Free Emerald Germs of Ireland by Patrick McCabe

moment the song concluded (“A fine rendition!” Pat had trumpeted) until the entire quota of blood had been drained from the journeyman’s face, were: “What are you doing with that pitchfork, Pat?” And ones fated to receive in response nothing other than the succinct and unadorned sentence: “Sending you back to Ardee once and for all, you interfering peddler of dirt!”
    As for the animal, it too went to its doom in the same hopelessly insouciant manner which it had displayed all its life, regardless of world politics, trauma, or incident. Even Pat’s deranged cries (for how else can they be described?) along the lines of: “Carry turf now! Go on, you bollocky bucking ass! Let’s see you do it now!” failed to make any impression upon it, even as it buckled hopelessly to its knees, on its last, sad journey toward eternity’s meadow.
    It may be so that Pat’s visitor upon that fateful evening one September long ago was well regarded and always had been so in the small County Louth town of Ardee, it somehow ordained that his absence not only be noted but for generations mourned with Niagaras of tears and wailing lamentations. It is indeed possible that he and his turf-bearing ass were as part of the landscape itself in their travels throughout the length and breadth of the county. But if such were the case, no evidence to suggest it ever came the way of Pat McNab who, occasionally, long after he had cleaned out the stables, and was satisfied that all trace of any event, terrible or otherwise, ever having taken place within those walls had well and truly been removed forever, would pause for a moment from his polishing (inveterate cleaner, Pat McNab!) and, satisfied once again that the sound which had distracted him had not, in fact, been the strange and lonely braying of a restless ass from someunmapped, timeless phantom zone, but the simple, insignificant whine of a broken fence post buffeted by the wind, give himself once more to his work and the soft humming, contented and protracted, of a certain popular tune from the oft unfeted county of Louth, which in its own special and unspoken way was destined to be his forevermore.

Old flames
    Downtown tonight I saw an old friend
Someone who I used to take comfort from
Long before I met you
I caught a spark from her eyes of forgotten desire
With a word or a touch, Lord,
I could have rekindled that fire.
    Chorus

But old flames can’t hold a candle to you
No one can light up the night like you do
Flickering embers of love I’ve known one or two
But old flames can’t hold a candle to you.
    Sometimes at night I think of all the lovers I’ve known
    And I remember how holding them made me feel not so alone
    Then I feel you beside me, even their memories are gone
    Like stars in the night lost in the sweet light of dawn.

    O ne evening in or around five past six, Pat was conning along past Brennan’s Gap (Billy Brennan was a farmer who concerned himself mostly with milk cows) when who should he meet, only Mrs. Ellen McCrumley. Now Pat was in a little bit of a giddy mood (perhaps because of the grand stretch in the evenings—for he had only had two bottles of Guinness!) and was on the verge of saying to her, “Oh hello there, Mrs. McCrumley! And how might
you
happen to be getting on this evening in this wonderful Town of Liars?” Which, as he turned the corner past Ned McGahey’s welding shed, he was glad he didn’t, for he knew only too well the answer he could expect. A croaky old scrake of a whine to the effect that Mrs. Ellen McCrumley “really wouldn’t know” or didn’t “quite hear him,” perhaps. And why? Why because she herself was a citizen of the esteemed place to which he referred. The place thenceforth to be known as Town of Liars! But which it always had been, of course, as Pat well knew. Along with everyone else in Gullytown, but of course they would never admit it. Why? Simply because they couldn’t, as every time they opened their mouths all