Old Friends: The Lost Tales of Fionn Mac Cumhaill

by Tom O'Neill

  There were several thousand of them on the island and none anywhere else in the world that they knew of, they said. Though, in fact, none of them had been anywhere else in the world. Nearly half of them had blue stripes instead of orange. There didn’t appear to be any chief. They all referred to each other as ‘Your Highness’. The young had only two arms and sprouted the third as they stopped running and became wiser.

  Mac Cumhaill took the fathach s to meet his friends. The fishermen were very nervous at first. But the fathach s kept bringing them treats – special fruits from hidden corners of the island. Soon all fear was forgotten and the people started trusting in a way that adult humans had forgotten how to.

  Of all of them, the oldest one, Nóirín’s Caoimhín, became completely at peace here. Maybe, being the oldest, he had had the heaviest load of mistrust to lose and was the most relieved to be in a place where you didn’t always have to be careful what you thought or what you said.

  The days and nights slipped by without them even noticing. They explored all day, often carried around by the fathach s. At night they sat looking out at the sea. They tried to light a fire on the first night that they spent with the fathach s, but realised that the fathach s were terrified of it. So they didn’t do that again. Anyway, there was no need for fires. It was warm enough. They were eating and drinking plenty, and then sleeping well.

  Eventually, Mac Cumhaill said, ‘We’ve all got people and tasks that need us, and it’s time for us to bid farewell to this kind place and to go back to our hard world.’

  The fishermen sighed, but once they realised how much time had slipped by, the thoughts of how their families would be worried to despair convinced them to get back into the boat without hesitation. All except the old man, Nóirín’s Caoimhín. His sons and grandsons argued with him and pleaded with him, but there was no way they were going to persuade him. One of them even tried to wrestle him into the boat, but he soon learned what strength could be in a wiry old body.

  After watching this quietly for a while, Mac Cumhaill said to them, ‘I can see you love the elder and that he loves you all. But what more could you want for him? Have you seen him as happy and free from aches and sorrows? And he’ll never forgive you if you bring him back.’

  Eventually, after each receiving a blessing and hearing old stories they’d never heard before, they said their tearful goodbyes to old Caoimhín, and loaded up some fruits and seeds of apple trees that they hoped might grow back in Corca Dhuibhne. Strangely, as they nosed the boat down out through the little estuary, the sea again became as calm as a pond and the journey home seemed shorter.

  When they got home, there was great celebration. It had long ago been assumed that the heartless sea had taken more victims. The village had started to blame Mac Cumhaill for persuading the men to go out further than they knew was safe.

  Now that they were back, few people believed their story. All the fruits had rotted away within an hour of leaving the island. And Nóirín’s Caoimhín was missing.

  When the fishermen attempted to take other people out to the peaceful fathachs’ island, they couldn’t find it again. No matter how far out they dared to go, they could not get to the calm waters.

  Most people then assumed that the old man had fallen overboard and that Mac Cumhaill had somehow managed to keep them alive at sea for weeks while they searched the dark waters in vain for old Caoimhín’s body. It was said in the village that because the Cinnéide boys couldn’t bear to think of him dead, they had come up with this story to comfort themselves. And nobody faulted them for that because it was a part of the country in which a good story was always appreciated, regardless of how concentrated or diluted the truth it contained.

  But those fishermen and their sons knew the island existed and the rumours are that it still appears from time to time. Some descendents of those Cinnéide men believe that when a fishing boat disappears in stormy weather, the fishermen end up being taken to the beautiful island of the peaceful fathach s.

  When Dark sat up in the misty blackness, a cock pheasant that had come down from its roost was eyeing him very curiously.

  He made his way home.

  The next day, Dark’s mother dropped him at the start of the town leaving him to walk that last bit to school.

  ‘Sorry, Arthur,’ she said in a kind of embarrassed tone, ‘I’m just in a rush today.’

  Dark knew she didn’t want to meet the principal again. He scared her. But she didn’t think she could say that to Dark. Dark didn’t see anything wrong with that. Magill had that effect on most people.

  As she pulled off, he looked up the town where little groups of lads and girls were walking vaguely towards the school, with their hands in their pockets, barely talking, looking at the ground, some worried about uniform, some worried about homework and some still half asleep. He looked back in the other direction, past the speed limit sign, and saw the road closing in with cow-parsley and bushes that couldn’t be cut back till the autumn because they were full of nesting birds and hedgehogs and maybe further back towards the covert, a den of fox cubs. The choice was easy enough. Once he got in off the road at the first field gate, he was out of sight of the curious. He knew a shortish way back across the fields. It would only take him a few hours.

  He got a little lost, and found himself in fields he didn’t know. He panicked at first, going through hedges and doubling back, trying to find something familiar. Then he remembered the advice Connie used to give – always go back to the Brown River when you’re lost. Then the only thing you have to figure out is which direction to follow it in so that it takes you in under the Rocky Field. And as Connie said, ‘if you can’t figure that much out you may as well go and shite’.

  When he found his way back to the stream, he went to a grassy shelf partway down the bank, out of view. He sat down and took out his lunch. He stayed there a good while watching a large salmon that seemed to have no plan other than to stay flicking his tail barely enough to keep him stationary against the flow. The water was deep and brown. It was beyond time and caring, oblivious to concerns of any kind. The sun was warm. Flies were busy. A water hen kept bobbing in and out of the reeds to see if she should be bothered about his presence. He could see he would be spending a lot of school time here in future. Tomorrow he might bring his telescopic rod and a tin of worms in the rucksack.

  In the afternoon, as he wandered home, he texted his mother to say he’d got a lift from a lad who lived further up the road, so she didn’t need to pick him up. He had all his farm work done without any pressure. And he still had time to watch some TV. This was definitely a much better way to spend a day.

  In the rath that night, the goblet girl looked more perfect than ever before. Dark could hardly keep from glancing at her, even though she caught him every time. The red-haired woman threw something on the fire and it blazed up brighter than ever. Through the flames, as the Old Man cleared his throat, Dark could see a man fishing very contentedly in a small stream that looked very like the one at the edge of the bog.

  The Luck of the Lúdramán

  It’s true that Mac Cumhaill had some unnatural gifts that have often been spoken of. Indeed, he sometimes regarded that little bag of inheritances as a curse. He achieved most things in his life fair and square. But whenever he won a contest in battle, begrudgers like Goll would mumble that he must have used the magic spear. When he won a fishing or hunting contest he had heard of people putting it about that he consorted with dark forces. Whenever he won a board game his opponent would claim he had put the thumb of knowledge in his gob. There was one occasion, however, when the thumb story caused difficulties of a different kind.

  Gearraí was a man from Fotharta who hadn’t landed in this world with an over-abundance of sense. While many children would touch their thumbs off every fish they saw, on the off-chance of getting a taste of Fionn’s wisdom, Gearraí still fully believed this was possible at the age of fifty. And he was still fishing, still hoping. Every dayl
ight hour of his life. In fairness, he needed the top-up of wisdom more than most.

  One thing he wasn’t short on, however, was patience. He had never really figured out how to catch a fish, any fish, after all those years. Even though kindly friends tried to explain to him the sorts of things that might actually tempt a fish to bite into his hook, he still tried his own things.

  One unfortunate day, a sea witch, a bandraoi of the lowest order, happened to be in the waters of Éire. There were unnatural storms at sea that summer and she’d decided to move up into the rivers and streams for a spell. And in the way that bad luck operates, this lady happened to find her way into the very stream in which Gearraí was always fishing. That day, he was dangling a bit of old leather on the end of his fishing line. The bandraoi could take many forms, but generally she moved around as a dogfish, hiding in murky waters, sustaining herself on decaying rats and ducklings.

  The bandraoi was going along in the dirty drain where Gearraí was fishing. The boys with him should have guessed there was something dangerous in the water, as a family of otters sprang to the bank, panicked by something, and headed into nearby bushes.

  The bandraoi was bored and irritated. Gearraí’s bit of leather strap swung in front of her, and she snapped at it crankily. The first fish the unfortunate man had ever caught in his fifty years. The hook stuck in her. She now became very, very cross indeed and gave a big pull, lodging the hook painfully into her.

  Gearraí was so excited that he almost fell into the drain. He started screaming at his friends, ‘I’ve cotch him, I’ve cotch him, I’ve cotch the salmon, I’ve cotch the salmon of knowledge.’

  Two of his friends came and showed him how to pull in his fish. They were surprised at how strongly the fish was pulling – they didn’t think anything other than frogs and eels lived in that dirty little stream.

  When the fish eventually came to shore, one of Gearraí’s best friends, a six-year-old boy called Oscar, said, ‘Sorry Gearraí, but that’s not a salmon.’

  Gearraí was very disappointed, and he argued with the boys as they looked at the big ugly fish jumping around on the grass.

  ‘Maybe it’s just a different shaped salmon, because it’s stuffed out of shape with all the knowledge and all.’

  Oscar and the other little boys felt sorry for Gearraí, since he had been waiting his whole life for this. So they told him that maybe if he cooked it up and tasted it, he might just get lucky.

  Gearraí brightened up. He set about creating a fire. But all the sticks he used were wet twigs from the stream. And his efforts to light them eventually tired him. In the end, he gave up. He decided he could cook the fish with the heat from his breath. He started blowing on it and saying ‘Come on little salmon, cook, cooook.’

  The bandraoi had planned to lie there till nobody was looking, and then to make her escape unnoticed. But the stink of Gearraí’s breath was too much for her. A shrill curse broke out from the fish and the bandraoi emerged in full shape. She was a rather pale-faced lady with long yellow hair and thin legs sticking out under a sea-green tunic. She did not have a happy look in her eyes.

  Gearraí still thought he had a chance and went up to the bandraoi, touched her with his thumb, and sucked his thumb to see if he could get any knowledge. This bandraoi did not have a kind nature and she was so angered by Gearraí’s slowness that she couldn’t bring herself to just fly away and leave the situation alone. So incensed was she that she didn’t even think of putting a spell on him immediately. Instead, she started hopping around the place in her rage, slapping him on the head with some kind of beaded rope and saying ‘You stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid creature.’

  Poor Gearraí wasn’t even smart enough to know how to get away. He kept running around in circles and she kept getting madder and slapping him harder.

  The boys looked on in terror at this. They had never seen a bad bandraoi before, let alone a fish that turned into a woman of any kind. But Oscar had the wisdom to run for help. By the strangest of good fortune, he only ran a few minutes when he bumped into two old ladies walking the pathways of Éire, as they had always done since time began. Although Oscar didn’t know it, his appeal for help was addressed to two of the finest healing bandraois who had ever stood on hind legs. The ladies didn’t like the sound of what Oscar was telling them, and they came with him quickly.

  The bad cailleach was so consumed by tormenting Gearraí that she didn’t notice the time passing or didn’t notice the arrival of her colleagues. The old women found her still raging and still slapping Gearraí, now with her fists, a trickle of blood coming from the corner of her mouth where she had pulled out the hook.

  Good women though they might have been, there was very little healing in the spell they hit the younger woman with. They uttered a few unintelligible words and the other woman collapsed into the form of a mud minnow. Gearraí looked down at it, still bewildered. One of the ladies hobbled up and flicked the minnow with her stick, landing it expertly in the stream. A small pike happened to be passing and gobbled the bandraoi minnow in one mouthful.

  Oscar had an idea. He pleaded with the old healing ladies to make a spell to give Gearraí some wits.

  ‘Wouldn’t it be a nice thing for him as he heads into his old age?’ said the boy.

  The taller one laughed. ‘Putting wisdom into that head would be beyond our greatest efforts.’

  ‘Besides,’ said the other to Oscar, ‘you are a bright lad but you, too, have a lot to learn. Sometimes it is best to leave well enough alone. How do you know that wisdom would improve his lot? Gearraí might not have the knowledge of the salmon but he is blessed with the ignorance of the earthworm and that seems to bring him more bliss.’

  When the little boys and the old women looked over at Gearraí, none of them could doubt these words. Despite being streaked with bruises, Gearraí was smiling again, putting a piece of grass on his fishing hook and going back to try to catch another salmon of knowledge, completely forgetting the whole episode he’d just been through.

  ‘Furthermore,’ said the other woman, ‘he is blessed with the luck of the lúdramán. There aren’t many men alive who can say they stuck a hook in the palette of a beautiful bandraoi, tried to cook her alive, and are still in one piece after it all.’

  In school Dark was braced for some drama. Miss Sullivan always interrogated people who had been out sick, convinced that overprotective parents kept them away ‘at the slightest sniffle’.

  He wasn’t too troubled. As a token, he had written a note to say he had been sick the previous day. He hadn’t spent very long doing it, so it probably didn’t look too much like his mother’s writing. But what did he care? He would ride on through; whatever.

  He was surprised, though. Sullivan never asked him a thing. None of the usual, ‘Well, look here, look who has decided to honour us with their company. Let me guess: you were looking a little pale and Mammy thought you might be coming down with Ebola? Or maybe your Daddy couldn’t find a plank to block a gateway from his cows so he kept you home instead?’ None of that. Not a word.

  She was almost nicer to him than usual. She asked everyone else about homework before getting to him. Almost like she was giving him the signal that she wouldn’t have an issue if he went missing again. Eventually, of course, she did ask him.

  ‘Well, yourself,’ she said in a very controlled tone, ‘did you manage any of the homework?’

  ‘No, Miss.’

  ‘Might I ask why not?

  ‘Because I wasn’t here yesterday.’

  Dark didn’t see any reason to avoid the issue, even if she wanted to.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because I decided to go fishing, Miss.’

  Although Dark wasn’t trying to amuse anyone, the others started shouting and laughing.

  She waited for that to settle down and then said very calmly, ‘You do know when you are out you are still supposed to phone someone else to find out what the homework was.’

  ‘Sor
ry, Miss, but I didn’t want to do that.’

  ‘OK, well… well, try to remember next time.’

  The message couldn’t have been clearer. She didn’t even shout or pass a sarcastic comment as she opened the door to the corridor for him.

  That was all grand until break time. During break, David Cash came up to him. David was in the same class, but he was two years older than the rest of them. He went in for being hardy. He looked like he’d been shaving for years and he was stockier and stronger than them. And until recently he had been the tallest. He liked to push other lads around. Some lads called him names behind his back. He was half deaf and wasn’t sure who was slagging him and who wasn’t, so he would randomly come up to people, making out that he thought they had been insulting him; grabbing people and saying, ‘Com’ere, what did you say about me?’

  Nobody was very fond of him.

  Cash was always in trouble with Sullivan too. He had missed a lot of time. People said his family moved around. And he wasn’t really able to do any reading or writing. Though he was able to do all sums in his head and he seemed to know everything there was to know about jet engines, World War II and horses.

  He came up to Dark and said, ‘Here, McLean, how come she always sends you out and she never sends me out?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Dark.

  It was peculiar, right enough. Sullivan certainly told them often enough that they were no better than each other.

  ‘Neck and neck for the prize for the thickest plank I’ve ever had the misfortune to teach.’

  Dark was never sure which of them she thought would be insulted.

  ‘I’d feckin’ much sooner be out here or outside altogether than packed all day into that glass cage,’ said Cash.

  For some reason, he was angry with Dark about this. Dark said nothing.