Old Friends: The Lost Tales of Fionn Mac Cumhaill

by Tom O'Neill

  The only problem was that he still couldn’t sleep. He tossed even more and moaned and grumbled until he felt a tapping on his shoulder. He turned viciously.

  ‘Hey, let go, let go,’ shouted the shadow looming above him.

  Reluctantly Balor opened his ferocious little jaws and released the man’s long, bony hand from his teeth. Luckily Balor’s teeth were blunt from many years of doing one of his favourite tricks – cutting through the ropes that visitors used to tie their boats in harbours in Éire. Still, the old man who stepped into the moonlight looked cranky and kept shaking his badly bruised hand.

  He picked Balor up by the hair and held him at arm’s length. Balor was kicking the air and screaming curses. The old man eventually started laughing at him.

  When Balor finally calmed down, the man, who had a grey beard that trailed to the ground, said that he had overheard Balor’s grumbles and wanted to help him.

  ‘I’ll tell you what you’ll do,’ said Balor, getting mad again and punching wildly. ‘You can go and jump off the top of a cliff. Balor don’t need help from an old wreck of a human.’

  ‘Stop, stop, stop your nonsense now,’ said the old man. ‘There’s no time to lose.’

  Balor quietened, temporarily. He heard the authority and the hint of danger from the depths of the old man’s voice.

  ‘I’m Hanlon, a humble man,’ said the old fellow.

  Balor’s eyes lit up. Everyone in the worlds beyond humans knew Hanlon. Few had ever met him. He was a roaming spirit of the Dé Danann. He was said to be able to appear in many forms but only rarely appeared at all. The woods were his domain and he was usually visible only to the birds.

  Balor saw possibilities here. But that didn’t stop him being rude.

  ‘Aye, and I’m Balor, who has no time for modesty. I’m the trickiest little fairy man in the land.’

  ‘Is that so?’ asked Hanlon.

  ‘Listen, any chance you’d help me with a few things, you being so great at magic and all that?’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Hanlon cautiously. ‘As long as you cooperate with me. What do you want to know?’

  ‘How can I make an egg go rotten while it is still inside the hen?’

  ‘Only by killing the hen before she lays and leaving them both to rot.’

  ‘Thanks very much,’ snarled Balor. ‘Don’t try too hard to help me, now, in case you injure yourself.’

  ‘Quiet with the smart talk,’ commanded Hanlon. ‘You’ve made your decision and if you were truly bad we both know that you’d be in the company of someone else now and not here prattling to me. So tell me the full story of what our friend Saile has planned, so we can save the people of Tara.’

  ‘There’s no point,’ said Balor, ‘they’re not worth saving. The blackguards don’t want to believe me so they can get along without Balor’s help.’

  ‘We’ll go together and they’ll listen,’ said Hanlon.

  ‘First, tell me how I could make a pike bite a lump out of a man’s leg when he’s standing in the river trying to spear a salmon. How can I make pimples grow bigger on a youngster’s face? How would you make a cow mix her piss with her milk just to give a farmer a nice surprise when he goes to milk her? What is the best concoction to make a pompous druid’s fart so foul that he clears all living creatures from fifty paces around him?’

  Hanlon didn’t answer.

  As they flitted through the countryside with Balor’s head sticking out through Hanlon’s beard, Balor filled Hanlon in on all the details he hadn’t already overheard.

  When they approached the fortress, Balor started kicking up a fuss. He wanted Hanlon to put some tricky curse on Cullen.

  ‘Just make his toes webbed and stick him to the ground, or... or make hair sprout out of his eyes, or... ’

  ‘Quiet,’ said Hanlon, pushing Balor back into the beard, and walking straight past the guards and through the closed doors completely unnoticed.

  They went straight to Dreoilín’s quarters. Dreoilín awoke and looked around, at first seeing no-one. Then he saw. Balor dropped quietly to the floor and watched. Dreoilín was thrilled by the presence of the ancestral spirit.

  Hanlon introduced Balor and told Dreoilín that, despite what everyone thought of him, he was a good little rogue. Balor expected Dreoilín to set Hanlon straight. After all, there were many times when Balor had tormented the life out of Dreoilín, stealing his potions and tying his long hair to his bed head.

  But Dreoilín just looked down and said, ‘I suppose we all know that. That’s why I didn’t turn you into a bar of soap the last time you put itchy dandelion powder into my sandals.’

  Balor was somewhat upset at his loss of bad reputation. But right now, he wanted to get the business of Saile off his mind. Hanlon, who would not meet any humans, asked Dreoilín to take Balor to Mac Cumhaill with the story.

  Dreoilín left Balor with Mac Cumhaill, telling him everything he knew about Saile’s movements and what his intentions were. In the meantime, Dreoilín went back to his rooms to work with Hanlon on something that would protect people from Saile’s blinding flashes.

  By morning, Mac Cumhaill had a group of men ready and Dreoilín had a protective ointment prepared. Hanlon had disappeared back to the woods, his work done. Mac Cumhaill wanted to march straight into Saile’s hideout and to take him back to Tara for the king to decide his fate.

  But the rogue in Balor was still alive and well, and he wanted it done differently. Since he’d done such good work, Mac Cumhaill decided to let him have some entertainment.

  Mac Cumhaill and Balor went to Saile’s house.

  Balor shouted, ‘Saile, my old friend, come out and see what I’ve brought you.’

  Saile was cautious – that was how he had got to be such an old wizard. There was no answer.

  Balor shouted again, ‘Saile, I’ve brought you a gift.’

  Still no answer, but Mac Cumhaill spotted a shadowy movement behind a hole in the wall of the hovel.

  Then came Saile’s sickly voice, ‘Balor, little... em... friend, I thought you were lost. What exactly have you brought me and who is your giant, oafish friend?’

  ‘Oh, he’s just a fellow I thought you might like to try your special charms on.’

  ‘Aha!’ said Saile, throwing the ash plank back from the doorway. ‘Excellent thinking, my little dwarfish brother, excellent.’

  Saile walked to within two paces of Mac Cumhaill and then pulled his hand from his pocket, and released something into the air. A flash of white light seemed to fill the whole space around them, just as Balor had said.

  ‘Oh, no,’ whimpered Mac Cumhaill, with his arms outstretched. ‘What has happened?’

  Saile cackled. ‘Now,’ he said, walking right up to Mac Cumhaill, ‘let me see what this big galoot can do without his sight.’

  He started poking his stick at Mac Cumhaill. Fionn danced this way and that, trying to get away from his tormentor and tripping over stones and bushes as he did. Balor joined in, of course, unable to let such a good opportunity to annoy Mac Cumhaill pass him by. He kicked Mac Cumhaill very hard in the shins. He threw stones at him. He scrawbed him with a briar and rubbed nettles on him, laughing like a lunatic all the time.

  Eventually, the cautious and cowardly Saile was convinced that the big man was helpless, and he came right up. He grabbed hold of Mac Cumhaill’s spear saying, ‘I’ll have that if you please’.

  ‘Let me advise you friend,’ Mac Cumhaill said, the play-acting gone from his voice, ‘it will be a matter of great regret if that spear parts company with me.’

  ‘Oh, you’ll have it back in a minute,’ laughed Saile, as he gave a big tug which he assumed would remove the weapon from the blind man, ‘but it will be in your heart and not in your hand.’

  ‘That spear was my father’s and it is loyal,’ said Mac Cumhaill more quietly.

  ‘Let go, let go, you fool,’ said Saile. ‘Here Balor, throw more rocks at him or something to make him let go. He’s starting to stare at m
e as if he can see, and it’s starting to scare me.’

  Balor was an expert rock thrower. He picked a nicesized one, took aim and hit Saile very hard in his flabby belly. Saile bent over crying out, ‘FOOL! Fool! I might as well kill you now rather than later, as you’re no use to me.’

  Saile made one last grab for Mac Cumhaill’s spear, this time intent on impaling the bad púca on it. But as he did so, he finally realised that Mac Cumhaill was indeed staring straight at him. What was worse, he had the same big grin on his face as the púca had. By the time Saile had realised he had been outsmarted by the púca, Mac Cumhaill had already introduced himself.

  Saile was put in a large cabbage bag and transported to Tara. The fact that he had shown his intention to kill both Mac Cumhaill and Balor in front of the several witnesses who sat in the bushes absorbing the entertainment did not go well for him. The brehon s presiding had no doubt at all that he was a truly bad fellow, and he was condemned to working for life as a slave to a friendly dragon who lived in a remote cave in Alban.

  Balor’s heart gave a little twinge of jealousy when he heard the king pronounce that Saile was the worst black-guard of a man he’d come across in a long time. But he also enjoyed the party that Mac Cumhaill and the king threw for him at Tara. He became very friendly with Conán, and spent the entire evening sitting on an arm of the king’s throne, with Conán on the other side, encouraging him and breaking up with mad laughter as the fear dearg passed rude comments about the king and all of his guests. Whenever the king got tired of mischief and practical jokes in the castle, he would send Balor away on holidays to visit the castles of royals whom Cormac considered boring. Balor would usually arrive back refreshed, with a message sincerely and regretfully breaking the news to Cormac that the little gentleman musician whom Cormac had lent them had not quite behaved himself in an exemplary fashion while he was abroad. The king could recount nearly all of these messages, word for word, as they amused him greatly.

  As he left the rath, lonely again, Dark was thinking he should have made some effort to defend himself against Cash. He should have felt angrier. He was starting to feel angry now – for all the good that was – with himself, mostly. Just because someone else was having a bad day, why did he always just suck it up?

  He remained cross as he fed the calves, not even talking to any of them as they pucked the buckets and looked up at him, expecting more.

  As usual, Dark was in the schoolyard before most of the others, as his mother had to get to work early. So was David Cash, as usual, even though he walked to school.

  For a while, Cash stayed at the other side of the yard, kicking a Coke can against the wall to keep his feet warm. But then he wandered over when he thought no one else was looking and sort of slapped Dark on the back and said, ‘Sorry, Art. Sorry about that yesterday. Are you alright?’

  ‘The finest,’ said Dark.

  ‘I’ll make it up to you,’ said Cash earnestly.

  ‘No need,’ said Dark.

  ‘I will. If you ever want a pup, just tell me. It’s just I was scared about the phone. It wasn’t really my phone. It’s the uncle’s. I don’t have a phone at all.’

  ‘By the way, it was Magill broke it,’ said Dark.

  ‘Oh, Jaysus, so that only makes it all the worse what I done to you. Oh, man. Maybe Magill is right about me. Maybe I am just as thick as horse shite and I probably am going to end up in jail.’

  ‘Don’t listen to anything Magill says to you. He knows nothing about anything.’ Dark was surprised at himself saying so much.

  ‘Do you reckon?’ said Cash, staring intensely at him, trying to figure out whether Dark was making fun of him.

  ‘What kind of pups have you got, anyway?’ said Dark, trying to take the uncomfortable seriousness out of the conversation. He didn’t like serious conversations.

  Cash brightened up, ‘All sorts. Brindles and blacks and little terriers. All classes. The loveliest pups you ever seen. And all out of great rabbiters. Come back with me some day after school and I’ll show you.’

  ‘I will,’ said Dark.

  Cash started to wander off again, and as he got a distance away, he turned and shouted in his usual voice, ‘By the way Dark, you nearly broke me leg with that kick, ya crafty hure.’

  In maths class, things were back to normal. Miss Sullivan got in a rage with Dark over nothing much and sent him out to his usual place. Out in the corridor, Dark gave a lot of thought to how well a little greyhound might settle in at home with Georgina and Psycho, the two old collies.

  As the break approached, the thought struck him that he would be better off talking to the dogs themselves. And he’d better talk to Niamh too.

  He slipped into the classroom once Sullivan had headed for the staffroom. He picked up his bag and went out. He went to the back of the school, as the staffroom window looked out on the front gates. As he headed quickly to the hedge at the back, Ciara spotted him and said, ‘Hey Arthur’.

  He stopped and feebly said, ‘Hi’.

  Then he kept going. As he pushed his way to make a gap in the bushes, which he was fairly expert at by now, he heard some of the sixth-year lads who were smoking at the back of the oil tank shouting, ‘Hey look at McLean go!’ and ‘Good man, Dark!’

  Cheering struck up, sure to draw the attention of old Úna who was on yard duty. It didn’t matter. He was out of there very fast and made his way quickly across the fields, over two further ditches and a six-foot-high stone wall. Within three minutes he was in the clear, back out on the road to the Brown River, a half a mile outside the town.

  He had the telescopic rod with him this time, but he didn’t get a nibble. It was too sunny. He headed on home.

  When he got there, he went straight into the house to see the collies and get some crisps to add to his sandwich. When he had eaten, he put on his wellies to go out and bring some meal to Niamh in the back garden.

  Niamh had been Connie’s favourite cow. She had a lot of grey in her coat – apparently she had some of an old shorthorn strain in her – and the kindest, gentlest eyes Dark had ever seen in any creature, human or otherwise. But she hadn’t gone in calf this year. Brian said that in tight times like these no farmer could carry a dry cow for a year. But Dark had eventually persuaded his mam that it wouldn’t cost anything if she let him keep Niamh. He had fenced off the back orchard which had been overgrown for years. He didn’t intend to let anyone remove Niamh from there until Connie came back to see to her.

  As he was about to go out, he heard a noise in the yard. Like someone banging closed the steel door of the tractor shed or hitting an oil drum. The collies started barking and wanting to get out. Dark moved the net curtains on the kitchen window and looked out across the yard. He could see nobody. Maybe he’d imagined it.

  Then, just as he opened the house door, he heard a car door shutting. Whoever was there must have seen him.

  A pick-up truck pulled out of the yard. He only saw the departing tail at the far end of the yard and he couldn’t see the number but was pretty sure of the colour and make.

  He went out into the yard to see what had been taken. The old stone quern and trough were still out at the barn door. He went to the milking parlour and everything seemed in order. He went to the tractor shed. The door was not closed properly. Things had been tossed about inside there. But strangely, the welder, the angle grinder, the spanners and everything else seemed to be in there still. Dark was very puzzled.

  There was only one person who had that kind of truck around here. But why would Trevor Saltee have been in the yard? Looking for what? And why would he sneak off when he saw Dark come in?

  Within an hour, his suspicions were confirmed. He got a text from his mother. ‘Art? Where are you?’

  Dark didn’t reply. His phone was not supposed to be switched on at school, so she’d understand.

  But she sent another a few minutes later, ‘Arthur, you can reply to me. I know you’re not at school.’

  Dark replied.
‘Felt v sick so came home. Ddnt want to trble u.’

  ‘OK, love. Wrap up warm and I’ll see you later. Who would have sent me an anonymous text about you, by the way?’

  ‘Dunno,’ replied Dark.

  That was it.

  He could not begin to figure out what Saltee was searching for. He went out to the tractor shed and looked again amongst the oil cans. The crate for scrap steel was half empty, and the rest of the contents were scattered on the floor.

  When Brian came to do the milking, Dark had the cows in for him as usual. He asked Brian, ‘Is there anything you can think of that Trevor Saltee might want around here?’

  Brian was quiet for a minute. ‘You should have no dealings with that man, Arthur,’ he said, ‘I don’t like to put in a bad word. But you should know. When that fella came to the area twenty years ago and bought Brown Hill farm, no one knew where he came from or where he got his money from.’

  ‘What would he want, though?’

  ‘Everything that he thinks he can get; the land and everything else, I’d say. I notice he’s gone very friendly with your mother. I’m sorry to say this to you Arthur, but she’s too nice a person to be up to dealing with the likes of him. She sees only good in everyone and there’s none that I know of in Saltee.’

  Dark already knew that Brian wasn’t fond of Saltee, to put it mildly. It wasn’t the first dire warning he had issued about Saltee wanting to take the land while Connie was away. Dark didn’t see how that could happen, so he didn’t get too alarmed by Brian’s forebodings.

  He stuck to his point: ‘But if he was after the land, why would he be rooting around in the tractor shed?’

  ‘Why, indeed,’ said Brian, almost to himself. ‘You might very well ask. And why would a man want your hundred acres when he’s already got three hundred of his own and a serious aversion to work? But the answer is, Arthur, that some people always want more of whatever is going. That’s the beginning and end of Trevor Saltee. There’s nothing more to him. If you could remove the craving to have more than his share, Saltee would no longer exist.’