Storms of Rathmullan
Amist the storms of the Celtic sea, shadows lurk crashing doom and despair. Heaping themselves upon a shoreline of ancient ruin where farms once plowed by humble hands crested and eroded meager quantities of food, for mellow appetites of indigenous peoples.
A people elect, as God’s own chosen, left the settlers that called themselves England. When King Henry entered the land aloof, this handful of brave left for a cave; a secret place they called their escape. Their story may not attract the weary traveler whom visiting ancient set erect stones at Ireland’s bay. For all the world these artifacts are the true treasure and not the history of a boy named Charlie. The land is called the stones of wonder in ancient Ireland where God once thundered, the stories there echo faint and some only known within God’s own gate.
In comparison to gardens of ruins where golden bowls in a tomb are strewn, old oyster shells crumbled into pilth and painted on a lower hill, doesn’t cry out to the world that gawks, but the story still may leave others shocked. No, this land isn’t filled with marching saints just humbler followers willing to leave. They picked up belongings in 1606, the year before the Flights of Earl, instead of fighting they clamored ahead and watched their culture dwindle to dead.
The home of Charlie were these travelers of men. A hundred men that gathered in prayer and fasted for days to give up their land or to give into the king. When hearts all stirred and the flame did flicker they sold all their stock and left England’s steeple. They climbed a rock hidden away and made a fire and gladly did eat. Leaving the homes and treasures behind they headed to the west coast that had few places to sow, many acres of garden rows. They set out plugs at the bottom of the ocean and called them spears and went fishing. They gathered nets and humbly prayed and only had meager rations day by day. Sea Bass, Haddock and Dog fish plates filled with sea kelp salad is what they ate.
They were not much in all considerations, a famous bunch amongst generations considering the land they shared is now famous for rock pyramid formations and ancient stones erect just beyond their location. . They took, they prospered, they built a fire, but none of them echoed importance to local squires. They were not taxed because they were not known, the forgotten kin that answered to no throne. This was their cause and this was their plight to keep the martyr away from their lives.
In this year when the travelers left not one year hence, of the King who befell Roman Celtics and Irish swell. They heard stories and wondered whether they were lore when their friends and family were slashed of all their dignity. They forced the men to rubbish Celtic skirts and combed their long Irish manes and told them they had to in order to answer to the king. He changed the order to the red coat army and humbled Ireland’s courage through murder and tyranny.
Charlie is a woodmaker’s boy a grandson of a man that filled him with joy. He carved ladels out of fishbone skin and told dear Charlie God was within. He was one of the men that wept and said we cannot stay and live in this kind of misery. They fled the country and lived by the sea because of a fire from inside that drove them from iniquity. Some might say it was God that had mercy on he that brings love and kindness and leaves in faith, when one does not wish to give up all that is lost, it may not be that they are tempest tossed. In quiet recesses in crevices like these, upon shoreline rocks that rocked with ease, a humble people of Gaelic tribe, lived their lives and thought to hide.
King Henry the VIII had left his mark on the thriving coastal town of Rathullan, Ireland. It wasn’t that he was king it was the had stripped the vacant land of any form of pride and left them in humility. In established court sets many dukes and many earls received titles that held no honor. They were forced little by little into English monarchy. Old Galeic order of clans and tribes was forced to lose their unified emblems of Catholic patronage and Irish dignity. The O’Niels and O’Donnell’s left their soveirgn country and fled to Spain and other small sects. Places where they could live in peace and not be degraded into simple truths that King Henry origionally declared, that even Irish men would have to cut their hair and change their skirts to red coat offerings. In many ways England forced tyrinacal rule, even changing religious power from Catholic to Protestant, furthering faithful patrons to leave or become martyrs.
Charlie O’Neill was a descendent of Earl of Rathmullan, he had no known ancestors living in the area and was taken in by an old woodcutter. The old man he called, grandfather, had found him cold and smitten to the Earth after one of the kingly battles that had origionally started with Old King Henry trudging in to take over their seaside town. He couldn’t weep much longer than to see the sparkly blue eyed boy tuck under a river bed and hide filled with scars hidden in his skin. Charlie had vowed never to give his name away as O’Neill and never leave the village his father had died in.
The old woodcutter never asked questions. He was a humble man. He often left scrapes of chicken by the river where the boy Charlie lived. He hushed him when he cried and picked up in his lap on a log and sung Irish hymns to him, telling him God would soon come and the wars would end. He told him the stories many of the settlers were saying, that they would leave and set adrift before ever succumbing to the new order of things where freedom did not exist. A monarchy that chose their religion for them. Always, always this hushed the child and with time earned trust. Eventually, Charlie left his driftwood shelter and went with his grandfather to his wooden cabin.
Grandfather didn’t have much to offer but his patriotism to the cause. When a group of angry men marched with their torches up and down the village doors, marching in and stirring up hearts they knocked at the old woodcarver’s door. They bid him keep their cause secret and threatened him with a jack knife.
“If you ever tell the king we left, you will die”
The woodcarver grimaced and promised looking over at Charlie.
“Beidh mé riamh” I never will, he managed to say.
“We are leaving the tradition and heading up to North Bay. They will never find us there.” the men explained, peering deeply into the old man’s eyes as if questioning his solemnity to the words spoken. We will be needing a carver and a boy to do some of the fishing. There will be just around a ce`ad of us.
Tradition had kept the town of Rathmullan’s clan thriving in the tiny sea village built of stone and sea shells mixed by potter’s hands. The new land the settler’s spoke of would have many of the same resources without the affordance of farming land. It was a humble anecdote to the alternative of staying. The ruthlessness of the English empire now presiding rule in Ireland had already threatened to burn the church, lynch-gate and garden, Charlie and his grandfather also saw few other alternatives.
Climbing dugged out beaches, they gathered in the oyster shells and fished from shore line and ate free of tax and tyranny. When they starved, they starved together. None had money to go any further from where they resided to gather resources that were amiss, even if those cities were in close proximity they had charged one another to keep their namesakes protected. It was a humble condition to live in that land. Few could forgo the graces they had once encountered before Ireland had admonished to surrender. They left their humble homes’ abode and dwelled in rock cliffs overhung instead on a peninsula stretched out to sea that no one saw befit or charming and therefore left undisturbed, mostly. For the most part the village thrived and knew they would be protected from their enemy because the few that knew of them were also planning a large attack on the English army.
Charlie and the old woodcarver carved out a design in one of the rocks. It was far more enchanting than the pile of sticks Charlie had lived in after his father, the duke, had died. The scoured the canyon wall and found a hole close to the water’s edge and built around it with driftwood chips. Etchings were inlaid by the old man of sea side and Galiec folklore. Inside the walls of the crevice they lived in the old man carved out figurines upon the walls. Charlie relished in them and bid his grandfather to re-live the tales by explaining them. Mermaids and enchantresses and angels caressed his nighttime drifts and he lie down beneath fox fur barely dreaming and staring at the images that enchanted him.
In the daylight hours when Charlie went to check the nets, his village job that had been afforded him, he wished for them. He wished for the enchanting mystical women his grandfather had haunted him with. He tended to his duties often with gaiety, something lacking in the motions of the other angry fishermen faces. He was not a bitter child, he was a hopeful child. Waiting pateintly on one of these creatures to stir the night, to tell the other’s there would be no fight. He was a young man and a boy all in one and it did not help that he was taken in by the sweet old man. He had the charm of gentleness and still offered to sing to Charlie at night, even though five years had gone by since he found the tiny soul shivering, coldly. Often he didn’t mind the work he did, pulling at nets and bringing them back to the rock hole they lived in for grandfather to carve out the fish.
Long brown locks of hair laid entangled in colors of autumn moonlight rested upon the back of a wet and soiled cloak of white. If the moon had only shined down that morning dawn there might have been a reason for the radiant light resting on the woman’s skin. She had long since recognized that she had beauty that could not be matched by human skin and yet she always felt startled if ever a man noticed and looked upon her in that way, that Earthly way. From a distance one might look upon the beautiful woman in flowing white standing in the ocean encompassed in foggy mists bent and hunched over as an enchantress of the sea. She hung the net and started to sing as the fish jumped in. She bid them sweet words of affection and smiled as she thought of the happy children that would be gathering.
The fish netted were about a hundred that cold day, where fog gathered so thick you could drink it up with a cup. The fishermen came in to check the nets just after dawn in the mornings. They came down to the seashore from the cliff dwellings, hoping and praying there would be just one fish more than what they could eat. This enchanting morning there was a vibrancy just above the cloudy sea and some of the men coming in at the hour could barely see the shifting of what seemed obscured yet framed almost in a human mass. The clan of kinsmen came upon the shore after hearing a screech from a young man sent up the harbor to see if the nets had not yet come in, his name was Charlie. They had been waiting endless days to have meat to fill their aching bellies.
The mass of men could barely see her and yet their weakened strength let her pass off as a ship lingering in the sea, perhaps a barge let out by accident or was it a ghost that had set upon the weathered waters that morning? They did not listen to the words of the boy nor try to discern the woman singing . The boy had heard it and rushed up ahead of them eagerly. He did not expect much else from the men they had always treated his grandfather and him with such callousness. He scampered off expecting the laughs they heard as part of the neglect he had expected from the starving older men who could find no solace in the night of their village.
Yes, they could barely see her but she had already known they were coming. In a place where time mattered, things could get so complicated. There were no constraints in the world she had come from. She could take her time pulling up weeds in the garden and listening to fairies buzz in the meadow brooks nearby. She felt sorry for the children of men and their woes and misery. She always had such compassion for this world and that was possibly why she was sent. Drifting back to her work she tried to hurry, cautioning herself to only let the boy that had called her see. He was the only one in the hidden landscape that seemed to have a heart to believe, that and the grandfather’s but he would nt be by the sea side, his legs had become to weary.
Busily she pulled in the last line of tweed rope intertwined with sea salt. She could visibly see the salt lumped together in clumps of lime green erosion and rust where the rope maker had tied off the ends with a metal clasp. She had almost cut herself many times but it would heal quickly (as always if so she conjectured). Her skin’s luminous quality hid a healing agent that protected her from such human devices. “Steady as it goes, pull them on the shore, and leave them” she recited as she thought of the instructions she had been given. She felt the men coming before she ever heard them. She looked back one last time and vanished.
Just then Charlie bounded back towards the group of men after reaching the shoreside and tugged at the scraggling grandfather’s trousers motioning his legs to move faster,
Come quickly, old man. I will carry you if I have ta. I saw her plain as day. She was holding up a lamp light. I saw it, I saw it. She held it up enough that I could see her face. She must have been an angel, she was so pretty. I mean the prettiest damn woman you ever saw. I would give my right eye to have a chance at her.
Charlie’s grandfather chuckled merrily. He had always known his stories and etchings had gotten the best of Charlie’s imagination sometimes. Looking up at the crowded men he decided to give him a stern reproach, after all it was expected,
“That’s enough Charlie, how old are you anyway?” He said in his raspy deep voice.
Charlie’s grandfather was smoking tobacco that early morning. He had just taken the stump of the pipe out of his mouth and turned it upside down to clean out the residue for one last chance at the good stuff left at the bottom like the soot of an afternoon’s day. He lit the pipe and peered down at Charlie hidden beneath his hood draped over straw hair patched in with bits of kelp brown to block out blonde streaks. He grimaced with a wince of pain remembering back to days when they young man had a much rounder face. His tear stricken eyes startled him too, for Charlie rarely cried. Not even on days when famine hit the shores so boldly it rung out like thunder in the heavens. Remembering back to the child crouched beneath the timber stack down by the stream in the old village his last cries came back to him, as if the melody still clung in the air beside him. “Charlie, is my son now he said to himself.” The man’s thought wandered back to the present and suddenly he felt alarmed and he gulped down the choked up tears he had just shed, silently.
Peering down at the wide eyed somber faced Charlie, his grandfather knew there must be something there, up ahead, in the ocean. Perhaps Charlie had seen something that resembled this angel, but it honestly had to be something. The look on Charlie’s face was proof enough. Not that anyone else noticed among the crowd of harbored sea men Charlie was standing in the middle of, their corpses almost dead with flesh sunken in. The boy had his own radiance behind the sunken sockets of grey circles smirched upon cheeks, starvation hadn’t taken that from him yet.
Pride had kept the village at bay, kept them from sending a letter to the nearest English camp; a reward to the red coats to come find the group that had fled. At least then they would have been given meat in exchange for taxation and monarchy. The Irish refugees had not given in, despite the days they went without eating. As long as their legs could carry them to the nets that eventually fed them they would keep bleating, soaking in the heat of their own hearts, praying for a day when Ireland would rise again.
The crowd looked at Charlie hollering and making noise as he clamored on ahead, as if trying to corral them to this sacred spot, a place only Charlie could see. Angry sailor’s stomachs growled at legs that chased after him, almost in unison wondering if it was worth the energy to go out and see what had startled him.
Charlie insisted again, “No Grand Dad, I saw her. She was clearly visible and then she wasn’t”.
The crowd of about fifteen seemingly drunken men trudged in and suddenly began a brawl. Anger and howling arose in the early morning’s mists that sounded like the dead rising out of the sea brining in the morning tides. For a starving village off a coast where few sea ships filled with cargo ever visited seeing 100 grey, silken scaled fish laying in a brown spider net off the shore gave more than a rise of rejoicing. They started racing on ahead, the boys cry no longer important. They would have eaten the fish raw with fists ready to turn faces to blood right in the middle of the devouring process, had it not been for Charlie’s last turbulent warning.
The fighting and angry fits subsided as men paused and felt a deep awe and reverence settle down upon them, even before Charlie spoke. The wind shifted and stilled. It was as if the waves even grew silent beneath the ominous sky.
Charlie pointed after wailing out his battle cry to the soldiers of oyster rocks and fishing spears sitting in heaps of selfish indulgence. He is the one that saw the lamp first, floating on the calmed harbor sea, lamp still lit, seconds before it fell in. Boys from the schoolyard would put on waders later that day and run out to the shore to try to feel for it with the tips of their toes when the news got in. It was a cold, foggy winter’s day, but that would not stop them. It was talk of the town that an angel had come to bring them more than a day’s worth of fish. Not fifteen to feed a thousand men but 100 to feed a town of 100 surviving, including all of them.
The parish filled the next Sunday and out at the square after and into the night, children’s feet flitted beneath moons embraces and husband’s danced with wives. Their hours of celebrations lingered on into dusk of a new morning, bright. Their Christian relatives that had taught in nearby towns came to see the sight bringing with them baskets of bread in exchange to see light. It was a happy remembrance that the king could not steal their Irish courage. Praises soared and people came to the peninsula, where Charlie had rallied God’s own Irish army, to throw decorated ornamented shells out to sea in hopes that the spirit of cascading hair and luminous skin would be lured back in. It was a victory and a sign from heaven, that God entrusted Ireland in these humble hands. The Flight of the Earls took place weeks later just beyond reach of the first to leave, including Grandfather and Charlie. Many men including the O’Neils and O’Donnells’s boarded ships to Spain, in search of freedom to rule and reign in their own homes worshiping their own God, in their own ways. It was stories of these mighty sea dwellers and their faith that they knew were hidden away in the rocks bay that gave them courage, courage to leave a country that no longer served a righteous King.
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