The Ribbajack

The All Ireland Champion Versus the Nye Add

I WAS TOLD THIS TALE BY MY FATHER’S SON,

so I’ll tell it as he told it to me.

I can recite the thing word perfect,

’cos I’m an only child, you see?

The stream starts up in the mountains, and like all sensible water, it runs downhill. It’s there that it joins the river and flows into the great, wide ocean. Which is how nature ordained it should. A little village stands near the riverbank with a grand view of the ocean, no more than two miles away. Now, if you sit still and listen, I’ll tell you a tale which comes from that very village itself. Are you listening?

Well, if you travel anywhere in the beautiful country of Ireland, wherever people live, be it town, city or village, there’s always an All Ireland Champion. Oh, it’s a fact, sure enough. Each one of these distinguished folk holds the All Ireland Medal for a variety of mar vellous things. Dancing, singing, leaping, jumping, eating, drinking, playing hurley, chasing pigs or destroying foxes, playing the fiddle or reciting poetry, to name but a few categories. But the fellow I’m about to tell you of is Roddy Mooney, the All Ireland Champion Fisherman. Roddy lived in a neat ould cottage near the river with his dear mother, the Widow Mooney, because he was scarce nineteen summers and not ould enough to start a family of his own. Did I hear you say that eighteen is a bit green for an All Ireland Champion? Well, I’m not given to lying, and by the beard of the holy Saint Patrick, you’d better believe me!

Roddy Mooney had caught more fish than Biddy Culhane had eaten hot dinners (and that’s a grand ould number if you’ve seen Biddy at the dinner table). Ah, yes, to be sure, Roddy had caught trout, perch, pike, grayling, chubb, dace, eels, lobster, crabs, garfish and all manner of watery beasts. He’d snared them with rod, line, net, gaff, spear and bare hands. Nothing ever escaped Roddy Mooney. There was not a whit of space on the walls of his ma’s cottage that was not festooned with frames, mounts and glass cases full of great stuffed fishes. Widow Mooney, good woman that she was, was forever dusting and polishing the trophies, which were the proof of her darling son’s skills as an All Ireland Champion Fisherman.

But things are never as they seem, and in actual fact, poor ould Widow Mooney was hard put to keep body and soul of them both together. She grew cabbage and spuds in season, and kept a few pigs and chickens on the plot behind her neat cottage. They never had fish, because Roddy hated the taste of scaled things. There were times when his dear ould mother would have eaten the leg off a tinker’s donkey for a nice bit of fish. But Roddy wouldn’t dream of bringing home fish to cook. He kept the finest specimens for his display, but all the rest he threw back or chopped up for bait. So, despite the fact that he was a champion angler, Roddy Mooney was a great lazy lump of a lad who would not lift a finger to help his mother, and her a widow, too. But aren’t I the one for rattlin’ on. Let’s get down to the story, and a queer ould tale it is, I promise you!

So then, there’s little Mickey Hennessy, one fine golden summer noon. Ten years old, and a slip of a boy, with no more meat on him than a butcher’s pencil. Fishing by the river, armed with no more than a crooked stick, a yard of string and a bent pin from his ma’s apron with a worm dangling from it (the bent pin, I mean, not his ma’s apron). Mickey fancied himself as a Junior All Ireland Champion. When along comes Roddy Mooney himself.

“So then, me little man, what are you doin’, tryin’ to drown that worm?” says Roddy.

Says Mickey, looking serious, “I am not. Sure, I’m after tryin’ to catch meself a Nye Add!”

Roddy looks at little Mickey as if he was christened with a vinegar bottle and had his brains completely destroyed. “A Nye Add, is it? An’ what in the name of all that’s good an’ holy is a Nye Add?”

So Mickey, being the grand lad that he is, explains all about Nye Adds (though I’m not sure if that’s the plural). “Barney Gilhooly told me that a Nye Add is a fine pretty lady who lives under the water. Barney used to be a sailor, y’see, an’ he’s the man who’d know. He said he saw many a one of them when he was off the coast of Calatrumpia years ago.”

Roddy sits himself down on the bank, next to Mickey. “Barney Gilhooly, that terrible ould fibber? All he ever sailed on was the village pond, and all he ever saw was through the bottom of a whisky bottle. So, what did Barney say a Nye Add looks like?”

Little Mickey pulls in his line. The worm is drooping, so he casts it back again for a further bath. “He said that a Nye Add is half a woman and half a fish, but a rare beauty. He said sometimes they used to come out onto the rocks, combin’ their hair an’ singin’. Sure, Barney said that the sound could drive a man mad completely!”

Roddy laughs. “Then Barney must’ve heard the Nye Add singin’, ’cos he’s as mad as Rafferty’s pig with a bee in its bonnet. Now let me get this straight, Mickey. A creature that’s half fish an’ half a woman, but not altogether either. Livin’ under the water, an’ comin’ out now and again to comb her hair an’ sing, just to drive fellers daft. Sounds like an underwater banshee to me.”

“Aye, she may be just that,” says Mickey. “Sure, I’ll let you know when I catch one an’ get a good look at her.”

Roddy does no more than glance at Mickey’s fishing gear, then he laughs. “Mickey, me little tater, you’ve got more chance of of seein’ O’Hara’s goat singin’ in the church choir than ye have of catchin’ the creature. What makes you think there’d be such a thing in this ould river?”

“Because I saw one here not an hour since,” says Mickey.

“I think you’ve been sittin’ out too long in the sun. So where did ye see it, pray tell?” says Roddy.

So little Mickey explains. “Me ma sent me for a duck egg, for me da’s tea. I was walkin’ along the footpath by here when I sees Mulligan’s dog. Sure, he was creatin’ an awful racket, barkin’ an’ howlin’ at somethin’ in the water. So I goes to see what all fuss was in aid of. That’s when I saw the Nye Add swimmin’ around under those bushes by the far bank. Well, she saw me, an’ dived straight down an’ hid, so she did!”

Roddy looks over to the spot Mickey had indicated. Something occurrs to him which gives him pause to chuckle. “Are ye sure it never had a fish’s head an’ a lady’s bottom?”

Little Mickey does not like being made fun of. “Arr, away, ye great eejit, I saw it with me own two eyes. The top was woman, an’ the bottom was fish. ’Twas a Nye Add, she looked just like Barney Gilhooly said she should!”

The lad seems serious, and Roddy is getting curious. “Just over there, ye say?”

As Mickey nods, Roddy picks up a stone about the size of his fist. He heaves it out into the river and hits the very spot where Mickey had seen the creature.

The stone had scarce struck water, when a great fluke-shaped tail rises and slaps down hard on the surface of the river, drenching them both with spray.

Little Mickey Hennessy wipes the water from his eyes. “That was her tail. Now will you believe me, Roddy Mooney?”

The All Ireland Champion Fisherman grabs little Mickey’s shirtfront, causing half the buttons to pop off. “That’s no Nye Add nor water banshee! All I could see was its tail, but that’s a fish, the biggest ever seen in Irish freshwater, I’ll bet. A shark, or a dolphin, or some kind of deep-sea big-game fish found its way upriver from the ocean. Mickey, ye darlin’ little man, will ye do somethin’ for me?”

“I will if ye stop tearin’ the shirt from off me young body,” says Mickey. So Roddy tells him the plan.

“Stand guard here an’ watch in case the fish moves. I’m goin’ home for my anglin’ tackle. I’ll be back before ye know it, so I will!”

The good Widow Mooney is chucking turf bricks onto the fire when in dashes her son like a nun with a bee in her bonnet.

“Sit ye down, me luvly son. I’ve mashed some grand taters an’ buttermilk up for your tea,” says his ma.

But the All Ireland Champion is already packing all his tackle in a wicker creel. Maggots, hooks, lines, ledgers and floats. “Sure I haven’t the time t’be sittin’ round feedin’ me gob, Ma. There’s a fine big ould fish needs catchin’!”

He seizes a selection of rods and sundry other poles, then grabs his lucky hat, the one with all the bright-coloured flies stuck in it. Jamming it on, Roddy knots the hat strings under his chin and goes tearing out of the door, with his ma shouting after him, “I’ll put it in the oven to keep warm for ye, son!”

So then, there’s Little Mickey marching up and down the bank with his twig over his shoulder, keeping guard over the spot, as Roddy arrives in a cloud of dust. Mickey salutes like an Enniskillen Dragoon. “Sure I’ve not seen it move, so it must still be there!”

Roddy Mooney starts unpacking tackle, talking to himself the way that All Ireland Champion Fishermen do. “Now, will the beast be takin’ a woolly nymph, or a red hackle weaver? I’d best use me good split-cane rod, an’ a heavy line. Where’s those musket ball ledgers, an’ a decent float? Mickey, will ye stop pacin’ up’n’down like a half-paid officer? Get that maggot tin an’ sling some ground bait out.”

Like most small boys, Mickey loves to play with maggots. Shoving his hand into the battered tin, he rummages about happily among the squirming mass of maggots. “Ah, sure, I don’t know whether or not Nye Adds eat these.”

Roddy squints as he knots the red hackle tight onto his line. “Will ye give over, there’s no such thing as a Nye Add. That’s a monster fish in there, big enough to take the gold cup at the Bantry Bay All Ireland Reel Off. Aye, an’ I’m the very man who’s goin’ to catch it. Now will ye give up messin’ with those maggots an’ throw them in the water!”

Mickey slings out two handfuls, shouting, “Lord ha’ mercy on your little maggity souls!”

Roddy whips his rod back and forth several times, then casts out expertly. The hunt for the creature is on.

But fishing, as you all well know, is a lengthy business. Three hours later the pair is still sitting on the bank edge, with no luck thus far, not even for an All Ireland Champion. Of course, not knowing the grand, exalted title held by Roddy Mooney, the honour of the occasion is probably lost on any fish swimming in the river.

Four, five, six hours go by. Apart from a small eel and a half-dead roach, nothing decent comes near Roddy’s hook. Little Mickey has lost interest in the proceedings. He’s trying to catch a dragonfly with Roddy’s keep net, but most dragonflies are craftier than most little boys. So Mickey gives up the chase and sits back down with Roddy.

“Do ye not think ’twould be better goin’ home for somethin’ to eat? It’s gettin’ dark now, we could come back tomorrow, eh?”

Roddy Mooney concentrates on his unmoving float. “Sure, ye stand a better chance at the night fishin’. That’s when the big fishes come up to feed.”

Little Mickey’s stomach rumbles like a cart going over cobblestones. “Have ye not got any ould sam-midges under that hat, Roddy? I’m fair famished for a bite!”

“All Ireland Champion Fishermen don’t need food when they’re fishin’,” says Roddy.

Suddenly, out of the dark waddles Bridgie Hennessy, Mickey’s fine big mammy. She fetches him a clout that knocks him sideways, and roars at him, “Where’s the duck egg for your da’s tea, ye Hessian deserter? Where’ve ye been all day an’ half the blessed night?”

Regaining half the sense he had before the clout, Mickey explains, “I been fishin’ for a Nye Add with your man Roddy Mooney.”

His distracted mammy lifts Mickey off the ground by the seat of the trousers. “Fishin’, is it? I’ll fish ye! Your da an’ your twelve brothers’n’sisters have been out scourin’ the country for ye!”

Mickey is hauled off home, keeping up a midair conversation with his mammy. “What’s for supper? I could eat an ould horse!”

They vanish into the darkness, with Bridgie Hennessy bawling like a Mullengar heifer.

“There’ll be no ould horses for you, ye hardfaced melt! A taste of your da’s belt an’ straight up to bed, that’s all you’ll be gettin’ for your crimes!”

Sitting alone in the dark night, Roddy feels happy as a donkey in a strawberry patch as he waits to catch the fish of his life. He wonders if anyone has ever gained the title of Double, Supreme or Majestic All Ireland Champion Fisherman. The summer night is quiet and warm, with not a breeze to stir the calm air. From behind the cloudbanks, a dusty gold moon emerges to dapple the river with pale shadows. Roddy’s eyelids droop. He stifles a yawn and settles his back against the cane hamper. Even All Ireland Champions have to sleep, ye know.

A plip and a small splash close to the bank where he is sitting causes Roddy to wake immediately. He never moves, but directs his gaze to the water, beneath which his feet are hanging over the river edge. He sees the huge flukes of the tail waving enticingly, a mere inch from the surface. Beyond the tail he glimpses a fraction of the thick scaled body underwater, but it is impossible to see more. By the sword of Finn McCool, this is one big fish!

But the dilemma is, how to catch it? The fish is sure to swim off if he makes a sudden move. Roddy Mooney is a grand man for making up his mind quickly in angling situations. He decides the prize can only be taken with a gaff. Now if you’re ignorant as to what a gaff is, I’ll further your education. A gaff is a huge, sharp steel hook, bigger than those you see at the butcher’s with meat hanging from them. The gaff is lashed tight, with stout cord, to a pole. Gaffing is a most unsporting and, in some regions, illegal way of catching fish in freshwater. Gaffs are generally used by poachers to hook fish, mainly salmon, as they leap up to climb waterfalls and weirs. It is a cruel thing, because the gaff usually strikes the fish right through its body. The fish wriggles in agony until the angler dispatches it by striking its head with a heavy object. You have to be skilful and swift with a gaff or you lose the catch.

But Roddy Mooney has to have the big fish. So, keeping still as possible, he reaches behind with one hand, inch by inch. Locating the gaff where it has been lying on the grass behind him (Little Mickey had been using it to dig for worms), Roddy finds the leather strip he has knotted through a hole in the handle. Sliding the strip about his wrist, he takes a good grip of the pole. The fishtail is still waving invitingly, almost touching his boot soles. The All Ireland Champion begins raising the gaff with painstaking care. One strike, that is all Roddy knows he would get the chance of. Slowly, slowly, like a snail climbing a wall, he raises the gaff, until his arm is fully stretched. The wicked steel point of the hook is perfectly balanced, ready to strike.

Roddy Mooney strikes like lightning. However, whatever is under the water strikes back like greased lightning, which is much faster, probably because of the grease. The gaff is seized hard by its curved hook, and Roddy gets hauled, hat over hobnails, into the river. You understand, he has no option but to go, as the gaff is looped around his wrist. Now, you can believe this or believe it not, but it is no big fish which yanks the All Ireland Champion into the drink.

Beneath the water, everything looks like an enchanted world. Moonlight shining through the river gives the entire scene an unearthly glow. In the soft, pearly green radiance, waterweeds and fronds sway gently seaward with the current. But Roddy ignores the charming vista completely. His attention is captured by the girl who is holding his gaff hook, and a fine big specimen of fishy maidenhood she is, to be sure. From tail to navel, her lower half is covered in silver scales, which I suppose most underwater folk take for granted. She has thick greenblack hair, which covers her upper half modestly down to the fishy bits. From top to waist, she resembles a human being, except for her hands, which have webbed fingers and long curving nails. The smile she gives Roddy near frightens the life out of him. I say that because she has no lips to speak of, merely a wide gash of a mouth, which curves downwards. Her teeth are gleaming white and sharply pointed—there are lots of them, far more than you or I have. Now isn’t that odd, but even stranger are the two gills on the sides of her jawline that keep opening and closing like they have a life of their own. Her eyes are solid jade green marbles with just a black slit at the centre of each one, showing no white whatsoever.

Roddy feels an urgent desire to be back home in the neat little cottage with his ma. He tries pushing himself upward to the surface, but the fishgirl tugs on the gaff, pulling him back down. She reaches for Roddy’s hat, which is covered with colourful flies and strapped beneath his chin. He puts out a hand to stop her. She knocks the hand away and lets out an almighty shriek of protest.

“Yeeeeeeeeeeeeekkkeeeeeekkkk!”

Like a red-hot darning needle, the sound goes through Roddy’s eardrums. He opens his mouth in shock, letting the water rush in. Poor ould Roddy, I hear you say, but that is only the start of his troubles. The fishgirl shoves him flat on the riverbed and sits on him!

She pulls the hat from his head and begins unhooking the flies from its brim. Pinned beneath her, Roddy shuts his mouth tight, and bubbles stream from his nostrils. Evidently, this causes the fishmaid some grand amusement. Switching her attention from the hat, she jiggles up and down on Roddy’s stomach, shrieking with laughter at the bubbles that are streaming from her captive’s nose.

After a while, Roddy’s mouth pops open, his last remaining gasp of air bursting forth. Burrloop!

The fishgirl loses interest in him and starts looping the coloured flies into her long tresses. They look rather weird, but pretty nevertheless.

Just then another fishy female comes on the scene. She is much bigger and older than the girl—in fact, it is her mammy. She deals the daughter a whopping blow with her powerful tail, sending her flying, or should I say floating. Grabbing Roddy in her strong webbed hands, she whooshes him straight to the surface. With a single mighty heave, she flings him high up onto the bank, as though he is no more than a wet dishcloth. The unconscious All Ireland Champion lands with a grand swishing flop, facedown, with his head hanging over the bank.

Streaking back down to the bottom, the big fishwife begins giving her daughter a good ould scolding. The young one bares her teeth, hissing and shrieking as she argues back with her mammy, the way that some fishmaids do. Now, to the layman, the entire argument might sound like a load of submarine caterwauling. But to a student of underwater jargon, the gist of the noises goes roughly like this:

“Arrah, ye daft little shrimp. What’ve I told ye about fishin’ for leggy ones? They’re nought but trouble!” says the mammy.

Then her daughter replies, “Sure, ’twas him that was tryin’ to catch me. Did ye not see all those funny little bubbles comin’ from the leggy one?”

The mother gives her another tailwhack.

“Ye destructive little sardine, have ye not got the sense of a barnacle? You’d probably like to have destroyed that leggy one. Aye, he’ll not be the same again, if he lives. Ah, well, I suppose we’ll have to be goin’ back to the ocean now. Selfish little haddock, ye’ve ruined our river holiday completely. An’ ye can get those things out of your hair, faith, ’tis tatty enough without all that nonsense!”

At this, the fishmaid gives an impertinent pout, just like one or two young madams we might know.

“It’s not fair, Mammy, sure I was havin’ a grand ould time up here in the river. I’m not wantin’ to go back to the ocean.”

The mammy isn’t about to be putting up with teenage tantrums, though, wise fishwife that she is. “If ye had the brains of an oyster, you’d know we won’t get a moment’s peace here when they find the leggy one. There’ll be leggies here in their droves by tomorrow, splashin’ about, hurlin’ rocks and probin’ ’round with great poles. They’ll muddy the water up until our gills are filthy. ’Tis always the same, so come now, move your tail, we’ve got to go.”

Well, away they go downstream, with the young fishgirl still complaining. “But Mammy, that big fat dolphin will be after me again. I can’t stand the great gobeen, forever squeakin’ and smilin’ that big stupid grin of his.”

Like all good mothers, the mammy gets the last word in. “Listen, Miss Picky-fins, ye could do a lot worse than that nice dolphin. He comes from a respectable family, an’ he’s very intelligent, too. So get along with ye before I skelp the scales from your tail!”

So, it is the Sunday morning of the following week that I must move on to, are ye listening? Father Carney has finished the mass, and like the saintly man he is, he goes off to visit his sick parishioners. His first call is at the neat little cottage of the Widow Mooney. The reverent man accepts a cup of tea and visits the poor woman and her son, the former All Ireland Fishing Champion. With a rug about his legs, Roddy sits in an armchair, staring out into space, his face all pinched and thin, the skin white as a corpse. He has heard and seen nothing since that fateful night, living in a sort of permanent coma.

Well, there is not much the father can do. He says a few prayers for Roddy, then blesses him before enquiring of Mrs. Mooney, “Has he not moved at all, spoken or anything?”

The widow serves the priest with a slice of soda bread spread with her very own fresh churned butter. She wipes both eyes on her apron and sniffs aloud. “Ah, sure, I’m completely distracted, Father, me son’s like the livin’ dead. Night an’ day he’s as y’see him now, alive only by the mercy of the Lord. ’Tis a sad burden for a mother to see her darlin’ son in such a miserable state.”

She straightens a lock of Roddy’s hair and wipes his nose on her apron corner. Father Carney looks away, saddened by Widow Mooney’s grief. It is then he sees the crowd of village onlookers jamming the doorway and windows to see what was going on inside. Shoving on his battered hat, he reaches for his knobbly blackthorn stick. “We must trust to the power of prayer, Mrs. Mooney. I’ll drop by again this evening, after benediction.”

Striding out, the priest confronts the crowd of gawping faces angrily. “Have ye no homes to go to? Be off with ye, now. ’Tis not a penny peepshow, there’s a grieviously sick person in there! Give the lad’s poor mother some peace, for pity’s sake!”

Mary Creeley, the village gossip, purses her lips shrewdly. “Father, is it true that Roddy Mooney’s had a spell cast on him by a water banshee?”

The good man shoots her a glare of disgust, then moves off, surrounded by curious villagers all wanting to hear what he has to say concerning the All Ireland Fishing Champion. “Wash your mouth out, woman, that’s a sinful thing to say. Who’s been filling your head with such nonsense?”

Barney Gilhooly winks at the priest and smiles slyly. “Ah, well, Father, there’s some knows what they knows, an’ there’s things not better mentioned. That’s what I always say.”

The priest halts and shakes his stick at the man. “Hold your foolish tongue, Gilhooly! Who knows what, eh? An’ who listens to the tales of snot-nosed urchins or tattlin’ ould gossips that should know better!”

The crowd stands cowed by the reverent man’s wrath. But Mary Creeley, who would have the last word with a hangman, calls out in a whining voice, “Ah, sure, nobody tells us anythin’, Father. We’re left entirely in the dark, with only the words of one witness, the child who was the last to see Roddy Mooney on that day.”

Father Carney’s stern eye seeks out little Mickey Hennessy. “Witness, indeed! Ah, ye make me sick, all of ye. Believing the ramblings of a child who’d say anything for a sweet! Listen to me now, I’ll tell you the truth as only a priest can.”

Little Mickey Hennessy ducks behind his mammy’s shawl as the good father thunders out at his errant flock. “Holy Mother Church forbids belief in all pagan superstitions! If you attended your services more often, you’d all know that. Hah, standin’ outside of Gilligan’s pub, tellin’ fairy stories, ye should be ashamed of yourselves as grown men an’ women! Water banshees, is it? Leprechauns, boggarts, sprites, willow the wisps, phantom coaches an’ pots of gold at the rainbow’s end. Do ye not know that folk with a bit of sense an’ education laugh at such things?”

Father Carney strides off in disgust, leaving the chastened villagers gazing at the ground in silence.

But that ould Mary Creeley, she is like a dog with a bone, she will not leave it alone. She wails out piteously at the saintly man, “ ’Tis yourself that’s right, Father, sure, we’re knowin’ nothin’. Simple ignorant folk is what we are. I’d say it’s your duty as our holy priest to tell us, what really happened to poor Roddy Mooney?”

Holding back his irritation with remarkable fortitude, Father Carney gives his explanation of the affair. “Have ye not got the sense the good Lord gave ye? Your man was out fishin’, an’ he fell into the river. Somehow or other, he was trapped underwater, by the weeds, or mud, or even some waterlogged branches. Poor Roddy was so long tryin’ to free himself that his brain was affected by the loss of breath an’ all that water he swallowed. But by the mercy of Heaven he lived through it all. Though his brain was addled, an’ he’s not the grand feller we once knew, an’ that’s why Roddy Mooney’s the way you see him now. Let that be the last word on it. An All Ireland Champion Fisherman he might’ve been, but an All Ireland Champion Underwater Escape Artist he was not!”

So there you have it, the terrible tale of poor ould Roddy Mooney. It happened almost sixty-five years ago. Now, whose explanation are you to believe, that of a priest or a ten-year-old boy, little Mickey Hennessy? As for meself, I believe the lad, and I’ll tell you why.

Every midsummer since, at the night of the full moon, the boy has gone down to the very spot on the riverbank where Roddy was taken. Aye, all those years, an’ he still goes there. Listen, I’ll not be telling anyone but yourself this, for fear of being laughed at. Mickey still sees the Nye Add lady return, to look for Roddy Mooney. Of course, being the wise man he is, Mickey keeps well away from the river’s edge. But over all that time he has learned to understand the creature’s language, though he cannot speak it, because Mickey’s no great shrieker. The fishwoman told him that she’s neither water banshee nor Nye Add, she’s called a Kelpie. I think that she fell in love with Roddy, because she returns there every midsummer, hoping some moonlit night to see him. Ah, she’s a sad ould thing now.

Well, I’ve told you the tale now, so I’ll go on me way an’ bid ye good day. But it’s a true story, an’ if I’ve told you a lie, then I’m not seventy-five years old next birthday, and my name’s not little Mickey Hennessy.