Two Walls and a Roof Read Free

immediate panic, shouting at Michael to get the doctor, “Quick, quick, he’s drank the paraffin, he’ll die. R un for the doctor will you” . S he used to use this paraffin oil to light the fire and I had dru nk it. I remember feeling no discomfort of any kind, and the excitement seemed to be great. She was hugging me and saying , “D on’t die, don’t die on me , please God spare him, save him dear Lord” . I don’t remember what they did next, but I do know that I was sure determined to drink more of this oil stuff at the first chance I got, just because of all the affection shown to me by them all. Michael was blamed for letting the oil on the stairs, even though it was the Nan that lit the fire each morning, and this blaming becam e a pattern for all of his life. H e was always blamed for all things she did wrong, and praised for nothing good he did right, yet we would all have been lost without him.
    Even though my Nan presented a stern exterior to the world, she was a deeply superstitious , God- fearing woman of the old ways. She came from farming stock in Tipperary, and being from the country she knew all about faeries and p ishogues and was scared to death of both of them , especially the ‘Evil Eye’. Armed with such knowledge, it has always surprised me that both she and my mother would ever take me to an area that was bounded b y a faerie f ort. They used to go for a walk down the Charleville road to a dog track that was run by a family friend, a man called Thomas Nash.  There they would sit and chat for hours, while I played around in the field with a ball, but the field bounding the track happened to have a large faerie f ort in it, and it was even known as the ‘Faerie Field’.  Looking into this Faerie Field you could clearly see the large circular moat or l ios that no one would dare to dig in, or excavate. This field was sealed off from the dog track by an old iron gate that had some bars criss crossing it, and I would say that it had never been opened.
    As a curious child I used to go over to that gate and peer through it every time I was there, wondering what was over across in t he tall ditch that was the faerie r ing. However, Nannie had me warned never to go through that gate, but I remember being curious about the place.   One beautiful summer’s day, when I was about four or five years old , I was given a rare opportunity to parta ke in some real Irish myth and folklore at that field. We were at the track and I wandered off to the gate as usual and stood looking through it. No one will probably believe me, but when I looked through the old gate I distinctly remember seeing a small man dressed in a green coat and black breeches. He had a wide belt with a large shiny buckle tied across his middle, and he looked exactly like a f aerie should, just as our folklore would describe them today. But at my age I had no idea about folklore or anything else either and I had never seen anyone like him before. It looked like he was very old: grey-haired, craggy- faced and bearded, with a small hat that seemed to flop over on the side of his head. He was smiling and beckoning for me to go to him.  He used a gentle hand movement, beckoning and calling to me all the time, but I heard no sound in my ears, and I somehow just felt this calling. I believe I liked him , and even though his wrinkly face frightened me a bit, his smile was drawing me to him for some reason, and so I began to climb through the gate . Th en the panic started. I heard Nannie screaming, but I ignored her. There is a scene in the film Close Encounters of the Third Kind , when the child is drawn through the cat flap to the alien ship outside the door, and that’s how it felt to me . I was powerless to stop myself from going through the gate.  Nannie had seen me begin to climb through, and she instinctively panicked and started running to pull me back, shouting at Thomas Nash who was much closer. He caught me just as I was about