Free Galway Bay by Mary Pat Kelly

rent.”
    “Bíonn siúlach scéalach,” Granny said.
    “A traveler has a tale,” Owen Mulloy translated. “True enough, though I’ve come from only two miles away and my story’s a very short one, because what happened is not worth telling. The neighbor who shared the stock with me had three daughters. The oldest one wished to marry the son of a farmer near Minclough, a likely lad. They went to the landlord for permission.”
    “Which landlord?” asked Da.
    “The Pykes.”
    “Which Pykes?”
    “The Scoundrel Pykes,” Owen Mulloy said. “I’m sure you’ve heard the tales of the old Major, and they’re all true. A devil. He takes a bride’s first night. Droit du seigneur, the Pykes call it, but it’s rape, a criminal violation, and they’re never called to account.”
    “Too many other landlords doing the same,” Granny said.
    Mulloy nodded. “My neighbor sent his daughter off with her young man—they left the area entirely. When old Major Pyke found out, he evicted the family in spite of the rent being paid. My neighbor was a tenant at will, as are so many. No protection at all. So,” said Mulloy.
    “And where did they go?” Da asked.
    “Amerikay.”
    “Oh, the poor, poor souls,” said Mam. “Leaving all they loved behind.”
    Granny crossed herself, as did we all. Exile. Amerikay. The last resort.
    “Mr. Mulloy, it was only that Champion needed feeding,” Michael started.
    Owen Mulloy interrupted him. “I took a good look at your horse as I was coming in. She’s a fine animal. I see why you think she deserves the very best of grass. Faugh-a-Ballagh,” he said.
    “Faugh-a-Ballagh!” I said. “The Irish Brigade’s battle cry when they served in the French army and defeated the English at Fontenoy—‘Clear the Way! Faugh-a-Ballagh!’”
    “Faugh-a-Ballagh is the name of a racehorse,” Mulloy said.
    “Oh.” Sometimes I
am
too smart for my own good.
    “Your horse puts me in mind of his line, the mus-cu-la-ture,” Mulloy said, dividing the syllables. “She might make a hunter with the Galway Blazers.”
    “A hunter?”
    “You surely know the Galway Blazers. That gang of gentlemen,” said Mulloy, “who get pleasure out of chasing the dogs who are chasing a fox. They like to blow horns and dress up. Like children. Im-ma-tur-ity run riot.”
    “Why are they called Blazers?” Joseph asked.
    “Two reasons are given. One, after they drink in-or-din-ate amounts of whiskey punch, they get to fighting duels, blazing away at each other. Two, they set fire to a hotel out near Birr when they were visiting another hunt. Either one could be true, or both.”
    “You seem to know a lot about them, Mr. Mulloy,” Da said.
    “My father looked after the Pykes’ stables when I was a boy. I helped out a bit. Whatever else about the landowning gentlemen of Ireland, they love their horses, no question. The gentry might turn a blind eye to the Scoundrel Pykes interfering with the daughters of their tenants, but they wouldn’t stand for the Pykes mistreating their horses. The old Major and his son, the young Captain, ride with the Blazers. It’s the Pykes and their friends who put on next month’s Galway Races on the old course at Parkmore.”
    “Where I’m entering my horse,” Michael said. “I have a sponsor—Mr. Lynch.”
    “Well,” Owen Mulloy said, “very en-ter-pris-ing. The course has walls and fences,” he said, thinking aloud. “Steeplechases, you call them, the fashion ever since those two Corkmen raced from church to church. At Parkmore even stable boys can ride.”
    “As you yourself did?” Michael asked.
    “I did,” said Mulloy. “Won a few races, until one fall too many stopped me.”
    “A fall?” I asked.
    “Riders fall all the time,” Mulloy said.
    So Michael could break his neck as well as lose the horse?
    Maybe he shouldn’t . . .
    But before the evening was over, Owen Mulloy had agreed to let Champion graze in his pasture and said he’d help Michael train