Rince na Sióga Gealaí
By Karl Morrissey
There is, on the shadowed corner of Kilkenny’s Smithsland, an old and weather-worn Willow in a sickly sea of grass that is taller than the typical child.
Its blackened branches, malformed and maimed, crease and contort in acute angles. And all, without exception, fold yearningly skyward under certain moons as if praying - or, as many believe, offering.
Passers-by habitually shun the twisted and tangled yard. Though, not because of the terrible tree or the ghastly grass. Rather, it is the old wooden bungalow skulking in the background that the eye so anxiously avoids - with its two unblinking panels peering out to the waking world.
Living alone in the decrepit home is a nameless woman said to hail from the blacker bogs in Wexford. And though this is far from the only thing said about the ancient outsider, it is undoubtedly the tamest. Even despite her reclusiveness - or maybe entirely because of it - she has garnered something of a reputation as being exceptionally wicked and sinister. Children are the worst for it. She’s more than two hundred years old, they say. No, she is really Dame Alice Kytelar. She feeds on the spiders in her grass. That’s why you never see her at the store. Her four husbands are buried in the yard. Their graves are hidden by the grass. She steals the souls of the sick with her tin whistle. That’s how she survives.
The truth is worse.
A dwindling few still live whose hints surpass mere conjecture. But these individuals only grow more ancient, dreamy, and fewer with every passing year. And whether or not their wild warnings of chanting yellow-eyed fairies and foggy grottos are heeded or hogwashed is down to the beholder. Usually, to avoid any uncomfortable curiosities, one will opt to take the latter approach and couple these tales with those of the children.
After all, what good is recognising that dogs bark at the house for the same reason no birds nest in the tree?
On occasion, in the twilight, when the sky isn’t sooted with clouds, and the moon hangs low and gleaming yellow, the melancholic notes of a tin whistle will pipe through the dead Kilkenny air. Many have questioned where the music comes from, but the children in Smithsland are quick to claim that it rises from the great grass where the willow weeps and the bungalow broods. And that’s not the half of it. Because usually the next day, or a short time thereafter, news of death will spread.
One morning, the townsfolk woke to dreadful tidings: a boy of seven had vanished overnight. Daniel Fogarty of Archerstreet became the sixth child to disappear without a trace between Kilkenny and Wexford. A grisly list stretching back eighteen years. Where the missing had gone, none could say. Only in ignorance was it said by others that troubled children traditionally run away and that mysteries would not exist if we knew the answers to every riddle.
But it is terrible for any parent to lose their child. So grave indeed was the broken heart of Daniel’s grieving mother that none were surprised when her body washed up on the river bank some years after. And on that day, as word of Mrs Fogarty’s death spread through the village, one who lived in Smithsland said to another:
‘That explains the music last night.’
If only the dead could speak; if only we and the birds shared a common speech. Through them perhaps the damned could tell their tales. In the end, it was only the dead and the birds in the trees, and none else, that beheld the fate of little Daniel Fogarty on his final accursed night:
He had stood weeping among the dandelions of a misty and moon-streaked swamp as little winged people danced in a ring around him. Calling upon the Nymph to rise from her long rest. It was when her polished crown of ivory reared from the rippling water that Daniel fell into a swoon, and mercifully woke in his bed. He sat up, and pricked his ear to the darkness. The hum of a cold whistle whispering in the night. He drew back his curtains and cracked the pane enough to hear the dreary ditty, and knew that death was in the air. Of course, Daniel had learned from his classmates all about Smithsland’s doomy harbinger, and he had heard many times the shrill song sailing over his own rooftop. But never before had he worried quite like this night. The boy was terrified for his sick grandfather, whom he loved dearly. From that fear flowed a flurry of foolish courage, the kind only known in the hearts of sweet and innocent children. Daniel did not plan on letting his grandad go without a fight.
He crept forever away from his house on Archerstreet. Lulled down empty roads and alleyways. Crossing dog, cat, bird and rat alike, toward the low-hanging and ethereal yellow moon. He passed along the lightless and curtained windows of Smithsland until he came at last before the wistful willow, the ghastly grass, and the boorish bungalow at the end of the street.
Just then, the uncanny piping crescendoed up into the solemn stars. With a whoosh, the grass keeled over all at once in a wretched bow, and Daniel’s hideous fate was revealed.
In the yard before him were five baby willows. None taller than himself. Each stood on two legs instead of one, with gnarled arms bent towards the moon. But Daniel hardly noticed them. His eye was on the shadow outstretched at his feet. Slowly, he raised his head and met the darkened figure of a woman sitting on the rickety porch. And as the grinning old crone slipped her silver pipe into her jacket pocket, and as the baby willows started walking his way, Daniel had enough time to consider a final thought; not of his grandad, or his parents, or his two sisters. He thought about his classmates and the tales they had told him. They had never mentioned that the woman’s eyes were yellow.
There is a curious truth in the musings of the Kilkenny folk. Should we hold the answers to every riddle, the world would grow dull and lose its wonder. To some that is mercy, to others it is madness. In the case of the willow, the grass, and the bungalow, the answers do not hide. They lay, waiting to be unearthed. But certain fears run deep, festering below the surface of curiosity, and we don’t look closely when they threaten to rear. So, it seems, certain questions are fated to remain unanswered.
Or, perhaps, such answers merely fall upon deaf ears. Take, for example, the humble traveller journeying ancient Ireland. Every day they come in droves, seeking to learn and feel and see what Ireland has to offer. Some may go North. Many will coast the scenic West. Others may sample the East. But, every so often, a traveller will happen, through sheer chance, upon the marshy village of Inisknock in the South of County Wexford. There, one will hear performed in a quiet bar, or when passing a street musician, a peculiar piece in old Celtic. They may find themselves moved by the song’s solemn notes, or ponder those lyrics of unguessable age and meaning. Afterwards, they may even ask the performer for its name,
and be given the answer.
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