This was followed by shouts of, “Up the Banner, yeh bollix yeh!”

 

“What kind of a book is it?” inquired Eugene the part-time chicken choker.

 

Mac was now wallowing in the attention. He lit a cigarette and surveyed the assembled audience or his faithful flock as he now saw them before blowing a pillar of smoke into the dark rafters. “Somebody mentioned the fellow from Kerry. Well, now my book would be different from his, much different…”

 

There were more shouts of encouragement.

 

“Yes. My book is a cuntish sort of book,” he said, an inane smile on his face. “Its a book in which the people talk exactly like people talk. There’s no pretentious shite like oh dear I am emblazoned with bemusement or what the freaking frig or is this an indiscretion or something.”

 

“That could work alright,” agreed Long John. “Once it rhymes.”

 

“I’ll let no prick up in Dublin tell us down here how we should talk or what we write or when we should have our dinner…”

 

“Or what we should have for our dinner,” a voice yelled and was followed by shouts of “Free speech for Clare.” “Away with censorship.” “Up the Banner.”

 

“Oh yes. Have no doubt that my book will be banned by the Dublin gang. But that’ll be to our benefit. We’ll have them, book dealers, from all over the world jostling one another out on the road there trying to outbid one another and that’ll be just on the rumours of its contents. It’ll be a salacious companion to the country girls by….”

 

 “Isn’t he fucking amazing,” crooned the curvaceous Bridie.

 

“It’ll be translated into many languages even Japanese.”

 

“Why not!” shouted someone who was outside the back door pissing into the dereliction that served as a backyard and a urinal when some other imbiber was in the half-collapsed wooden hut that had an overflowing bucket which served as the official Jacks and had a notice saying ‘Piss on regardless’ above it.

 

“Japanese bejaysus Mac! Everyone will want the Japanese version as a keepsake.”

 

“An why not,” said Mac, “isn’t Ulysses in Japanese but I tell you this I’ll be the first to have geebags translated into Japanese.”

 

“That’ed be some quare one to get your tongue around, the sound that is Mac.” said Eugene as he brushed off some small chicken feathers from his jumper.

 

Whether it was because of the ebullient nature of Mister Mac or whether a quirk of geography, the establishment seemed to attract a substantial proportion of what big farmers would consider landless riff-raff. These basement dwellers of society or those with poor reputations in the eyes of the law, Mac welcomed with open arms. While he had his favourites, like Bridie from Cranny or Beatrice the cherubic peroxide blond, he never had a good word to say about anyone within moments of them staggering out onto the dilapidated road.

 

When Marsh, the motorcycle Bonafider, entered the cosy family establishment, its air scented by a combination of cigarette and turf smoke, he found it busy.

 

A silence came over the pub. Near the door, a bunch of fellows around his own age stared at him. Because he was embarrassed at his dishevelled appearance and especially of the muck-splattered sheepskin coat he asked in a sort of apologetic tone: “The restroom lads?”

 

There was a burst of laughter. “A restroom!! Is it a snooze that you’d be looking for?” inquired a foxy-haired fellow who Marsh later learned was known as de Valera Murt because of his fanatical support for Fianna Fail.

 

Marsh smiled. “Actually, on the way here I was attacked by a sheep, I mean a big dog that looked like a sheep. Catastrophic violence as youse can see…” he said in an apologetic tone, not realizing that his bedraggled appearance blended in perfectly with the gentle disorderliness of the premises.

 

There was more raucous laughter. “A fucking sheep. Yuh sure it wasn’t Leatherlip Finnucane,” another jibed.

 

A group of older men at the far end of the counter were watching the proceeding with silent suspicion. Almost to a man they wore long unbuttoned dark grey overcoats and only one, who reminded Marsh of the Cork IRA commander Tom Barry, was bareheaded. These were men who had been out in the War of Independence and after that had taken on the Free Staters. Indeed, some of them had taken part in the attack on Kiladysart barracks in 1922 when republican volunteers John O’Gorman and John McSweeney were killed in action by Free State forces. To the other side, these men were considered Irregulars. They were naturally suspicious of strangers. They remembered when the Castle gang came sniffing around after a garda was killed by a booby trap in a field near Tullycrine in 1929.

 

It did not matter to these men that over forty years had passed or that Marsh looked like he was after losing a wrestling match with a madman’s shite or that Branchmen were now post-civil war. A Branchman was always a Branchman and why wouldn’t one half cover himself in cow shit and muck if it was thought that it might lead to solving a bit of near-forgotten wickedness.

 

“Leatherlip?” inquired Marsh.

 

“Never mind that yahoo,” advised a man who said he was Patcho, and whose brown curly hair sprouted out on all sides from his corduroy peaked cap. “Leatherlip was a fellow who murdered a woman for half a crown years ago and was hung, his ghost is supposed to haunt the road, the bog is out that door but there’s a tap out in the back an there’s a bit of a mirror on the shed door.”

 

Marsh tidied himself to the best that the sparse facilities would allow and in emerging introduced himself to the younger group as Lambert Simnel and apologised for the gap in his mouth where his two false teeth had been a short time earlier.

                                                         

“Well he’s no relations around here with a name like that,” concluded Murt.

 

“I’m from over the way,” said Marsh.

 

“You’re from well over the way, I think but you missed the fair here. That was last week,” said a fellow who introduced himself as Titanic Pat the sailor.

 

Marsh called a pint and lit up a cigarette. “Ah, I’m not over here to buy or sell I’m…”

 

“That’s a pity now because there was some lovely single-punch and double-punch bullocks on the go last week…” Eddie announced.

 

“Not to mention the mightiest of sucklers. What are yis milking over beyond?”

 

“Cows,” said Marsh taking a long drag on the cigarette.

 

There was a burst of laughter.

 

“Eh, black an whites like,” he explained.

 

“We call them Friesians over here,” said Patcho.

 

“That’s what I was thinking. Yes, a good name especially in winter. It’s the back end of them my mission relates to.”

 

As Marsh paid for his pint and took a good slug from the glass the others gave one another puzzled looks.

 

“The rear end! Yuh wouldn’t be talking bout the back legs of a sheep into the oul wellington boots job?” inquired Jaws Byrne who was able to place a large cooking apple into his mouth and split it in half with one bite. He winked at the others.

 

“Oh, Jaysus no. I’m talking about eh science. Yes, the science of flatulence!”

 

“Flatulence! What the fuck is that?!”

 

“That’s farting or breaking wind in polite circles. You see the world is going to explode,” he clapped his hands together… “unless…”

 

Beatrice, who was standing at the counter jumped and made the sign of the cross as some of the others burst into laughter.

                                                            

“You’re a fucking gas man,” said a well-dressed fellow who was known as Batters Clancy. “Isn’t he a gas fucking man?”

 

“Are they all gas men over there, I wonder, all full of wind eh, they must spend all their time breaking their arses with the laughter…” echoed Murt.

 

“That fellow’s only ball hopping, trying to trick yez,” one of the older men shouted.

 

“I’m not,” appealed Marsh. “It’s a well-known fact, that’s why I’m over here.”

 

“Yes agreed,” another of the older men in a phlegmatic voice. “Why exactly are you over here?”

 

Marsh detected a hint of menace in the question. He was standing there, a stranger among a group of strangers in a place he had never been before. He thought that he better get on with the story he was going to spin, find out as soon as he could where these Stacpooles were holing up and get the fuck back on the road. He took another gulp from the pint glass.

 

“To get a solution to the problem that was well known to the early Celts…” he said sluggishly.

 

“And what problem would that be now?” asked one of the older men in a voice filled with cynicism.

 

“The problem with farting cows filling the world full of methane gas and…”

 

“Oh I see so you’ve come over here to tell us the small farmers and the smaller to slaughter our cattle and get off the land, is that it?” he asked in a combative tone. “You’re one of these climate action fuckers.”

 

“Oh no. Slaughter is not on my mind,” said Marsh in a matter-of-fact manner. “In fact, I’m not a citiphiliac, a phoney rural or an ambivalent muck spreader. A small farmers’and a smallers’ farmers and workers’ republic is one I’ve always stood up for. An you know these Marxist intellectuals who say that such a thing is a contradiction in …”

 

“We’re all Catholics here,” piped up a deep voice.

 

“You don’t speak for everyone here,” Bennie replied instantly.

 

“Of course,” agreed Marsh. “We’re not all Hail Queen of the May! As I was saying I’m not one of these fuckers in pinstripe suits who wants to empty the countryside, actually I love the countryside, the heather, the furze even the stingers and especially the rural pubs like here and the relaxed attitude to the law and to life in general. Sure, I spend a lot of time travelling around it, I do a lot of travelling you know looking for the formula…and trying to find out where good ideas come from….”

 

“I’m afraid there’s a scarcity of good ideas around here,” sneered a bearded fellow known as dead-end Dick simply because he lived at the end of a boreen.

 

“Not really,” contradicted Marsh, “good ideas are everywhere. Its just a matter of recognizing them through perceptual knowledge and then developing that knowledge into rational knowledge which gives us the dialectical-materialist movement of knowledge from the fucken perceptual to the rational that establishes the law of the unity of opposites.”

 

As Marsh lit a cigarette many among the gathering exchanged perplexed glances while Beatrice moaned, “that kind of eegit talk gives me a pain in the gee.”

 

“Beatrice is right,” concurred the gangly Clancy who was blessed with a voluminous head of black curly hair and whose barber should have gotten hard labour, “now what’s this about a formula?”

 

 “The formula, of course yes,” agreed Marsh as he swirled his tongue around the hole in his teeth. “But before we get into that I need to make clear that I’m not one to support turning the countryside into a handful of huge farms where the cows never see eh...”

 

“Fresh grass,” said Eddie.

 

“Exactly! I want to see the countryside full of people. I want to see industry getting government aid to encourage an equal spread throughout the countryside. And remember with developing technology a time will come when people will be able to work in small groups in maybe village halls and so forth.”

 

“He’s fucking full of methane,” mocked Patcho.

 

“All I’m saying is we don’t want the countryside emptied like what they did when the potatoes failed or the clearances in England when the people were forcibly fucked off the land”

 

“In England?” asked Bridie.

 

“In England by the English,” confirmed Marsh. “Sure, they were every bit as bad to their own as they were to us.”

 

“Fucking animals,” muttered one of the older men.

 

 “Fucking right, for instance in the close of the 15th century and for the whole of the 16th the breaking up of the feudal land system the ordinary people were forced off the land and could not be absorbed into the nascent industry that then existed, so they were forced into becoming beggars and vagabonds and the more daring and inventive became robbers.”

 

Eddie gave a low whistle. “Sure, what else could the poor fuckers do. No dole then.”

 

“Well, the upper crust had a sort of a dole. And beggars who were old and infirm were given a sort of licence to beg but sturdy vagabonds were subjected to whipping and imprisonment. That is, they would be tied to the back of a cart and whipped until blood ran down their backs and then they had to swear an oath to go back to where they were born and put themselves to labour.”

 

“Jesus Long John, you’d have to go back to Limerick so,” Beatrice laughed.

 

“That was Henry VIII in 1530 but then things got a little more serious and new clauses added to the statute so that for the second arrest for vagabondage the whipping is to be repeated and half the ear sliced off but for a third offence the offender is to be executed as a hardened criminal....”

 

“It musta bin a paradise for sadists,” Eddie remarked.

 

Patcho shook his head. “He’s fucking making this up.”

 

“No, I’m not. But then came Edward VI in 1547 who ordained that anyone who refuses to work, shall be condemned as a slave to the person who has denounced him as an idler..”

 

“That sounds like a sensible law,” suggested Mac to Beatrice.

 

“Your wuzz Mac,” said Beatrice giving him the two fingers.

 

“There are conditions for the master,” Marsh continued, “he shall feed his slave on bread and water, weak broth and such refuse meat as he thinks fit. He has the right to force him to do any work, no matter how fucken disgusting, with whip and chains. If the slave is absent a fortnight, he is condemned to slavery for life and is to be branded on the fucken forehead or back with the letter S; if he runs away thrice, he is to be executed as a felon. The master can sell him, bequeath him, let him out on hire as a slave, just as any other personal chattel or cattle.”

 

“This is crazy,” said Dick.

 

“No Jim Larkin then,” said Marsh. “If the slaves attempt anything against the masters, they are also to be executed. Justices of the peace, on information, are to hunt them down. If it happens that a vagabond has been idling about for three days, he is to be taken to his birthplace, branded with a red-hot iron with the letter V on his breast and be set to work, in chains, in the streets or at some other labour. If the vagabond gives a false birthplace, he is then to become the slave for life of this place, of its inhabitants, or its corporation, and to be branded with an S. All persons have the right to take away the children of the vagabonds and to keep them as apprentices, the young men until the 24th year, the girls until the 20th...”

 

“The poor kids,” said Bridie sorrowfully as she called for a hot whiskey.

 

“Jesus fuck! Now I have to boil the kettle. Don’t continue until I boil the bollocksing kettle will you.”

 

Bridie shook her head in disgust. “Imagine doing that to their own people.”

 

“Sure, didn’t the feckers call us their own people, the children of the Empire,” said the bareheaded older man, rolling his tongue around the word ‘empire’ in mock homage. “Didn’t they call the people of Kenya and India their own children and look at what they were doing to them only a few years back...”

 

Mac emerged from the kitchen with the boiling electric kettle, “Fucking Nelson,” he shouted. “Sure, it just occurred to me that Nelson won the Waterloo carry-on, and half of his navy, those in the galleys, were made up of these and Irish prisoners, continue on Lambert.”

 

“That is correct. Well then we came to our old friend Elizabeth 1st and under her unlicensed beggars above 14 years of age are to be severely flogged branded on the left ear unless someone will take them into service for two years; in case of a repetition of the offence if they are over 18, they are to be executed, unless someone will take them into service for two years; but for the third offence, they are to be executed without mercy as felons. And then under James Ist, more bollix. Anyone wandering about and begging is declared a rogue and a vagabond. Justices of the peace in petty sessions are authorised to have them publicly whipped and for the first offence to imprison them for 6 months, for the second 2 years. While in prison they are to be whipped as much and as often as the justices see fit...”

 

“All that fucking whipping,” smirked Long John. “Francis Bacon would have out Baconed himself if he had lived then.”

 

Marsh laughed. “Well, it lasted until the reign of Ann in the 18th century. So yiz see why its important we maintain a viable rural population.”

 

“He’s finally talking sense after me nearly giving him up as a hopeless case,” declared Eugene.  “And then the food they could give a slave!! A hunger striker would eat more.”

 

One of the older men stared at Eugene. “Don’t be mocking hunger strikers. I knew Sean McCaughey who died in Portlaoise on hunger strike...”

 

“Oh, I’m not Tom,” Eugene apologised.

 

“Yuh know the way you die without food?” continued the older man ignoring Eugene, “well in the latter stages the stomach thinks that the throat is slit and starts eating itself...”

 

“Jesus!!” said Mac as he subconsciously placed a hand on his more than ample belly.

 

“And then yuh see the tongue like a shrivelled sliver of what! Not meat as we know meat but more like a rasher rind waving around in the shrunken face for....”

 

“For fuck sake Tom...we’re trying to have a drink now you’re after putting such a thirst on us that we’ll be going home legless if we have to go home that is,” said Beatrice addressing the hint to Mac.

 

“There was a fellow who used to talk about that McCaughey business,” said Mac, “who was a diligent reader and was a gateman on the West Clare railway can’t think of his name.”

 

Eddie clicked his fingers. “That’s right. He was a nice man, big fellow whose first name was Sean, I think, he went to England when the line closed, he was at the Blackweir crossing on the way to Querrin.”

 

Mac laughed. “And the story I heard was that there was a kind of a relation of his living there and this evening Sean had become engrossed in a book about Carl Chessman who was known as the red light bandit and at the time was the longest man on death row in the U S….” I’m telling you,” he promised his uninterested brother, “if they gas him there’ll be a fucking revolution, a fucking rebellion…”

 

“I’m not saying you’re wrong,” growled the short-tempered brother as he hammered the flimsy kitchen table with his fist, “but what I am fucking saying is that the up mail has now passed Costellos and probably Bradleys and…”

 

Sean made a dash for the door which led onto the station platform just as the up mail rattled past. There was an ear-splitting sound of splintering wood as the remains of one of the gates landed outside the shop window of Missus Downes of Blackweir. Sean, with his hands to his head and his lugubrious face ashen, stood on the road and looked across at Missus Downes who was inside her shop window waving her fists at him.

 

“What about this formula Lambert?” Patcho inquired when the laughter died.

 

Marsh had just called a pint. “Oh, the formula. Have you ever heard of the Cin Dromma Snechta manuscript?”

 

“No. And I doubt if you have either. I think you're full of shit....”

 

“That’s the second time you’ve said that today.” Mac cut in.

 

Marsh shrugged with a morbid look on his face which was somewhat diluted by his open mouth displaying the gap left by his missing two front teeth as Mac, who seemed to have taken an avuncular liking of Marsh, muttered through gritted teeth to Patcho, “And the ironic thing is you’re the very fellow in here who has more shit than anyone,” he concluded while leaning forward on the counter on one elbow.

 

“This is a shitty conversation,” Bridie chuckled in a vain attempt to lessen the temperature.

 

“What are yuh talking about?” demanded Patcho glaring at Mac.

 

“You know what I’m talking about. You’re in here shouting about the republic and up the IRA and Sean South from Garryowen and the Four fucking Green Fields….”

 

Patcho frowned as the words stumbled out. “Is there something wrong with that?”

 

“You’re a hypocrite, that’s what’s wrong with it because we know who you vote for.”

 

Patcho blanched. “You know nothing about me.”

 

“I know everything about you and your family and whether you know it or not but everyone here knows it and everyone here has always known it…”

 

“Knows what?” snapped Patcho giving Mac a truculent eye.

 

“How your grandfather lost his pub,” retorted Mac in a stentorian voice.

 

“Generosity,” Patcho hissed, “he gave the slate to too many scroungers who were not very pernickety about paying their bills.” 

 

“Really!” sneered Mac standing up… He gave the counter a firm slap with an open hand. “Well, that could be true but the scroungers, whether they were or were not paying their bills were fucking Black and Tans. There was only two pubs this side of Ennis who served Black and Tans,” he paused, “your grandfather and one out the West owned by pernicious fuck face himself. It was boycotted after the Treaty. That’s the fucking reason. Even the scroungers abandoned him.….”

 

There was a brief throbbing silence. Marsh poked at where his missing teeth used to be. Bridie wriggled a foot and admired her legs. Eddie glanced out the window at the deserted street.

 

Patcho appeared shocked. “I’ll take meself to somewhere decent where my family won’t be lied about,” he muttered weakly as he headed out violently pulling the front door shut behind him.

 

Another awkward silence followed to be broken by Mac, “I’ve been waiting to get at that fucker for some time now.”

 

“Ah he’s not that bad,” Beatrice reasoned.

 

“Not the bad!! Are yuh fucking joking me? Did anybody ever hear him say anything, any tinchy winchy bit of a good word about anybody living or dead? He is a mendacious scoundrel, as were all belonging to him, he is a characterless arsehole, as were all belonging to him.”

 

Bridie gave Marsh a wink to put him at ease as she was aware that he was feeling uncomfortable at thinking that he was the reason for the row as Mac continued, “he is a fucker who only sees the worst in everybody, as did all belonging to him, he is a donkey’s jack-off, as were all belonging to him.”

 

Mac was now standing on the pub counter and acting like a pulpit-ranting parish priest encouraging the hapless congregation to accompany him on the chorus of ‘all belonging to him’ as if it was some satanic Rosary.

 

“He is an opinionated runt, as were all belonging to him. He is a narrow-minded turd, as were all belonging to him. He is only a whore’s huff, as were all belonging to him. He is a jockey’s ponce, as were all belonging to him. He is a banjaxed catastrophe,” Mac, delighted with himself urged an end with delicate, lowering hand gestures and the chorus ‘as were all belonging to himmmmm’ faded into impalpability.”

 

He got down off the counter, “that’s the best bit of fun I’ve had in ages. Thanks to you Lambert.”

 

“Not since the night we heard of Ultan and the car,” said Murt.

 

Mac turned to Marsh. “Ah wait an you hear this. Wasn’t it true Murt?”

 

Murt grinned. “Well true or not oul Ultan swore by it.”

 

“A Morris wasn’t it?”

 

“It was, a black job.”

 

“That’s right up at the field near the graveyard…”

 

Marsh perked up at the mention of the place. “The graveyard Murt?”

 

“Yeah. Oul Ultan God rest his soul left here one night in the Morris, now he had a skinful, but he was perfectly capable of driving…”

 

“Capable!” confirmed Mac. “As if I’d let someone leave here incapable. Sure he could have taken on Stirling Moss the same night.”

 

“Course he could but anyway down the hill with him and the gears grinding as he’s hanging a right into Labasheeda…”

 

“Grinding is the word,” Mac laughed. “D’yuh know I don’t think he knew what the clutch was for….”

 

Eddie gave the counter a playful wallop. “I don’t know how many times the fucker woke me up an you know Mac, I was up in the factory then, the fucking early start an early to bed an him coming back from wherever the fuck with a belly full in the small hours…”

 

“Ballynacally most likely…”

 

“I suppose but when he’d hit the turn for here you’d hear the fucking gears mashing into one another like a trashing machine an that’s me night’s sleep fucked…”

 

“Nothing for it then but to wake the wife,” advised Eugene.

 

“What happened up near the graveyard?” inquired Marsh.

 

“Oh yeah, the poxy graveyard. Well, when he got up to the field just before it didn’t the fucking Morris refuse to go any further.”

 

“Jesus!” Beatrice called out. “I never heard that.”

 

Long John gave a loud guffaw. “C’mon lads!!”

 

“That’s the God’s honest truth,” confirmed Mac. “Not a fucking budge outav ih.”

 

“Did the engine just die?” asked Clancy.

 

“Did it fuck! She was purring over like a Rolls according to Ultan an he jammed her into every forward gear but not an inch would she move.”

 

“Like Delaney’s donkey,” laughed Marsh.

 

“Did he ever find out the reason?” asked Bridie.

 

“Never,” answered Mac as he lit a cigarette. “He sat in it until the dawn rose and fucky the ninth’s cock was on the pier of the gate crowing its bollocks off and then it drove him home without any bother but the funny thing is he never drove past the graveyard again after midnight. Isn’t that right Eddie?”

 

“That’s it Mac. If he was here late he’d go on the wine, well his belly would take no more stout and that’ed be late like and he drinking, what wine would he drink Mac?"

 

“Ah it depends. He liked Romanee-Conti or sometimes a glass or two of Chateau Mouton- Rothschild. Now if he was after having say a feed of bacon and cabbage he might prefer Chateau Cheval Blanc or maybe Chateau Lafite- Rotschild and you could be sure then that it would be late so he’d leave the Morris and get a lift home, bejeepers he would.”

 

“One can get all those wines here. Right Mac?” said Eugene.

 

“They’re all behind me,” remarked Mac as he scratched his jaw “and there’s no shortage of furze out in the back garden. Jesus look at the fire.”

 

“So, Lambert what about this formula and this Irish manuscript?” Bridie asked.

 

“Didn’t Pearse or somebody say that a country without its language is not a country at all?” Eddie remarked.

 

“You can’t fucking speak English don’t mind Irish,” Beatrice mocked.

 

There were splutters of laughter among the pub audience. Mac, who was putting two sods of turf on the smouldering embers, not because it was cold but because he believed as did his father before him that a pub without a smouldering heart was a pub without a soul, looked at Marsh.

 

“Did anyone hear of the Republican intellectual Ernie Bates?” asked Marsh.

 

Everybody shook their heads and there was a general agreement that whoever Bates was he was not from around the Labasheeda area. Marsh told them that he was not only an intellectual but a prominent revolutionary poet and a republican who had been involved in revolutionary action. He is a fluent Irish speaker and in having studied linguistics and being a linguist he could also speak English in three accents, Tipperary, Belfast and Liverpool.

 

“You see Ernie was doing a PhD in Trinity on the life of John Dowden 1840-1910. Actually, I think he still is when he’s not helping the Catholics in the North.” continued Marsh. “Anyway, Dowden was born in Cork and at the age of sixteen he gained a classical scholarship at Queen’s College and when eighteen he proceeded to Trinity College. He had a distinguished College career, being a senior moderator in ethics and logic. He was made a bishop and served in the Scottish Episcopal Church as the Bishop of Edinburgh and he refused to regard the Scottish Episcopal Church as a mere appendage of the Church of England….”

 

“Jesus! When I see me girlfriend tomorrow and tell her this she’s going to wet herself with excitement,” mocked Titanic Pat to general laughter.

 

“I know,” agreed Marsh as cigarettes were passed around, “but why this is relevant is that while Ernie was researching Dowden’s papers, he came across information that led him to references to the Cin Dromma Snechta manuscript.”

 

“What the fuck!” exclaimed Dick.

 

“Bejeepers I never heard of that,” said the poet “and I’ve been around, you know, McDaids and all those scribes therein. I’ve heard them all, Jordan pontificating to the high ceiling, sometimes making illogical sense, Cronin, Hayden Murphy, Linden the women poets as lovely as their sad poems and O’Broin the poet and disrespectful gent and book collector who was imprisoned in England for not returning library books and who on release from Pentonville nick proudly produced from under his overcoat a copy of Moby Dick, stamped with her Majesty’s logo which he had filched from the prison library and I heard them to one another mention things with the quarest of names but never did any of them mention this Cin Dromma Snechta book…”

 

“Well, it doesn’t exist,” explained Marsh.  

 

There was a burst of laughter. “Isn’t he some baby all the same, some fucking baby,” remarked Clancy to the gathering.

 

Marsh held up a hand. “I’ll explain in a sec. But to come back to the book what I mean is that the Cin Dromma Snechta manuscript which was written a thousand years ago in ancient Irish was lost but it had been transcribed by scholars like Sean O’Maoil Chonaire into the Book of Ballycummin.”

 

“Never heard of that lad either.”

 

“Well, it exists and it has great stories of Cuchulainn who was quite unfaithful to Emer and was reputed to be banging women as far as East of the Alps…”

 

“Huh. Men!” muttered Bridie with a dismissive toss of her head.

 

“I believe where the stone with the formula to save the world from the build-up of methane gas is and that is why I’m here.”

 

“So, the stone is here, right fucking here,” said Dick.

 

Marsh took a good slug from his pint. He was contented now within himself and relieved that the pain from the bites of the animal or whatever it was that attacked him in the graveyard had also dulled, probably helped by the effects of the alcohol. His one regret was realising that this evil landlord, was not still above ground, where he would have made him pay the ultimate penalty for his crimes against the Clare tenantry. He would have to get a fix on the house and maybe later get a few of the lads to come down, evict the living descendants and burn the house down. Give them a taste of their own medicine. For now, he’d have to be contented by finding the vault and putting a slug through the skull as a belated warning to the present landlord fraternity. When he got back he would have to visit the good doctor Bullet. The republican medicine man who sorted him out when the incendiary device exploded in his pocket, the very same doctor that treated the man who Ructions, in a fit of pique, shot in the neck in the Peacock pub and nearly got himself barred except for the magnanimous understanding of Jimmy Clarke. A throbbing in his testicles was proof that it was in that area that the wolf in sheep’s clothing first attacked when it bounded out of the twilight and caught him completely unawares as he was bent over trying to read an inscription on a vault to see if it would furnish him with clues as to the whereabouts of the landlord’s estate. He had tried to check himself out in the pub toilet, but the light was bad and he had no sooner dropped his trousers when he heard a customer approach and he had to whip them up again. He didn’t want the customer to think that he was trying to pleasure himself in a pub toilet without a toilet on the banks of the River Shannon. A shadow of a smile crept over his face. If the job went without a hitch and there was no reason why it would not, he told himself, he would head back to that graveyard and see if he could come across this mysterious animal. And even if it was the hound of Fedelma bean Sidhe herself he would face it with a reprehensible demeanour for this time he would come prepared, and his .45 revolver would not be left in the saddle bag of his Honda 50. This time it would be sitting nice and snug in his trouser waistband ready for the off.

 

He had borrowed the weapon from Jer O’Leary the uncompromising republican, socialist activist, actor and bannerman artist extraordinaire among a number of other talents. Actually, he had not told the Jim Larkin actor impersonator that he had taken a loan of it because O’Leary, at this time, was playing ‘long ball up the middle Alfie’ seven-a-side football in the D-Wing yard in Mountjoy. And it was expected that he would be playing for another few seasons there.

 

Marsh was not thinking of O’Leary, he was thinking that after he had obliterated the miserable life of this animal thing, he would then head into county Limerick where he had many women admirers and safe houses and where he hoped to investigate disturbing rumours that were surfacing in the Peacock about the Irish Republican Brotherhood. Dreadful tales about an attempt to replace the Supreme Council of this iconic revolutionary organization which had been founded in 1858 and was involved in the 1916 Easter Rising, with a Dublin clique. If Marsh could confirm this, he would confront the bunch of kerb-crawling latichoes who had allowed rural branches to disappear, who were indifferent to the problems of people in the country having to walk miles to a pub for a drink because of the lack of public transport and whose political motives were suspect. With a simple demand, he would order them to stand down or dissolve and to desist from using the Sovereign Seal or face ferocious and unremitting violence.

 

He was pleased that the crowd of locals in the pub had swallowed his story hook, line and sinker. Who knows, he wondered, that someday the same locals might erect a bronze plaque to him in the village with a profile relief showing a full set of teeth, a plaque commemorating his brave act and probably designed by the great revolutionary sculptor Yann Goulet. He was aware that some of the Irish artistic notables were cap doffers to Poppyism and its Estate. Some he thought were imprinted by Britishism and had an alternative view of Goulet. He shrugged as he put his pint glass back on the counter.

 

“The formula is with Stacpoole,” he announced with solemn certainty.

 

“Who the fuck is that when he’s not at home?” asked Long John.

 

“The landlord Stacpoole,” explained Marsh. The question surprised him.

 

“Do you know who the fuck he’s talking about Tom?” Eddie asked one of the older men who was a sort of a village historian.

 

“I do,” answered Tom “one of the old landlords…”

 

 “Was a bit of a bollix,” cut in Marsh.

 

“So I heard. I remember me grandfather talking about him when I was a small garsun. He had a bad name alright. Richard Stacpoole. He was known as the exterminator, and he had no problem in tumbling houses and putting tenants out on the roadside. He used to wear a tall black hat and never went anywhere without a gillie with a double-barrel shotgun while he always carried a large-bore revolver. It was beside his hand day and night, and it was said that he had a chest full of threatening letters.”

 

“He was a badun so,” said Eddie.

 

 

 

 

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Stacpoole in Celler. Painting by Ned Hone 1865

 

 

 

“He was just as bad as the Vandaleurs who set up the town of Kilrush and the workhouse. And to this day most of the streets in the town, Croften and Victor and that are still named after the fuckers, isn’t that a bit of a fucking joke now!!” one of the older men spat out.

 

“And they’re all gone?” asked Marsh.

 

“Yep. Here’s your coffin what’s your hurry.”

 

This was grist to the mill to Marsh. This Stacpoole might still be alive. Very old but still breathing. He'd have no regrets, he told himself of putting a neat round hole in the middle of this fellow’s forehead.

 

“A real bad fucker,” continued Tom, “the local rebel leader said he’d swing for him but Stacpoole never gave him the chance. Actually, he’s supposed to have told his gillie that if anyone fired at him and he went down his gillie was not to run to him but let him lie and make sure to kill the man who fired the shot. He said that there was no law in Clare and promises to kill any armed man he sees lurking near his house.”

 

“Where’s did he live?” asked Marsh.

 

“Oh, it was a big house, think it was called Edenvale House near Ennis. It’s a good journey from here.”

 

“D’yuh know the turnpike in Ennis?” asked Dick.

 

“How the fuck would he know that when he’s from over there!” laughed Pat.

 

“It’s where Tony McMahon, our greatest box player lived and where he waited with his father’s loaded double barrel shotgun when he was only a kid for to blow the mutton head off the psychotic Christian Brother who bet the shit out of him for fucking fuck all…” declared Bennie.

 

“Ah, I’ve heard it said in music circles that Tony is not a man to break bread with fucken messers. I heard him play in O’Donoghues, definitely the greatest,” agreed Marsh. “Smoother on the bends than even Sonny Brogan. Didn’t know he had a trigger finger as well,” he laughed. “So anyway, I head for Ennis, the turnpike…”

 

“That’s fucking it so you’re going to knock up Stacpoole and get this magic formula to save the planet. Is that it?”

 

“That’s the general idea.”

 

“What’s this formula for anyway?” asked Bridie.

 

Marsh coughed. “Eh…. its the formula for fartless grass…..”

 

The pub was filled with a guffaw of laughter…. “Jesus we heard it all now…” Murt snorted.

                                                             

“It’s the final solution to the methane gas,” explained Marsh as he prepared to leave, “the growing of fartless grass for the cattle means fartless cattle.”

 

“I see,” drawled one of the older men as he rubbed his chin with a leathery hand, “so the cows won’t fart once they eat bellyfuls of this grass because what, it’ll bung up their arseholes?”

 

“They’ll just fucking explode,” suggested Dick. “Sure, wouldn’t it do wonders for tourism in the area? You could get one of those double-deckers with the open-top Mac and they could look at the exploding cows as…”

 

“I could be the conductor Mac, collecting the fares,” piped Eddie as he rubbed his hands together.

 

“I can see an early bankruptcy,” asserted Clancy the alleged fiduciary expert.

 

“Oh, they’ll fart alright,” Marsh assured.

 

“What’s the point so?” asked Bennie.

 

 “The farts will be fartless,” snapped Marsh.

 

They were still laughing when the door creaked open, and a priest entered.

 

“May God and his Holy Mother keep the fires of hell quenched by drink,” the priest called out in a cultivated accent.

 

“For all eternity Father and may you have the Sunday collection money on yeh,” toasted a chorus of merry voices.