When I got off the plane in Dublin airport I was quite excited to see my fiancée Regina, not entirely because there had been a nine month absence which we’d both endured although that was the lion’s share of the excitement. But while on the plane I had learned a new fact, apparently the long held belief that the Irish are descendants of the ancient people known as the Celts is in fact erroneous. Recent, or so I was lead to believe by the in-flight entertainment, developments have used modern science to tie the DNA of the Irish to similar strains found by peoples native to the northern region of Spain; the Basques.
So upon my arrival in Ireland and after a thorough amount of time spent kissing and holding my beloved I shared with her my revelation. Yeah, she replied, of course. She explained to me that it was widely known that the Milesians ventured out from the Iberian peninsula and settled in Ireland after a series of clashes with the indigenous people. It is at this juncture that I would like to point out that the ‘indigenous people’ were not exactly people but rather gods, goddesses, and beings of the spirit world. Reg explains this all to me in the same manner in which one would explain the American revolution or Napoleon’s conquest of Europe.
Over the years Regina has told me many stories in this same manner, The Táin, the Faye, Cuchulian and the salmon of knowledge, all of which may fall into the realm of ‘myth’ when it comes to black and white history books but to the Irish hold as much truth as successions of kings, the English rule under Cromwell, and Michael Collins as the first president. The concept may be a bit foreign to us domesticated yanks but the idea of a shared history including impossible exploits by fantastic actors is not so strange to native Americans, Africans, Australian aborigines, and a myriad of cultures around the globe. Maybe we didn’t have to give up the history of Coyote as the trickster god when we settled for Columbus discovering America.
We have our figures of mixed lineage as well, Davy Crocket was a real person even if his exploits were exaggerated in song, the same goes for Billy the Kid or Buffalo Bill Cody, from there it’s only a small walk to Wyatt Earp and the OK corral shootout, Wild Bill Hickok shot in the back of the head during a saloon poker game holding black aces and eights, forever to be called the dead man’s hand. So why not throw in John Henry, Pecos bill, and Johnny Appleseed? Perhaps in a few more centuries the line distinguishing myth and truth will blur to the point where it cannot be discerned, given millennia of social and cultural upheaval like the Gaelic people have survived those differences are not worth debating.
Perhaps it is because of this, or vise versa, or chicken and egg not withstanding, the Irish seem to have a unique attitude towards their view of legends. Take for example our flat-mate Jack, over the course of several conversations and with the aide of liquid tongue loosener I’ve elicited a tale from his childhood; the Ennis field wars. It seems that when he was growing up the children of his town, Ennis, came into conflict with the adolescents of neighboring towns over possession of the local woods, streams, swamps, and of course fields in which they were want to play. This all sounds innocent enough as young kids are often prone to imagining their exploits as something grandiose, in fact there is a movie which follows a similar plot involving Irish youths called “the War of the Buttons.”
Mention this to Jack and he’ll get a slightly insulted look on his face and explain how it was kind of like that only they didn’t battle with buttons salvoed form slingshots, “we had rocks, and spears, proper spears with metal blades.” He’ll explain how his housing estate held some key advantages, since it was the most recently built there was a rich resource of construction materials which could be repurposed into armaments, their fort was located in the midst of a massive hedge, impenetrable save for one heavily guarded entrance, most importantly they had a navy. He’ll explain, in that same matter of fact tone as Regina employs when explaining how the recruitment test of the Fianna (a fearsome warrior class) included evading a band of hunters through a forest without breaking a twig or disturbing a leaf, that they had a navy because his older brother (a general) helped to develop raft building technology thus enabling them to navigate the swamps and ponds with ease.
They built the rafts with a fatal flaw, however, which could be exploited were the vessels ever captured. Rapt with his oratory I asked what the flaw was, ‘well they would get stuck in shallow water and we could pelt them with rocks.’ he replied. Hardly the sinking of the Bismarck but still, other impressive include the environmental hazard suit, built of polystyrene tubing and bits of metal sheeting, again foraged from a construction site, it was able to protect the wearer from a fall of great height or more accurately, off of a local bridge. That was the second version though, the prototype was apparently not as sturdy. Similarly was their simultaneously best and worst invention, the catapult; literally, a siege weapon in the medieval vein although perhaps scaled down a bit. It worked, by god, although not very well apparently for as Jack put it, you can only use it to hit so many cows before you start trying to improve it. Improve is a loose term since by ‘improving’ it the small soldiers overclocked it to point where the torsion caused the catapult to explode sending boulders hurtling in all directions, no one was hurt by the test run, of course because they had a safety tunnel and the aforementioned environmental hazard suit.
There are more stories of course, such as the lad who wrong in his belief that adults would not have left that bulldozer accessible to children if it could be easily turned on, or the pen-knife accords which had to be implemented after one lad was captured by the enemy and “Stabbed up a bit”, but they are best explained by the veteran who saw it all first hand. If you will, however, imagine my astonishment and awe at hearing these stories of youth presented so flippantly, so naturally as to never have questioned the plausibility of a children’s crusade which lasted longer than hostilities in WWII or for that matter the lack of parental oversight which allowed it all to happen. Again, it must be the Irish sensibility that places such epic events so close to home, so accessible that legends are just a touch beyond commonplace, the word ‘legend’ itself in the form of phrase ’A legend of a…’ is employed to describe interesting individuals, nights out, and even dogs.
Yapper was a legend of a dog, as often I hear when gathered around the kitchen table at the Finan homestead in Laragh. To be fair I met Yapper when he was still alive, a scruffy little Jack-Russell terrier who stood no higher than the laces of a good boot he would seem to the casual eye that he was in all ways ordinary. This was, however, at an advanced age when I interacted with him, and as stories would have it when in his youth Yapper killed everything. He would hunt mice and other small game no bother and this is not of special note, what is exemplary was first his ability to catch wild birds, sparrows and thrushes could not escape his jaws as he snatched them from the air mid flight, if they roosted he would climb a tree and pluck them from the nest, more often than once his ability to climb ladders would place him on the roof of the house or even on a small second story window sill where he was occasionally stuck for the night.
In these ways he was as much cat as dog, but when his prey became more dangerous he proved the adage that it is not the size of the dog in the fight which matters. There were the minks, the stoats and other weasels which he would ferret out and extinguish, he was also seen to drag off and hide the bodies of tom cats three times his size which he’d dispatched handily. Yapper would win fights against the family guard dog, a nimble and determined collie, as well as any other canines who thought the terrier was easy pickings, but his most lauded feat was the fact that he had killed a badger.
Most of you reading this will never have come face to face with a badger before, nor have I, but by tales passed on to me I say that with a decided note of relief. ‘Don’t turn your back on one.’ I’m told, ‘unless it charges you, in which case, run.’ A badger is like a wolverine, if that helps at all, only thicker, more dense, better able to hug the ground, if you face one while holding a shotgun you’d better hope both barrels are loaded, that’s your only chance since their skin is so think, if you’re driving and one’s out in the road it will do more damage to your car than a deer. In my time I’ve faced raccoons, possums, skunks, groundhogs and coyotes just to name a few, but when there’s a rustling in the undergrowth here I just pray that it’s not a badger. Still, Yapper, the wire-haired terrier I knew to beg for food sitting bolt upright on his haunches, killed one in cold blood escaping with all four paws intact to tell the tale, or rather, to have his legend grow and live well beyond his years.
