Meeting the Other Crowd

by Eddie Lenihan

  “Don’t have no fear about that,” said the small man. “When the game is over you can go your way.”

  So he went in. ’Twas in a field just off the road, beside Haugh’s Fort. I know the place well, a fine level field. The fort is there yet, as good as ever. No one ever put a hand to it.

  They had all the field marked out when he went in, goalposts up and all—’twas a hurling match—and they were all there waiting for him, fifteen a side. And they had different colors. They were all dressed in different colors so that he’d make no mistake.

  They had great welcome for him. The two captains stood out, shook his hand. I don’t know did he explain rules or anything like that to them. I s’pose he didn’t.

  But, anyway, he threw in the ball and the game started.

  And ’twas a game! Up and down, and up and down, hell for leather. They were able to play hurling. There was no easy ball there. And every now and again he’d have to blow the whistle—they were fouling one another so much. He was amazed. The size of ’em and they were tougher than the biggest fellows he ever saw playing! Several times he had to warn ’em he’d send ’em off.

  Anyway, he had a pocket watch, so he was keeping the time, and when it came to halftime he got a drink o’ water and all.

  But no one talked to him, and he was wondering what would he do.

  The second half started, and he said to himself, “If I do the wrong thing here am I in trouble? Could they take me away with ’em?”

  He blew the whistle, anyway, and the second half went on. And ’twas up and down, point for point. I think he played twenty minutes a side. He said a half an hour’d be too much for ’em, that they wouldn’t be able to keep going—at least, by the size they were.

  So, the last five minutes was an awful problem to him. He was saying to himself, “If I can at all now, I’ll make this a draw. I’ll be in no trouble then.”

  So, coming up to the last couple o’ minutes, there was one side a point behind and they were pressing and pressing. But the other fullback cleared away out into the center o’ the field. And then, however ’twas done from out there, didn’t the crowd that were behind get a point to level the score.

  He looked at his watch. And there was still a minute or two to go, but he blew the whistle . . . ’twas safer to do it now. He mightn’t get the score level again.

  Well, if he was wondering what they’d do, he needn’t. They all gathered ’round him, and such thanks as they gave him! ’Twas the best match they ever had, they told him, a great night’s entertainment entirely. And they asked him would he come again if they wanted him. He told ’em he would, and glad to. Maybe ’twas glad to escape he was. They went then and left him there.

  But ever after he took a different road to Askeaton.

  To be hijacked on your way home at night by the Good People! No small matter, especially when one of their hurling or football matches is in question. For they take their games deadly seriously. In this case the man in question should have been more careful, since his road home ran right beside a fort, moreover one where he was at a disadvantage, laboring up a hill.

  Yet, the manner in which he answers their call when they summon him proves that obligingness, and after that a cool head, may save one from even dire possibilities.

  And in this case the worst would have been the loss of a hurling match. Obviously the Good People are desperately competitive, and their sports are the traditional Irish ones of hurling, Gaelic football, perhaps wrestling, horse racing—not road bowling, though, since that involves iron or steel, which is anathema to them. And the notion of them playing soccer is . . . is . . . well, odd. So un-Irish as to be almost laughable. It would be the same as them driving cars: somehow ridiculous.

  The man who so successfully referees their game that night on his way home towards Askeaton learns a salutary lesson, though: One meeting with them is enough. He knows well that the next time he may not be so fortunate, and modifies his behavior accordingly.

  “Don’t interfere with ’em. Leave very well alone an’ you’re okay.”

  DRUMLINE, OCTOBER 22, 1999

  A Queer Walk

  THIS MAN who used to live up here in Tullaroe, he had two sisters married over here. He was above in Kilkee this night, and he came along for Tullaroe. And when he came to one house they were in bed.

  “Well,” says he, “I won’t disturb ’em.” So he went to the other sister—she was only the pelt of a stone away, married there, too. And they were asleep. He made for home, anyway. And when he was about a mile down the road, he said he could see the crowd and they were kicking football.

  He said he didn’t get any way upset or afraid, but when he came back as far as Carrigaholt, he said he met a funeral. That’d be about one or two o’clock in the night. And the priests that were in the funeral were dressed in black and white, he said, and they were coming with the hearse. It stirred him up then. He got afraid because he had to go as far as Fódra.

  When he met the funeral he said, “I won’t go no farther. I’ll go in to my friend’s house.”

  So he went in. Wasn’t it a queer walk!

  He lived above there and he told me that one day when we were coming from Kilrush.

  A story such as this one begs several obvious questions: Is the teller, perhaps, telescoping two separate tales, heard at different times in the past, into one? Was the man who told him the story, maybe, so frightened that he became confused? Or was he under the influence of drink on his night journey from Kilkee?

  That a crowd would be playing football at night, or that there would be a mysterious funeral in the dead hours, both of these are well-attested happenings, but that they would occur to the one person on the same journey on a single night, without any negative consequences, seems somehow odd, something of a letdown—showing, maybe, how dependent we are on the teller of a tale for its coherence. But on the other hand, life being by no means as neatly packaged as we might wish, perhaps this is how that man’s journey from Kilkee was that night—a walk with the otherworldly, that of the fairies and that of the dead in succession.

  “They couldn’t be seen, only in the nighttime.”

  KILCOLUM, KILMALEY, AUGUST 11, 1999

  A Skeptic’s Story

  THE GOOD PEOPLE? Well, there was a lot o’ them stories, now, and they were coincidence, I think.

  There was a couple o’ men from here one time . . . at that time you’d have to go into town for a coffin with a horse and car when somebody’d die. There was no hearse or anything else, only the horse and common car. But these two boys went to Gort for a coffin in a horse and car one evening. They took a few extra drinks and ’twas very late when they came back. And coming home, the band came off o’ the wheel. And o’ course, that was it. They couldn’t go any farther. They hit it in a small bit, anyway, and they took off the coffin and they left it beyond there at Waters’ crossing. Then one of ’em went away down for the loan o’ the horse car from the man down the road, d’you see. And they left the coffin there. The other fellow stopped there with the coffin to wait until he came up with the other horse car. And he was sitting down on the coffin, sure, smoking his pipe, when a couple o’ people came along. And, sure, Lord save us, they saw the coffin left down and a man sitting above on it. They definitely did conk out! One of ’em wasn’t in the better o’ that for a long time. He was full sure that ’twas the lad inside came out for a smoke.

  Here we see a seemingly rational man coming to a rational conclusion about what in reality was a case of mistaken identity at night. And his testimony is useful in that it reminds us that, yes, many sightings of strange things at night by travelers in a pre-electric age must have been magnified by their imaginations into whatever they wished to see.

  But his inability or unwillingness to distinguish between the fairy and the ghost world is typical of many Irish people, and even more interestingly, when I asked him a few minutes later whether he believed in retribution by the Good People on those who interf
ered with fairy places, his reply was, “I wouldn’t believe in one bit of it.”

  Yet straightaway, he went on to add that he himself would not interfere with such places, bulldoze a fort, or move it: “I mean, you could trim it up a bit, but I wouldn’t ever agree in taking it away. No. You could be wealthy enough without the little bit o’ land that was taken up with a fort.”

  It is this strange mixture of sentiments and beliefs that I find so fascinating, and which has been far more effective in protecting these sites than the most stringent laws. (To knowingly destroy a fort nowadays carries a penalty of up to €75,000.)

  “I was telling you about the fairies I saw that had the sports in the big field below; they’d remind you much of something you’d see in a film. They flit from A to B. They’re as if they’d be carried in the breeze. That kind o’ thing. But they were there. Sure I saw ’em performing, an’ the races they ran an’ the games they played were all going around in a circle. There was no go two hundred yards on the straight in a race. They went round in circles.”

  DRUMLINE, JULY 10, 2000

  Man Carried to Play Football

  IT HAPPENED about a half a mile up the road there, towards Camp. This man living below here, his daughter was married in Camp, and the mother had something to send down to her, so she asked him to take it down to her.

  “I will, o’ course,” says he. She gave him a sixpence and he went off walking. He found the daughter, anyway. And her husband—they weren’t long married—came up to Camp with him. I don’t know is it Barry’s or Ashe’s pub they went into. ’Twas one o’ the two, anyway, and they had two pints out o’ the sixpence. And they had two pence left. And if they had another halfpenny they could get another pint and halve it.

  But ’twas about ten o’clock when he left the pub and all the drink he had was two pints. He was coming along for Glenagalt and next thing he was taken into this field.

  There was a crowd there, he said, but he didn’t know any of ’em. They were normal size.

  He could hear the ball kicking and any ball that came ’twas a goal. They put him in the goal. Two uprights and a bar across ’em.

  And they were talking and everything, but he couldn’t understand any word o’ what they were saying. He understood, all right, that they wanted him to keep goal. But he didn’t know was there a man in the goalposts on the opposite side o’ the field or not.

  ’Twas nearly two o’clock when he got home. “The wife started at me,” he says, “that we spent the night in Camp drinking.”

  But he went over the following morning then, he said. There was hay cut off o’ that field and a nice bit o’ young grass, but the only place that there was any bit o’ trampling or anything was where he was standing—and he could see the holes for the goalposts.

  So ’twas no dream. But they did him no harm.

  Here we see, once again, that the Good People seem to need a human being if they are to do their business properly, even if the person in question seems to have only a poor grasp of the proceedings. The man in this story seems not to understand their language. Maybe not surprising, this, since the Good People speak Irish. His night visit with them is certainly a confused one. Can he, or can he not, see the football? Does he manage to prevent any scores?

  Yet he can see and hear the players. And, significantly, they are normal human size. He comes to no harm, either, probably because he did not resist their summons.

  And when he checks the place the following day, he finds that, sure enough, the marks of the goalposts are where he recalls them having been. But there are no other player’s footprints there but his own.

  The man who told me this story was ninety-eight at the time and died only in 2000, aged one hundred.

  “The shouts an’ kicking o’ the ball’d be heard. The shouts praising the teams an’ the sound o’ the ball could be heard, but you couldn’t see no people. We heard that.”

  MILTOWN MALBAY, JUNE 27, 1999

  A Midnight Ride

  I WENT OVER to my uncle in Feakle one time, and we went on cuaird 4 one night. And we were coming home about twelve o’clock in the night and this terrible noise came along the road of horses galloping. And my uncle was coming behind me and he says, “Will you come for a drive tonight?”

  “Where?” I said, “Or what?”

  “Oh, you haven’t much time now,” he says. “First horse that’ll pass you, shout, ‘A cap and a horse for me!’ ”

  Faith, no length till the horses came, and I heard my uncle shouting behind me, “A cap and a horse for me!”

  And I shouted the same. The next thing, we were gone. No idea in God’s glory where we went, but we were traveling for a long time. We could be gone back as far as Loughrea. We had terrible jumps here and there—you’d hear an old man shouting now and again to hold the reins tight. We could be back around Loughrea or Ballinasloe, but all of a sudden it stopped. And you could look round. See nothing. You didn’t know in the hell what was up, but there was terrible sound o’ people now and again, great commotion o’ talk.

  But every now and again a light would flash over and hither, and it seems a football match was on. Whether ’twas Cork or Galway or who was at it between the fairies, this huge crowd was inside in a field by the side of a grove. Some of ’em was dressed in white and more in green. But the light’d flash now and again, just to let you see ’twas on. And the terrible shouting was going on inside, every now and again.

  I have no idea how I was able to stick it out, but after about an hour and a half we started again with our horses. An old man came and shouted. They must have won the match. There was terrible shouting started.

  But we came along—I s’pose we had to cross the Shannon. He let one unmerciful shout: “Boys,” he said, “stick tight. This is a big jump!”

  And we landed, I s’pose, in Tipperary or someplace—in across the Shannon. And off we went.

  We was going all night long, until we landed back again to where we were, and felt these things coming down to the ground. And down we was, the very same as when we were picked up, at six o’clock in the morning.

  Wasn’t that something? Wasn’t that an experience! And my uncle says to me, “If they ask you where you was,” he said, “say we were playing cards. Don’t let on we were out driving.”

  So I never told anyone for years where we was that night.

  Not very often does one hear of a person brave (or mad!) enough to invite himself into the fairy host on its travels, but here we have such an account. The older man obviously has gone on such outings previously for he knows the magic formula that will allow them to obtain transport for the night’s adventure. The younger man, however, finds the night frightening, confusing, yet exhilarating, a kaleidoscope of sounds, movements, colors, and impossible feats like jumping the Shannon, the largest river in Ireland.

  No wonder his uncle tells him to mention nothing about where they’ve been all night when they get home!

  Here again we see the competitiveness of the fairies in their games and the long distances they travel on important occasions to meet rival teams and support their own—just like the followers of hurling and Gaelic football to this very day, in fact!

  “They were famous for music. An’ ’twas the pipes the most of ’em played. An’ different people heard it.”

  MILTOWN MALBAY, JUNE 27, 1999

  A Musician’s Story

  I KNOW A MAN, now, that went out in the night, and he heard the music, the violin music, playing. And he was a great musician. Faith, he associated it with the fairies. And I said to him, “Did you bring ever a note out of it?”

  “Believe it or not,” he said, “anytime ever I heard a new tune or music played anywhere, I always brought the air of it. But,” he said, “not as much as a note did I bring out o’ that fairy music.”

  I said, “Would you be able to get your bow and put it on the string on the same note?”

  “Not a hope in hell,” he said.

  And that man wa
s full o’ music, could read music, was a great musician. No! The music, he said, was unnatural, ’twas windy, ’twas very twisty music. So I can understand that he didn’t. Different people, now, that heard music in the night, I asked ’em the very same question: Did they bring a note out of it? And they said no.

  Well, I have an instance o’ something like that myself, now. Take the coral that grows in the coral reef in Australia. If you can break a piece off that coral there’s no known adhesive that’ll stick that. And ’tis like the fairy music. There’s nothing to bond it. The ordinary musician that’ll hear the fairies’ music won’t bring it.

  And if the man I knew couldn’t, no one would. I grant you that.

  On the face of it, this story seems a little unusual, for there are many instances of wonderful music being brought back from the fairy world, such as “The Fairy Reel” or “Port na bPúcaí,” etc. The vital differentiating factor would seem to be that if the music is given freely by the Good People to the human being (as a reward for a favor done, for instance) it will be brought across that divide between their world and ours. Otherwise, as in this case, its complexity defies even the best human musician’s skill.

  Not just to the luxuries of life, like music, does this apply, but to the very basics, like time itself. For a millennium and more Irish people have listened spellbound to stories of The Land of Youth—Tír na nÓg—with their message that to attempt to go beyond our natural sphere of space and time can end only in disappointment and ultimate disaster.

  “There didn’t appear to be any dilapidated people in ’em. They all appeared to be in good shape. They were a lively crowd o’ people, an’ merriment was their business, as far as I could see.”