Tag: Ireland

The Presage by Ken Foxe

I never tell anybody about my gift. Nobody really wants to know when they are going to die. I remember when I first happened upon it, not something I’m ever likely to forget. I was thirteen years old, a gawky schoolboy with all that entails, rebellious, playing at being a man, ready to fight with anybody, most especially my parents. I was at Heuston Station, about to catch a train to what seemed at the time like escape, three weeks of freedom in an Irish-language school in West Cork.

As I was about to board, my mother insisted on hugging me and in that moment, I could see it all vividly. The white rental car that my father was driving, the pilgrim coast road, the metal of the crash barrier giving way, a tumbling, and the wreck on the rocks below. Mammy watched my dad die, wondering if she might survive, but she didn’t.

The Matter of the Oilliphéist by Brendan Shea

When Bryce Garner and Deirdre Murphy skipped their morning class at the National University of Ireland, Galway, on the morning of October 7th, their absence was noted by their professor, Dr. Seán Riordan. He spoke with us months later, following the discoveries near Clashganniv, County Kerry.

“I didn’t like the American fella, if I’m being honest,” Dr. Riordan, professor of Early Irish Folklore and Heritage, said. “But Deirdre was lovely. Galway girl. Worked at the sandwich shop. Made a wonderful bap. They had taken to sitting together. Drawing doodles, smiling. Thinking I didn’t notice. It was the lack of giggling—that’s what caught my attention that day, when I realized they weren’t there.”

The Lep by Pat J. Mullan

People think nurses get a special calling, like nuns’ or priests’ vocations. That wasn’t the case with me. After five years at boarding school in the convent, I knew I didn’t want to be a nun. I didn’t make the grade for teacher training college like my older sister, and I didn’t like the thought of working in a bank or at a desk in the civil service. There wasn’t much else for a girl to do in the late sixties, was there? I mean, I was never going to the factory. God no. Being a factory girl’d be even worse than being a nun. My mother would never have lived that down.