An Irish Country Christmas

by Patrick Taylor

  ROYAL ICING

  3 egg whites

  575 g/20 oz/2½ cups confectioner’s sugar, sieved

  1½ teaspoon liquid glycerine (optional)

  3 teaspoon lemon juice

  Lightly whisk the egg whites, adding the sugar at intervals. Beat well until the icing reaches soft peaks. Add the glycerine (if using) and the lemon juice.

  MARZIPAN

  150 g/5½ oz/⅔ cup ground almonds

  140 g/5 oz/caster or white sugar

  juice of ½ lemon

  glycerine, 10 drops approximately

  almond or vanilla essence, to taste

  Mix together the ground almonds and sugar. Gradually add the lemon juice and glycerine until you get a marzipan texture. Flavour to taste with almond or vanilla essence.

  ICING THE CAKE

  Place the Christmas cake on a cake plate or foil board. Dust hands with flour and work surface with a little icing sugar. Knead the marzipan (see accompanying recipe) until soft. Roll out half of it to fit the top of the cake and the rest to fit round the sides. Brush the cake with warmed apricot jam and place the marzipan on top. Cover with a tea towel, and leave for four days before covering with the royal icing (see accompanying recipe).

  You can buy marzipan and royal icing or make your own. But whichever you do, please make sure that after you put the marzipan on the cake, you leave it for four days to dry out before you go putting on the royal icing, or you’ll spoil it, so.

  CHRISTMAS PUDDING

  175 g/6 oz/¾ cup soft bread crumbs

  400 ml/1¾ cups milk

  300 g/10½ oz/1¼ cups castor or white sugar

  250 g/9 oz/1 cup suet

  175 g/6 oz/¾ cup plain or all-purpose flour

  ½ teaspoon salt

  1½ teaspoons nutmeg

  175 g/¾ cup grated carrot

  250 g/9 oz/1 cup currants

  250 g/9 oz/1 cup raisins

  175 g/6 oz/¾ cup mashed potato

  75 g/2½ oz/¼ cup candied peel

  3 eggs, beaten

  4 teaspoons treacle or molasses

  Heat milk to boiling point and pour over crumbs in a very large bowl. Add the sugar and leave to soak for ½ hour. Mix in all the other ingredients, except eggs and treacle, mixing very well. Finally add the eggs and treacle and beat very well. Put mixture into greased bowls, cover and steam for 4 hours. Continue to add boiling water from time to time to ensure that it does not boil dry. Makes one very large (1½ litre) pudding or two small ones (2¾ litre).

  You can use special bowls with their own lids, or else cover the bowl with aluminium foil. I use greaseproof paper, then brown paper, and I tie it on with string, making a handle with the string. If you haven’t got a doctor handy, you do need to be very careful with the boiling water, so.

  The pudding matures and tastes much better if you can remember to make it one year to 6 months before you need it.

  On Christmas day steam for a further 2 hours. Turn out and garnish with a sprig of holly.

  BRANDY SAUCE

  55 g/2 oz/4 tbsp butter

  55 g/2 oz/¼ cup plain or all-purpose flour

  570 ml/20 fl oz/2½ cups milk

  55 g/2 oz/¼ cup castor or white sugar

  ¼ cup brandy

  Melt the butter and stir in the flour. Cook for 2 minutes and stir in the milk. Bring to the boil, stirring all the time. Simmer gently for 10 minutes. Stir in the brandy and sugar, and serve with Christmas pudding.

  Now, that’s that done. I’m going to have a nice cup of tea and read a book I got for Christmas from my sister Ailech, who lives in Rosbeg in County Donegal. It’s called The Reivers and it’s by William Faulkner. I did so enjoy his As I Lay Dying.

  And to you I wish success with your cooking and an Athbhliain shona dhuit, a Happy New Year to you all. No doubt you’ll be hearing from me again soon. Sometimes I wonder if that Taylor fellah’s ever going to dry up. He’s as chatty as Cissie Sloan.

  Slán agat.

  Farewell,

  MRS. KINKY KINCAID

  Housekeeper to

  Doctor Fingal Flahertie

  O’Reilly, M.B., B.Ch., B.A.O.

  1, Main Street,

  Ballybucklebo

  County Down

  Northern Ireland

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Doctors Taylor, Laverty, and O’Reilly, Mrs. Kinky Kincaid, and their friends and patients are very pleased to welcome back readers who are already acquainted with Ballybucklebo. They hope that you will enjoy meeting old friends and making fresh ones, visiting familiar places, and exploring new ones. You have seen the townland in summer and autumn. This time it is winter, Christmas is coming, and the geese are getting fat.

  For readers new to rural Ireland in 1964, perhaps a word of explanation from the author might be helpful. To you I offer the following.

  I had just finished a novel, Pray for Us Sinners, a follow-up to Only Wounded, a collection of short stories, both concerning the 1969–1994 Ulster Troubles.

  Concurrently I had been writing a monthly humour column in Stitches: The Journal of Medical Humour, where Doctor Fingal Flahertie O’Reilly and the residents of Ballybucklebo first appeared in 1995. My editor at Insomniac Press read my column and suggested that the characters might form the foundation of a novel. The idea of writing about something lighter than internecine strife was appealing, so An Irish Country Doctor began to take shape.

  Once it was finished, I completed Now and in the Hour of Our Death, the sequel to Pray for Us Sinners, but when that was done I discovered that I was much more fond of pre-Troubles Ballybucklebo than I was of sectarian strife–torn Belfast and County Tyrone. I decided to follow the further doings of the cast of Doctor with An Irish Country Village. An Irish Country Christmas is the third volume of the series.

  In writing the series I have used the Ulster dialect. It is rich and colourful, but often incomprehensible to one not from that part of the world. For those who may have difficulty, I have taken the liberty of appending a glossary (page 485). I have been sparing in my use of the Irish language, which is not spoken by most of the citizens of Northern Ireland.

  The setting is Ballybucklebo, a fictional village in County Down, my own home county. The name came from my high-school French teacher who, enraged by my inability to conjugate irregular verbs, yelled, “Taylor, you’re stupid enough to come from Ballybucklebo.” Those of an etymological bent may wish to know what the name means. Bally (Irish, baile) is a townland—a mediaeval geographic term encompassing a small village and the surrounding farms; buachaill means “boy”; and bó is a cow. Thus Bailebuchaillbó, or Ballybucklebo, means the townland of the boy’s cow.

  Since the publication of the first two novels I have been amazed by the number of my Ulster friends who insist on trying to pinpoint Ballybucklebo as a real village in North Down. It is clear that the old Irish pastime of chasing moonbeams is not yet dead.

  In my darker works I strove to make the setting and events historically accurate. The Irish Country stories take some liberties, and in Ballybucklebo time and place are as skewed as they are in Brigadoon.

  The purist will note that the southern shore of Belfast Lough is devoid of sand dunes. Further round the County Down coast at Tyrella, there are dunes aplenty. No salmon river called the Bucklebo flows through North County Down. The nearest is the Shimna River in the Mourne Mountains, not far from Tyrella. Everything else is as accurate as extensive reading and memory permit.

  I have also taken liberties with Ulster politics. Some say fiction is an outward expression of the author’s wishes. In this work I have portrayed a tolerant place that the majority of people in the north of Ireland would have wanted. Sadly, in that small country in the sixties it could not have existed. The ecumenical spirit exhibited by those on either side of the sectarian divide in Ballybucklebo had little chance to flourish in Northern Ireland—although it could have, but for the bigotted intransigence of a very few people. Fortunately, as I write, it seems that those days are
gone forever.

  I will not miss them, but I do miss the rural Ulster I have portrayed and the Ulster people; indeed I missed one so much that I have returned to Ireland after thirty-seven years in Canada to be with her.

  I know the place I have come back to has changed. The farms and villages still look much as they did, but the simplicity of rural life has been banished by the Troubles and the all-pervasive influence of television. The automatic respect for their learning shown to those at the top of the village pecking order—doctor, teacher, minister, and priest—is a thing of the past, but men like O’Reilly were common when I was a very junior doctor. And on that subject, may I please lay to rest once and for all a question I am frequently asked? Barry Laverty and Patrick Taylor are not one and the same. Doctor F. F. O’Reilly is a figment of my troubled mind, despite the efforts of some of my Ulster friends to see in him a respected—if unorthodox—medical practitioner of the time.

  Lady Macbeth does owe her being to a demoniacally possessed white cat, Minnie. Arthur Guinness is a reincarnation of a black Labrador with the same name, now long gone, but who had an insatiable thirst for Foster’s lager. All the other characters are composites, drawn from my imagination and from my experiences as a rural GP.

  Today’s medical graduate would not recognize the conditions under which medicine was practiced in the sixties. Only five years earlier than this story the link between thalidomide and birth defects had been established. In 1963 the first cadaver kidney transplant had been performed in Leeds, and in 1965 cigarette advertising was banned from British television. It was not until 1967 that Doctor Christiaan Barnard gave Louis Washkansky the first heart transplant. This was followed by the first heart-lung transplant in 1971. We had to wait until 1978 for the birth of the world’s first baby conceived by in vitro fertilization.

  Diagnostic tests were rudimentary, both in the laboratory and in imaging departments. In 1979 Godfrey Hounsfield was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine for the invention of computerized axial tomography, the CAT scan. The eighties, the decade that saw the identification of the AIDS virus, was also the time lasers began to appear in operating rooms.

  By today’s standards, medicine was in its infancy, and much depended on the clinical skills of the Doctor O’Reillys. They practiced a very different brand of medicine on real people, whose feelings and lives were as important as the diseases that afflicted them.

  Doctor O’Reilly has asked me to tell you he hopes you will have as much fun in Ballybucklebo as he has.

  PATRICK TAYLOR

  Cootehall,

  County Roscommon,

  Republic of Ireland

  GLOSSARY

  The Ulster dialect, properly called Ulster-Scots, is rich and colourful but can be confusing. Like all patois, Ulster-Scots is not one bit shy about adopting useful phrases from other dialects. For example, the reader should not be surprised to find examples of Cockney rhyming slang here.

  acting the goat: Behaving foolishly.

  apples and pears: Cockney rhyming slang for stairs.

  argy-bargy: Voluble disagreement.

  arse: Backside (impolite).

  aunt Fanny Jane, my: Nonsense.

  away off and chase yourself: Go away.

  away off and feel your head: You’re being stupid.

  away on: I don’t believe you.

  bamboozle: Deliberately confuse.

  banaher, to beat: Exceed any reasonable expectations.

  bangers: Sausages.

  banjaxed: Exhausted or broken.

  banshee: Female spirit whose moaning foretells death.

  bap, to lose the: To be temporarily out of control.

  barmbrack: Speckled bread.

  bashtoon: Bastard.

  beagle’s gowl: Very long way; the distance over which the cry of a beagle can be heard.

  bee on a hot brick: Running round distractedly.

  bee’s knees: The very best.

  bee’s knees, he thinks he’s the: He’s conceited.

  bigger fish to fry: More important matters to attend to.

  bind: Cure diarrhea or cause constipation.

  bit my head off: Expressed anger by shouting or being very curt.

  bloater: Salted and smoked herring.

  bletherskite: Nonstop talker.

  blow you out: Tell you to go away.

  bob, a few: One shilling; a sum of money.

  bodhrán: Irish. Pronounced “bowron.” A circular handheld drum.

  boke: Vomit.

  bollocks: Testicles (impolite). May be used as an expression of vehement disagreement or to describe a person you disapprove of; for example, “He’s a right bollocks.”

  bonnet: Hood of a car.

  boot: Trunk of a car.

  both legs the same length: Standing about uselessly.

  boul’: Bold.

  bowsey: Dublin slang, drunkard.

  boys-a-boys, boys-a-dear: Expressions of amazement.

  brass neck: Impertinence, chutzpah.

  bravely: Feeling well.

  breeze blocks: Cinderblocks

  bun, done a: Ran away.

  buck eejit: Imbecile.

  bun in the oven: Pregnant (impolite).

  cailín: Irish. Pronounced “cawleen.” Girl.

  call the cows home: Be ready to tackle anything.

  capped: A cap was awarded to athletes selected for important teams. Equivalent to a letter at an American university.

  carrageen moss: An edible seaweed.

  caubeen: Traditional Irish bonnet.

  casualty: Emergency room.

  céili: Irish. Pronounced “kaylee.” Party, usually with music and dancing.

  champ: A dish of buttermilk, butter, potatoes, and chives.

  chemist: Pharmacist.

  chiseller: Dublin slang, a small child.

  chuntering: Talking nonstop.

  clabber: Glutinous mess of mud, or mud and cow clap.

  clatter, a brave: A large quantity.

  colloguing: Chatting about trivia.

  conkers: Horse chestnuts. Used to play a children’s game.

  coortin’: Paying court to. See also walk out with.

  cow’s lick: Tuft of hair that sticks up, or hair slicked over to one side.

  cracker: Excellent (see also wheeker).

  craking on: Talking incessantly.

  crayture: Creature. Equivalent to North American “critter.”

  craytur, a drop of the: Whiskey.

  crick in the neck or back: Painful strain.

  crúibins: Irish. Pronounced “crubeen.” Boiled pigs’ feet, served cold and eaten with vinegar.

  cure, wee: Hair of the dog.

  dab hand: Skilled at.

  damper: Device for restricting the flow of air to a coal or turf fire to slow the rate of burning.

  dander: Literally, horse dandruff. Used to signify either a short leisurely walk or anger. For example, “He really got my dander up.”

  dead on: A strong affirmative or excited acceptance of good news. Equivalent to “I totally agree” and “That’s marvelous.”

  dibs: A claim upon.

  didny; didnae: Did not.

  divil: Devil.

  divil the bit: None. For example, “He’s divil the bit of sense.” (He’s stupid.)

  doddle: A short distance or an easy task.

  do-re-mi: Money. Equivalent of North American “dough.”

  dosh: Money.

  dote: Something adorable.

  dote on: Worship.

  do with the price of corn: Irrelevant.

  dozer, no: No fool.

  drill-the-dome boys: Medical slang, neurosurgeons. See also nutcracker.

  drouth, raging: Pronounced “drewth.” Alcoholic.

  drúishin: Irish. Pronounced “drisheen.” Dish made of cows’ blood, pigs’ blood, and oatmeal. A Cork City delicacy.

  dudeen: Short-stemmed clay pipe.

  dulse: A seaweed, which when dried is eaten like chewing gum.

  dummy
tit: Baby’s pacifier.

  duncher: Cloth cap, usually tweed.

  dunder: Forcible thump.

  Dun Laoghaire: Port near Dublin. Pronounced “dun leery.”

  eejit: Idiot.

  egg-bound hen: A hen with an egg that cannot be laid stuck in the oviduct. Applied to a person, it suggests extreme distress.

  fag: Cigarette.

  fall off the perch: Die.

  feck, fecking: Dublin corruption of “fuck” and “fucking.”

  fenian: Catholic (pejorative).

  field, the: A place where Orange Lodges and bands congregate after the Twelfth of July parade.

  finagle: Achieve by cunning or dubious means.

  fist of, to make a good: Do a fine job.

  fit to be tied: Very angry.

  flex: Plug-in cable of an electrical appliance or light.

  flies, none on: Smart. Streetwise.

  flying: Drunk.

  fornenst: Besides.

  foundered: Chilled to the marrow.

  full of it: Being either stupid or excessively flattering.

  gander: Take a look at.

  get (away) on with you: Don’t be stupid.

  get on one’s wick: Get on one’s nerves.

  give over: Stop it.

  glipe, great: Stupid or very stupid person.

  gobshite: Dublin slang used pejoratively about a person. Literally, dried nasal mucus.

  good man ma da: Expression of approval.

  grand man for the pan: One who really enjoys fried food.

  great: The ultimate Ulster accolade; can be used to signify pleased assent to a plan.

  grotty: English slang. Run-down and dirty.

  guard’s van: Caboose.

  gub: Mouth.

  gub, a good dig in the: A punch in the mouth.