typical move with grave issues.
“Ben, he hits her. That fellow she’s with.”
I looked at her with eyes of stone.
“Mother, what are you talking about?”
“Ally Carroll’s sister has a bed-and-breakfast in Mitchelstown. They stayed there. The police were called. She had a broken rib. He’s a drinker.”
For the next two hours I paced by the river.
A small guest room? No! I’m not seeing the water. I’m not looking for the flights of the birds. The children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the birds I first learnedto love here. Now I’ll be a bird, too, a bird of passage. He hits her. He broke her rib. How often do I have to be told? Failed again
.
As depression swept in like a tide of sludge, I took one last look at the house. Seen from the river, the chimneys stand up through the trees. That’s the view I knew best, the view that had given me security and the lessons in how to be free of it, the view that still means the most to me in the world.
34
In my earlier days, after such a painful time, and wearing a huge sense of loss, I’d have avoided people; I’d have sought quiet places such as woodlands or mountainsides and wallowed in bleak groves. This form of retreat had a curious side effect, in that I became able to identify the legends I collected with the undulations of the land.
This time, however, I didn’t seek the quiet places; I resumed work, went straight back into collecting, fulfilling the month of appointments I had made.
Indeed, that very day, I found a short tale in the next county. It’s a little piece of mythology that supports what I’ve observed about the connection between legend and landscape. Here it is, as I took it down from a retired farmworker in County Kilkenny (not far from Randall’s house).
Near Mooncoin, where the River Nore has a wide bend, there used to be a thick stand of trees on a height above the water. Long ago, the land was owned by an old Irish family, name of Riordan or O’Riordan. The farm was taken from them by a family of Scottish planters brought in by the English government. Jer Riordan, the oldest son, had to stand there and watch his parents carried out in a cart, the farm they’d worked on all their lives robbed from under them
.
Now Jer Riordan was a quiet fellow, born weak, and not able to fight. So he went up to the man who was taking over the farm, a man by the name of Langden, and says to him, “I’m going to curse your family for five generationsuntil we get our land back. Whenever you see a deer on that hill over there by the trees, a big buck with fine antlers, then you’ll know that a Langden is going to die.”
The following morning, Mr. Langden got up and went out his front door, and there, across the river, he saw a big stag, with a rack of antlers you could hang vestments on. And then he heard a shout above his head. He looked up and saw his small son waving out the window to him. But the boy leaned too far out and fell down at his father’s feet and broke his little neck and died. That kind of thing happened four more times in a hundred years—and there’s Riordans back on that farm again now
.
35
As long as I kept moving, I knew I’d begin to feel better. And Jimmy Bermingham wouldn’t find me. Five weeks had gone by since the shooting of Sammy Gilpin—five weeks since I’d shoved Jimmy out of the car in Dundalk, south of the Irish border, the town they’d later call “El Paso.” And then, calmer, resigned, and even making plans in my head, I went to watch the afternoon sunlight dancing through Randall’s long windows.
It was one of those days when a hush hangs everywhere, heavy as cloth. Nobody to be seen on the property, no workmen in the fields, no housemaid cleaning the brasses on the front door. The lake spread long and lovely, blue satin, to the tall red reeds on the far bank. I parked the car on the terrace.
Silence everywhere. No answer to the long, echoing clang of the doorbell. I opened the
“Ben, he hits her. That fellow she’s with.”
I looked at her with eyes of stone.
“Mother, what are you talking about?”
“Ally Carroll’s sister has a bed-and-breakfast in Mitchelstown. They stayed there. The police were called. She had a broken rib. He’s a drinker.”
For the next two hours I paced by the river.
A small guest room? No! I’m not seeing the water. I’m not looking for the flights of the birds. The children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the birds I first learnedto love here. Now I’ll be a bird, too, a bird of passage. He hits her. He broke her rib. How often do I have to be told? Failed again
.
As depression swept in like a tide of sludge, I took one last look at the house. Seen from the river, the chimneys stand up through the trees. That’s the view I knew best, the view that had given me security and the lessons in how to be free of it, the view that still means the most to me in the world.
34
In my earlier days, after such a painful time, and wearing a huge sense of loss, I’d have avoided people; I’d have sought quiet places such as woodlands or mountainsides and wallowed in bleak groves. This form of retreat had a curious side effect, in that I became able to identify the legends I collected with the undulations of the land.
This time, however, I didn’t seek the quiet places; I resumed work, went straight back into collecting, fulfilling the month of appointments I had made.
Indeed, that very day, I found a short tale in the next county. It’s a little piece of mythology that supports what I’ve observed about the connection between legend and landscape. Here it is, as I took it down from a retired farmworker in County Kilkenny (not far from Randall’s house).
Near Mooncoin, where the River Nore has a wide bend, there used to be a thick stand of trees on a height above the water. Long ago, the land was owned by an old Irish family, name of Riordan or O’Riordan. The farm was taken from them by a family of Scottish planters brought in by the English government. Jer Riordan, the oldest son, had to stand there and watch his parents carried out in a cart, the farm they’d worked on all their lives robbed from under them
.
Now Jer Riordan was a quiet fellow, born weak, and not able to fight. So he went up to the man who was taking over the farm, a man by the name of Langden, and says to him, “I’m going to curse your family for five generationsuntil we get our land back. Whenever you see a deer on that hill over there by the trees, a big buck with fine antlers, then you’ll know that a Langden is going to die.”
The following morning, Mr. Langden got up and went out his front door, and there, across the river, he saw a big stag, with a rack of antlers you could hang vestments on. And then he heard a shout above his head. He looked up and saw his small son waving out the window to him. But the boy leaned too far out and fell down at his father’s feet and broke his little neck and died. That kind of thing happened four more times in a hundred years—and there’s Riordans back on that farm again now
.
35
As long as I kept moving, I knew I’d begin to feel better. And Jimmy Bermingham wouldn’t find me. Five weeks had gone by since the shooting of Sammy Gilpin—five weeks since I’d shoved Jimmy out of the car in Dundalk, south of the Irish border, the town they’d later call “El Paso.” And then, calmer, resigned, and even making plans in my head, I went to watch the afternoon sunlight dancing through Randall’s long windows.
It was one of those days when a hush hangs everywhere, heavy as cloth. Nobody to be seen on the property, no workmen in the fields, no housemaid cleaning the brasses on the front door. The lake spread long and lovely, blue satin, to the tall red reeds on the far bank. I parked the car on the terrace.
Silence everywhere. No answer to the long, echoing clang of the doorbell. I opened the
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