A New Day Dawning: Those scallywag days in post-war rural Tipperary

By Edward Forde Hickey

A New Day Dawning is set in the unreal world of Rookery Rally, which portrays Tipperary countryside and a hillside community in the late 1940s.

It follows a group of children through their formative years as their personal beliefs and personalities develop. Alternating acts of good and evil are carried out by the children as they struggle to set their own moral compasses. They walk three miles to bring back a puppy for an old man left broken-hearted by the death of his dog; they accompany their parents on a hunt and share in the act of killing foxes and their cubs; they drown a tinker’s pup; they turn over a new leaf and promise to be good after a stern fire-and-brimstone sermon.

There’s stop-and-start progression within the children’s moral development as they try to prove themselves good and worthy people on their jaunty adolescent journey towards adulthood. Will the good outweigh the bad? Will optimism outweigh the cynicism of today’s world?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Troubador Publishing Ltd
• Release date: Oct 28, 2019
• ISBN: 9781838597528

Edward Forde Hickey

Edward Forde Hickey spent his early years in Dolla, Tipperary. He has always been interested in folklore and the history of Ireland, including its music, dance and literature. Edward now lives in Kent with his wife and has three sons, but still spends time in Tipperary on his small hillside farm.

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Edward Forde Hickey spent his early life in Tipperary (Dolla). He now lives in Kent with his wife. They have three sons. He still spends time in Tipperary on his small hillside farm. He has been writing sporadically since leaving University where he studied Classics.

Also by Edward Forde Hickey

The Early Morning Light

Copyright © 2016 Edward Forde Hickey

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

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ISBN 978 1838597 528

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Matador is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd

www.edwardfordehickey.co.uk

To the memory of Bridget and Jack, my early sun, moon and stars

Contents

Author’s Note

Introduction

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Author’s Note

Like the peeling of an onion there lurks inside each one of us that small unshaped child, who supposedly perished and died years and years ago. This book is set in the unreal world of Rookery Rally and portrays a Tipperary countryside and a hillside community in the late 1940s where people and places have no real-life counterpart past or present. Persons arrive on the imagined scene as and when the tales dictate so as to make the writing more readable and believable – more reflective of human nature during the formative years of adolescence – creating a mixed picture of compassionate and generous youth when they are helping others, as well as occasional bouts of somewhat cruel and aggressive behaviour towards the vulnerable and the innocent. There’s a stop-and-start progression within the children’s moral development as they try to prove themselves good and worthy people on their jaunty adolescent journey towards adulthood. Will the good outweigh the bad? Will optimism outweigh the cynicism of today’s world?

Introduction

The War Was Over

It was September 1945 and the cruel war elsewhere was over at last. Dowager and her son, Blue-eyed Jack, had just waved goodbye to Teddy, who had stayed with them throughout the war years so as to avoid the German bombing of London the year he was born. And now they were two sad old figures – lonely and heartbroken to see him leave Rookery Rally and go off on the train that’d lead him to the boat and back to his parents in England – parents, whom he had never known. It was too much to bear, so much had they grown attached to him.

Home From The Train

The old lady and her son came home from the station in Matt-Saddle-up’s pony-and-trap. Ahead of them lay the bitter silence of the hills. Matt finally guided Moll-the-mare in over the stream’s flagstones where she dawdled in front of the empty house. Now that the little boy had gone away, the place had a bare and ruined look about it and they felt like a pair of weary beggars, afraid to go in the doorway. Finally they managed to put the key in the lock. There’d be no child lurking behind the door to greet them as of yore and they sat on their chairs in front of the cheerless hob. For the next half-hour the daylight simply flitted away from them, flat and ashen as never before. They didn’t even bother to light the oil-lamp – only the two candles, the sole illumination that they were able to tolerate.

Had It All Been A Dream?

Had these last five-and-a-half years been a terribly sad dream? There wasn’t a word out of them and even the crickets and beetles in the turf-box didn’t have the nerve to interrupt their silence. They tried to hold onto a few of their recent images. Blue-eyed Jack could picture his little nephew this very evening and he bravely sailing out across The Irish Sea and he stuck against the wet railings of that old cattle-boat and his aunt trying her living best to soothe him. He could see him shrinking minute-by-minute away from the coast of Ireland and finally fading away altogether towards England and out of their lives forever.

Dowager was full of her own thoughts too – to have looked upon her grandson’s every small gesture and to have walked and talked with him – abroad in the yard, out in the fields and down by the well-hole – a child (and those big words of hers that she never stopped using) who had been a gleam of sunshine in her old age from the moment he arrived in his yellow swaddling clothes the time of The Blitz – a child who had become a ray of firelight dancing in and out over the walls of her old heart. And from now on she knew she could never look over her shoulder across at Corcoran’s Well in the direction of The Roaring Town (whence the train left) or even to say the child’s name without getting a great big choking catch in her throat.

Of course it wasn’t the same for the rest of us and by next day we were all getting on with our lives here in Tipperary’s hills. It was natural that even the children among us would have forgotten all about their little friend before the week was over and school began.

But Then A Very Strange Thing Happened

But then a very strange thing happened. The Old Pair (as the neighbours now called them) were suddenly whipped out of their misery when Moll-the-Man and By-Jiggery came across the fields and dragged the two of them out the half-door and down the yard. These good souls knew that what was needed was a harsh hand. It was the only way to get them out of their deep sadness or else they would simply never get a bit of work done for themselves – they’d just sit idly by the fire in the gloom of their Welcoming Room and watch their seven cows lie down and die on them below in The Bull-Paddock. This couldn’t be let happen.

A few days later the rest of us (adults and children alike) came tippy-toeing down the road in a combined effort to restore The Old Pair’s cheerfulness. You could see us standing on the flagstones and a few of our wives edging shyly across the yard. And to the fore were some of Moll-the-Man’s older children (Lippy, Philly and Gallantry), determined to show that they were every bit as good as the adults in attempting to bring the heart and soul back into their two old friends’ lives.

The men weren’t slow either in getting down to the task. They placed their skittles on the flagstones and pelted their sticks up to the mark. They followed this up with a round or two of horseshoe-pitching and pitch-and-toss-the-pennies-at-the-mott. The women sat on the singletree in the grove and they watched and admired the stylish way the games were being played out. They listened to the hoorays of the winners and the fierce curses of the losers lighting up the place when they lost their few brown pennies.

And then the play and the pitching were replaced by the arrival of the card-players and poachers, whose evening bicycle lamps shone down the hillside, illuminating the whitewashed road ahead of them. Ayres ‘n’ Graces (the leader of the poachers) came in along Dowager’s yard with a stickful of rabbits for her. Then each of the card-players stepped lightly in behind him and across the doorway. The candle-lit card-table was pulled out into the middle of The Welcoming Room. The cards were dealt out and hammered off of the table and the noise filled the rafters and it slowly began to destroy the sadness in the old woman and her eldest son.

Is It Christmas?

Dowager and Blue-eyed Jack were left scratching their heads. Had Christmas come early? A day or two later some of the women almost knocked the two of them out of their boots with their honest-to-goodness kindness. Moll-the-Man brought down a pig’s head with the two eyes left standing in it (she gaily pointed out). Ducks ‘n’ Drakes sent up the featherless corpse of her Little Red Hen and offered Dowager another broody hen that she had tucked underneath her arm. Gentility sent down a bag of goose-feathers and she knitted a pair of bed-socks for her old school-friend. Cousin Mary-the-Linnet (the schoolteacher) brought a fine fat goose with her from across the fields in Copperstone Hollow. She gave Blue-eyed Jack a little nudge and a sly little wink and she told him to look inside the gable-end of the bird. And when he did, what do you think he found but a bottle of her finest homemade whiskey (the potheen) tucked neat-and-tidily inside the breast cavity – a bottle with which he could carouse himself till kingdom come (she said) – a bottle with which he could go and rot his fine set of teeth for himself (she said).

All these acts of goodwill were enough to frighten the saints in heaven. It was going to take a week-and-a-half to devour all the fine fare – the hen, the rabbits and the goose and all the other foodstuffs that came pouring in through the half-door. The grateful hearts of Dowager and Blue-eyed Jack raced out of their bodies when they listened to the squeals of lusty laughter coming in the door along with each new visitor and these echoes of Rookery Rally friendship would stay with them a long time and help to gladden their lives as of old.

Everybody Now Knew The Child Had Gone

By mid-September the people across the fields in the village of Copperstone Hollow also knew that our little evacuee had gone – that he was just a small part of our Rookery Rally’s history and soon to be forgotten by everyone – everyone except The Old Pair, who (in spite of these daily acts of kindness) would go on grieving silently under the bedsheets for a good while yet. The rest of us had our own worries to be dealing with ahead of the oncoming winter and we put our backbone into tending to the mundane tasks of gathering in the turf and timber and digging the pits for the turnips and spuds and generally getting ourselves ready for the harsh days ahead.

We Had One Last Worry

However, there was one more worry in everybody’s mind and it had to be dealt with quickly. Though the war had stopped raining down its misery on the rest of the world there was still a number of The Mountainy Men in the hills around Diggledy-doo, who had not yet been informed of this most important fact. It was a bit of a scandal. And to put our minds at rest we’d have to choose a smart spokesman to ride up over the wastelands and bring them the good cheer that the war was finally finished, for it was at least a month since Herald-the-Post had told the rest of us that Hitler and his friends had been wiped clean off of the map. The children whilst smoking their stolen fag-buts in the grove and the orchard constantly talked to each other about it, picturing Hitler lying in his hidey-hole with a bullet in his brain and The German army running back to their parents and taking some of their own medicine back with them. Until recently we had good reason to be worried sick. Though we hadn’t got a lick of this war’s savagery, practically everyone in our midst (and in the mountains too) had brothers and sisters beyond in John Bull (England) and in that other heavenly spot, The Land of The Silver Dollar (America). As long as the war went on there had been no way of knowing whether a number of our blood-relations were still alive or whether they’d been shot and killed on the battle-field.

Father Accessible.

To soothe away some of our worries Father Accessible had been praying every Sunday at Mass in Copperstone Hollow that Mister Hitler and his finely-trimmed moustache would go and get his head mended or that he might go and throw himself (may God forgive our holy man!) into some dismal bog-hole or be presented with a bullet up his backside from the attacking forces. He could now give his tongue (and our ears) a bit of a rest. Except for those men above in Diggledy-doo, we could all see that the world had been saved. Women like Dowager, whose own son (Soldier Tom) had been risking life and limb on the burning sands of Africa, need no longer wear away their knees and rosary-beads praying that the world’s soldiers would stop killing one another – that they’d shake hands like grown-up men after a fiercely-fought hurling-match. Their prayers had finally been answered, thank God.

One

September 1945

How Clever Jack lost his beloved hound

(the little whippet, Caruso)

and became a new man quite unexpectedly

(with a little help from the children).

Pets And Rookery Rally

Clever Jack was the brother of Glasses. Glasses had been dead a long time. He had been remembered as the half-cripple for many years before he died, his two shins having been severely dented from the savage kicking repeatedly given to him by Sizzle, his fierce-tempered mother. And she (may God spare her the health above in heaven) was also long dead. Clever Jack had six sisters (God be good to them also) and these had flown far away from Rookery Rally – mostly off to the wheat-fields round Minnesota in the Land of The Silver Dollar or else had left for Sydney at the other end of the map. So there was only Clever Jack left here amongst us – himself and his jovial and weather-reddened face.

I’ll get to him in a minute, but first of all I must tell you this: in our small part of Tipperary, if something was of no use to any of our children, they quickly destroyed it – be it the discarded bicycle-lamp’s graphite for drawing on the flagstones or the penny-go-cart with a broken-down wheel. And then they went off and found something else to play with – maybe a pig’s bladder or a bowlee-wheel made out of Gentility’s rusty old creamery-tank. This well-known fact (what was useful and what was altogether useless) was true also of our men: if a man hadn’t a few acres of land thrown up against the side of a hill, he was like the cast-off bicycle-lamp and of no use whatsoever to any young damsel: any woman with a stem of sense in her head would tell him to hightail it across The Irish Sea as quickly as his legs could carry him.

Moreover, unless a young man happened to be the privileged eldest son in the family and the provider for his parents’ old age, there were one or two mothers and fathers, who would give the rest of their sons and daughters a poor enough welcome beneath their own roof (‘eating us out of house and home, is it?’ – that’s what they said) and they’d tell them to pack themselves off somewhere else. They’d help them sort out their suitcases and take them sobbing to The Roaring Town Station and almost go as far as the cattle-boat in Dublin to get rid of them.

There was another side to what was useful or useless among us: a woman who wouldn’t give her man the odd little race round the bedroom and the odd little tumble between the bedsheets (and that was no tall order to be asking of her) – a woman who wouldn’t provide him with enough children to spend their youthful days helping their poor old father and mother cultivate the land and (later on) bring home a few silver shillings by working for a rich farmer or doing a bit of ploughing down at The Big House – or (better still) to send home a few green banknotes from some foreign clime – that good lady wasn’t worth a heap of coppers either, or so said some of our menfolk.

But the broken toy, the man without a bit of land or the woman without a houseful of children to call her own – these weren’t the worst obstacles to befall us. It was far worse (if you were to listen to some of the more practical heads among us) to make a shy pet out of one of your animals. This was a veritable crime that would make you the laughing-stock of every living soul in Rookery Rally and you’d be better off going down to Abbey Cross and joining up with the clowns in the Daffy-Duck Circus – that’s what these practical fellows said. For (said they) the likes of us were not pure fools altogether – even though we had learnt from our schoolbooks that the rest of the world had oceans of pets – back as far as the Egyptians with their precious pet cats and dogs. In some ways we had to agree with them: you might as well have tried bringing down the stars from heaven as asking our children to go out in the field and get themselves a little pet goat with which to run races round the haggart or maybe a little caged bird to sing a few songs for them.

Take the cats in Rookery Rally: they were wild creatures one and all and they were scarcely ever let in the half-door to our Welcoming Rooms. Some farmers had as many as four or five of them (and they all breeding like rabbits) – all living off of the red meat of any mouse or rat that dared enter the haggart or tried to nudge up too close to the potato and turnip pits or (in the dreadful dark days of winter) come in too near the henhouse looking for an egg or two for their young families or for the red berries on the hawthorn tree at the side of the singletree-stick.

Hen-catcher (Cheerful Nan’s young cat) would saunter in to pay his daily homage to Moll-the-Man and By-Jiggery when the two of them were abroad in the cowshed milking the cows. The old couple would give him a good sup of milk in a tin and, after drinking enough for himself, the respectful Hen-catcher would show his gratitude for all this homely kindness and go off down the haggart and come back with half-a-dozen rats that he’d killed the previous night. He’d lay them out in a meticulous line on the broad of their backs with their long pink tails in a neat little row on the concrete slab in front of the half-door. When Moll-the-Man and By-Jiggery returned from the cowshed it was always a great pleasure to see the rats’ white bellies and their bloody throats. And if any of the rats’ little brothers or sisters happened to be peeking out from underneath the laurel hedge they’d be sure to head for the hills with a smart hop and a skip. A very useful article was Hen-catcher!

And another thing – when it came to our dogs, By-Jiggery had his own bad-tempered hound (Shark) that’d go off hunting with him in the nearby woods round Lisnagorna where there were scores of rabbits. As they passed through The Valley of The Pig, Shark would run ahead of his master and delve deeply into every burrow in sight and drive out from the brambles half-a-dozen rabbits for By-Jiggery to catch in his hat. A fine and well-bred hound was Shark, in spite of his sour nature!

And what about that other useful creature – the young sheepdog (Rebel) on Red Buckles’ broad acres? This fine dog would bring home the cows, nipping at their slowly-ambling hocks and at their shitty tails, reminding them to get a move on towards the gate and on up the road. And halfway home he’d give them time to stop and emit their moist dung from their gable-ends onto our well-decorated road. He was the essence of patience and tolerance when Red Buckles’ parched cows finally got to the little stream that ran across the lane, letting them halt for a well-earned drink before going in under the sawn-off telegraph posts and the galavanized sheeting that protected the cowshed. I tell you this: that dog was worth a bag of golden coins (and so said Red Buckles).

On the other side of the coin (that is, the downright useless side), some of our dogs were put to death with a cruel and steadfast regularity: one dog would have stolen the goose-eggs of Cheerful Nan: another dog would have marched off with a mouthful of Moll-the-Man’s duck-eggs: another dog would have killed the lambs of Red Scissors: another dog would have allowed Renardine-the-fox to creep out from the wire fence round The Bog Wood and terrorize the hens of poor Slipperslapper or allow the ancient family of badgers to rule unchecked all over The Bull-Paddock. Every one of these crimes had to be severely chastised and each misguided dog was singled out for its own particular death-sentence: some of these useless articles were given the full force of the gun-cartridge into the forehead: some were taken down in a sack and drowned in the sally-hole in River Laughter: some were given the hangman’s noose. This necessitous cruelty left each of our sad and sorry farmers with such a powerful thirst on them that it could only be washed away by swallowing five or six glasses of Curl ‘n’ Stripes’ best stout ale (The Black Doctor).

Leggins’ Little Pigs

There was one (and one only) exception to this useless or useful rule of ours. One Saturday of late we saw two of Moll-the-Man’s older children (Lippy and Philly) heading down towards the orchard for their usual afternoon ritual (‘twas the same with all the children) – the joy of lighting up the fag-butts stolen from their grandmother’s tobacco-jar and then trying to put the smoke out through their nostrils and ears. They were sitting as contented as you like on the fallen fir-tree at the lower end of the orchard (near the well-hole) and they had just started their smoke when the rain from far-off Kerry came down suddenly (the way it always did) from beyond Corcoran’s Well. Soon it was hopping off of the road and turning it from bone-white to deep blue. From their half-hidden hidey-hole under the ditch the two boys could see the huge spatters making music off of the puddles. Then they heard the flapping wellingtons of Leggins (the son of Leppalong) stamping down the road. They could see the rain beating off of his black beardy face. His ash-plant was bouncing gallantly on his shoulder. Strutting along behind him in the rain were his three important-looking piglets (named A, B and C) and their snouts were pointed pompously up in the air. Lippy and Philly laughed to see these charming little creatures dancing along in a tippy-tappy rhythm in the middle of the downpour and to watch their curly tails shivering along behind them. A, B and C were marching in a spaced-out line like good little school-children and following Leggins down to Echo Bridge and on over to the shop of Curl ‘n’ Stripes for his daily package of biscuits and his pint of The Black Doctor. Rain or shine, nothing would stop this quaint little scenario: Leggins would ring the silver bell on the green door: he would enter the shop: he would sit on the barrel-planks: he would munch and crunch his biscuits and scrape his lips deliciously across the pint-glass and rub the froth delicately onto his coat-sleeve.

From outside the door his three little piggies would soon be heard setting up an almighty racket that would have suited The Abbey Theatre stage above in Dublin. ‘Come on out to us, Leggins – come on out, blasht you!’ they seemed to be crying. ‘We are awfully lonesome out here, standing around like poor scholars in the pouring rain.’ It was clear that there’d be no black-handled knife-of-death to pierce the throats of these three princely creatures. Leggins (the big softy that he always was) would rather die than let anyone put a hand on his three petty-petty piglets. Oh Leggins! Where on earth did your mother get you from? Was it under some foreign gooseberry-bush that she dropped you? In heaven’s name, piglets and pets – I ask you.

Caruso And The Children

And now – back to September 1945 and the first Saturday in the month as we turn our gaze on that prince among our animals, the young hound, Caruso. May his fame last as long as there are wild mushrooms below in The Bull-Paddock. For whether at card-table or drinking-shop, at the forge or the creamery gates, his name was forever on the lips of us all like no other creature in Rookery Rally had ever been before.

The children of Moll-the-Man and By-Jiggery were still off from school until the following Monday and the younger ones (Young Jim, Leppity and Battlin’ Sal) were still lying fast asleep in their beds. Young Jim was named after his grandfather (Gentleman Jim), who had become known as Old Jim the minute Young Jim was born. The old fellow (much to the concern of his wife, The Little Relic) had given his life to regular feeds of strong drink (a mixture of The Black Doctor and raw-gut whiskey) and he’d met with an untimely death, coughing up the last bits of his liver. His tearful and heartbroken son (By-Jiggery) was said to have given the shortest Obituary that any son ever gave a father (‘The Whoor drank The Shannon’) and his words would never be forgotten by any of us.

For the three older children (Lippy, Philly and Gallantry) it was a pleasure just to be out and about and not lying in bed alongside the three little ones. They were as happy as larks with the news that the war with its misery and bombing was finally over, thank God. There was a touch of a breeze in the air these days and the smell of September’s withering leaves itching to fall down from the trees. Behind them the smoke from their mother’s fire was mushrooming out from her chimney and spreading into the fir-trees round her haggart. In front of them they could see Red Feathers sitting cockily on top of the dung-heap and answering Dowager’s cockerel (Rampant) with his own raucous version of what he thought a cockerel’s song ought to be. The rest of us could hear the ringing laughter of Lippy and the other two as they came tearing down the hillside, running their barefoot races and pummeling their wiry heels in passed Old Sam’s hayshed before leaping out over the dyke to reach the well-hole and fill the six buckets of water for their mother.

‘Look at the dash of them young scallywags,’ smiled Dowager as she finished cleaning out her creamery-tank with the scrub-brush.

‘The speed of them – they’re like streaks of blue lightning,’ said Blue-eyed Jack. ‘They must have been getting their running lessons from Clever Jack’s hound, Caruso.’ And with that they both smiled, knowing the absolute speed of Caruso.

On reaching the well-hole the three boys engaged in their usual playful bouts of chasing each other round and round through the nettles and flicking the water from their cupped hands and into one another’s faces. Then they went on with the daily sport of spitting gushes of water out of their mouths to see who could drive it the furthest. Finally they lifted their swollen buckets out over the stile and out onto the road.

In the distance they could see Clever Jack coming on up the slope towards them from Echo Bridge. They were as excited as calves, knowing that he’d surely have the latest news about the war’s aftermath and tell them whether Hitler was still in charge of his two fine legs or whether the Yankie Boys or the Rooskies had finally put a bullet in the old blackguard’s heart.

‘He’s awfully slow, isn’t he?’ said Lippy and the three of them kept their eyes peeled on Clever Jack’s slouch-footed mare (Red Baggy). The huntsman and his mare continued up the hill and then stopped at Old Sam’s Gate. They could see that his eyes were downcast. Maybe he was about to light his pipe. Out from inside the gate stepped the children’s father (By-Jiggery), who had just taken back his cows after milking them. Both men started talking to one another in subdued whispers and this was a very strange thing. For when men usually spoke to one another you’d hear them bellowing like claps of thunder (even when standing shoulder to shoulder) – as though some fierce lion was about to leap out over the ditch and pounce on them. With Lippy leading the other two, the three boys left their buckets at the side of the ditch and scampered down the road to meet the two men and see what was the cause of all this whispering.

That’s when the air turned ashen and grey all round them. For they saw that Clever Jack was crying rivers of tears like Lady Demurely’s peacock that had recently been caught in a trap. They had not seen a grown man crying bitter tears like this – not since Easy-does-it’s cow fell in a drain and got fatally stuck and the poor man had to jump down in the drain after her, where he lay alongside her and the two of them started bawling in harmony.

Suddenly the three children felt sadder than a dead candle on their mother’s altar. They could see the reason for Clever Jack’s terrible sorrow. Across Red Baggy’s saddle and partially hidden underneath Clever Jack’s outstretched greatcoat was the expressionless body of Caruso. He was as dead as a doornail and his eyes had bulged out like a frightened frog’s. Until this very second no child had ever seen a dead dog lying uselessly across any man’s saddle and it was hard for their puzzled young heads to take it all in. You could see from the mournful look on their faces that they’d never get the sight of this shapeless piece of flesh out of their heads. His shiny velvet body was wet with sweat and it seemed as though he was shedding tears down at them. A few morning flies had gathered scornfully around his nose. The three of them began to shudder and they tried bravely to hold back their childish tears. The six buckets of water would remain at the stile a good while yet, it seemed.

‘There you lie! There you lie!’ stammered Clever Jack, ‘the finest hound that ever laid eyes on the fields of Tipperary. You and me, as close to one another as the two sides of a window-glass,’ and his eyes once more filled up with water at the thought of never again being able to befriend his loyal hound. There’d be no more harecoursing for young Caruso in far-off Kilkenny. There’d be no more trips to Biddy Lumpity for injecting his seed into her bitch. There’d be no more warming the poor man’s toes at the foot of the bed or snuggling up to him under the blankets in wintertime. There’d be no more Dog-Man conversations between the two of them. What on earth was Clever Jack going to do without this great dog at his side?

Forgetting the six buckets of water – forgetting even to seek out the latest bit of news about Hitler’s state of health – the horrified children raced their heels home smartly to give the news of Caruso’s death to their mother. She’d be sure to get to the bottom of this terribly sad story and it would spread like wildfire round Rookery Rally and Lisnagorna before the day was out. Oh, poor, poor Caruso! How on earth could this have happened to such a fine dog as yourself?

The News And The Mountainy Men

The Monday before Caruso’s death had been a far different story: Clever Jack was then the happiest of mortals. In our midst there had always been fixed times in the year: the time for the daffodils and the time for the skylark in our meadows: the time for the corncrake in our gorse bushes: the time for the pell-mell rains of September, followed by the increasing winds that would rise to full force a month later. This particular Monday was to be the time for Clever Jack to proclaim himself the biggest villain in Rookery Rally.

In the following days The Mountainy Men would remember the evening as The Night of The Big News. It was going to take place in The Welcoming Room of Old Titanic and his wife, Be-the-Tair. It was the perfect spot in which to hold such a meeting, for it was the longest Welcoming Room that any of us had ever heard tell of apart from Din-Din-Dinny-the-Stammerer’s above in The Hills-of-the-Past. And like Dinny’s house, it was also the handiest place for The Dance-of--Thanksgiving at harvest-time and the winter celebrations that we held at The Hunting-the-Wran Ball on Saint Stephen’s Day (the day after Christmas).

The previous week Moll-the-Man had made the arrangements for Clever Jack to go up to these hillsmen and read them the news from his newspaper so that they’d get all the latest details about Hitler and the war. They knew that the conflict had been hammering on for a good number of years – even though our men hadn’t yet had a chance to go and kill a few Germans for themselves. They knew also that their women were awfully anxious about the fierce killings going on across the map in case our own men should one day get a few unexpected licks from the German guns. In which case they were sure they’d find themselves all laid out cold one morning and lodged below in Abbey Acres Graveyard before their time was due.

To get up there Clever Jack had to ride his bike (Caruso trotting briskly beside him) out through The Valley of The Black Cattle, then out by the side of Growl River and on up to Diggledy-doo where lived The High ‘n’ Dry Men (like Joe Solitary) and The Lackadaisicals (like Old Bazeen). These were the wildest of farmers with only a few patches of rough reedy land overrun with scrub bushes – land no better than an abandoned jungle in some places so that they were a good bit poorer than the rest of us down here on the slopes.

The villainous Moll-the-Man had informed the hillsmen how Clever Jack was a well-versed reader of holy books such as The Messenger and also a number of Zane Grey cowboy novels – that he was the prestigious reader of any book other than a Post Office stamp-book – that he had turned his two eyes almost inside out from reading the most recent newspapers that Herald-the-Post was able to get through to him, even going hard at it in the dusk of the evening behind his hayreek.

When they heard such lavish praise of Clever Jack they were itching for him to come and pay them a visit and begged Moll-the-Man to bring him up the very next Monday. To tell the truth, they were a small bit ashamed that they couldn’t read the newspaper too well and therefore hadn’t a clue as to which side was really winning the war. Worst still, they hadn’t even been told that the war in Europe had ended a good while back.

This evening’s reading would give Clever Jack (the rogue that he always was and with that glint that he always had in his eye) a chance to distort the truth about the various conflicts and all the killings. He’d entangle The Mountainy Men’s brains with a bag of filthy lies, all made up on the spot to look real and with a few cleverly embroidered embellishments added here and there out of his wily imagination. He’d be as good as a blessed missioner, wouldn’t he (the rascal)? Of course he knew the lay of the land (we all did) – that from The Roaring Town to the back of the hills there was a descending scale of literacy amongst us, so that that when it came to reading the newspaper version of the war the literate fellows were always able to make fools out of the semi-literate fellows. There was a contrasting side to this – that the hilly breezes (everybody knew it) stimulated the brains of the hillsmen up around Diggledy-doo so that they were said to have far more brains than the likes of ourselves and were as gifted as a parish priest when it came to telling their stories and making up their own lying yarns (the rogues). However, being so far away from a schoolmaster, only a few of them had been given the chance to get to a regular school-house. That (said our wise men) was the reason why they had a small bit of trouble deciphering the written words in any of the newspapers.

It Was Now The Big News Night

The Big News Night finally came on. The room for the meeting was twenty-foot long and rectangular. The walls with their many old ghosts, memories and pictures had been newly decorated with whitewash. There were two small square windows as well as the half-door to let in the last few drops of the day’s fading light. It was six o’clock. Any minute now Clever Jack would be arriving in the doorway to pay these hillsmen his respectful homage. A big crowd had already arrived from the depths of the countryside, filling Old Titanic’s Welcoming Room and stretching out the half-door and into the cobbled yard. War-news was important to these men and there wasn’t one of them who wouldn’t give his hind teeth to get his hands on a wireless-set so he could listen to the man-in-the-box speaking his words-of-wisdom to them. Of course the only two wireless-sets known to any of them were stuck on the wall below in Lord Demurely’s kitchen and in the parlour of Father Accessible in Copperstone Hollow – though Doctor Glasses was said to have put in an order for one. And this evening they would have liked nothing better than to make a quick raid on those grandiose establishments and run off with their wireless-set. For the moment, however, there was nothing they could do only sit around and wait patiently like poor scholars for Clever Jack’s arrival and what he had to tell them from his newspaper.

Moll-the-Man had reminded the wily fellow to bring up his spectacles (not that he needed them) so as to convince the gathering of the full force of his intellect. As soon as the meeting ended she’d give The Mountainy Men these precious items so that they in their turn could go further inland and read their own version of the news (or at least pretend to read some of the bigger words) as soon as they came across people more remotely situated than themselves. She could picture them skimming their eyes up and down the newspaper and telling their listeners all sorts of nonsense – how Hitler had gotten himself practically killed abroad in Timbuktoo – how he had risen up from his hospital bed and thrown off the blankets to come storming back and torment the rest of the world all over again.

The Clock Was Ticking

The clock was ticking loudly on the wall and the murmur went round that Clever Jack (they could hear the ring of his hobnails) had crossed the flagstones and that with him he had brought along Caruso, his famed little hunting-dog – the dog that was now lying stone dead across Red Baggy’s saddle. The big man took a few strides in across Old Titanic’s yard where Moll-the-Man met him at the gable-end of the house. She tied Caruso to the singletree and ruffled his ears and gave him a big saucepan of scraps and milk. She gave Clever Jack a playful little shove towards the half-door and she whipped off his cap good-naturedly and led him in under the lintel.

‘God save all here! May God bless the work!’ shouted Jack as he devoured the gathering with his eyes and threw his cap on the nail next to the holy-water font and blessed himself.

There was a brief pause out of respect for him and then – ‘God save you kindly, Jack!’ they echoed back. In their eyes there was a pride in him as they looked at his manly stance. His hair was as rusty-coloured as autumn ferns and it was swept back over his left ear like a solicitor and the dewy frost of the early evening was shining on his face, coat and boots. They were used to observing things and they could see all this.

Old Titanic dragged his esteemed visitor over towards the blazing turf-fire and sat him down at the head of the listeners in the comfort of his own grandfather-chair. Behind Clever Jack and in underneath the hob there was an apple-box, from which now and then he could draw out an apple for himself so as to break up his reading spells and oil his parched tongue – but especially to give himself time to think about the next bit of his news from the pages of the paper.

He looked