Crossmacglynn

By AM Tuesday, March 8, 2011

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Tonight the Pensive Quill carries the first two chapters of Thomas "Dixie" Elliott's satirical story, Crossmacglynn.

Ballycrossmacglynn
Thomas "Dixie" Elliott


Chapter I


It was 1984, give or take a leap year.

Godfrey Templeton, the English undercover agent, was heavily disguised as he entered the bar. He removed his balaclava and put it with the other balaclavas which hung by the door revealing a mop of ruddy red hair. Godfrey's hair was naturally black but the change of colour would fool the natives.

His dark glasses were a replica of those commonly worn by the IRA; these he didn’t remove. The IRA could identify a British soldier by the way he looked, if he looked suspicious then he was a Brit. So Godfrey surmised that if he hid his eyes behind dark glasses he wouldn’t look suspicious. Templeton spat in the face of death: he was British upper class, Eton educated and came from a long line of Sandhurst trained officers.

All eyes looked to the door as he calmly walked in. The locals in the Bomb Inn didn’t take to strangers.

"Top O' the morning till yees!" He hollered as he walked towards the drunken IRA men who milled round the dartboard firing revolvers to see who got closest to the bull.

"And the luck of the Irish till yourself, me good man," they replied, seemingly relieved that he spoke the Irish.

Godfrey pulled out his Browning 9mm and emptied the mag into the bulls-eye, finishing with a double top.

"Begorrah!" they called out in amazement. "Sure if your man isn't the best shot this side of the Mountains of Mourne!"

“And where did you learn tay shoot like that?” asked a member of the group at the dartboard.

“During the Great Famine we lived in a wee cottage in the bogs of Donegal. I had to go out hunting to feed my widowed mother and 10 brothers ‘n sisters. And it wasn’t long afore I could shoot like Annie Oakley.”

“Balls!” The voice came from a snug in the corner.

“Are you accusing me of lying?” asked Godfrey of the voice in the snug.

“The Famine was more than a hundred years ago and you look well for a man of that age,” replied the voice from the snug.

Kitty MacGlynn the barmaid looked to the trio of men seated round a table in the far corner of the bar. Cigarette smoke hung in the air above them as they drank pints of the Black Stuff.

Their hands slowly but surely reached down to the armalite rifles that were propped under the table. Kitty’s father, Big Dan Mor MacGlynn, the local OC, grinned through his thick beard as he swung his weapon up and took aim. Godfrey was quick. In one swift movement he released the empty magazine, let it drop to the floor and replaced it rapidly with another.

Everyone in the bar room froze momentarily.

Everyone except Tomas MacGlynn, Kitty's 7 year old son who had watched everything unfold as he pumped coins into the Sons O' Eireann slot machine. In a movement which equalled Godfrey for speed he pulled a Walther PPK from his school bag and fired. The bullet tore half of Godfrey's ear from the side of his head taking the dark glasses with it. The gunshot was still resounding around the bar when a shotgun blast from the direction of the snug lifted Godfrey as both barrels caught him in the chest and flung him across two tables and out through the bar window into the car park. Granny MacGlynn, the family matriarch, blew on both barrels of the sawn off and shuffled out the back to put her washing through the mangle.

There was silence in the bar for the merest of seconds, then glasses of the Black Stuff clashed together in cheers and the whole bar room erupted into a chorus of "Come out ye Black 'n Tans..."

Godfrey was far from dead though. Gingerly he pulled open the bullet proof vest.


The characters of Crossmacglynn

Chapter 2


The little village of Ballycrossmacglynn nestles in an area of green hills straddling the border between the Northern Ireland part of Ireland and the Southern Ireland part of Ireland. The village has nestled here since the time of the Normans and takes its name from its earliest known inhabitant, Cross MacGlynn, a man who was angry at everyone and about everything.

MacGlynn built the ruined castle which stands on the hill overlooking the village and his anger was said to stem from the building of this castle. It was meant to be built in County Kerry but those he sent before him to force the native Irish from their land and build a castle upon it actually took a wrong turn. Upon landing at Waterford they headed north instead of west and MacGlynn was an angry Norman when he arrived at Kerry to find that what he believed to be his castle was occupied. Therefore he laid siege to the castle he thought was his castle for several months thinking that the native Irish had squatted into it. The besieged were actually Normans themselves who thought that the forces of MacGlynn were actually native Irish trying to storm the castle. It appears that every time MacGlynn called upon them to surrender he was so angry the besieged mistook his ranting for Gaelic battle cries and replied with a volley of arrows and other projectiles. By the time word reached MacGlynn that his castle was actually in the North, he had lost many men. They had wandered off, bored by constant besieging and became more Irish than the Irish themselves.

MacGlynn eventually reached his new castle in the North only to find that it was squatted into by the native Irish. The Norman builders had set off to find him, wanting paid for the job and left no one to look after the castle while they were away. The native Irish they had drove from their land had, in the meantime, decided to lay siege to the castle to get their land back, but, finding it empty, they moved in.

To say that Cross MacGlynn was angry was putting it mildly and he pounded the castle with all he had until it was left in ruins. However it turned out that the native Irish in the castle, upon seeing how cross MacGlynn was, decided it would be better to sneak out the back at the beginning of the siege. If MacGlynn had only tried the door, before pounding it with all he had, he would have found it unlocked.

Needless to say MacGlynn was angry with the builders and refused to pay them and they left in a fit of umbrage to become more Irish than the Irish themselves.

Having realised that he was alone in the Northern part of Ireland with a ruined castle, MacGlynn met and settled down with a local girl, becoming, not surprisingly, more Irish than the Irish themselves.

The ghost of Cross MacGlynn is said to haunt various parts of the village.

“That I do!………That I do!”

Who said that?

“Didn’t you just say that the ghost of Cross MacGlynn is said to haunt various parts of the village?”

Well, OK I did, but that was part of the narrative.

“Do I look like part of a fecking narrative to you?”

I don’t see anything.

“That’s because I’m a fecking ghost, you clampet, an invisible fecking ghost which is haunting the fecking village!”

Oh right! Did I just write that?

“Oh get on with the fecking story for feck's sake!”

No need to be so angry.

“You made me fecking angry, you buck-eejit!”

Oh, right!


To be continued....