Copyright © 2016 by Brian O’Sullivan
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced electronically or in print without written permission, except in the case of brief quotation.
Copyright of the individual stories or work in this book remains with the authors.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, organizations or persons, living of dead, is entirely coincidental.
ISBN: 978-0-9941258-6-6 (print)
ISBN: 978-0-9941258-7-3 (EPUB)
ISBN: 978-0-9941258-5-9 (Kindle)
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Table of Contents
Front Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Celtic Mythology
Hawthorne Close
Mythological Context: The Fairies
A Mainland Mansie Meur
Mythological Context: The Selkie
In a Small Pond
Mythological Context: The Salmon of Knowledge
Lir
Mythological: The Children of Lir
Transit Hours
Mythological Context: The Male Selkie
The Authors
The Celtic Mythology Short Story Competition
Another Complimentary Book from Irish Imbas Books
Other Books from Irish Imbas Books
Acknowledgements
Special thanks to Marie Elder.
Celtic Mythology:
What we refer to as ‘mythology’ today was actually a framework of ideas and beliefs used by our ancestors to understand the world around them. In the absence of modern-day science and technology, these people used an approach based predominantly on observation and deduction over an extended period to make sense of the things they saw in their lives and environment but could not explain. Instead of developing theories or hypotheses to articulate those explanations as we would do today, they developed narratives or stories that used those observations and deductions. This is why so much mythology is connected to questions of creation such as ‘Where did we come from?’ ‘Where did the moon and stars come from?’ or explanations for uncommon natural phenomena such as giant waves, earthquakes, rainbows, mists and so on. These stories, and others that helped to guide how people should treat each other, formed the basis of the Celts’ cultural belief system.
Since the erosion of what are generally referred to as the Celtic nations, those cultural beliefs have often been seen as something to be looked down on and many of the important cultural narratives have been classified as fantasies or relegated to the status of children’s tales. As a result, despite the affection that people of Celtic heritage feel for such stories, very few actually understand them today. That lack of knowledge – the result of a great disconnect from one’s cultural heritage – means that, in contemporary times, we’ve come to believe in skin-deep, almost cartoon-like caricatures of our own cultural origins.
Given the amount of time that’s passed, it’s hard to fully comprehend how much has been lost, even if it’s easy to understand how it has been lost. Over the course of history, the Celtic nations were invaded and colonised by Roman, Anglo Saxon, Norman and English nations etc.). The impacts of war and domination by a foreign culture caused huge destruction of Celtic society and completely eroded the social mechanisms normally used to transfer cultural knowledge from one generation to the next. Thus the druids, the poets, the Gaelic-based educational system and the Celtic languages have fallen from favour. The scorn for Celtic culture displayed by administrative and governance systems established by the colonising cultures, combined with the increasing influence of the Christian church – an entity with a strong interest in suppressing native (and competing) belief systems – meant that the Celtic belief systems never stood a chance.
Over time, the people of the Celtic countries began to lose their stories and their language and consequently, their connection to their own history and culture. By the late 18th century, a significant proportion of cultural knowledge had already been lost. Other elements, meanwhile, were being misinterpreted and romanticised by amateur “folklorists”, generally privileged writers descended from the ruling classes who had limited interaction with the native populations whose culture they were mining. No-one seemed to notice the irony that their exclusion from the established educational system meant few of the native population had the skills or opportunity to conserve their own cultural knowledge by transferring it into written form.
Fortunately, some scraps of the ancient Celtic belief systems managed to survive through the work of passionate historians and scholars who recorded and saved what knowledge they could, often at great risk to their own lives. A certain, limited, transfer of cultural narratives also continued through the ragged remnants of the last remaining poets and bards before they too died out. As a result of the efforts of these early scholars and the dedicated analysis of the information they managed to save, talented academics have managed to piece together much of that ancient knowledge over the last hundred and fifty years or so. Unfortunately, little of that work has seeped beyond the realms of academia and back out to a wider audience. In the age of the internet, where anyone can publish unsubstantiated opinions and articles that receive no peer review, cultural misinterpretation and misinformation on Celtic cultures continues to flourish.
This collection of stories by contemporary authors is a first attempt to haul Celtic stories and beliefs back out of the shadows. Love stories, action or mystery, these fascinating tales and their associated contextual contexts mark what we would like to believe is a new wave of more authentic Celtic writing. It is, we hope, a small but important first step in countering centuries of misinformation and allowing a better understanding of Celtic culture today.
Brian O’Sullivan (Wellington, 2016).
Hawthorne Close
Sighle Meehan
A builder named McGroarty bought the field.
‘I got it cheap,’ he told his wife.
‘Because of the thorn tree?’ she asked.
McGroarty laughed, poured himself a brandy. He leaned back into the good life, the pale-grey leather recliner, the classical music he was beginning to love, the artworks, the fifty-inch screen. He was well pleased with his purchase.
‘It’s not zoned for residential,’ he admitted.
‘You’ll have no luck if you cut down that tree,’ his wife warned.
‘Arra, old wives’ tales,’ he said. ‘What can happen?’
‘Bad luck! Bad luck will follow you from the day you cut it down. It’s a fairy tree.’
‘You and your piseogs!’ he teased. ‘I am more than a match for any fairy I know!’
‘It’s where they gather,’ she insisted, ignoring the innuendo. ‘You will make them angry and they will work their magic on you.’
‘The only magic nowadays is money,’ he retorted. ‘I know people in the planning department, I know people on the County Council and I know that, sooner or later, money talks.’
Sure enough, within two years the machinery was in, the field was cleared, sites were mapped and McGroarty was on the pig’s back.
‘Four houses,’ his wife exclaimed, ‘I thought you wanted six?’
‘Naw! I applied for six, knowing I would be lucky to get four.’
‘Are you satisfied so?’
‘When a
m I ever satisfied!’
He speculated gleefully. There would be a tidy profit on four houses. Even three, which he had half expected, would have made a fair few bob. It was a prime location: twenty minutes drive from the city, sea views, a beach close by.
‘I’m thinking of using an architect.’
‘What happened to your ‘natural eye for design’? I heard you say often enough you were better than any architect,’ she teased.
‘I am too. All those fellas with their letters and their degrees and they wouldn’t know a hall from a horse’s bollicks,’ he grinned. ‘All the same, these are great sites. An architect might be a good investment.’
McGroarty wasn’t by nature honest, but he knew the importance of reputation. Sometimes he took the odd short cut but, by and large, his houses were sturdy, well built. He also knew his trade. He had trained as a carpenter but, after years in the business, he knew the intricacies of plumbing, electricals, bricklaying, plastering. He employed a young architect, struggling, but already earning a reputation for brilliance. The houses were modern, spacious, full of light. They all sold from the drawings.
He named the place Hawthorne Close even though the tree was gone and McGroarty had no idea what a close was. But he liked the sound of it.
‘It has an upmarket ring, sort of English,’ he told his wife.
The new owners were young couples with school-going children. They were all upgrading. Their previous houses had been too far out or too small or on the wrong side of town. They were all excited. They moved in at the start of summer and soon gardens were being planted, BBQs were being lit, friendships developing. The Hogans delivered on a promise to their children and got a puppy. But the puppy didn’t thrive and died after a few weeks.
McGroarty thought of retiring. He had made a lot of money from building and it would be nice to travel. But a site came up, a spectacular site, big enough to build an entire complex of town houses. Two or three other builders had looked at it with a view to forming a syndicate but McGroarty mortgaged himself to the hilt, borrowed from his in-laws and bought the lot.
The mould appeared in the first month. The Stewarts noticed it in their kitchen on a Tuesday morning as everyone was rushing off to school or work. By evening it had spread. Vonnie Stewart wiped it off, applying bleach carefully as she didn’t want to spoil the paintwork. Next evening it was worse. This time she used undiluted bleach but by the weekend it was as bad as ever.
‘I’ll see to it,’ Reggie, her husband, said. ‘It’s only a mould, it can’t be that difficult to treat.’
He bought pesticide, read the directions carefully, and treated a large area of wall. The mould came back. Reggie called to the Hogans, talked rugby, motor bikes.
‘Any problem with mould?’ he asked casually.
‘Nothing much,’ George Hogan replied. ‘The wife doesn’t use the extractor properly. I tell her she’s making the kitchen damp but you know women, they never listen.’ Reggie thought Betty was about to say something but her husband looked at her and she turned away.
McGroarty had a look, cursed some non-national he had used to help with the plastering.
‘I’ll strip that wall, treat the problem, and re-paint,’ he reassured them. ‘If needs be, I’ll re-plaster, but that’s unlikely.’
He wasn’t unduly worried.
‘Sorry for the inconvenience,’ he added. ‘I’ll keep it to a minimum.’
Some weeks after the repairs were finished he received an email from Stewart. The mould was reappearing. These days McGroarty wore silk and cashmere, drove around in his merc, left the physical slog to others. But he wasn’t afraid of hard work. He donned his overalls, pinned up his sleeves, and set to. He drilled, excavated, removed exterior doors and windows. He inspected wiring, pipes, disposals, searched for ingress of water.
‘I’m at a loss,’ he confided to his wife. ‘The house is structurally sound. It’s a puzzle.’
His wife said nothing, shrugged her shoulders.
He called in experts, listened to their suggestions.
‘It’s an unusual mould,’ one man said. ‘I’ve never seen anything like it. We could try blazing it with a cocktail of chemicals.’
For a time this seemed to work and McGroarty thought the problem was solved.
‘The Mannings have their house up for sale,’ Reggie Stewart announced to Vonnie one evening. ‘Mould!’ he added. ‘Hogan told me.’
‘That man,’ she exclaimed. ‘He knows everything. I swear I saw him looking in our windows.’
‘You did,’ Reggie answered. ‘He looked in the windows of all the houses. They all have mould.’
‘I think the children are allergic to it,’ Vonnie said, listening to her eldest wheezing. ‘You could be right,’ Reggie agreed. ‘The Hogans all have coughs. And the Manning children weren’t at school this week.’
‘How do you -’ Vonnie started to say.
‘Hogan told me,’ Reggie smiled, ‘he saw them through the window.’
September brought an Indian Summer. Warm, sunny days: picnics on the beach, dinners al fresco on the sheltered patios. Idyllic days for the residents of Hawthorne Close. The mould seemed to have reached a truce; it hadn’t cleared but it hadn’t got any worse. Wasps were the only problem, darting everywhere, more numerous and more angry than in other years.
‘Shouldn’t you be doing that in the spring?’ James Harper observed to Reggie one evening as he passed his gate and saw Reggie busy with the secateurs.
‘I’m new to gardening,’ Reggie admitted. ‘I am going by the book. Some shrubs can take a bit of pruning in October.’
‘It’s getting chilly,’ James said, ‘we’ll soon be in the winter woolies.’
‘We were spoiled by the gorgeous September,’ Reggie answered. ‘It was warmer outside than inside.’
‘It’s still warmer outside, despite the chill. Our house is very cold,’ James confided.
‘Have you the heating on?’ Reggie asked.
‘It’s been on all this past week. Doesn’t seem to make much difference.’
‘Now that you say it, I hear Vonnie complaining about the cold,’ Reggie admitted.
Six weeks later the four families held a meeting. McGroarty was to come but at the last moment he sent his apologies.
‘He should be here,’ Heff Manning said angrily. ‘Our houses are cold. I think it is coming from that stuff on the walls.’
The mould was now a major problem, a grey-blue fungus that grew in tufts.
‘It must be the foundations,’ Hogan said. ‘It’s only on the downstairs walls.’
‘It has a rotting smell,’ Vonnie Stewart said. ‘Like something decomposing.’
‘It smells like death,’ Angie Harper agreed.
‘We had to…’ Betty Hogan began but her husband glared at her and she didn’t continue.
‘Our house is freezing,’ Jenny Manning complained. ‘We have the heating on as high as possible and we are still shivering.
‘The cold seems to come from the walls,’ Reggie said. ‘I think whatever is causing the mould is causing the cold.’
‘We had …’ Betty said.
Her husband glared at her again but she was crying now and kept going.
‘We had to pull up the floorboards, they were buckling.’
‘Nonsense,’ Jenny argued. ‘They are solid oak, they can’t buckle.
‘We pulled them up,’ Betty wept. ‘There was mould underneath, great clumps of growth.’
‘Mould isn’t that strong,’ Reggie protested uncertainly.
‘I warned you to keep your mouth shut,’ George Hogan snarled at his wife. ‘We can’t let this get out,’ he said aggressively to the others. ‘It will devalue our houses.’
‘It’s too late,’ Jenny Manning said. ‘We put our house on the market. We didn’t get one bid.’
‘We pitched the reserve too high,’ Heff said, forcing a smile.
‘No,’ Jenny said. ‘We have to be truthful here. We reduced t
he reserve, reduced it again. It made no difference. People are talking.’
‘We have put every cent we own into this house,’ George Hogan whispered.
Betty snuffled into a wet tissue. ‘I hate this house,’ she gulped. ‘I wish we had never left our cosy terrace.’
‘I sort of agree with you,’ Vonnie said. ‘But I think it’s the house that hates me.’
‘That’s rubbish talk,’ Jennie snapped. ‘Houses can’t hate.’
‘I feel it too,’ Angie Harper nodded. ‘Something in the house, something hostile.’
The Mannings were older than the others, their children finishing secondary school, one already at university.
‘We need a solicitor’, Heff told the meeting. ‘This problem won’t be fixed. We must try to get our money back.’
‘A court case will take ages,’ Reggie groaned. ‘And meanwhile the growth will mushroom. Our houses will be destroyed.’
‘And maybe we won’t get our money back,’ Harper’s face was grey. ‘Barristers are slippery.’
‘We will have to get something back,’ George Hogan said. ‘Won’t we?’ he pleaded.
‘Our best chance is to stick together. Now I suggest,’ Heff began.
‘You weren’t that keen on sticking together when you tried to sell your house,’ Hogan accused.
‘We were just testing the market, getting an idea …’
‘Without a word to anyone!’
‘Getting an idea on the value …’
‘Look, we all know you tried to pull a fast one.’ George’s face was red, angry.
‘Calm down, man, you will give yourself a heart attack,’ Heff said smoothly.
‘What do you know about this mould? What do you know that the rest of us don’t? What are you not telling us?’ George was on his feet, shouting at Heff.
The problem was never solved. McGroarty fought with the families, the families fought among themselves. Court cases dragged on for years. The families left, their houses unsold. Copper piping was stolen, slates disappeared, and a slimy growth pushed out in angry bursts. Squatters came and went; none stayed for more than a day or two, driven away by the deadly cold. McGroarty’s drawings for his planned complex faded on his desk, his reputation shredded. He tried to sell the land but prospective buyers drove a hard bargain, knowing how badly he needed the money. He wanted to start again but his wife left him, went back to her family, and the money dried up. The banks foreclosed and he was declared bankrupt. He tried to get a job on a building site but employers were reluctant to hire him. He went on the dole, moved into a communal bed-sit.
The Celtic Mythology Collection 2016 Page 1