Old Friends: The Lost Tales of Fionn Mac Cumhaill

by Tom O'Neill

  His mother looked at him questioningly.

  ‘And are those reports that we’ve been receiving from concerned neighbours about seeing you lurking at the river, are those incorrect? How many days a week do you actually stay in school?’

  ‘Two or three,’ said Arthur.

  His mother now looked shocked. Arthur was sorry. But he was also puzzled over who could have been reporting him.

  Jenkins turned to Arthur’s mother again, and said, ‘If you were in our position, Mrs McLean, how do you think this would look? A mother who claims to be unaware that her son is going to school with an empty bag and mitching every other day?’

  Arthur’s mother said nothing.

  Jenkins turned to Arthur. ‘What do you think will be the final result for someone who doesn’t bring any books or make any effort?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Do you think learning is just going to happen to you?’ Jenkins was sounding a bit less patient now.

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Well, I have bad news for you, Arthur. It won’t. And you will very soon find yourself with no future other than being trapped here, not able to read or write or succeed. Is that what you want?’

  ‘I don’t mind,’ said Arthur.

  ‘He can read and write perfectly well,’ said his mother, reddening.

  ‘You are going to need to make a lot more effort,’ said Jenkins. ‘Now, there are some other issues Mr Malley wants to ask you a few questions about.’

  Malley now stepped forward. ‘Would you like to take a walk with me?’ he said, very sweetly.

  Arthur looked at his mother. She nodded.

  Malley wanted to go to Arthur’s room.

  He said, laughing ‘Do you mind if I make notes, Arthur? It’s just that I have a very bad memory.’

  Arthur wondered if Malley thought he was five years old.

  ‘You can call me Joey,’ said Malley.

  Then he went from general questions to fairly detailed ones. He asked Arthur what he usually had for supper. How often they had take-away. What time his mother came home at. Whether he sometimes went hungry. He asked him who is at home when he gets home from school. He asked him whether he was having to do a lot of farm work. More information from concerned neighbours it seemed. Then he started asking about his mother. How often did she talk to him? Did she ever leave him alone at night?

  Next he said, ‘Arthur, I noticed some beers and wine in the fridge when Mum was getting out milk for our coffee. Would there often be a lot of drink? I mean, for example, would you often see Mum getting drunk with friends? It’s OK to tell me.’

  Arthur didn’t like that. His fear of these men turned into something like anger. Sneaks in cashmere jerseys trying to get him to spy on his mam.

  ‘You leave my mother out of this!’ he heard himself saying.

  The social worker’s lips tightened. ‘I see,’ he said. He started writing furiously.

  And then he brought Arthur back to the kitchen.

  ‘Arthur, we are just trying to help.’

  ‘If you want to help, there’s a scoury calf-shed to be cleaned,’ Arthur said loudly, almost in someone else’s voice.

  Arthur’s mother looked as surprised as the two officials.

  They didn’t stay long. His mother was very upset for a long time after they left. But she didn’t give out to him for all the trouble he had landed her in. His mother always blamed herself for everything. He made her tea and said he was sorry.

  Down at the rath that night, he told the Old Man a bit about it. He didn’t understand what the titles of the men could mean.

  ‘Why would it be, Arthur,’ he asked, ‘that when a boy is having trouble in the school that these brehons of yours come to the conclusion that the problem is in the home, where everything is fine and there is no problem at all? Or none that is any of their business, anyway.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Arthur.

  ‘Do you think you should spend the night with your mother instead of listening to an old man raiméising?’

  ‘No,’ said Arthur. ‘She’ll be asleep.’

  ‘Good enough’, said the Old Man.

  Then Arthur felt the Old Man put his arm around his shoulders as they walked over to the fire. It felt very nice.

  Etain gave him his cup with a smile and sat next to him again. Soon the Old Man’s words flowed and transported him.

  The Hardy Sangster

  There once was a land occupied only by woeful sangsters. A sangster was a creature much bigger than a human. They were noted for the ugliness and abundance of their heads. Though a sangster would display only one ugly mug at a time, it had many. Only one of the many was the working head, where any business went on. And only close family members knew which one that was. Since the only way to kill or hurt a sangster was to hit its real head, anyone needing to quieten one of these fellows was faced with a very good chance of himself getting sliced and eaten without inflicting the slightest damage on the sangster.

  Sangsters were chronically unhappy entities. One of the results of this was that they liked to fight a lot. The only good thing about them was that they didn’t like to leave their island. Even though they were extremely unhappy with every aspect of it, they were convinced there was no better country on earth, and no other decent creature liked to visit there. So they continued breeding and fighting with each other as they had done since the first brother and sister sangster had landed on that island many centuries earlier. Most outside didn’t know about them. And of those who did, most didn’t care about them.

  However, at one time, there was a particularly nasty young sangster youth who caused so much damage and attacked so many others that he became too much even for the sangster bosses. The story told at the time was that the elder sangsters made the mother tell them which was his real head and told her that if he caused another minute of trouble they’d send him to dig in the mines. There were no mines on Sangster Island. Anyone who got sent to the mines never came back.

  His mother was not pleased. As far as she was concerned, they were punishing her for doing too good a job. Every young sangster was supposed to be raised as an un-mannerly, uncontrollable, sulky hooligan. And she knew she had done such a good job on this cur that he would not listen to her even for a minute. He could as soon attack her with a long knife, if she tried to advise him to calm down. But she had no doubt that the senior sangsters would be true to their word and disappear him the next time he attacked someone. It would be a matter of great shame for such men to be suspected of showing any mercy.

  So she got her brothers to help tie up her little darling. They caught him in a net and as they ran chains and ropes around him he lashed out and killed one of his uncles who had mistakenly let his good head show for a minute. They put the young sangster in a big barrel, and pushed him out to sea to a point where the barrel got caught in an ocean current and was swept away.

  That very ocean current that cooled Sangster Island happened to be one that warmed the west coast of Éirinn. By the time the barrel had been a couple of days at sea, the angry young sangster was able to free himself from the chains and rope. No splashing and flailing could work the barrel back against the flow. There was no way back home for him. He just had to allow the barrel to carry him wherever it was going. When it landed, he was awfully hungry and he proceeded straight towards a small village called Umall, on the western tip of Éirinn. He announced that this was his new country and that all the creatures he found living there were invaders. This, apparently, was his argument for eating them.

  The local hard men tried to attack him with stones and hurley sticks. They thought they were having great success in their surprise attack, for they knocked his putrid head to a pulp. But no sooner had they turned to walk away, slapping each other on their backs, than a replacement head popped out and ate three of them in one mouthful.

  The remaining people fled the area (except for one widow woman who found the sangster very attractive and staye
d behind with him).

  And of course, as always when a stew started getting too thick, someone suggested that Fionn Mac Cumhaill be sent for. It is not that Mac Cumhaill enjoyed being the first port of call no matter what extraordinary mess was going in any part of the country, and it was not that he always had a very strong preference for the people he was supposed to rescue over the creatures he was supposed to rescue them from. But what choice did he have other than to come? There was to be no rest for him.

  He came with Dreoilín, Conán and a couple of young soldiers. On the road to Connemara they discussed the problem. Dreoilín said that from the descriptions people had given, the troublesome stranger sounded like a kind of creature he had heard tell of from a faraway island.

  ‘If it is indeed a sangster,’ said Dreoilín, ‘then we’re probably wasting our time going there. There’s no way to kill him without knowing which head to kill. And there’s no way to know which head to kill unless someone from his family tells you. And sangster families aren’t renowned for helpfulness and don’t live anywhere near here even if they were.’

  Mac Cumhaill decided he was going to try to fight anyway and see what happened. They didn’t have much further to go, as the sangster, who had started moving inland from Umall, met them on the road. He headed for them roaring, with his big mouth open and his huge arms flailing. Mac Cumhaill went straight for him and lambasted him with a blow of a club. The head was knocked clean off him like a loose stone off the top of the wobbly walls the people marked their ragged boundaries with over in those parts.

  But no one celebrated. Just as they feared, another head popped up to greet them with even greater toxic rage. And this one was harder to connect with using the club. This went on for a while, until Mac Cumhaill finally realised that Dreoilín was right.

  There was nothing for it but to take one of the bigger risks of his life and head off for Sangster Island. He left the two young soldiers taking turns, hitting heads and resting, with strict instructions to keep the sangster occupied till they got back. He headed down to the sea, happy enough for the chance of some solitude. He felt like a swim anyway, as he hadn’t been in saltwater for a year.

  It wasn’t so great a distance into the Westerly Ocean to reach the current, and, swimming against it, it took him nearly a week before he spotted the bleak Sangster Island, a bit off to his right.

  He was surrounded immediately when he went ashore, but fortunately not eaten. These sangsters had never seen a visitor before and were not sure whether they were allowed to eat them. They decided to take him to their king instead.

  The king happened to be in a good mood that day. When Fionn described the problem, he immediately slapped his brow and said, ‘That sounds very like the hardy pup that was supposed to be taken to the mines. Bring his mother here’.

  The massive old cailleach kept changing heads uncomfortably when the king asked her why she had made a sailor of her son, when they were waiting for a chance to send him mining. For a minute, Mac Cumhaill felt sorry for her. What else would a poor old woman do but protect her child? he thought. But his sympathy didn’t last long. The old sangster mother took a run at the king and nearly scratched his eyes out.

  ‘If you find the cur, I’ll kill him myself. The runt promised to send me dead bodies from wherever he landed and he hasn’t sent me a thing.’

  ‘Well now, if you would tell this big lump of a visitor how he can coax the real head out of your delinquent son, he can do your work for you. And be advised that if you try to scratch the eyes out of any of my heads again, I’ll boil you up for soup!’

  The sangster mother had no hesitation.

  ‘Call out, “Torment, Torment, Torment,” and the big ugly mug will come popping out,’ she shouted in her deep, gravelly voice, ‘and you’ll know it because it has a tiny red mark over the left eye.’

  ‘Thank you, indeed, and blessings on your business,’ said Mac Cumhaill, backing out.

  Nobody heard him because the hall had erupted into a major squabble over some food the servants had just brought in. Even the king was kicking and knifing everyone around him.

  Mac Cumhaill ran back to the sea before they realised that a nice-sized meal was leaving the island.

  It only took two days to swim back to Umall. And not a minute too soon, because the two young men whom he’d left fighting the sangster were so exhausted they could barely raise a sword.

  Mac Cumhaill rushed up.

  ‘Torment, Torment, Torment,’ he shouted.

  At first nothing happened. He fired every foul curse he could think of back in the direction of Sangster Island. Then he tried again, but with an attempt at imitation of the deep gravel voice of the sangster mother.

  This time there was a crackling sound, and out popped the ugliest of all the heads in the universe. The ‘little’ red birthmark his mother had referred to would have been hard to miss. It was in fact a blazing conflagration the size of a frying pan over his left eye.

  What nobody present had known was that a sangster with its real head out becomes a thousand times more ferocious. Within a second of the head appearing, three heads had disappeared off middle-aged Umall men who were standing around observing the unusual events that were unfolding in their usually quiet settlement. Everyone else scurried out of the way of the sangster, its red blotch throbbing with rage. It was looking everywhere, probably trying to locate the source of the motherly voice.

  Mac Cumhaill stood firm. Retreat now would only allow the monster to calm down and hide away its good head. He had to keep it riled. It came for him faster than a cat strikes, which is faster than any other animal can blink. Fast, but mercifully predictable. If Mac Cumhaill had not observed closely the slight swelling of the eyes that had occurred immediately prior to the strikes on the other men, he too would have certainly had important parts of his body partitioned from each other. His head would undoubtedly already be keeping company with the heads of the harmless Umall men, swimming in the digestive juices of the whelp’s belly. Instead, Mac Cumhaill had crouched down just a moment before he thought he was in the sangster’s striking range. Only his sturdy spear stood upright with its base firmly jammed on a rock, to greet the palette of the sangster’s great cave of a gob, as it attempted to enclose Fionn Mac Cumhaill’s head inside it.

  The spear had no retreat through the rock and had no option but to extend itself through the roof of the mouth and the brain, what little there was, of the sangster’s one true head. This did not have a good effect on the sangster, who fell down dead without a word out of him. Mac Cumhaill struggled to retrieve his prickly accomplice from the hoary cartilage of the sangster’s skull. That same article had saved his skin on many another occasion and he certainly had no intention of deserting it now.

  Mac Cumhaill then left the people of Umall to their confused mixture of lamenting for the lost and relief at the end of the torment. He had other business to see to back home. He heard afterwards that the local people were too scared that another head might pop out, and left the sangster on the roadway for nearly a month before they finally dragged it down to Clare and flung it off the cliffs of Dooneen.

  The widow who had stayed behind with the sangster had twins the next year. Although they had only one head each, they both had the distinctive red blotches all over their faces leaving little doubt that yet another drop of malignant blood had thereby been added to the already dangerous concoction flooding the veins of people from those parts.

  As they were heading out for school the next morning, his mother stopped the car in the lane.

  ‘Please promise me you will stay in school and I will promise you I will make things better.’

  Arthur didn’t like the sound of either part of this. But he could see she was still upset from the visitors yesterday.

  ‘Sorry, Mam,’ he said again.

  He fully intended not to duck out of school again until he had a better plan for not getting caught. He would stay put at least until he had figured out how
to do it without Trevor Saltee spotting him. He had realised by now that nobody else could have been reporting. No other neighbours would spoil a mitching day. And Miss Sullivan wasn’t rushing to report him for leaving school, that was for sure.

  That morning in school, a thing happened that did not make Arthur feel too good.

  It was at break time and all the lads from his class were hitting a sliotar up against the boiler-room door. They often did that before school. It was a steel door and there was a great bounce out of it. Tadhg shouted for Arthur to come over. Arthur hadn’t tried hurling since he was in primary school, back in Cork city.

  Someone gave him a hurl. The idea was to stand back at the hedge and hit the sliotar as hard as you could at the door. At first he couldn’t get the hang of it. Then his hands started to remember how to flick the ball up onto the stick and clip it towards the target.

  There were five of them at it each stepping up in turn and throwing shapes like Seán Óg in an All-Ireland final, placing the ball carefully on the ground, eyeing the target, legs apart, spit into the hands…

  Gerry Kennedy was giving the commentary: ‘And Miley Coakley carefully addresses the sliotar. He says, “How’ye, sliotar.” And then Coakley deftly lifts the ball in the air. And yes, yes, yes – it’s on target, what a cracker of a shot! This will be the decider, the goal that brought the cup home to the Rebel County. No, wait, the feckin’ eejit is after missing it.’

  The lads were laughing so much that half the shots weren’t even hitting the door, but hopping off the bricks and going everywhere. By the time it came to Arthur’s third turn, he found it helped him to concentrate if he pictured someone in the door. He hit harder every time. Soon he had it aced. He was picturing a sangster, with a different head each time, each uglier than the last.

  Kennedy was saying, ‘They call him the terminator back in the wilds of Killane. He kills insects. There’s no man alive prepared to stand in goal in front of the man they call The Dark. One man did, may the Lord have mercy on his perforated soul... ’