then he stared at the priest and said, “All I’ll tell you, Father, is this: If one drop of blood can be found in their veins on the Day of Judgment, the Good People will see the face of God.”

  “Wha—?”

  “One drop of blood, Father. That’s all.”

  And with that, he fell back on the pillow, dead.

  The priest, he said a prayer, blessed him, and then out quick to the kitchen. He beckoned the curate and off they went, the two of ’em, out, and down the passageway. Left the people there wondering what in the name o’ God was going on.

  They came to the gate, turned right for Crusheen, and home. But when they did, there was the horse and trap in the middle o’ the road. And there, in front o’ the horse’s nose, was the stranger. He held up his hand.

  “Well, Father,” says he, “did you get my answer this time?”

  “I got an answer all right, but I don’t know if ’tis the one you want. It didn’t make much sense to me.”

  “Ahh!” says he. “So you have it!”

  He started towards ’em, but the parish priest held up his hand.

  “No, no!” he says. “No nearer. Stay where you are and I’ll tell you what I know.”

  He stopped a couple o’ yards from ’em, but they could see that wrinkled face of his clearly.

  “Tell me!”

  “He said . . . if one drop o’ blood could be found in their veins on the Day o’ Judgment they’d see the face o’ God. Does that make any kind o’ sense to you?”

  “One drop o’ blood,” says the lad. “Only one drop?”

  He stared at the priests again then, and it frightened ’em, the look in his eyes. They thought something bad was coming. But no. All he did was to put down the fiddle on the road, and then the bow across it, very neat.

  And when he straightened up they were so busy watching his face that they never saw his hand going to his belt, slow, slow. ’Twas only when he pulled up a dagger and held it out before him that they jumped back, sure he was going to attack ’em.

  But not a bit of it! All he did was hold it there at his full arm’s length, nodding away at it all the time, like he’d be thinking to himself.

  And then, while they were still wondering what to do, he stuck that knife straight into his chest, pulled it out, and stabbed himself again. And again. Twelve times in all he stabbed himself. And not a drop o’ blood! What came out o’ him was thick green stuff like . . . like stewed apple, for all the world.

  He looked at the knife, then at the two priests again, then flung it into the darkness. He turned around, and they could see a fierce change in his eyes now. Something . . . something they didn’t want any part of.

  “Father,” says he, “for the last five thousand years and more, I and my people are traveling the roads of Ireland, and in all that time we never did harm to man, woman, child, or any living creature, only playing sweet music for all of ’em in the dark, hurting no one. But from this time on, Father, there’ll be no more music.”

  He turned to the fiddle and bow then, where they were left on the road. Then he jumped on ’em, danced down on ’em until he had matches made of ’em.

  “There’ll be no more music, Father. But there’ll be this!” He stepped into the dark, picked up the knife, and held it under their noses.

  “Go home. Tell your people what you saw and heard here tonight. And tell ’em that anyone we catch on these roads after dark anymore . . . this is what they’ll get. Now that I know we’re never to see the face o’ God, we have nothing to lose. So, make sure you have your message right, Father, ’cause there’ll be no other warning.”

  He turned into the darkness then, and they saw no more of him.

  They were frightened men, I can tell you, when they turned to the horse trap to go home.

  But there was no “go home” there. The poor horse’s legs were shaking under him and he was foaming at the mouth with fright. I always heard that—horses know when the Other World is near ’em. ’Twas they had to bring home the horse. Whether they brought the trap or not I can’t tell you, but they got back to the presbytery very different men than when they were starting out. They went to their beds, no more said. They had plenty to be thinking about!

  And there was no more said about it until the following Sunday, at eleven o’clock Mass in Crusheen church—the parish priest’s own Mass.

  The people were in, and waiting for the prayers to start, but while they were sitting there, or kneeling, they noticed that there was something out o’ place. You know, now, yourself, the way ’tis in a church. Nothing ever moves much from one end o’ the week to the next. But they couldn’t make out what ’twas until the sacristy door opened and out came the priest. ’Twas then they saw it—a stool against the wall outside the door. But that wasn’t all. Out after the parish priest came the curate, and then the altar boys. And that was unusual, ’cause the curate had his own Mass said earlier on.

  They were all looking out of ’em now, to try to see what was going on. What was this concelebrated Mass for? But the parish priest started as usual—“In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti . . .” You remember, the grand old Latin prayers.

  And still nothing strange, until it came to the sermon time.

  Now, the other thing about the parish priest, as well as being a nondrinker, he was a hopeless man to preach a sermon. Useless entirely. I heard he was so bad that every Sunday, when he’d start, the people used to go to sleep while he’d be at it, and the ones at the back and up in the galleries, they’d curl up on the seats to do it. And that’s no easy job on church seats!

  But on this Sunday no one went to sleep, or yawned, either. ’Cause all he did was to tell ’em about what he saw and heard on that road near Sunnagh bridge the few nights before. And there was the curate, sitting on the stool near the sacristy door, nodding at every word.

  And you can say what you like—one priest might tell you a lie, but two priests together? No such thing! I wouldn’t believe it, in spite of all the bad things we’re hearing about the clergy for a few years back.

  Anyway, he told ’em every bit o’ what happened. And the man that told it to me, he said ’twas the damnedest thing he ever saw—people’s hair beginning to stand above on their heads with the fright. And ’twas even funny in one way, to see old lads that were bald and whatever few ribs they had behind their ears sticking out!

  But I can tell you, by the time Mass was finished, the last blessing given, and people stood up to go, there was a good third o’ them people who couldn’t rise out o’ where they sat. Stuck to their seats! He frightened the . . . you know what . . . out of ’em.

  That was fair work for a man that couldn’t preach a sermon, hah!

  From there the word went out, o’ course, into all the parishes around—into County Galway and Tipperary and Limerick, and farther, too.

  After that, night walking stopped entirely in all this part of Ireland. And they say it got so bad for a finish that country pubs started to go out o’ business—no customers once dark’d fall. Publicans started to take the train and the boat to England, America, even to Van Diemen’s Land—and by God, that’s a place you’d persuade no Irishman to go unless ’twas a last resort! There was pubs selling here in Clare that time for forty pounds—and no takers!

  ’Twas only in the late ’50s, when cars began to get a bit plentiful, that people started traveling out again at night. ’Cause you know as well as me that people are very brave when they have lights in front of ’em and
maybe a radio to be listening to.

  But I know this much, and you can believe it or not, whatever you like: That road isn’t right. The whitethorn bush where the priests saw that lad, I often passed it in the dark, cycling home, and I’d always feel safer when I’d be past it.

  I regard it as no shame to admit that I also have had that feeling on that same Sunnagh road at night. For I have done, on several occasions, what would surely have confirmed many people’s opinion of me as a lunatic if they had seen me (and maybe some of them have, for in a small community one can never, even in the remotest place, darkest time, presume that one is unobserved) stop there, look around me as if I were expecting something unusual to happen. For, to country people, natives of these very same places, the last thing a person should do is stand, silent, waiting. They would laugh. “Waiting for what? For God’s sake, have a bit o’ sense. ’Tis only children believe in them old stories, that old kind o’ nonsense.”

  And yet, later that same night, in the pub, when all the laughing and mocking is done, the serious talk will begin, hesitant at first, then more freely, until at last, many pints of Guinness later, even those who mocked earlier in the night will finally—and not for the first or last time—admit that, yes, “There’s something there, all right. Petey (or Johnny, or Paddy or whoever) is no liar, whatever else he is.”

  And in such unpromising companies, by not retreating from impending scorn, ridicule, I have very often come away with a completely different knowledge of people I thought I knew before.

  And such confrontations have, I think, brought to the surface for some of those mockers, too, something deep, something that may have been forgotten in our hurly-burly world of “acquire, have, experience, spend”—life as advertisers and their victims see it.

  An oasis in the midst of crassness? Yes. But a great deal more, too, a lifting of a corner of that veil that separates us from a world that is right beside us, but for most of us as far away as Heaven . . . or Hell!

  “Some’d tell you, whether ’tis true or not, that the fairies were the fallen angels that God cast out o’ Heaven long ago. They rebelled against God, didn’t they? An’ He cast ’em out o’ Heaven. They are! An’ they’re always trying to get back in, looking for salvation. They could get it the Last Day, I’d say. Well, I hope an’ trust it that they do.”

  LISCANNOR, SEPTEMBER 2, 1999

  The Fallen Angels

  NOVEMBER, as you know, is a very lonesome month. There was a lot o’ people long ago, they couldn’t go outside the door in the month o’ November. They say if you’re born at the dead hour o’ the night, between twelve and one, that you’ll always see ghosts and fairies and that kind o’ thing. That was a well-known fact long ago.

  Everyone knows there were two or three different kinds o’ ghosts or fairies or spirits, or whatever you like to call ’em. But the most plentiful kind of ’em was the evil spirit and the wandering souls. The wandering souls, all they wanted was your prayers, and say Masses for ’em. But the evil spirits were different. They were out for destruction of every kind, devilment of every kind. And I’d say a lot o’ these plane crashes and car crashes that happens to very careful people, they’re behind ’em. The only weapon against the evil spirit was the holy water. ’Twas handed down here in west Clare that when people was tackling horses they’d always shake the holy water on ’em, or going to a fair with cattle you’d always shake the holy water on ’em. That was the only weapon, they said, against the evil spirit.

  But, as well as them two, you have the fallen angels. The time Lucifer rebelled, millions upon millions o’ the fallen angels went out in sympathy with him, and they fell all over the world. But however it was, for a country the size of Ireland and the small population, there did more of ’em fall here than in any other country. A missioner was in Miltown one time and he said, “Every step you’re taking, you’re walking down on ’em.” He knew a lot about ’em, the same man. He said on account of Ireland being that kind of a country—long ago ’twas known as the Island of Saints and Scholars—that was why he thought that more of ’em stayed in Ireland than any other place.

  But, that was all right, anyway. There was this man, and he came from the same quarter as myself—only about a half mile over there. He lived with his mother and his uncle and the servant boy. The four of ’em lived in the one house. And she was keeping him for the land. There were a good few in the family, but they were married here and there; the girls married local farmers and some o’ the boys went to America and Australia. And one of ’em joined the RIC; he was a big strong man.

  She was keeping this boy for the land, anyway. And he was a fairly strong farmer. He had a hundred acres o’ land—mixed land, you know; it wasn’t all good.

  This uncle of his was over eighty years, but he used to do a lot o’ handiwork around the farm—mind the cows, bring the cows to be milked, feed young calves, and boil spuds for pigs, and that kind o’ thing.

  ’Twas the month o’ November, anyway, and the uncle got a kind o’ sick. There wasn’t much wrong with him, but he wasn’t feeling so good. The woman o’ the house used to bring down the dinner every day to him, spuds and bacon and cabbage—they were after killing a good pig—and he’d eat as much, now, as any man. But still he wasn’t getting up. He was keeping to the bed. And after three or four days o’ this, she was inside one night. She had a good fire down and she was knitting a stocking. No one used to be idle that time! And she heard terrible talk coming up out o’ the room. She went down, anyway, but ’twas how he was raving. He was talking very strange things. He was a great footballer when he was young, and he was talking about football. And he was a great man for breaking horses, and he was talking o’ horses. And he was a great man in faction fights—they were very common at the time. He was a great man with a stick, and he was talking about ’em.

  But the woman could make no sense of him; when she’d ask him a question he wouldn’t know her or anything like that. She came up again in the kitchen, anyway, and she didn’t know what to do. Her son came in about half past ten o’ clock and she told him the story. And he went down in the room, and ’twas the same story: He was raving away. So the son said he’d go for the priest.

  “No,” says the woman, his mother. “You won’t stir out o’ this,” says she. “I’m no good around people that’d be dying. You must wait now until the servant boy come in.”

  And they did wait until he came in, about eleven o’ clock, and they told him their story. The servant boy was a great friend o’ this old man, and he went down in the room.

  Now, this servant boy, he was in service all over the country in different places, and he was often slowed up for a week minding old people. ’Twas a terrible crime that time to die in a hospital or the county home or them places. The servant boy went down, anyway, and looked at him.

  “That man is raving,” says he. “That man is dying. But we have plenty time. He’ll go on till about the break o’ day,” says he. “Them people does. The month o’ November it won’t be day till about seven o’ clock. We have plenty time,” he says.

  That was all right, anyway. The man o’ the house said, “Will you go for the priest for him?”

  “I will,” says he, “and welcome.”

  The servant boy went out, anyway, and he used to keep a great bicycle, and he got it and cycled into Miltown. And he didn’t go to the parish priest at all—the parish priest in Miltown that time was a bit old—he went to the curate. He knocked, anyway—the servant girl wasn’t gone to bed—and he told her his story and she sent down this curate. This curate was only in Miltown about a year and a half. And that time, priests without power, there wasn’t much thought of ’em, but this curate had a lot o’ power; he had a good few people cured. At that time, a priest without power, you see, he’d be very old when he’d get a parish. Folklore is full o’ the power o’ the priest. Sure you know that.

  Okay, anyway, the servant girl woke the curate, and the curate came down.

&nb
sp; “I know these people well,” says he, “but I don’t know where they live. What way o’ traveling have you?” he said to the servant boy.

  “Oh,” said the servant boy, “bicycle.”

  “Oh, grand,” says the curate. “You’ll show me the road,” says he.

  The two of ’em went out, anyway, and the curate went in the stable and took out a good horse, a good five-year-old Irish draught horse, a good clean-boned horse, and he put the saddle on him.

  And himself and the servant boy rode down the street o’ Miltown as far as Canada Cross, up Faiche na Muc, past the Ballard graveyard, up along, and up the Ballinoe Hill. And they landed near the place where this man lived.

  The servant boy said to the curate, “There’s a stable there. There’s a man gone selling a horse,” says he. “You can put in your horse there.”

  The curate did as he was told. They took off the saddle, and settled the horse, and went in to where the man was dying, in along the road. And the curate was talking away to him and the servant boy talking away to him. They arrived inside, anyway, at the house, and the curate went down and gave him the last rites. And he said the same as the servant boy. He said the man was dying but he might go till the break o’ day.

  And the woman o’ the house was a very friendly woman. She wanted to rise the heat o’ the fire and make tea for him, but he said he wouldn’t, that he wasn’t cold.

  He went out, anyway, and the man o’ the house said to the servant boy, “Go down with that man, now, till he take out the horse and see that he’s all right.”

  And the servant boy said that he would.

  There was about half a mile o’ road into this house—there’s parts o’ the old house there yet; the rest of the place is planted with trees.

  But they went down along the road, anyway, and they were gone about four or five hundred yards when the curate said to the servant boy, “I’m afraid you’ll have to go back.”

  The servant boy said, “Didn’t you hear what the boss said, that I have to go down and settle the horse with you, and get you going for Miltown?”