Old Friends: The Lost Tales of Fionn Mac Cumhaill

by Tom O'Neill

  As he was leaving, she said a peculiar thing. She blessed him and laughed saying, ‘A mhic, you’ll have to watch out for the little folk that they don’t steal your heart away. The old people always said there was a great kingdom of the little enchanters somewhere out Killane way.’

  As he was heading out the gate, he held up the little box that Mrs Cash had settled the pup in for the journey, ‘Thanks very much Davey.’

  ‘No bother, McLean.’

  ‘See you tomorrow?’ asked Arthur.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Monday then?’

  ‘Not going back there, Arthur.’ There was finality in his voice. ‘I’m no one to them. I have better things to be doing.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ said Arthur.

  ‘Call up another day, though. Any time you want.’

  ‘I will,’ said Arthur.

  When Arthur got home, he spent a couple of hours settling the pup by the Aga. She ate the bread and milk and corned beef and tuna he gave her. And she got out of her bed to pee on the floor five times in an hour. That was no bother, as the old flagstones on the kitchen floor soaked up what he couldn’t mop. The two old collies took to her immediately and even started growling at each other to work out which of them would get to mind her and lie next to her and show her the ropes. Georgina won in the end. Arthur was glad, as she had the greater need.

  That night, the Old Man and Conán asked for a detailed description of the newcomer. There were some questions about the shape of her ears and her eye colour that Arthur would have to check on later.

  ‘I can develop a terrible fondness towards a dog, Arthur,’ said the Old Man. ‘You must treat her with great respect. A dog will always pay back kindness, in loyalty and love. She will never have to think twice.’

  Arthur noticed that the little people didn’t seem too enthusiastic about this subject. Bal was positively sulky.

  ‘You wouldn’t have so much fondness for the friggers if they were five times the size of you and came digging the earth to look for you,’ he said.

  ‘Most of them can’t even get the scent of sí,’ Conán laughed. ‘They mightn’t bother you either if you weren’t so averse to water.’

  That only made Bal’s face more contorted with anger.

  Etain brought the goblet and sat in next to Arthur on a log. A terrible fondness would hardly describe what Arthur felt then, as the lovely liquid made his mind melt and the words of the Old Man transported him through the flame.

  Fiachra Loses His Fight

  Fiachra Mac Duibhne had joined the Fianna very young and trained with a terrible determination, no matter what the weather or no matter what festivities were going on.

  He had become one of the greatest members the Fianna had ever known. He was a very short young man, and he wasn’t bulky. He never boasted of his achievements. But he was fast, fearsome and unflinching. His friends were wary of him, because of his strictness and dedication. He stuck absolutely to the rules and had no sympathy or understanding for anyone who strayed. He was ever vigilant and some said he never slept. Enemies quickly learned to fear him for he had a stamina and ferociousness in battle that was unmatched. The leaders came to know about him and from early on, he would be selected for missions that needed only the most trusted and committed.

  Mac Cumhaill didn’t like to discourage such dedication, but he sometimes thought that nobody could keep going indefinitely with such fervour.

  ‘Have you no life outside of this, son?’ he often asked Fiachra, laughing.

  Fiachra would respond, not laughing at all, ‘No, chief, I don’t.’

  One evening, sitting at a slow fire and waiting for a pot to boil, Mac Cumhaill asked him what he meant by that.

  Fiachra said, ‘Many years ago I left my father when he needed me.’

  There was silence. Tears welled, strangers to the hard man’s eyes.

  ‘Sorry, chief,’ he said, blowing snot into the fire and trying to dry himself up.

  ‘Get the dirty water off your chest, boy,’ said Mac Cumhaill. ‘There’s no shame in tears.’

  ‘I can never forgive myself for it,’ said Fiachra.

  Then he told how his mother had died when he was very young.

  ‘After that, it was just Daddy and myself in the house. I liked him. No. That’s not it. I adored him. I went everywhere with him. He was a currach maker. The best. He was very good indoors too, doing the cooking, taking care of me and telling me stories. But then, when I was about ten, my father changed. He started being visited by a ghost. He stopped all his woodworking. He stopped even leaving the cabin. He took to his bed, without any talk of plans to get up. I had to take on all the inside work as well as learning to snare rabbits and collect debts from people my father had built boats for, so we wouldn’t starve. That was in the middle of the winter so at first I hoped that when the weather cleared up a bit maybe he would shift out of the bed and sit next to the hearth and heat his strength back. I kept the fire blazing.

  ‘But nothing changed. He would just sit on his straw mattress looking terrified and talking to the ghost. I wasn’t able to see the ghost and often didn’t believe it was real. I was tired of having to work so hard. I was angry because I’d lost my mammy and now even Daddy seemed to have stopped caring for me. I shouted at my father to wake up and start helping. After maybe two years of this, I took a notion one day and just packed my few clothes, I cursed him and left. I walked many miles until I found an old warrior who promised to train me for the Fianna. I worked and trained very hard until I was accepted by yourself as the youngest ever member of the Fianna. But ever since I have never felt good. Not for one day. Not for one minute. I left my sick father alone and didn’t even tell him where I was going.’

  ‘So,’ Mac Cumhaill said, ‘is that why you’ve never taken a partner and had a family of your own?’

  ‘Yes. Since I let my father down, I don’t deserve to be loved by any other person. How could they trust me not to desert them too?’

  ‘You were young,’ said Mac Cumhaill. ‘We all make mistakes when we are young. You have to close the door on them some time or they spawn other mistakes.’

  ‘I can’t,’ said Fiachra. ‘I think about him every day; I try to put him out of my head by fighting harder than anyone else, by hunting better than the others, by working harder in the castle. So I’m that exhausted that I might get an hour’s sleep.’

  ‘Well, what about going to find your father then?’ said Mac Cumhaill.

  ‘I tried that. I went back there a few years ago. The people in the clan all said they were proud of how well I’d done. But they all got quiet when I asked about my father. I went down the path to our little old shack. A woman welcomed me. She said, “I’m sorry son, he hasn’t been heard of in a long time”.’

  ‘Well, since it’s going to be a long night and since this pot is never going to boil,’ said Mac Cumhaill as casually as if he was suggesting a walk over the hill, ‘why don’t you take a turn with me to the land of the unsettled. We’ll see what they have to tell us about the whole episode.’

  Mac Cumhaill didn’t make such proposals often. He liked to keep quiet about the few special abilities allowed to him by higher powers, to avoid fuelling rumours about him. He looked closely at the reaction. Fiachra paled. But he didn’t laugh or run away like most men would do at such a proposition. The depth of Fiachra’s misery was such that he agreed without hesitation.

  No sooner had he agreed than they had travelled far without any sense of moving and were now sitting in the same position, still facing a very poor fire, in the middle of a stone hall. The hall extended into other halls as far as the eye could stretch. The roof was so high you could barely make out the details. All around in every direction were moping images of human forms floating aimlessly, draped on furniture and lying forlorn on the floor. The last time Mac Cumhaill had been here was to have a conversation with a very frightened old soldier, killed in battle but suspended in these halls, too paralysed by fear to ma
ke the next step into the other world.

  Right there, not a hundred paces from them, was the only clear image. His form was vivid and real. He was hunched in his old brown tunic, sitting on the floor, rocking slightly.

  He looked up when they walked over to him. He looked the same as the day Fiachra had left him. He still had the face of someone trying bravely to swallow back great pain. He didn’t recognise either of his visitors, but he smiled faintly at seeing humans.

  Fiachra bent down over him and whispered in his ear. ‘It’s me. Fiachra. I’m very sorry.’

  The father tried to stand. For a second or two he didn’t believe it, staring through the years, and then he hugged Fiachra.

  ‘A fine man! My little child!’

  ‘I am very sorry, Father,’ Fiachra kept saying.

  ‘Sorry? For what?’

  ‘For giving up on you.’

  ‘I can’t lie to you. I was heartbroken from the day you left. But I knew I was the one who left you first. So I always prayed you’d found something better to do than to spend your life nursing a skeleton.’

  They went on talking, each vying to take more than his share of the blame for their separation and hardship.

  Eventually, Mac Cumhaill said, ‘We have to be moving soon, Fiachra. That pot will be boiling over and our bit of meat will be ruined.’

  Only then did Fiachra remember to introduce Fionn Mac Cumhaill to his father. Warm greetings were exchanged and much gratitude was expressed by Fiachra’s father for all Fionn had done for his boy, not least in bringing him here to this place, where humans dreaded to tread.

  ‘Will the three of us go back then and we can talk about it all over a few mouthfuls of rabbit stew?’ said Mac Cumhaill.

  ‘You go,’ said the father. ‘I can’t.’

  It was as if someone had punched Fiachra very hard in the chest. His face filled with pain again. He had assumed they were reunited for good. Of course then he realised that if his father had been free to come back, he would have done so long ago.

  He started pleading like a child: ‘Come back with me and I will make things right. I will never leave you alone again.’

  ‘I can’t,’ the father said, pointing over his shoulder, where there hovered a ghost as ugly and foul as the darkest deed. ‘This thing will definitely never leave me alone.’

  Fiachra could finally see it – the thing that had enslaved his father all these years. The thing, if the truth be told, he had doubted. It was real.

  ‘It will never leave me alone,’ said the father again.

  ‘I know an old lad who might be able to help,’ said Mac Cumhaill.

  The ghost, who had remained impassive, seemed to shift position slightly at this.

  The father was eventually persuaded to come back to their fireside, if only to spend a few hours on earth with Fiachra. The spirit came with him, he said, but could no longer be seen by Mac Cumhaill or Fiachra.

  Mac Cumhaill sent a boy to Lisheen, where he knew Dreoilín was often to be found wandering in the bogs in the company of frogs, inspecting his forest of rushes and mumbling to his ancestors. Dreoilín flew to their fireside and then changed into his human shape.

  He needed no explanations. He could see the ghost immediately and recited a long verse appealing for the restoration of Daghda’s protection over the poor man. Almost before the words were finished, the ghost had fled back to its own land, without a murmur of bad or good wishes to the man he had plagued for twenty years.

  The father was overwhelmed. It took him a little while, looking timidly this way and that, to start to believe.

  Then he said, ‘It’s the first time in so long I feel like a living person. Nothing squeezing the good out of every thought, before I even get a chance to translate it into an action. It feels like somebody just rolled away a huge boulder that has been flattening my body.’

  From that day on, Fiachra visited his father every day and they would often go hunting and fishing together. Fiachra became interested in many things. It was as if his own life had been suspended just as his father’s had, and he was trying to catch up on all that he had missed.

  Over time, he became hale and hearty, where he once had been keen and lean. That made him better company, but a much worse soldier. He found excuses to miss any events that involved travelling far from home.

  One day, Mac Cumhaill said to him, ‘Fiachra, I am sorry to tell you this, but you are no longer suitable for the Fianna.’

  Fiachra actually looked relieved and said, ‘But I have been trying really hard to stay good at soldiering.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Mac Cumhaill, ‘but your heart is not in it.’

  ‘You saved my father and this is how I repay you? What can I do to get back as good as I was?’ asked Fiachra.

  ‘Nothing. I have been thinking about that this last while. The basic problem is, you are too happy to be a good soldier. All of the best here are being eaten up inside by various things. That’s what makes us mean when we have to be.’

  They parted as friends and Fiachra took up bee-keeping, supplying honey for the tables of kings, as well as making mead. His temperament infected the bees and he rarely got stung. He went on to have the biggest collection of hives in this country or in any other that Fionn Mac Cumhaill had ever visited.

  The mornings were getting lighter and even though the fire vanished earlier than usual, there was already a glint of light over the hill fields and the birds were already well into their proclamations.

  Arthur wandered home and had a sound sleep before the alarm clock called him. He was giving himself an extra half hour these days, as the worst of the calving was well over. He thought his mam would be relieved about that.

  No trouble from Sullivan at roll call about the previous day’s absence. And she skipped over David Cash’s name altogether. No homework questioning either. Her policy of ignoring was in full force. He still didn’t care. He took out the DS and played it under the desk. By first break he was very bored.

  Cash and the Old Man were right. Why should he be wishing the long minutes away in here? He wasn’t needed here. At home, there were many animals that needed and appreciated his attention. There were good things he could be doing.

  And as for the sí’s fort, there was not one thing in that world as dull and miserable as one minute in Sullivan’s classroom, with its yellowing posters of badly-drawn smiling people, and brightly-coloured walls that someone thought would trick young people into thinking this was a happy place.

  He would only have to figure out how to get out altogether without getting his mother in trouble. He left at break time through the front gates.

  That afternoon when he sent his usual text telling his mother he had got a lift home, she phoned him to say she was coming home anyway. She sounded serious and a bit scared.

  ‘Arthur, there are some people coming to the house to see us this afternoon. Just be honest with them.’

  Arthur washed and put his uniform back on. When she arrived, she tried to wipe crumbs from his mouth with her handkerchief. Even though he was a head taller than her, she patted his hair as if he was still little. It was only because she was nervous.

  Shortly after that, Georgina ran out barking madly, as a car crunched its way up the gravel. The pup, Pumpkin, ran out after her. Arthur ran after Pumpkin. Georgina couldn’t be expected to understand that other dogs didn’t have the same natural instincts for car-chasing as collies.

  It was a large, metallic blue Passat. It made his mother’s car and everything else around the yard look old and somehow lacking in colour. Arthur went back in with the pup.

  Two men came to the door and his mother invited them inside. Arthur was sent out, and from the door he heard them talking to her in serious tones. He couldn’t make much of it out. Then she called him back in.

  ‘Arthur, I think you know Mr Jenkins from school?’

  Arthur looked at the first man. He seemed vaguely familiar.

  ‘And this is Mr Malley. He is wi
th…er…the HSE, you know – the, um, health board, sort of.’

  Jenkins stepped forward, in front of Arthur’s mother, with a hand extended to Arthur.

  ‘Arthur, I’m the home-school liaison officer.’

  Arthur said nothing. He’d seen the man in Magill’s office, now he came to think of it.

  ‘Your mother is a difficult woman to pin down,’ he said with an attempt at a laugh. ‘I’ve been trying to get hold of you both for weeks now, and in the end, I had to bring my friend here, Mr Malley, with me to get the favour of an interview at all. Mr Malley is a social worker. Have you ever heard of such a species before?’ He was trying to be funny, but Arthur just went on looking at him.

  ‘Do you know what our jobs are?’

  ‘No.’

  Malley intervened. ‘Arthur, we’ve just come up here to take a look in on you and see how things are going.’

  ‘They’re going grand,’ said Arthur.

  ‘Arthur,’ said Malley, ‘the reason we are asking you these questions is only for your own good. We are on your side. So you can answer freely.’

  ‘OK’, said Arthur.

  ‘Well, to be honest, we’re not so sure that things are going so grand,’ said Jenkins. ‘My information is that you are not doing very well in school – on the rare occasions you decide to attend. And from outside the school we’ve had reports of you wandering the fields during school hours. You do know that when we get reports like that we cannot ignore them. What would be your own view on that?’

  ‘On what?’

  ‘How well are you getting on at school?’

  ‘The finest,’ said Arthur.

  ‘Well, when last did you do any homework?’

  ‘A while back.’

  He turned to Arthur’s mother. ‘When did you last check that he was doing his homework, Mrs McLean?’

  She was flustered. ‘I’m sorry. I’ve been so busy. He’s been so busy. We will make sure he does better.’

  ‘And when did you last bring any books to school, Arthur?’

  ‘I dunno,’ said Arthur.