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Breton Humors
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Molly's Boy
Down The Long Road
A black haired apparition
Excerpt 2
As a final throw of the dice and to consider my future I decided to give myself a long September holiday of three weeks on the Aran isles off the west coast of Ireland. I went with a friend who considered himself a budding John McCormack and we stopped off in Galway in one of the hotels where people could present themselves for singing to a lounge audience. He told me to approach the master of ceremonies and say that he was a famous singer with a recent success in the Feis Ceoil. The MC duly obliged and my friend strolled in a professional manner to the mike and sang two traditional Irish ballads. They went down reasonably well but the audience was in holiday form and wanted something a little jazzier. I would call it a mid success but my friend felt that his talent had not been fully rated.
We joined the queue for the boat to the Aran islands and I had bought a large bottle of Cidona which was a non alcoholic apple drink. It dropped from my grasp and shattered over the quay and I got sympathetic looks from my fellow travelers who thought that it was a bottle of whisky. Now that would be a mortal sin. There is something about holidays that makes you frisky in the romantic sense and as the boat moved through the spray I spied this beautiful girl sitting on her suitcase looking out to the distant islands with a dreamlike expression. This was my first view of Patricia Paterson, a blackhaired apparition from Philadelphia, who was of Irish ancestry. She was an artist who was visiting Ireland for whom she had a great love. I decided to be brave and I approached her on deck and began chatting and she was pleasant enough to me. She told me afterwards that she wished that a large wave had come and washed me over board. She wanted to drink in the scene and absorb the green blue sea and the majestic yet mysterious Aran islands looming ever closer out of the sea fog surrounding our boat.
We arrived at Kilronan harbour and I found that we had bookings in the same guest house. Now that was a good turn of the wheel of fortune. I had come prepared with Mitchell reel and Rainbow rod which I had been assured were the best in the business for catching fish. I stood on the shore and whipped my line out with a flashing silver lure for hour after hour but I did not have any experience in fishing and caught nothing apart from some sun burn for the whole time I was there. We would sometimes spend our day roaming on the main island called Inish Mor, walking to the end or over to the furthest western point where the ancient fort of Dun Aengus was situated. There we would see the local children with their long twine wrapped around a piece of board dangling it the huge distance down the cliffs to the storming wreathing sea and catching cod and mackerel. It was all very irritating and humiliating.
I fancied a drink one day and went into a pub near Kilronan harbour called the American bar. It was owned and run by two sisters who had been to the States and saved some money and came home to start this little business. The Guinness was poured in the very old fashioned way from jug to jug until it settled and was then presented to you. There were no pumps then or cooling systems or any technology; just straight from the barrel and over the counter via the jugs. I got my pint of Guinness and took a couple of sips. It tasted dreadful and I suspected that it was not really fit for drinking. But I had never got the so called bad pint before and did not want to make a fuss and complain and hand it back. Very shortly afterwards I was violently ill and spent the next two days in bed with searing stomach pains and not able to eat a simple thing.
No doctor was called. One of the girls working in the guest house where I was popped in occasionally with a glass of water and soothing words and I just about recovered. Everybody told me to report them to Guinness, especially since I worked there, as the sisters had been doing this for years and it was really a very serious affair as people were being made seriously ill. But I didn't and looking back I should have for they were purveyors of poison. We ate well in the guest house and it was simple fare with a lot of home cooking particularly the bread. If you wanted to go for a long walk during the day the owner Mrs.Conneely would make you a nice pack of sandwiches and maybe provide some fruit as well so you could wander at will and take your repast gazing over a sun smeared sea.
Nearly every evening we would all go to the village pub where the islanders gathered as well. The Guinness was still poured in the jug fashion but it was kept in proper condition and did not damage you apart from the quantity that you drank. Every person in the bar was expected to provide a turn and they would go to each one coaxing out a song or a poem or a recitation or anything. I would sing a couple of Irish ballads which was my only repertoire and they would applaud like I had performed in the Albert Hall. Some of the islanders were fantastic singers in the old style and they would sing ancients songs with immense feeling and style. Patricia Paterson was usually there and I would hate to see her laughing and carrying on with the island men. She had won my heart and I was shattered to see her being wooed and won by these peasant fishermen.
The worst time was when I was playing hurling outside the guest house in the late autumn evening. One of the islanders strolled up the road nicely dressed in his tweed island jacket and herring bone trousers and traditional crios, a handmade woven slender coloured cloth, wrapped around the waist, and knocked on the guest house door. Patricia must have been expecting him for she emerged and walked away arm in arm and I was nearly as sick as with the pint of bad Guinness I had previously drank. Later on I plucked up my courage and declared my love for her and she was gentle and receptive and found lovely words to say that she liked me a lot but she was not into anything serious just a love affair with the island and its tradition, warmth and beauty.
Another girl in the guest house was there with her friend from Dublin and she was getting over a love affair she had been having with her boss who was a married man. On long walks around the island she told me all about it and in floods of tears described the pain of trying to keep apart as she was happy with the work she was doing. I listened and consoled her and she thought I was wonderful and began to get interested in me. We were a complicated lot; each of us falling for the wrong person. I got to know Patricia Paterson a bit better and confided in her about my unhappiness in Guinness and how I wanted to get back to the land and maybe have a small holding. Bawnmore had been the only place where I had been happy but this sort of life was looked down upon as primitive if attractive for a holiday. Patricia, although an artist, was a practical person and said that you have to learn how to grow cabbage plants and other things to be a successful small holder. I knelt at the altar of her wisdom and common sense.
She also turned me against the fishing. She was passing by one day when I was spinning my silver lure out over the Atlantic waters and she said to me that I did not even feed them before I murdered the fish. I thought long and hard about this and decided I didn't really know if the fish did feel pain so I discontinued. That was the end of my fishing career. Perhaps fate was on the side of the fish because I had caught nothing up till then anyway. On the day that I was going back to the mainland just as the boat was pulling away from Kilronan pier she came rushing up in true dramatic style and gave me two pebbles for me to hand one back and cement our friendship. I think that was the idea with the hope of joining them up later. She looked now like any other Aran island girl with a small black shawl around her shoulders and roses blooming in her light tanned face. I kept the two pebbles in confusion and waved fumblingly to the beautiful Patricia as the boat drove a distance of churning water between us and the cries of the gulls were a keening for my lost love.
All texts are ©1999
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