Granny Nessie

Granny "Nessie," never just Granny. I was six or seven-years-old the first time I met her when she and my aunt Jane came over from New Zealand to visit us when we still lived at St. Cummin's Hill . Up until then all we knew about her was from pictures and occasional packages at Christmas and birthdays.

We'd call her Granny from New Zealand when talking about her in family circles. It was strange having a granny that lived 13,000 miles away when most of the people around us had all their grandparents within a fifty-mile radius. Other kids in school said we were just showing-off when we said we had a granny in New Zealand, but it was a fact.

Her packages would contain sweet treats from New Zealand, books about The Maori people and sometimes clothes that she sewed herself, like a nice pair of pajamas. And sometimes a small check for ten or fifteen dollars inside a small card with a New Zealand black robin or fern on the cover. She once sent over these store-bought Kiwi bird pillow cases and Derek and I thought we were the bee's knees with them on our beds.

Needless to say, we were very excited about meeting our mysterious Granny from New Zealand for the first time. Derek and I got home one morning, from staying at cousin Paddy's, and there she was. She had kites for us as gifts that looked like silk octopuses and we were shy and didn't know what to call her, that's when we started calling her "Granny Nessie."

She was a little woman, even back then when we were little, with silver hair, tanned skin and a polished colonial accent. She said things like "Sambrosa" when she liked some kind of food and sang little jingles from her younger life back in New Zealand. We found her ways very amusing and she would whisper when she knew she was talking about something just a little off color like when she first met my wife she whispered to my cousin Charlotte "My goodness, what are the grandchildren going to look like." She never meant any harm by these asides, it was just her way of thinking out loud with no filter.

She was a great woman for the morning constitution. Tea and toast with peanut butter on it. Wheat germ on her cereal and semolina in the evenings. She ate things we'd never heard off and exposed us to interesting and delicious foods and taught us not to rush our food "take time to digest" she would say. My favorite thing she made were piplettes, small pancakes that you ate cold with butter or jam slathered on them.

Granny was an all or nothing person. You were either immediate family to her, or someone to be set adrift on an iceberg and never heard from again. Like when Mum's sister Pat, who was working for Dad at the time, opened the fridge at our house out The Five Points and Granny slammed the door shut on her and reprimanded her with the phrase "that is for immediate family only." Never one for tact.

Mum and Granny didn't hit it off instantly either. I remember how Mum would fret that she was constantly under the disapproval of Granny Nessie. But in the end they found the goodness in each other and were very close towards the end of Mum's life.

When Granny came to live permanently again in Ireland in the mid-90s she shipped all her belonging over from New Zealand in a giant container at a considerable cost. Dad would never let it go and always talked about how it was a container "full of shite" but to her those were her possessions and our heritage. Furniture from New Zealand and when she lived in Coradina House in Dublin years ago when she and Granda were still married.  

Heritage and the knowledge of one's roots were very important to Granny and she instilled in us a sense of pride in who we were and were we came from. Even though I've never been to New Zealand I feel very connected to the country and feel like an honorary citizen because of Granny. Stories of our great Uncles fighting in the Commonwealth boxing championships against each other, another Uncle who played for the All-Blacks, Joseph Lister who invented medical equipment sterilization back in Edinburgh where her family came from. Family heroes and legends that are ingrained into my memory no matter how true or false.

I was working at Dad's fish factory when I was in my late teens she'd have us out to her little rented house in Bavin for dinner every few weeks. You could see the resistance in Dad's eyes, but you knew he loved it at the same time. Granny's food was to a certain taste and sometimes it was the best thing you ever tasted, other times it was something Dad would poke with a fork and Bruce or Alan, having adopted Granny's lack of tact, would say "What is this Granny? Sure we can eat it?"

As the years passed on and I moved away I once again had a long distance relationship with Granny Nessie. We'd write and make short long-distance phone calls at random times. Her letters, sometimes indecipherable hand written letters, covering both sides of an airmail envelope, would ramble on about her veg garden and some news about a relative back home in New Zealand that I'd never hear of before: Uncle Tommy's cesna or Aunt June's daughter Bridget was in Oxford and we should try to meet her there. But it was the contact and the connection of getting a letter from Gran that was important, just like when we were children.

Eventually she came to visit Linh and I in Kansas City. Linh was terribly worried what she was going to do with Granny while I was working my management job all the time she was here. Linh must have felt a little like the way Mum did on her first meeting. But Linh took the bull by the horns, so to say, and took Granny all over the city. They'd come home at the end of a day and regale me with stories of wine tastings at The La Fou Frog and art showing at The Nelson and Happy Hour at some restaurant or other. They got along like a house on fire and to boot, we all got hang out tending the garden, raking the leaves and picking up walnuts and trimming tree limbs. Granny was very popular in Kansas City and for weeks after her visit people would ask me "How's Granny getting on?" "When is she coming back?"

Granny loved to make her own jams and chutneys and she and Linh made a big trip to the city market and canned a whole big batch of chutney that we used to make delicious curries with for months after her visit.

On her second visit to Kansas City, we took an all day road trip to Hannibal to visit the famous Mark Twain caves and Granny was a little scared of the dark and twisting tour through the caves and on hindsight it was probably not the best thing to do. But back in the town of Hannibal we took a horse drawn trailer ride through the town and that was much more the pace we should have been tending. Granny was always singing the first few lines to "Meet me in St. Louis" so on the way home we went via St. Louis and visited the Arch and had dinner on Laclede's Landing and returned home late that night to Kansas City. Granny wasn't in the best of energy on that visit and on her return to Ireland she had a bad bout of jaundice.

We hoped to have Granny back to Kansas City again, but her health wasn't the best and she even had to postpone her annual trip back to New Zealand to stay with Jane and the gang in Marlborough.

By the time Granny passed she was just as polarizing as always. There were people she cut out of her life, because of one silly thing or another, but people knew that that was just her way and to know her was to deal with these eccentricities. I am sad she is gone, but she lived a long, great life and if any of us can make it near 86 years of age, that'll be something. So, here's to you Granny Nessie, from a young girl growing up in Ashburton and Christchurch, to the midwife at St. James's in Dublin, to our Granny Nessie that we loved, we raise a small glass of Chardonnay in your honor.

A Horse of Course

I met a Midwesterner the other day that lives in Perth, Scotland. He met a Scottish girl, fell in love and moved there to be with her (sounds familiar) and he works in the thoroughbred horse business. During our brief conversation he made a very telling remark about the Irish people when he posed this question:

“The Irish are the only people I know that when they get into money, the first thing they do is get into horses. Why do you think that is?”

I rolled this around in the noggin for a moment and the first thing that came to mind went back to our English-Overlordship. I don’t usually blame the English for Irish problems, if anything, I think they’ve shaped us into the amazing people we are today.

So off I went with my answer “I’d say that land and horses are still deeply rooted in the Irish psyche as symbols of power and wealth, just as it used to be viewed as ‘being English’ if you planted a lot of trees on your property and we always aspire to be what oppressed us.” He took my reply with a grain or two of salt and went back to his dinner.

However, this conversation got me thinking about my own family, ‘cause these days my Dad and new Mom are mad into horses. They’ve built stables, an outdoor arena and have something like seven or eight horses running around the place. That in turn made me think about my sister's horse Bob she had when she was a teenager, then that nugget of a memory pushed the old mind back to when we were kids and we had a donkey called Eh-aw.

I’m not sure where we got Eh-aw from, but I know I couldn’t have been much more than three or four years old when we got her and she lived on Mick O’Donnell’s land with an old horse called Dusty. Mick O’Donnell’s land backed up to my aunt and uncle's, but his was all fenced in and was about 30 acres of some of the most amazing land you could imagine. We called it ‘the mountain’ but it was more than that, it had a view of the other mountain Slieve League, a hypnotic monolith of vast geologic proportions, you could literally stare at that giant rock for hours on end, clouds wisping over the peak and squinting at little dots as people climbed over the horizon of it’s peak.

Eh-aw and Dusty’s paradise also came right up to the edge of the estuary of the Salmon Leap river. When the tide was out we’d walk down there in our wellies, digging for razor fish, picking mussels off the rocks, checking the old abandoned oyster bed for a small harvest and turning over a kelp covered rock to tackle a scuttling crab. All the time keeping a weary eye out for the returning tide and often a stray goat or sheep wouldn’t be so lucky and get trapped out on one of the tiny islands of grass and they could only pray to the farm gods that it wasn’t a spring tide and they’d be safe till the tide receded.

When we went up to see Eh-aw and Dusty we’d walk on our side of the fence and call out to them and it usually didn’t take long for one of them to pop their big head up over a hilltop. They knew we’d have some apples or potato peels for them. Eh-aw would could come right up to the fence and sometimes she’d let us feed her from a flattened palm, but Dusty would always hold back and wait for us to leave before he came up to the fence to nibble the peel off the barbed wire.

Eh-aw and Dusty had become the most unusual odd couple. She was a little grey jenny, not much to look at, but friendly and welcoming with her braying speech. Dusty on the other hand was beautiful, the color of deep rust with a long flowing mane, standing about 15 hands high he towered over his partner. But he had become feral like a mustang or more appropriately a wild Connemara pony, and you only approached him at your own risk. We entered their field with trepidation and as we did the two animals paired up together and kept us within eye contact, but always thirty or forty feet away. You could tell that Eh-aw wanted to come closer to us and have us stroke her, but she played the role of a good wife and attended her husband’s will.

Within their realm there was a Celtic ring fort and us young boys would go over there and pretend to be Cuchullin and the Red Branch knights or Finn McCool and the Fianna, defending the fort against invaders coming up from the estuary, usually Vikings, Germans or English, our enemies of choice when we were the same age as our shoe size. Air raids were a bitch to defend, but the sequoia-like ferns provided plenty of cover.

Eh-aw and Dusty would look down on us shooting invisible bullets and throwing invisible spears, and we would incorporate them into our imaginary games by assigning them the role of Indians coming to attack our fort held by brave cowboys. Bang, bang.

So, all this gets me thinking back to the original question of wealth and horses. As children a donkey worth five bucks and a Celtic ring fort made us feel like the last of the high kings of Ireland, a priceless sense of completeness. You can throw money at houses, cars, stocks, women, even drugs and alcohol, but there is something primal, innate in the sense of ownership one has in possessing and just knowing that that semi-wild donkey was mine, was enough.

When the Celtic Tiger economy made Ireland a rich wee Island, people rushed out to buy their Five Dollar Donkey no matter the cost, so they could feel the tangibility of wealth that no amount of zeros on a bank stub can reproduce. And the ironic part is that the poorest sub-class/culture in Ireland: The Travelers have always kept horses and donkeys. So by my thinking we all aspire to be rich English landlords, but really we’re just a bunch of Knackers!

The Mountain

We’d been asking Aidan all week if he would bring us up the mountain. He kept telling us to wait for a nice day, then we’d all go and pick up the McCaullaghy boys on the way. There was no point going up there on a rainy day, so we just stayed in the house waiting for it to stop raining and watching the A-Team.

Before going to bed Francis reads us Jack and the Bean Stalk, from a Ladybird Read it Yourself book, it’s so much better when she reads it in her Manchester accent and licks her thumb every time she turns a page. As she puts the light out, she whispers to us that it’s going to be a nice day tomorrow and she’ll have a wee word with Aidan.

Aidan is up before us in the morning and it is so bright outside that it makes the inside of the house look pitch black with only little rays of light splintering through the curtains and you can see all the dust in the sunbeams. Francis has made us a fried breakfast and remembered to put two sugars and loads of milk in my tea. Derek pushes me out of the way and takes the biggest breakfast and Paddy has his own special seat and we know not to take that seat or he’ll be telling his parents and they’ll take his side.

Aidan is in the armchair by the range, rolling cigarettes from a packet of Old Holbourne and calling us little buggers and telling us a story about the half-man half-water horse that lives up in Lough Awe. I’ve never been up the mountain before, but Derek and Paddy have and they say they saw the creature and got to go up the mountain at Christmas and play in the snow.

Francis makes sure we are dressed for the day and pulls down some hats for us to wear. The hats are from the Army Surplus store in Carrick and as usual Paddy has the nicest one, but Francis didn’t let Derek bully me and I got the one I wanted. She tells us we look like smart little officers. My army belt won’t stay on so I leave it behind, Paddy got his to stick and he is a smarter little officer than me.

The dogs are barking ‘cause they know we are going on a big walk and Aidan selects his best hawthorn stick and we walk away from Kits Cottage, the little three roomed stone house Kit Marshal left to Granny when he died. The house is haunted and we think we’ve seen the ghost of Kit Marshal but aren’t too sure. David McHenry did see it and he was very nice to him and told him where he could find Aidan and Francis in Maloney’s bar.

We start up the lane, past the old house, which is also haunted, by a mean ghost and we are afraid to look in the windows in case the ghost stares at us and we see the red glowing eyes. We also have sticks, made from straight pieces of hazel and we use them as swords to chop down nettles and thistles on the side of the lane. A few startled sheep “Baa” at us and run up Ee-aw and Dusty’s hill. We shout to Ee-aw and Dusty and we can see them over by the fence, but they don’t say anything to us this morning, perhaps ‘cause they are sad and want to go on the walk too.

Paddy and I race along the road, but Derek can’t ‘cause he is afraid he will get an asthma attack. We make fun of him and he tells us he will kill us. Paddy tries to trip me up as we run, but he falls instead and Aidan tells him it’s his own fault.

We don’t look at the Burn’s house as we pass it ‘cause Aidan and Paul fell out over a spade and now they won’t talk to each other and we don’t take the short cut through their field ‘cause he’ll be out shouting at us and Aidan says that ever since he lost his hand he hasn’t been right in the head. He gave out to me last summer for making fun of his stutter and I cried so much that I vomited up salmon and Francis had to make me feel better and Paul even said he was sorry and didn’t mean to be so cross. Now Derek and Paddy do the stutter noise and make me mad and I try to say things to them that will make them mad, but only Derek gets mad when we say “Chipsticks, Monster Munch, Salt and Vinegar” and then he hits us and wrestles us to the ground. He doesn’t like those kinds of crisps because of his asthma.

Aidan tells us to walk in single file as we walk in the Line to Carrick. The dogs don’t need to be told and Aidan whistles and they file in behind us. The mountain is on our left as we walk in the Line and we can make out the silhouettes of people already up on the mountain. Aidan tells us that they are German tourists and we all shout and wave to them, probably Nazis so we shoot them with invisible guns and perfectly lined up sights. We are smart little officers.

The mountain is completely purple from this side and I imagine how soft it is going to feel underfoot and there are places of gray and they look like loose gravel to me, but Aidan tells me that they are huge boulders and when I am up closer I’ll see.



They’ve started to build a new Tech beside the old one and Paddy tells us that he’ll be going there, but we’ll have to go to the one in Killybegs which isn’t as good. I pick little green balls from the evergreen trees in front of the old Tech and throw them at Derek and Paddy, Derek throws them back and Paddy says to clear off.

We cross over the stone bridge into the town and spit into the river below, we pass Enright’s Bar and Chappie’s where Francis works and we take a seat outside of McGinley’s shop while Aidan goes into the house next to the post office to get the McCaughley boys. Paddy sees Garda Bradley walk past and go into the police station and tells us that his son Manus is a fucker and Garda Bradley is just as bad.

The McCaughley boys come out and at first we are all shy, then we remember we all played last August at Paddy’s birthday and we relax and Aidan goes into McGinley’s and buys us each a HB Frog and then goes into the pub next door for a few minutes and then comes out and we head off down the Tilan road.

We are still using our hazel sticks as swords, people are looking at us as they work in the fields. They think we look strange with our officer’s hats, but they look strange to us with their big wellies and hay fork and old Masey Ferguson tractor with the link-box and black and white sheep dog lying on the ground beside them. Aidan waves to them and they wave back, but still unsure.

The Tilan road goes along the side of the Salmon Leap river, which we had already spat into back up in Carrick, but up there is its called a different name. We can see northern Irish people fishing down by the Junction Pool and one of them is fly-fishing. Derek tells us that he knows how to tie a fly ‘cause Granda Sharkey showed him and bought him a whole kit for making them, with pheasant feathers, canary feathers, duck feathers and all kinds of colorful wings. Aidan brought us poaching down the Salmon Leap and we had a mono filament net and we had to be very quiet so the fish and the bailiffs wouldn’t hear us. We didn’t catch any salmon, but Aidan had a flue and after being soaking wet in the water it went away and we took home two trout.

As the river turns into the estuary we can see the woods across the way and it feels disappointing that we’ve already walked so far and yet we are just across from the house and we can see the smoke rising up out of the woods from Kit’s cottage and we shout to see if Francis can hear us, but she can’t.

Paddy asks if we can walk down as far as the rusty Mackerel and go up by Bun Glas, but Aidan says no that we’ll go the other way and up to the One Man’s Pass by the little road.

We are at the very bottom of the mountain now and the road rises steadily in front of us and the mountain is so big that you can’t really see it anymore, just all the fields in front of us fenced in with barb wire and skittish sheep with blue necks and red arses that run away when they see you. The lambs are a few months old now and they play and leap about and look like they are having a grand time, but the older sheep know better and it is better to run away and munch on grass than waste time having fun and being happy as a young lamb.

We tell Aidan that we are thirsty and he tells us to lean into a little steam and drink our fill. The water is freezing and refreshing and tastes so good. The McCaughley’s are worried that it is not clean. Aidan tells them that it is a lot cleaner than the water they drink everyday from the tap at home, filled with chlorine and chemicals and aluminum and all kinds of bad stuff. “Why do you think they give you teeth tablets at school?”

We meet some of the tourists coming down the road and they don’t look like Nazis at all, but they do speak like them and Aidan says to them “Guten Tag.” They giggle and walk on with their red and blue rain gear swishing with every step, just like the red and blue of the sheep.

There is a lake in the bowl of the mountain and Aidan tells us that a few years ago is was much bigger and in ten years there won’t be much of it left, so enjoy it now while you can.

We see a bird way up in the sky hovering like a helicopter and then it dive bombed like an aeroplane, quick as lightening down to get its prey. We said it was an eagle, but Aidan said it was a hawk and the last eagle in Donegal was killed a few years ago by some English wanker and now it’s stuffed and sits in a case in the Highland Central Hotel in Donegal Town.

After a drink of water in a little well we leave the path and begin a very step climb up to the One Man’s Pass. We had to go over the boulders now that I thought were gravel and I couldn’t believe how big they were. A little further up Aidan told us to find blueberries in-amongst the heather and we found so many that our mouths were blue and we had a great feed. Derek was complaining of his asthma and we stopped to take a rest and let him take a puff on his inhaler.

The One Man’s Pass is the most dangerous little piece of land in all of Ireland. On one side there is a drop 1972 feet down into the Atlantic Ocean and on the other side there is a steep drop back into the valley we had just climbed up. If you fall to either side you are going to die. Aidan asked is any of us wanted to go across it. I said no, but Paddy said yes and crawled along it on his hands and knees. Aidan did it standing up and I was terrified that he’d fall or a strong gust of wind would come and blow him into the sea.

While they played with their lives I looked down on the ocean below. You can see the Giants Table and Chair that was used by Finn McCool when he was in this part of Ireland and there are little fishing boats bobbing up and down on the waves. We’d been shark fishing out there before and I know what it’s like to bob up and down on those waves and Derek knows what it’s like to lie seasick on the nets all day while the seagulls and gannets squawk over head.

Aidan rolled another cigarette from his plastic pouch and said “a horse, a horse, my Kingdom for a horse,” and then started to sing some old sixties song that Paddy knew the words to. You were only allowed to listen to The Beatles and Sixties Mania at Paddy’s house and Paddy told us that all there was on the radio now was shit.

We left the One Man’s Pass behind and walked over the plateau of bog and rock. A big cloud had settled on top of the mountain and a light mist of rain and fog surrounded us. None of us had a raincoat so we took shelter by the old Spanish Church while Aidan told us its story.

A Spanish monk or man of God was ship wrecked just off the coast of Slieve League and somehow he managed to swim or drift ashore to one of the beaches at the base of the cliffs. He looked up at the tower of rock that lay before him and prayed to God to help him once more. That little Spaniard climbed with no rope or pick or anything, all 1972 feet to the top of the cliffs. He was so thankful to God for sparing his life that he built his church up here out of the mountain’s rock. He only had a few gold doubloons on him and he used these to fund the church and a few years later he built another church a few miles between Carrick and Kilcar. That little Spaniard had a wealth of courage, strength and perseverance.

When Aidan finished the story the rain had lifted and we explored the ruins of the church for archaeological evidence and gold doubloons. We didn’t find much but we did find carvings in the rock that read: Peter Murphy, Dublin 1962 and Hans Von Height, Berlin 1935. Aidan said it was a fucking disgrace the way they defaced the place. No respect whatsoever for history.

Before we left the site of the Spanish Church we built a little rock monument to mark that we too had been here. All around the place were hundreds of little rock monuments and some of them had photos in them and plane tickets and other little trinkets. We wanted to take some of them with us but Aidan said to leave them alone.

We began to walk over the plush purple heather now and Aidan ventured us to the edge of the mountain to look at Lough Awe where the half-man half-water horse lived. Lough Awe was one of many lakes left behind after a great glacier had ripped its way along the valley leading into Glencolmcille on its way down to the sea. But Lough Awe was the only one that was red and gold in color and looked like magic. The sun shone down on it and I was hypnotized by its beauty. I looked closer and closer and suddenly I lost my footing and went to fall headfirst over the edge of the mountain to the lake below, but Aidan caught my jumper and pulled me back, close one.

We continued on over the mountain and came across a tiny little pool of water that was shaped in a perfect circle. Aidan said that was the place where the half-man half-water horse came up in the middle of the night to steal sheep off the mountain. We threw stones into the pool of water and stuck our sticks into the mud at the bottom and the dogs barked and jumped in after the stones, but the half-man half-water horse didn’t eat them.

From there we could see where the estuary meets the sea and the big rock that is shaped like Moby Dick and Aidan does an impression of Captain Ahab. Then just around the corner is Derrylaghan beach where we saw the naked tourists a few weeks ago and we couldn’t get them out of our minds and we talked about their breasts all the time.

We were now at the very corner of the mountain as I called it. On one side you had the road into Glen and to the other was the way back to Bunglas and all the places we had been earlier in the day and right before us was a sloped drop of purple fields and rushes and small farm houses below.

Aidan said “on yer marks, get set, go” and the whole gang of us boys ran down the side of the hill as fast as we could. Some of us ran so fast that our feet came up over our heads and we tumbled a few yards and crashed and picked ourselves up again and continued running. Some of us got our wellies or shoes stuck in muck holes and ran on without our wellies or shoes and had to run back to get them. The dogs ran along side us and barked at our progress and wove in and out of the rushes. The startled sheep didn’t know what to make of us and ran away and went “Ba, Ba” and the young lambs jumped in the air to see such commotion coming down the side of the mountain.

Within a few minutes we were at the bottom and climbing over a barbed wire fence and the sweat was pouring off our foreheads. Derek was wheezing like he was going to have an asthma attack and Aidan was coming down the hill just behind us with a rolled cigarette in his mouth.

We were back on the Tilan Road now and Aidan told the McCaulghey boys to just walk on up the road to their house, as their parents would be waiting. They wanted to come on home with us, so he told them next time they could. It was strange that it had taken all day to go up the mountain and then in just a few minutes it was all over.

We crossed the river just up from the Junction Pool and Aidan helped us across the water and then helped us across the fences “one, two, three, jump.” We didn’t go the direct way home, instead we walked down by the shore and the tide was coming in for the night and Aidan told us to be quiet when we were near the otter’s holes. A big pollock was coming up the estuary and the water was so clear that we could see its big mouth opening and closing as it made its way up to the place where the salt water turned to fresh water and it would have to turn back after feeding.

We found an old bust football on the shore and kicked it back into the water and Paddy and I could see where we had lined up about fifty old bottle last week and then threw stones at them. Aidan saw all the broken glass and started cursing and giving out about how people had no respect. Paddy and I kept our mouths shut and Derek threatened to tell on us. I remember the way the light bulbs broke with a little puff of smoke when I broke them and the bottles just shattered and little splinters of clear and green glass just went everywhere.

Aidan found a good piece of rope and brought it with him and we followed him up through the ferns and up the path that brought us home through the woods. Paddy ran to be the first one on the tire swing and we pushed him on it and when it was our turn he ran on home so he didn’t have to push us. Then Derek and I ran on too ‘cause we were afraid of being left alone in the woods and getting attacked by a badger that wouldn’t let go of your arm until it was dead.

Francis said she was happy that all her smart little officers were home and had a lovely dinner cooked for us. Aidan sat down in his armchair by the range and rolled another cigarette and sang along to Hey Jude on the radio. Francis stuck newspaper in our wellies and put them down behind the range so they would be dry for tomorrow. We put on the telly and all three of us lay back on the sofa watching the A-Team and felt totally exhausted after our big hike up the mountain.

Shark Fishing

Shark fishing is something most people only read about in National Geographic or see on the Discovery Channel in some exotic location like the Caribbean, South Africa or The Great Barrier Reef. It’s never somewhere average and plain such as the tepid waters of Great Britain and Ireland in the North Atlantic. With only the mid-Atlantic drift giving any warmth to those waters in the summer months. All the same, this is exactly where I’ve seen my fair share of shark fishing, deep-sea angling and all the life that goes with those watery sports.

The first memories I have of shark fishing are from when I was about eight-years-old during the Killybegs International Sea Angling Festival. The festival, held every year in either July or August, depending on the mood of the committee in residence at the time, is the absolute pinnacle of the calendar for any boy over the age of five and under eighteen in the Killybegs area. Hundreds of people enter the competition from Ireland and abroad. You’ll find English, Welsh, Scotch, German, Swedish, even the odd Yank and Aussie along with young boys, young girls, old men and old women and every demographic in between. The variety of competitors leads to an even greater variety of categories you are able to contest in.

When we were children we use to stare, mouths wide open, drooling, in the window of Michael Quinn’s electric shop at the prizes. There were new Penn fishing rods and reels, tackle boxes, silver trophies, crystal, china, boat equipment, cash and many other amazing treasures. Our little finger prints greased over the glass and we could only imagine what it must be like to win one of those treasures and get your name engraved on the silver trophies.

That first year I was not a competitor, either was my brother Derek and cousin Paddy, merely spectators, under the supposedly watchful eyes of my Dad and Uncle Aidan. We’d have to wait another year or two before we could actively take part in the events.

I remember the boat was large and green, perhaps a sixty-footer, with wooden planks splitting the deck up into many sections, which we never tired of climbing over. There were nets piled up on the side of the deck, ideal for a rest and a place to lie down if you were getting a bit wheezy and feeling the need to get on ‘the big white telephone to God.’ There was a fair few people allotted to our boat, as I remember dozens of rods dangling over the edge of the boat, their taut lines disappearing down into the deep blue-green waters of the Atlantic.

Boat allocations are maybe something I should explain because you can’t just pick your boat, that would be an unfair advantage. First of all there is a deadline each year for entries, usually a day or two before the Sea Angling Festival, which always started on a Friday. Then a specific number of boats, usually with one or two in reserve just in case the numbers exceeded expectations, were designated for the competition. Individual names and group names were allotted to certain boats with a maximum number depending upon the size of the vessel. Like everything else in life, not all boats are created equal and sometimes it is the physical ability of the boat that holds the advantage and sometimes it’s the human element, the skipper himself. Skippers with names like Enda O’Callaghan, Smithy Campbell, Jim Parkinson, Tony Boyle, Brian McGilloway and vessels like The Bangor Crest, Persistence, Sinbad and The Girl Naoife. These were all names that held a certain amount of magic and if you were allotted to any one of these skippers or one of the boats, your chances just tripled of earning a prize.

Many sharks were caught on our boat and in others over the three days of the festival that year. Paddy and I found ourselves brave and ventured across the deck to touch the sharks. Their skin was surprisingly rough, it had always looked velvety in the water. We got quite a fright when one of the supposedly dead blues opened its mouth revealing an amazing array of razor sharp teeth. We both jumped back and found ourselves not so brave. Sharks can live out of water for a long time, just like their little cousin the dog fish that is often found dangling out of some fish box in the auction hall hours after a boat has landed.

There is a tale told that one year someone caught a small blue and when she was being weighed in the judges found her too small and had her thrown in the tide. The shark revived herself and swam around the bay for a long time, feeding on discarded fish from fishing boats and didn’t leave the harbor until she was big enough to face the open sea again. If this is true or not I don’t know, but I could well believe such a fisherman’s tale. Coastal town’s like Killybegs are rich in a special folklore all to themselves, unknown to inland towns and cities.

Some foreigner on our boat caught the biggest shark, a nine-foot blue. He had a wild time getting it on board, and the skipper had to gaff her a few times before it stuck. It wasn’t the best looking shark as it was rather skinny, but very long and its color was a gray-blue instead of the rich azure of the other sharks. After the weighing in of that fish, my first sea angling expedition was over.

A shark-fishing trip starts long before you ever set a land-lubberingDonegal Town to Dogherty’s was in order. Dogherty’s was a tackle shop with a twist. He sold all the things you needed for a deep sea-fishing trip, but also had the best array of pocketknives and torches for sale anywhere in County Donegal and all for under a fiver.

Granda Sharkey often brought us up there and while he would talk to Mr. Dogherty about something or other for eons, we would busy ourselves getting lost in dreams of owning this knife or that. Calculating at fifty pence a week pocket money, how many weeks it would take us to save up for it. All the time in hope that Granda would see how much we really wanted it and buy it for us as a little present. He was always giving us little presents that made our day, our week, our lives.

On our visit to Dogherty’s, Dad fitted Derek and I out with our own deep sea rod and reel, yards upon yards of eighty pound test and hooks that could have landed Jaws. Two of the most important things to take with you deep-sea fishing are feathers and lead weights. Without feathers you can’t jig for your bait and without lead weight you’re never going to get your hook to the bottom for the nice points fish.

Dad let us know that this first year we would not be fishing for shark ourselves, although he might have a wee go, but there were plenty of ling and congers, dogs and pollock to keep us busy. Considering I was only ten, I had no objection. Derek and I ended up with the same rod, but he got the better reel and I was in tears most of the way home, ‘cause mine looked like a giant fly reel and his was the proper shark fishing kind by Mitchell.

Next stop was to one of the chandlers in Killybegs to get our dappers or oilskins. These were to keep us dry while at sea. As these were our first ever set of oilskins it was really important because for years we had watched all the men down the pier wearing them and they were a sign of adulthood. My green pair dwarfed me and felt very heavy, Dad laughed saying I would grow into them. With that done, we had everything we needed for the sea angling festival, all we could do now was wait.

On Friday morning of the contest we were up at about seven a.m., God knows when Dad had risen. He was a real early bird and was fond of saying “when you’ve the name of an earlier riser you can sleep all day.” A great debate emerged between Derek and I as to whether or not we should eat a big breakfast. Dad was in the mind that we should, as a full stomach would keep us from getting seasick. I had never been seasick and knew not the pain or misery of it. Derek did and he would rather have less in his belly to throw up. Dad was in charge of making a flask of tea and putting the lunch together: ham sandwiches, egg sandwiches and smoked salmon, off course, was the fair de jour and a few pieces of fruit completed the seagoing picnic.

After registering and finding our birth, The Sinbad, we had a few minutes to kill and this was spent running back up the town to Gallagher’s to buy chocolate and sweets and the last few bits of tackle that suddenly came to mind. Paddy was with us, but he was not going fishing this year, as his aul fella was in the pub. We begged Dad to let him come along and reluctantly he agreed. His dad sobered up the next day and came out with us for the last two.

Our boat was birthed alongside a few others and as the clock slowly ticked towards eleven we got to know our boat mates and skipper. Jim Parkinson was the skipper, we knew him since we were very little and this put us at a great ease. Our mates were mostly Northerners and English lads and one fella from Finner Camp, the army training camp between Bundoran and Ballyshannon that we passed every time we went to Sligo with Granny and Granda to do the shopping.

The diesel engine cranked over loudly and the fumes were making us a little wheezy even at the harbor. Dad showed us a basic knot to tie our hooks and clips, we called it the double hoop and under, it was easily achieved and held with great strength. With our clips attached we jigged at the edge of the boat, sheans gathered around our hooks, but much too little to take a bite. We were suppose to draw for places around the boat but it seemed like it had become a first come first served basis and all the Juniors ended up with the places nobody else wanted.

At the stroke of eleven all the boats began their exodus of the pier towards the open ocean and into the Atlantic. Soon, we were passing Mooney’s Boat Yard, with the fishing boat graveyard beside, where several boats Dad had fished on as a young man lay wasting in skeletal decay, up to their keels in green sludge, lying at embarrassing angles to their once glorious and dangerous lives as fishing vessels in the Irish fleet. The town was growing smaller behind us and the mountain of Conerad began to come into view, the constant sentential of Killybegs. The town always looked so much smaller from the water. Nature seemed to cradle her on both sides, protecting her in a little pocket where man was allowed to be civilized and not disturb her peace.

We watched Dad and the other men get their gear ready and imitated them the best we could. I think we had Dad’s head wrecked with questions about fishing, and the how far, how long, what time, when, how many? Basically all the annoying questions ten and eleven-year-olds can ask. This was a whole new part of life for us; no longer just the quiet observers of our childhood’s, we had become cogs in the machinery that made our community a living, breathing entity.

Once past the Smooth Point and Rotten Island lighthouse we were into the open sea with St. John’s Point on our port side and Drumanoo Head on the starboard. We looked to the land, picking out the spots were we had fished off the rocks in the past and looking out for the house at Scottish Hill, it was haunted and once lived in by the Murphy’s, our cousins. Soon Fintragh beach was in sight, looking like a golden streak between the land and the sea. Many birds had begun to follow us, but there was nothing for them to scavenge yet, until we caught our first mackerel.

The Sinbad was a steel hauled vessel, about twenty-five feet in length that Jim used for piloting in larger vessels to the harbor and diving for wrecks and salvage. She was making great steam out the bay and easily overtook the boats that had set out a few minutes before us, with a nice steady cruise of 13 knots according to Dad. She wasn’t ideal for angling as her sides were very low and had few places to get a comfortable seat. Fish boxes were annexed into seats and one beside for your catch. This was The Sinbad’s first trip as an angling vessel and Derek, Paddy and I were disappointed that we were not in one of the sixty-footers like we had been in before.

The engines slowed and Dad let us know Jim picked up some fish on the sonar and it was time to start jigging for mackerel. I was amazed how quickly the fish began to hit. Usually on land you could be fishing for hours before anything even smelled your hook. Now we had six feathers attached and all around the boat people were pulling in full jigs. Mackerel give a great fight and when you have four or five on at time you feel like you’re about to land a great fish, not the little mackerel that you eventually pull of your hook and toss absentmindedly into the bait box. A few gannets now joined the gulls as if they knew we were into some good fish. When we had enough mackerel for bait it was decided we would steam ahead just a little and anchor off Inish Duff, where Paul Callaghan caught the thirteen-foot conger last year.

I was afraid of using a wire trace and felt comfortable with my feathers. So Dad helped me bait the feathers and showed me how to lower them all the way down, feel the bottom with the lead weight and then take her up about a fathom and keep her there.

Paddy with nothing to do was just bounding all over the place, taking it all in for when he got his rod and reel. Derek on the other hand was already beginning to get seasick and was hardly taking any notice of his rod in the water.

I felt my first real bite and the line got heavy. I wound my giant fly reel with all my might, making sure to guide the line on evenly as not to have it bank up and fall and after what felt like a life time I landed my first points fish in the 1988 Killybegs International Sea Angling Festival. It was a dogfish, a lesser spotted one to be precise, or jimmy-dog as all the adults called it.

The Sinbad bobbed up and down all afternoon and I had a great time fishing off Inish Duff. When it was decided to go on a little further and put out some rubby-dubby, I had a full box of dogs and two good sized pollock. I was feeling very pleased with myself and even more so when one of the other young fellas on the boat came to me for advice on where to catch the fish. I gave him the same advice that Dad had given me, but off course making those words sound like mine and not his.

I didn’t do so well further out, but was very intrigued with the baiting of the shark hooks, the blowing up of the balloons as floats and the importance of not running over your rubby-dubby trail. Rubby-dubby is a mixture of mashed mackerel and fish oil that is poured overboard to attract any sharks in the area to our boat. It smelled terrible and looked even worse. It had the effect of turning Derek’s stomach even more and soon he was lying down sleeping the rest of the day away. We fished for shark off Slieve League for a few hours without landing any. Lying there in the water off such beautiful cliffs more than made up for the lack of sport. The cliffs rose nearly two thousand feet out of the water and falls of spring water could be seen dashing off into the sea below. When you are this far out into the Atlantic you can look off into the distant horizon and see the curvature of the world. Your mind runs and you can imagine that if you kept going straight for thousands of miles you’d eventually reach Nova Scotia in north eastern Canada. You realize that we are not separated by oceans, but merely connected by a constantly changing liquid.

We commenced our steam home when Jim announced “Lines up, six o’clock.” There were a few grumbles to be heard from the Germans, then all lines were in. We ate the rest of our lunch on the way home feeling at ease, even Derek was revitalized by the turn about in our direction. We began to play and feel like children again, throwing the guts of mackerel at the gulls and watching the gannets diving for whole mackerel. We even looked at the sea and surrounding coastline like tourist, noticing houses near Bunglass and people climbing the cliff-face. We even remembered the stories Granda would tell us about Ben Bulbin way off in the distance towards County Sligo. Stories about Finn and the Fianna, Witch de Vanny and Queen Maeve’s grave.

As the town came in to view I felt a great feeling of home and joy. A feeling of coming back after being away a very long time, even though it had been only eight or so hours since we left.

Jim let us stow our gear on the boat until the next day, so we didn’t have to drag much back onto the pier. My first few steps on dry land were funny, it felt as if the earth was still swaying like the deck of the boat out on the ocean. Dad helped me weigh-in my fish and with all my dogs and two pollock, I managed to amass forty-five points. I found out the next morning forty-five points placed me in first position in the Junior category.

I slept well that night and was eager to get out on the boat again. However, my luck was to change and after getting my feathers stuck on the bottom with my first drop, I lost heart. Seasickness took over and I spent the next two days as a sick bystander.

Our boat managed to land two blue sharks and lost another “must have been a fair size” as it snapped the rod belonging the army fella from Finner adding to the proverbial one that got away. I had great empathy with Derek during those two days as we shared in the miseries of seasickness, probably the most I ever had with him in my life. And when the last line was hauled in on Sunday evening I was the happiest lad in Ireland.

That night we went to the prize giving in Fawlty’s Bar and I received twenty pounds for Best Junior on Friday. I had hoped for one of the bigger prizes that had been in Quinn’s Window, but was very content with the money. Dad didn’t go to the prize giving as he didn’t drink anymore, but Uncle Aidan was there to check on us.

I repeated the ritual of the Angling Festival for many years changing boats and skippers, always hoping to catch a shark myself, but the best I ever did was just more dogs and pollock. I did manage to win a big silver trophy for the heaviest whiting one year, but that’s not an exciting fish you can brag about. The best thing about the festival is there is always next year and the dream of landing your shark.

Now that I live twelve hundred miles from the nearest coast, I miss the sea; its feel and its smell and its unique way of life. Right now I’d give anything for a good dose of seasickness, mackerel guts and the feel of a fish biting at my line twenty fathoms below in the dark, unknown depths of the Atlantic Ocean. To see that curvature once more and feel the mystery of a world yet discovered.