An Irish Christmas Feast (9 page)

‘We were ambushed,' Micky Dooley explained.

‘But why?' the communal question came.

The wounded man shook his head knowingly and brought a silencing finger to his lips indicating that there was more involved here than met the eye.

‘We were ambushed,' he exclaimed to every newcomer.

‘By whom?' the question came automatically on the heels of the others.

‘Tans,' was Micky's immediate response. He kept repeating the word embellishing it every so often with choice adjectives. Eventually and inevitably the man who had planted the bullets arrived upon the scene. Tentatively he thrust his head inside the door.

‘Black and Tans,' Micky disembarrassed him before he had a chance to apologise and spoil the entire proceedings. The bullet-planter nodded vigorously, relieved beyond measure that no one had been killed. As it was, if the truth were to become known, the least for which he would be held accountable would be attempted murder.

‘Tans it was,' he confirmed. ‘Didn't I see them with my own two eyes and they making off down the road.'

Micky Dooley bent his head in gratitude and relief. It was only then that he noticed the dead cat. He lifted the stiffening form to his lips and kissed it on top of the head which was a change indeed for the only other part of the creature's anatomy with which he had any previous contact was its posterior whenever he applied one of his hobnailed boots to that sensitive area for no reason whatsoever.

‘My poor cat,' he called out while his eyes calefacted huge tears to suit the occasion. One by one the neighbours departed, arguing heatedly as to why such a savage attack had been made on a household which had no apparent connection with the Freedom Fighters.

They came to the only conclusions possible. The Tans had been seen by a reliable witness. They were, therefore, responsible for the attack. They would not have carried out the attack unless Micky Dooley was a dispatch carrier or was in the habit of secretly harbouring the men on the run.

Apart from Micky only one man knew the truth and that man's lips were sealed. It was that or subject himself to the possibility of a stiff prison sentence. There was no point in taking such a gamble. One thing was certain. Micky Dooley would never interfere with one of his reeks again. Others yes but not his. That had been the primary point of the exercise.

Time passed and word of the raid spread. The account was handsomely embroidered with the passage of the years so that, in the end, it transpired that Micky had single-handed, armed only with a double-barrelled shotgun, routed a score of Black and Tans killing none but wounding several while he himself would be a martyr to a pronounced limp for the remainder of his life. His neighbour Maggie Mulloy came to be revered throughout the countryside. Had she not fought by her neighbour's side? None begrudged her the paltry state pension and service medals which a grateful government had conferred on all those who had participated in the Fight for Freedom.

Micky Dooley fared better. Because of his limp he was awarded, in addition to his service pension, a handsome disability allowance which left him secure for the remainder of his days.

Maggie Mulloy eventually came to believe her own story. Without doubt, on a gusty winter's night under a fitful moon, shadows may be easily transformed into human shapes. No great effort is afterwards required to deck them in uniforms. Far from abandoning his old ways Micky Dooley redoubled his raids upon vulnerable turf ricks. Now he stole with impunity. Wasn't it his right he told himself. Didn't he single-handed defeat a company of Black and Tans! By God if he wasn't entitled to a few sods of somebody else's turf who was! Wasn't he one of the two surviving heroes of the Battle of Ballybooley. The bullet-planter would never mention the Christmas gift again, not even to this wife.

From time to time strangers visited Mickey Dooley's house to inspect the holes left by the bullets and to view the almost fatal wound upon his instep. Veneration was also paid to the memory of the cat whose life was ended so tragically in the service of its master. As Micky Dooley used to say when reminded of the creature's demise: ‘Greater love no cat hath than the cat who lays down his life for his friends.'

I was tempted for a while to call this story
A
Christmas Barrel.
Everybody, I told myself, has heard of
A Christmas Carol
so why not
A Christmas Barrel.
My wife thought the title too stereotyped when I submitted it for her approval. It was then I thought of
The Magic Stoolin
and, if you care to continue, you will see why.

Times were never worse in the bogland of Booleenablawha. On the run-up to Christmas the county council had reluctantly suspended all roadwork and there was no likelihood it would resume before spring.

Of all the seven families surviving on the bog road, Jack Tobin's was the hardest hit. The others had grown-up sons and daughters working in England and America but the eldest of Jack's
cúram
was only ten and the youngest still in swaddling clothes.

There was some consolation to be drawn from the fact that there would be plenty to eat over the twelve days of Christmas. Jack had seen to that. He had disposed of ten stoolins of dry turf in the nearby town. Each stoolin was the equivalent of a clamped horse rail and each had fetched a pound in the market place. Twelve stoolins remained in the bog, impervious, because of their perfectly tapering design and solid structure, to the rain, sleet and hail which would bombard them until the advent of May.

Jack might have disposed of three or four more and thus provided himself with the wherewithal for Christmas drink but this would mean sparser fires providing the winter wind with the openings it needed to freeze the toes and chill the blood. With Jack and his wife Monnie the children always came first.

‘If we pinch and pare,' Monnie had whispered as they lay on the feather bed two weeks before Christmas, ‘we might rise to a dozen of stout and a half-bottle of whiskey and maybe a few minerals for the children. There's three bottles of cheap sherry left after the wake and that will do the women.'

Jack's father had expired the previous summer from nothing worse than simple senility and the subsequent wake had made massive inroads into their insubstantial savings. The couple's concern with the drink stocks did not stem in any way from their own desires for intoxicating liquor although Jack could never be charged with missing a Sunday night at the crossroads pub. Monnie would truthfully declare that drink never troubled her. The problem arose because of an age-old custom whereby each of the seven houses in Booleenablawha hosted in turn, over the Yuletide period, a modest reception for the other six.

It wasn't that the hostesses vied with each other or that drinking was excessive but it had never been known, even in the blackest of black times, that a household had run out of drink. No other hostings, apart from wakes, weddings and wren-dances, could possibly be countenanced in the hard-pressed community at any other time of year.

If the neighbours but knew of Jack's position they would have cheerfully brought a sufficiency of drink with them but this was the last thing Jack and Monnie wanted. Jack also knew that he might borrow a pound or two from a friend or that he might secure credit at the crossroads where he was known but this wasn't his way either.

The pucker would remain unsolved until the week before Christmas. The morning rain had cleared and a fresh breeze rustled in the roadside alders. Jack Tobin went among his stoolins carefully selecting the drier, darker sods for his Christmas fires. A past master in the high art of stoolin rearrangment, Jack's turf castles, as his children called them, would not disintegrate under the buffeting winds and driving rains.

As he slowly filled his ass-cart he was surprised to see the heavily laden lorry making its way over the narrow, bumpy bog-way. Jack waved at the driver and the driver waved back. Then the lorry passed by, its precious cargo of wooden porter casks swaying dangerously because of the uneven contours of the quaking road.

The man who had waved at him, Jack felt, would be a relief driver hired temporarily for the busy Christmas period who would be unfamiliar with the terrain. Otherwise he would not have departed from the main road and chosen a shorter but far more hazardous itinerary. Then it happened! There was, a hundred yards further down the road, a hump-back bridge, covered with ivy and ancient as the road itself. A cannier driver would have slowed down. As the lorry passed over, its body was suspended for a brief while when the cab dipped on the downward side. As the airborne back wheels struck the roadway a barrel leaped upward and outward and fell onto the soft margin, rolling backwards until its progress was arrested by a sally clump. Jack Tobin immediately abandoned his labours and ran towards the roadway, furiously waving and calling out at the top of his voice in a vain effort to attract the driver's attention. Then the lorry was gone. Jack Tobin found himself confronted with an untapped half-tierce of approved porter.

A half-tierce, as every wrenboy knows, contains one hundred and twenty-eight pints of dun-dark, drinkable, delight-inducing porter, porter so profuse that the drinking folk of Booleenablawha would be hard put to consume it in the round of a single night. Jack Tobin stood without moving for several minutes. There was much to be resolved. Meanwhile he would roll the barrel deeper into the sally clump lest it attract the attention of passing vagabonds and heaven knows what fate.

That night as they sat by the dying fire, with the children sound asleep in their beds, Jack informed his wife for the first time of the day's happenings and the location of the sally-girt windfall.

Monnie Tobin lifted the tongs and discovered a number of small bright coals hidden in the ashes.

After she had rearranged the fire she pointed the tongs at her spouse in order to lend emphasis to her assessment of the situation.

‘First thing in the morning of Christmas Eve,' she said, ‘you will cycle to town and take yourself into McFee's the wholesalers. Find out if they're missing a half-tierce of porter. If they are, the barrel will be returned. If not, we'll see.'

They spoke long into the night concerning the state of the family finances but despite all her economic wizardry, all her penny-pinching and self-sacrifice, there was no obvious way the situation could be improved.

Despite the most assiduous of searches the clerical staff at McFee's could find no record of a missing barrel. No complaint had been filed by a shortchanged customer and the stock in their storehouse tallied accurately with the advice notes.

‘Why?' asked the firm's chargehand with a laugh, ‘is it how you found a barrel?'

‘No,' came the instant reply. ‘It's just that there was a rumour going the rounds.'

Later, as night was falling on the boglands of Booleenablawha, Jack and Monnie Tobin announced to the children that they were taking a stroll. When they returned there would be a distribution of lemonade and biscuits to celebrate Christmas.

Out of doors a crisp breeze blew steadily from the south-west. Overhead a full moon shed its pale light on the rustling boglands. Now and then passing clouds obscured its rays. It proved to be an ideal night for what Jack and Monnie had in mind.

At the sally clump where lay hidden the prized half-tierce they paused and awaited one of the night's darker spells. Even then they maintained a vigil for several moments. Then when the darkness was at its most impenetrable Jack rolled the barrel from its place of concealment and, aided by his partner, pushed it slowly to where a narrow passage led on to the turf-bank where stood the twelve unassailable stoolins.

Inside the wooden cask the porter chuckled and gurgled tantalisingly. After a few moments the interior noises stopped. Jack Tobin rightly surmised that the rolling movements had brought a head to the barrel's contents. His mouth watered at the prospect of savouring the first mouthful of the cherished brew.

He had not come unprepared. In his pocket was a brass tap, a relict from numerous wakes. Earlier he had deposited a hastily hewed wooden mallet at the blind side of a specially chosen stoolin. The mallet would serve nicely to drive the tap home when the barrel was in place. Jack had the additional foresight to bring along a brace and bit together with a tapering wooden spike which would be used to plug the bung-hole made by the former in order to facilitate an expeditious flow from the tap.

Jack's special skills and foresight with regard to regulating the condition and the drawing of porter came from long experience. In addition to the annual wren-dances which flourished throughout the region there were countless wakes where several porter barrels might be on flow at the same time. Consequently there were few houses in the countryside without some sort of porter tap and a brace and bit.

As in all trades there were the highly skilled and the botchers. With so much hinging on a successful outcome it would have been unthinkable to entrust the tapping of a full barrel containing such an irreplaceable commodity to an incompetent! Only the practised and the proven were elected to take charge of such a momentous undertaking. Jack Tobin was one of these.

On their arrival at the stoolin he quickly removed two-thirds of the upper body. Then with a mighty effort he lifted the half-tierce and laid it horizontally on the carefully structured base. Without hurry he bedded it firmly, but lovingly, so that it would lie still during the tapping. One, two, three rapid, accurate, beautifully timed strokes and the tap was firmly embedded in the barrel.

Without undue haste Jack Tobin remade the stoolin all around the recumbent cask. The demands of this difficult task brought out the artist in him. True, he was aided by a full moon but it is the touch as much as the perception that makes the difference between a great stoolin-maker and an indifferent one.

Smearing a liberal handful of turf mould over the exposed tap he extracted a tin pannikin from his coat pocket. Now would come the acid test. Those in the countryside who were partial to porter, and they were many, would quite rightly aver that every content of every barrel tasted differently. Some were too highly conditioned and some were too flat. Some carried a bitter tang whilst, worst of all, others were casky and decidedly unpalatable. Casky barrels were rare and were always replaced by the brewing house. Unfortunately, because of the nature of its acquisition, no such redress would be available to Jack Tobin if the lost barrel was tainted.

He looked upward first at his heavenly ally, still free of cloud and undisputed queen of the heavens. What if the barrel was filled with water or with cleansing fluid! Holding the pannikin under the spout he turned on the tap. A powerful jet of sweetly smelling porter foam knocked the pannikin from his hand. Quickly he turned off the tap and reclaimed the pannikin.

At his second attempt he only partially turned on the tap. The diminished outflow, still powerful, smote merrily against the bottom of the pannikin so that Jack was obliged to slant the shallow vessel in order to avoid a spillage. When the pannikin was filled he allowed it to rest atop the stoolin so that the froth might subside and the porter proper accumulate beneath. When he judged the time to be ripe he handed the pannikin to his wife. First she tasted and then, delighted by the first impressions, swallowed heartily, declaring when the pannikin was drained that she had never tasted the likes in all her days.

‘It's like cream,' she announced, wiping her lips, ‘only nicer.'

After several pannikins each they recovered their possessions and, hand in hand, returned homewards, their happy way benignly lighted by the liberal moon.

‘Did you ever taste the likes of it?' Monnie Tobin asked as they neared home.

‘Never!' Jack assented as he squeezed her hand and placed a frothy kiss on her upturned lips, frothy too. That night, full of porter-induced, seasonal mansuetude, Jack and Monnie Tobin sang the gentle songs of their youth for their delighted children.

Time passed until all that remained of the twelve days of Christmas were two. It was the night the Tobins played host to their neighbours all. Never was there such a night. Every half-hour or so Jack Tobin would disappear, through his back door, bearing two small milking buckets. In a matter of minutes he would be back again with two buckets brimful of the most nourishing, the most savoury, the most flavoursome porter ever consumed in that part of the world, or so the neighbours said.

Naturally they questioned its origin when it loosened their tongues. Jack informed them that it had come from the city of Limerick through the good offices of a calf jobber who was partially indebted to him for having extended credit to him earlier in the year.

And how had he transported it was the next question tabled? Oh by milk churn of course and had not Jack carefully transferred it from the jobber's churn to his own where it had, slowly but surely, acquired the immaculate condition which set it apart from the less exhilarating porter of former years! More evidence, however, was required by the discerning elders of Booleenablawha and, indeed, more evidence was forthcoming.

‘And pray!' asked Jack's immediate neighbour, a man with an insatiable appetite for information, regardless of its veracity, ‘could you tell us the name of the tavern where this porter was purchased?'

The question caught Jack unawares. There was also the lamentable fact that he did not know the name of a solitary tavern in the city of Limerick for the good reason that he had never been there.

‘The name of the tavern you say!' He pretended to ponder.

It was his wife who came to his aid.

‘The name of the tavern,' said Monnie Tobin, without batting an eyelid, ‘is the Magic Stoolin.'

‘The Magic Stoolin!' the neighbour repeated, ‘sure don't I know well where it is.'

The last thing the poor fellow wanted to profess was ignorance of this well-known watering place which was surely known to man, woman and child in the city of Limerick and other places besides.

As it turned out the Magic Stoolin was known to several other accomplished liars in the gathering who had never been to Limerick either and also to their womenfolk who were in the habit of supporting them, without question, in all manner of spurious claims and submissions over the years.