Old Friends: The Lost Tales of Fionn Mac Cumhaill

by Tom O'Neill

  Arthur was getting angrier and fiercer for some reason that he couldn’t explain and striking the door harder each shot. Then he stepped to take a shot and the sangster’s face blurred and started to turn into a more familiar one. He couldn’t quite make it out.

  Kennedy said, ‘A hush has fallen over the crowd. They have never seen this before. An angry Dark.’

  ‘Are you alright, Arthur?’ said Tadhg.

  Kirwan and Doran started singing, ‘Ooh-ah, it’s Art Mac Lee-ah.’

  Arthur didn’t stop. He had never felt rage spilling out of him like this. He got the ball on the stick. He looked again at the door. The outline of the face was still forming when he struck. It was his most powerful connection, giving an unmerciful crack of the stick. In that split second when the sliotar was powering in a perfect horizontal line towards the target, Arthur gave out a cry. He realised it was his mother’s face. He wanted to call the sliotar back. Why was he raging at her? That’s not the face he should have been hitting. It wasn’t she who had made Seán McLean ride a motorbike like there was nobody who needed him to be careful.

  Then there was a very loud bang and the door lock complained severely.

  ‘Jaysus lads,’ said Kennedy, dropping his ruler microphone, ‘run for it!’

  Arthur just stood there.

  Kennedy looked back and said, ‘Come on Art, don’t worry mate, we’ll all tell them we saw some knackers trying to break in.’

  Only Tadhg stuck around. He went up to the door to examine the damage. There was a massive dent in it and the lock had given way.

  ‘It’s only a smallish dent,’ said Tadhg, consolingly. ‘No need to be upset.’

  Arthur blew his nose onto the ground, to hide the tears. Tadhg awkwardly patted him on the back.

  ‘I’m grand, thanks,’ said Arthur. ‘Just pulled a muscle there. Not worried about the door at all. They’ve got insurance, you know.’

  Later, when the message went out over the PA asking whoever broke the door to please come to the principal’s office, it was a break for Arthur from playing the DS. He stood up immediately.

  ‘Well, well,’ said Magill, when Arthur walked in. ‘What a surprise!’

  ‘You asked who broke the door, Sir,’ said Arthur. ‘It was me, Sir.’

  ‘I’d never have guessed,’ said Magill, lying back in his leather chair. ‘The only problem is, I’m not a fool and I know you couldn’t have done it on your own.’

  ‘I did, sir. It was an accident. I hit a ball too hard against it.’

  ‘You really test my patience, McLean. I think you enjoy it.’

  ‘It’s true, sir.’

  ‘That’s a steel door. I’ll tell you one thing for a scientific fact. You did not do that damage with a sliotar. Christie Ring himself wouldn’t do that. You had accomplices. Were they from your class? Were they outsiders? Who were they?’

  ‘Maybe it wasn’t as well made as it looked,’ said Arthur.

  Magill stood and walked behind Arthur to close the door. He stood behind Arthur for a long minute and then walked back to his seat. He said, ‘Don’t talk rubbish to me boy. I’m too long at this game. I’ll do a deal with you. You give me names, and this time I won’t call the guards.’

  ‘I can’t do that Sir,’ said Arthur.

  ‘You fool, you gormless fool!’ shouted the principal. ‘Do you think that kind of honour amongst thieves will get you anywhere in life? Do you think they’d do that for you? Look where false honour got your uncle!’

  Arthur felt rage again. He felt like jumping across the desk and boxing the top of Magill’s baldy head. But he didn’t do anything.

  Strangely enough, there was no more mention of calling the guards. Arthur started thinking Magill musn’t have liked whatever the guard had said to him in the school yard on the last occasion.

  After an awkward silence, Magill said, ‘Right, you don’t want to say anything more? That’s fine. I’ll tell you one thing boy, I’m as near as this,’ – he was holding up his right hand showing a tiny gap between his finger and thumb – ‘I’m as near as this to just going over there to you now and giving you the hammering that your precious mother obviously needs help with giving to you.’

  Arthur just stood there. He was sure of one thing. He was not going to be able to stop himself hitting back.

  Maybe Magill saw this. He looked away for a moment.

  ‘OK then. OK then. OK. Detention indefinitely. How do you like the sound of that? Until you come to me with names, you will stay inside at your desk every break time and for one hour after school. Every day. Each and every day.’

  ‘I will like shite,’ said Arthur. He was surprised. He hadn’t meant to say that.

  The principal’s jaw dropped.

  Arthur had never been rude to a teacher before. But that was just how it was. He would stay on the grounds, at his desk if that was what they wanted, for the full day every day for his mother’s sake. But there was nobody on earth going to keep him from his life for a minute longer than the school day.

  He walked out and went back to class.

  After school, Magill was at the gate. When Arthur approached, he said, ‘Back inside, you.’

  Arthur just looked at him and walked past. Magill did nothing about it.

  When his mother picked him up, she asked, ‘Is something wrong, Arthur?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Arthur.

  The rath had never been quite the same to Arthur since the night of the Black Wind. He was always a little cautious now. He knew for sure now that there was much more here than simply good. It had never occurred to him before then that danger could flow out into the fields and could reach out over the boundary into his ordinary world. He now understood why people feared these places and left them be. He thought much more of the sí and what they might be thinking of his intrusions. And of other forces that might cross through this doorway while he was sitting there. He was more hesitant approaching the place.

  But once he was in there, in the safe company of the Old Man, his friends and Etain, he felt like travelling with them forever. It seemed he was OK in one world or the other but not in between.

  The Old Man asked him what had happened at school.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Arthur. ‘Nothing.’

  Etain brought the cup and stared at him. He thought of what Cash’s granny had said about enchantments, but he drank without hesitation.

  The Old Man raised an eyebrow. They settled at the fire and he started describing a cat.

  Beatha’s Sacrifice

  Fionn Mac Cumhaill and his good woman Úna were both very fond of cats. The best one they ever had they got from a neighbour as a tiny white kitten, only half the size of any other of its litter. Úna named it Beatha (meaning life), because she thought that for a thing that small to have survived, it must have had a great hunger for life.

  Beatha spent most of his young life next to the roaring fire that always burned in the hearth of Teach Mhic Cumhaill which was situated in the lovely hills of Baile Dunchada, a stone’s throw from the eastern sea and two stones’ throws from Tara.

  Beatha had taken a fancy to Mac Cumhaill’s great chair and would curl up on the feather cushion there all day long. Úna would laugh at Mac Cumhaill. Nobody else, not even the king when he visited, was allowed to sit in Mac Cumhaill’s chair. But when little Beatha was there, Mac Cumhaill would just give him a few strokes and pull up another seat, whispering to the little, purring ball of fur, ‘You terrible, lazy, little monster, you surely know how to live well.’

  Beatha wasn’t ever going to be big but he turned out to be a mighty little cat. He went hunting every night, but only after the fireside company had gone to bed. People would ramble in at dusk every evening for a few hours of news and stories. This kept Úna company when Mac Cumhaill was away, and of course, when Mac Cumhaill was at home, the numbers grew, as people would be wanting to hear what new yarns he had brought from his travels in the big wide world beyond them. Beatha would go around makin
g friends with all the visitors and would only start his own rambling when the last of them had bidden him good night. Even before he was six months he was a great mouser and was even tackling the occasional rabbit.

  At the same time as the little cat was growing up carefree in Mac Cumhaill’s house, trouble was brewing in the desolate little seaside village of Bré. A group of seven bandraois had gotten together with the idea of starting to do a bit of work outside the law.

  For some reason, when a group of people came together to reject the good and to praise and seek out the bad and the unkind, it was mostly bandraois. When druids or púcas went to the bad side, they usually acted alone. Úna’s theory was that even when they were bad, women were able to cooperate with each other but the men gone bad were so cantankerous that they could generally only work alone.

  And who knows why these ones turned away? Maybe they had seen no reward or appreciation after many years of good work – which is never well rewarded, because a calamity averted is never fully appreciated. Or maybe some of them had their own misfortunes or sadnesses. Maybe they were just lonely and bad company was more to their taste than none at all.

  For whatever reason, there now was this group of bandraois. And it was discovered later that they had made certain vows to each other. The cant they had all had to recite was:

  I now understand that goodness and kindness are mere illusions of the soft-minded.

  I believe that the ways of the world are overwhelmingly bad and unkind.

  I have abandoned the follies of good bandraois and druids, giving lifetimes to futility, attempting to hold back the tide of the wickedness of nature.

  I am now at one with the callous world.

  I will serve the bad spirits that are to be found in all foul and heartless doings.

  At night, they stood in circles holding hands and calling the spirits of dreaded long-dead cailleachs and wizards.

  ‘Come back, come back to us O inspired ones,’ they would repeat in low, croaky tones like frogs, ‘Come back and walk again among the living … Revive, O ancient wickedness.’

  After their chanting was done, they sat and drank their favourite drink. It was a mix of sladdie, the sea grass beverage that gives a lot of coastal people great strength and fortitude, mixed with the most powerful whiskey, nine times distilled. And they rubbed powerful, secret herbs on their bodies. And they would fall asleep around the dying embers of their fire as they concocted plans to bring the age of cailleach rule to Éirinn and then to all of the world.

  In the daytime, they were holding sessions for people who wanted curses put on their neighbours. This was always good business for bad bandraois. And in truth, if badness did not already lurk in people’s hearts, the dark bandraois would have had very little to do. There were always people with scores to settle, people so embittered they felt justified in consorting with bad forces and soliciting evil enchantments.

  This trade served two purposes for the bandraois. It helped them to start to fill a chest of treasure that they would need for their greater plans. Every piece of silver and every gift was stashed away, as their living needs were few. They ate eggs, hens and vegetables from their own garden. They kept their house perfectly tidy and nothing went to waste.

  The larger purpose it served, of course, was to increase the overall air of bitterness and malfeasance in the country. Each bad or mean deed reverberated and caused further grudges and bitterness and a desire for more vengeance that could spread and last for generations. That was a good start for the kind of power they aimed to build when they eventually displaced Cormac. This group had no shortage of bad intention. Especially late at night when the craic was high and the drink and herbs were lubricating their thoughts.

  The bandraois were placing curses of all sorts. One widow complained that her neighbour was running more sheep than he was allowed on the common grazing ground. The bandraois cast a spell that made all of the man’s sheep fall over and die, leaving him and his young family with nothing to keep them from starvation that winter but the kindness of other neighbours. One man went to them to complain that his sister had tricked their parents into giving her the family home. He didn’t mention that his parents had asked him to leave because he had been thieving from them and from his sister. Not that that extra knowledge would have stopped the bandraois. The bandraois, of course, didn’t care who was right or wrong. If you paid, you got your spell. They gave him a potion that would weaken bones and the horrible cur gave it to his sister’s young son, causing both of his legs to break.

  In return, the bandraois were demanding pieces of gold, sacks of corn, assistance with building a stone temple, and various other things that were quickly making them very well set up.

  The bandraois’ intention was to keep their business secret from the powers in the country until they had gained more strength. They had wanted to be better prepared before tackling Mac Cumhaill and his sort. So, part of the bargain with every person who came to them for a curse was that they must take a vow of secrecy or risk their lives. No admission was ever to be made. No glee was ever to be shown. In fact, the purchaser of the spell was to go to the home of the victim and commiserate over the terrible bad luck that had befallen them.

  The bandraois didn’t leave their customers with any uncertainty about this. Each was made to say out loud, ‘In requesting this evil today, I bond myself silently to evil. If ever I break my bond of silence, strike me down with the force of lightning.’

  It probably would have remained that way – a secret whispered amongst the bitter but unreported to the powers of the land – had it not been for a project that went wrong.

  There was a widow called Nan who was very upset with her son-in-law. Her husband had fallen from a tree and died when the eldest of their seven children was only ten. She had worked night and day to rear the children. She had prayed every day for her eldest daughter to fall in love with a good man who might help her a little with the other children. Maybe a man with land and cows or at least with some heart for work. Instead her daughter married Seánie, a man with no land, no cows, no interest in work and nothing only a mouth on him to talk and eat all around him. She couldn’t get rid of the ugly feelings she had towards Seánie. He offered her no comfort or help with her other children, only promised to add more children for her to provide for.

  So when she heard about the bandraois from one of her small-hearted friends, she couldn’t help herself. She went to the bandraois and asked for the man, Seánie, to die so that the daughter would be free to find a better match. By the time she was leaving the bandraois’ house, she was already regretting it.

  She ran back inside shouting, ‘No, wait, please forget all that. Cancel it.’

  But the bandraoi at the door shooed her out, saying, ‘Go on away with yourself. When you have saved up another two dozen duck eggs, you can come back with the next request.’

  Nan got down on her knees and pleaded. ‘You can keep the eggs I brought you today for free. No need to do anything to earn them. And then tomorrow, I’ll bring you some silver which I had stored away for her dowry.’

  But this only made them angry.

  ‘Have respect for yourself, woman,’ said a tall one who emerged from the dwelling to push her to the ground with a rush broom. ‘You have done what was in your heart, now stand over it.’

  Nan stood up and went home in dread. As she got further from Bré, her spirits started to lift and she thought that she was just being stupid. These bandraois didn’t have so much power. Nothing would have happened. She prayed to Daghda that all would be just as it was before. After all, she said to herself, why would those women bother with the effort of a spell when they knew that their action wasn’t wanted anymore?

  What she didn’t know about was the curious code of honour that bound this group. One of their rules was that once a job had been taken on, it would be done.

  She was feeling a bit better as she got close to home, and had promised Daghda that for the rest of h
er life she would do nothing but good for the people around her. Especially her daughter and Seánie. However, as she crossed the little wall near the front of her clan’s camp, she heard the sobbing of her wonderful daughter. Her pride and joy. It was a sound that pierced her own heart. She had known how much her daughter loved Seánie. She now knew that she would never be able to live another day with herself, in the knowledge that she had let wickedness take hold of her heart and that she had caused such devastation to her own beloved child.

  She fell down on the ground. As she lay there, she told the neighbours who gathered around her everything that had happened and exactly where the bandraois were living.

  And then she died.

  Whether she died of guilt and shame or whether it was the curse of the bandraois against anyone who gave them away, it was never known. But even if her life had added misery to the world, in her death she had done some good.

  Word went straight to the king and from there to Mac Cumhaill.

  It was mid-winter at the time. And a very cold and wet winter it was. Mac Cumhaill was getting older and he now liked to spend most of the long evenings by the fireside with family and friends, rather than in the camps around Tara or away on hunting trips. The news of the business with the cailleachs upset him because it disturbed what had so far been a very peaceful winter. But it didn’t terrify him as it did some of the Fianna. His upbringing in the company of a druid woman had given him some knowledge and strengths. And he had met some very fearsome bandraois in the past. For his own comfort, he decided to plan his campaign against them from home.

  Maybe the bad news made everything around him appear in a greyer light. There was a down draught and the fire seemed to be poor. His food tasted less appetising. The conversation around the fire was dull. Even his lovely little cat seemed to be a source of irritation.

  ‘What are you looking at me for?’ he grumbled, pushing Beatha off his chair. ‘I have enough people looking at me expecting me to work miracles. Don’t you have mice to catch?’

  ‘Leave Beatha alone,’ said Úna. ‘The little creature is not to blame for this. He’s only looking at you for a scrap of food or a bit of a stroking, like he always does.’