O'Shinny

Settle now won’t ye?

Rest your bones a while.

Lay down the burdens of the day, and I’ll tell ye the tale

of that mysterious, charming young man 

who came upon our small and quiet town 

one October time.

Remember how the mornings yawned in that grey mist?

As if the breath of earth itself were caught in the cold air.

Sure, tis no wonder the stories have carried for generations,

the legend that these mists be a veil to the “Otherworld”

O’Shinny, he called himself, with no mention of a forename or from where he hailed. Itinerant and handsome, his abrupt appearance among the townsfolk was as surprising and delighting as the first flower blossoms of Spring; bold as a purple foxglove standing among the earthbrown bracken. He had a natural charm and a flattery that hypnotised us all out of questioning the mysteries of his presence. Although his clothes were threadbare worn, and potent with the musk of nights spent in the clutch of the forest floor, you couldn’t say that he wasn’t elegant. He had a manner to him that could charm the bite right from the horse. A wanderer, no doubt of it, but for what trade or purpose? Well - not one of us thought to ask, not once before his departure, which was as abrupt as his arrival. 

The turn of the Autumn saw us in our usual preparations. Peat sods stacked beside piles of seasoned oak and bags of wool carded and cleaned ready for the spindle. Now the hearth fires would be lit every morning, and left to burn through the night, and became the centre point for the evening’s gatherings. The children loved to sit with their bare feet to the flames, catching the tips of sticks alight and drawing shapes in the air with the ember’d ends. They loved to hear the same old tales over and over; tales of the old heroes and warriors who it was said had the strength in just one hand to pull a mighty oak straight from the ground, who could throw boulders at their enemies from across the oceans, tales of women with raven black hair who would drop into a shadowed corner to turn themselves into birds at will, then fly out to watch over their kin from the high branches, tales of the fair folk, who arrived in the grey morning mist, only to be driven underground after fierce and devastating battles. It seemed at this time that the children lived for the evening tellings, the wives for loom circle, and the men for what we called the Sunday Snare. 

You see now, another popular tradition born from seasonal circumstance, was the hunt. Most of the families of the town being generational farmers, with many acres of crop and livestock to their name. Wild rabbits, foxes, hares were all considered terrible vermin, a threat to the livelihood of the town. So much so that the local Garda offered a bounty for the culling of wild animals; five shillings for a rabbit, seven for a fox, nine for a hare, so on, so long as they had been snared and clubbed and not shot with a bullet so that the pelt and meat would still catch a good coin. An incentive that became a weekly rite and contest amongst the men. A contest especially now in the last months as a particularly large and elusive fox had been ravaging not only the chickens, but had even taken out a substantial count of the young cattle, earning him a nickname from the children, Bodach Bo; “The old man of the cattle” The name being taken from a character in one of their favourite fireside tales, a mischievous and sometimes malevolent goblin sprite known to torment and trick farmers. There was a fine bounty on Bodach Bo, which had all sons and fathers out with fervent and competitive spirit. They had invented endless imaginative ways to snare an animal of that size, and would return with thrilling accounts of the speed and stealth of the biggest fox they had ever seen. He moves so fast you may only catch a glimpse of him from the side of your eye, but that’s only the least to tell of his skill, for this fox is smart as any man, they would insist, and given its ability to break into any coop we constructed in the last months, we were all keen to agree. 

It was a brisk and mizzly October Sunday, with the boys away for the Snare that I first met O’Shinny. He was standing among the women at the market, holding a sprig of lavender delicately between his forefinger and thumb, the way a painter might hold his brush while contemplating his artwork. The sprig appeared to have come from one of the bundles on Mary Doyle’s stall. Mary was the wife of Owen Doyle, a pig farmer who was away on the hunt with my own husband. If you weren’t to know that Mary was a married women with 2 children, you’d have thought her a blushing young maiden there as she looked up at the man from behind her stall, cheeks gone pink and gushing smile. Not to mention the others; he was flanked on either side by women with the same silly pink cheeked smiles, as well as a small circle of women who stood nearby casting subtle stares toward the stranger, while every passing set of eyes lingered to take him in. His delicately embroidered jacket looked like very fine needle work of leaves and knotwork, but it was worn through in many places with holes and scuffed all over. His scruffy hair looked matted and hung in shags around his ears and forehead, a dirty russet brown shirt beneath his jacket had a romantically low cut neckline showing off a section of auburn chest hair. Now, our town is very accustomed to the passing through of travellers, tinkers and rovers the like, especially seeing as our market is known to be one of the best for produce and wool textiles, but it was clear that the handsome good looks of this visitor had caused a stir among the hens.

I had no need for dried herbs or pig meat, so passed by Mary’s stall being sure not to stare at the alluring stranger as I went. Allowing myself only to look at the back of his once-fine jacket to get a better look at the needlework. It was fine indeed. I couldn’t imagine what artisanal skill could work to such detail. I couldn’t help but glance back to look at it again, but my eyes were met by his own, piercing amber orbs round and unblinking. Now I must have flushed pink also, as I carried on my way to the baker.

Carrying on my errands, I found myself distracted every time I thought I caught the glimpse of a sprig of lavender, or the gleam of fine embroidery from the corner of my eye. His presence had undeniably unsettled me, so I hurried the last of my business and rushed to make my way home. I was not far out the square when I realised I had left the bags of chicken feed at the benches where I had stopped earlier to rest. The man was waiting for me there, and somehow I knew he might be, call it fate if you will. He smiled at me like an old friend,

“You’ve not enough arms for yer load, fine lady” 

I was blushing again, two bags of chicken feed and a basket of produce was more than manageable. 

“I’ve not far to take them” I said with a shy smile, setting down my basket to pick up the bags of feed. 

“Then I’ve not far to help you take them” He winked

His charm was too commanding to protest. He picked up my bags of feed and there was nothing else to say about the matter. 

“It’s a fine shawl you wear” he said, as we made our way out from the market square.

You couldn’t say it was fine at all, the yarn was rough and unwashed, but I preferred the dense lanolin coating for these biting cold and mizzly Autumn days.

“Surely you can’t think so, being a man dressed in such finery as yerself”  I let my eyes go where they wanted now, to take in all the delicate gold stitching twisting shapes of wildflower beneath the lapels of his jacket. 

“What makes you say so?”

“This is crude work; the fleece was spun from what was leftover after we took what was good from our Spring shearing and only tossed in a simple dye made from a brew of bracken ferns and walnut husks. Simple, slap dash. Nothing like the skillmanship of your own attire.”

“Well, it happens to be the simple and crude things that I find most endearing.” 

The silence after he spoke had a weight to it, and I suddenly felt the urge to mention my husband. 

“That is how we live I suppose, Ivan and I, simple and crude, the man knows no other way.”

“Interesting, and how about you?”

“What about me?”

“Do you know any other way?”

This silence had even more weight to it, I had to consider what he asking for a while. 

When we reached the house, I showed him where to drop the bags of feed, and felt a parallel feeling of relief and regret to wish him well on his way and thank him for his help. Before I had said a thing though, he took a step toward me with a soft confidence, and smoothly brushed a lock of hair behind my ear before he turned and made his leave. It was hours later when I found the lavender sprig surreptitiously placed there. 

Ivan returned just before sunset, as he always did after the Sunday Snare. I saw him arrive into the back garden carrying a few rabbits bound by their feet in one hand, and holding his beloved shillelagh in the other. He had made that weapon himself, shaping a stout piece of ash into a club, and hollowing out the thicker end to fill with a lump of lead for extra clout. He took a while out back to skin the rabbits and stretch the pelts out on small frames before coming inside to salt the meat and leaving it all to dry above the hearth. He said nothing as he passed by me to the crock of water that we kept warmed on the stove to wash his hands and face. That silence was normal, Ivan was a man of hard work and little talk, weathered by hard wind and hard graft before he could even be called a grown man. Our marriage was functional and comfortable. I would sometimes ask him about his day, and he would answer with practical mundane recounts of work. I couldn’t tell if he had no interest in what I had done with my day, or if he just had too much on his mind in the way of farming and hunting to consider asking about it. I suppose I always had enough on my mind also with the tending of the home to consider it a bother. The only thing that ever got a truly lively response out of him was to ask about the hunt;

“Any sight of the Bodach today?” I asked, setting a bowl of rabbit stew in front of him.

His eyes widened as I expected they would, 

“Feckin’ right! I almost had the bleedin’ scut with me bare hands. Chased him down and almost had him by the neck. I’ve almost got the fecker, I got close enough to smell the shite on his feet. I tell ye. Fecker’s mine”

He burrowed into his stew, and we said nothing more to each other before he got up to go lay on the bed, leaving me to clean up the crockery. 

Seeing O’Shinny at the Sunday market became a regular delight. He would insist on carrying my things, he would compliment every part of me, anything he could think of or lay his eyes on. He was warming me with his words and he was very good at it. I never saw him any other day of the week. Perhaps he had business elsewhere. Perhaps he only came to town on a Sunday for market trades or personal affairs. I never asked, there was hardly a moment to ask between the folly of his sly charm, the teasing banter and the hours we spent making love around the house. I did ask him once why he never joined the men on the Sunday Snare,

“You seem to be a man well experienced with the ways of the road, are you not keen on hunting?” 

“Oh” his eyes sparked with lust “I am a keen hunter indeed” he growled and chased me all round the house.

It was around midday on the first day of November. We were in the bedroom, half clothed and kissing passionately on the bed. Neither of us heard the sound of the back gate clack as Ivan returned home early from the hunt with an injury to his hand. Our passions were undisturbed as Ivan entered from the back door, as he always did, and made his way to the kitchen to wash himself and dress his wound.

“Bastard Scut Bastard!”

Our hearts jumped and our ears pricked. The warmth of our bodies went cold as terror shot through my bones.

I panicked

but O’Shinny just looked at me calmly with a soft confident smirk. He kissed me lightly on the forehead before standing and pressing a finger to his lips. Gracefully he pulled on his russet brown shirt and crouched to the floor on all fours like a cat. He was tensing his muscles and pressing his shoulders back in a strange manner that made him look like a wild animal. I began to fret as I anticipated he was gearing up to brawl with Ivan. I would have stopped him, but in the shortest moment of taking my eyes from him to wipe the tears rolling down my face, he was gone. I didn’t see, or hear him leave the room, such was his stealth. 

“Feck it to the pits ye bleedin’ bastard scut!” 

Ivan cussed from the kitchen. I felt my heart jump out my chest! Had he seen my visitor slipping out? 

But there was no sound of tussle, no rush of heavy boots, no cries of pain or thud of lead filled Shillelagh cracking a skull in two. I waited anxiously to hear it; for the moment O’Shinny dropped a step too loud or let the door creak. 

“Ye’ll be getting the stew on early today will ye?”

Ivan was still dressing his wound in the kitchen.

I heaved a sigh, just as I caught sight of something out the window from the corner of my eye. A brown mass about the size of a hound trotting across the lawn. A huge brown fox, beautiful in the late Autumn midday sun. He stopped a moment turning his amber eyes to me for one moment before he was gone. 

I never saw the man O’Shinny again.