Peter Tremayne: Marbh Bheo

It was dark when I reached the old cottage. The journey had been far from easy. I suppose a city-bred person such as myself would find most rural journeys difficult. I had certainly assumed too much. As the crow flies, I had been told that the cottage was only some twenty-one miles from the centre of Cork City. But in Ireland the miles are deceptive. I know there is a standard joke about "the Irish mile" but there is a grain of truth in it. For the Boggeragh Mountains, in whose shadows the cottage lay, are a brooding, windswept area where nothing grows but bleak heather, a dirty stubble which clings tenaciously to the grey granite thrusts of the hills, where the wind whistles and sings over a moonscape of rocks pricking upwards to the heavens. To walk a mile in such terrain, among the heights and terrible grandeur of the wild, rocky slopes and gorse you have to allow two hours. A mile on a well-kept road is not like a mile on a forgotten track amidst these sullen peaks.

What was I doing in such an inhospitable area in the first place? That is the question which you will undoubtedly ask.

Well, it was not through any desire on my part. But one must live and my livelihood depended on my job with RTE. I am a researcher with Telefis Eireann, the Irish state television. Initially it was the idea of some bright producer that we make a programme on Irish folk customs. So that was the initial impetus which found me searching among dusty tomes in an old occult bookstore, in a little alley off Sheares Street on the nameless island in the River Lee which constitutes the centre of the city of Cork. The area is often mentioned in the literature of Cork as the place where once the fashionable world came to see and be seen. That era of glory has departed and now small artisans' houses and shops crowd upon it claustrophobically.

I had been told to research the superstitions connected with the dead and I was browsing through some volumes when I became aware of an old woman standing next to me. She was peering at the book that I was examining with more than a degree of interest.

"So you are interested in the Irish customs and superstitions relating to the dead, young man?" she observed in an imperious tone, her voice slightly shrill and sharp.

I looked at her. She was of small stature, the shoulders bent, but she wore a long black dress, with matching large hat and veil, almost like a figure out of a Victorian drama. From such a guise it was hard to see her features but she gave the air of a world long gone, of a time almost forgotten.

"I am," I replied courteously.

"An interesting subject. There are many stories of the dead who come to life again in West Cork. If you travel round the rural communities you will hear some quite incredible stories."

"Really?" I inquired politely. "You mean zombies?"

She sniffed disparagingly.

"Zombies! That is a voodoo superstition originating in Africa. You are in Ireland, young man. No, I mean the marbh bheo."

She pronounced this as "ma'rof vo".

"What's that?" I demanded.

"A corpse that lives," she replied. "You will find many a tale about the marbh bheo in rural Ireland."

She sniffed again. It seemed a habit.

"Yes, really, young man. There are many stories that will make your hair curl. Stories that are fantastic and terrible. Tales of being buried alive. The tale of Tadhg O Cathain who, in punishment for his wicked life, was condemned to be ridden every night by a hideous living corpse, a marbh bheo, who demanded burial and drove him from churchyard to churchyard as the dead rose up in each one to refuse the corpse burial. There are the corpses who wait in haunted lakes to devour the drowned ones, and the unholy undead creatures who haunt the raths. Oh yes, young man, there are many fantastic tales to be heard and some not a mile or so from this very spot."

An idea crossed my mind as she spoke.

"Do you know any local people who are experts in such tales?" I inquired. "You see, I am working on a television programme and want to speak to someone…"

She sniffed yet again.

"You wish to speak to someone who has knowledge about the marbh bheo?"

I smiled. She made it sound so natural as if I were merely asking to speak to someone who could advise me on bee-keeping. I nodded eagerly.

"Go to Musheramore Mountain and ask for 'Teach Droch-Chlu'. At 'Teach Droch-Chlu' you will find Father Nessan Doheny. He will speak with you."

I put down the book that I had been examining, turned to reach for my attache case and took out my notebook. I turned back to the old lady but much to my amazement she had gone. I looked round the bookstore. The owner was upstairs and I asked him if he had seen or knew her but he had not. With a shrug, I jotted down the names that she had given me. After all, in an occult bookstore you are apt to meet the weirdest people. But I was pleased with the meeting. Here was a more interesting lead than spending days browsing through books. A good television programme relies on personalities, raconteurs, and not the recitation of dry and dusty facts by a narrator.

Musheramore is the largest peak in the Boggeragh Mountains, not far from Cork. I checked the phone book and found no listing for Father Nessan Doheny nor for "Teach Droch-Chlu". But the place was so near, and city dweller that I am, I thought I would be able to ride the twenty-one miles to Musheramore and back in one evening. I should explain that I am the proud possessor of a vintage Triumph motorcycle. Motorbikes are a hobby of mine. I thought that I could have a chat with the priest and then be back in Cork long before midnight.

I rode out of Cork on the Macroom road, which is a good straight and wide highway, and then turned north on a small track towards the village of Ballynagree with Musheramore a black dominating peak in the distance. That was easy. I stopped at a local garage, just north of Ballynagree, filled up with petrol and asked the way to "Teach Droch-Chlu". The garage man, whose name-badge on his overalls pronounced him to be "Manus", gave me an old fashioned glance, as though I had said something which secretly amused him. His face assumed a sort of knowing grin as he gave me some directions.

That was when the real journey began.

It took me an hour to negotiate the directions and reach the place. Though it shames me to say it, my Irish is not particularly good. In a country which is reputedly bilingual, but where English is more widely spoken than Irish, one can get by with little use of the language. Therefore, while I knew that "Teach" meant a house, I had no idea of the full meaning of the name. And the cottage, for such it proved to be, was harder to find than I would ever have thought.

It lay in a scooped out hollow of the mountain, surrounded by dark trees and shrubs which formed a hedgerow. It looked old, dank and depressing. And when I eventually found the place, darkness had spread its enveloping cloak all around.

I parked my motorbike and walked along a winding path, with the sharp barbs of pyracantha bushes scratching my hands and snagging my jacket. I finally reached the low lintelled door.

When I knocked on its paint peeling panels, a reedy voice bade me enter.

Father Nessan Doheny, or so I presumed the gaunt figure to be, sat in a high-backed chair by a smouldering turf fire; his hair was white, the eyes colourless and pale, seeming without animation, and his skin was like yellow parchment. His thin, claw-like hands were folded on his lap. I would have placed his age more towards ninety than younger. He was clad in a dark, shining suit with only his white Roman collar to throw it into relief. There was a chilly atmosphere in the room in spite of the smouldering fire.

"The dead?" he piped shrilly, after I had explained my purpose. His thin bloodless lips cracked upwards. It might have been a smile. "Have the living so little to interest them that they need to know of the dead?"

"It's for a television programme on folklore, Father," I humoured him.

"Folklore, is it?" he cackled. "Now the dead are reduced to folklore."

He fell silent for such a long while that I thought maybe the ancient priest had grown senile in his ageing and had fallen asleep, but he eventually raised his face to mine and shook his head.

"I could tell you many tales about the dead. They are as real as the living. Why, not far from here is a farmstead. It is the custom in these parts that when throwing away water at night, for you will find many a house that has still to draw its water from wells, that the person casting out the water should cry: "Tog ort as uisce! Meaning - away with yourself from the water."

I knew this to be a rural expression better rendered into English as "look out for the water".

"Why would they say this, Father?"

"Because the belief is that water falling on a corpse burns it, for water is purity. Well, there came a night when a woman of a farm not far from here, threw out a jug of water and forgot the warning cry. Instantly, she heard a shriek of a person in pain. No one was seen in the darkness. Around midnight, the door came open and a black lamb entered the house, having its back scalded. It lay down moaning by the hearth and died before the farmer and his wife knew what to do.

"The farmer buried the lamb the next morning. At midnight that night the door came open again and the lamb entered. Its back was scalded as before. It lay down and died. The farmer buried it again. When this happened a third time, the farmer sent for me. I was then a young priest but I knew what had happened immediately and laid the dead spirit to rest by the solemnity of exorcism. The black lamb appeared no more."

I was hastily scribbling notes. I had to put down one of my notebooks on a side table as I bent to my task.

"Absolutely great, Father. That will make a nice tale. First class."

He gazed at me sourly.

"It is no game we are talking about. The dead have equal powers to the living and you should be warned not to mock them, young man."

I smiled indulgently.

"Don't worry, Father. I'll not mock them. I just want to get this programme together…"

Father Doheny winced as if in pain but I prattled on obliviously.

"Are there such things as zombies in Ireland?"

He sniffed. It suddenly reminded me of the old woman and the answer she had given me.

"You mean a corpse reanimated by sorcery?"

"Yes. Don't we have any stories about the walking dead in Ireland? I mean, what do you call it, a marbh bheo?"

His pale eyes seemed to gaze right through me.

"Of course the dead walk. There is only the faintest veil between this land of the living and the land of the dead. At the right time and with the right stimulus the dead can enter into our world with the same ease as we can enter into their world."

I could not help smirking.

"That's hardly the official Church line from Rome."

His thin lips compressed in annoyance.

"The ancients knew these things long before the coming of Christianity. It would be better not to take them lightly."

Father Nessan Doheny was a delight. I was scribbling away as fast as I could, imagining a whole series of programmes devoted to the ageing priest sitting recounting his bizarre tales.

"Go on, Father," I prompted. "How easy is it to cross through this veil, you speak of, into the land of the dead?"

"Easy enough, boy. Over at Caherbarnagh, when I was a young priest, there was living a woman. One day she was returning to her cottage when she stopped to drink by a small stream. As she rose to her feet she suddenly heard the sound of low music. A group of people were coming down the path, singing a strange, soothing song. It puzzled her and she felt a shiver of apprehension. Then she realised that close by her a tall, young man was standing watching her, his face strange and pale, the eyes wide and blank.

"She demanded to know who he was. He shook his head and warned her that she was in great danger and unless she fled with him, evil would befall her. She began to trot off with him and the people, coming down the path with their music, cried out: 'Come back!' Yet fear lent her wings and she ran and ran with the young man until they reached the edge of a small wood. The young man halted and pronounced them safe. Then he asked her to look upon his face.

"When she did so, she recognized him as her elder brother who had been drowned the year before. He was drowned while swimming in the dark waters of Loch Dalua and his body had never been recovered. What was she to do? She felt evil near and ran home to send for me, the local priest, confessing all. There was fear and trembling on her when she told me her tale and after she had made that final confession, she died."

"That's a terrific tale," I said, entering it enthusiastically in my notebook.

"There are tales of the dead in every corner of the land," nodded the old priest.

I became aware of an old clock chiming in the corner. I could not believe it. It was ten o'clock already. I sighed. Well, I was getting so much good material that it was a shame to break off now to make sure I was back in Cork at a reasonable hour.

"But what about this marbh bheo, Father," I asked. "These stories you have told me are more of ghosts than the walking dead. Are there stories of reanimated corpses?"

The priest's expression did not change.

"Ghosts, walking dead, the dead are dead in whatever form they come."

"But reanimated corpses?" I pressed. "What of them?"

"If I must speak, then I must," the old priest said almost half to himself, half as if speaking to some third party. "Must I speak?"

Naturally, I thought the question was addressed to me and answered in the affirmative.

"I will speak then. I will tell you a tale; a tale of a great English lord who used to own these mountains in the days before Ireland won her independence from England."

I glanced at the clock and said: "Is it a tale about the walking dead, the marbh bheo?"

The priest ignored me.

"The lord was called the Earl of Musheramore, Baron of Lyre and Lisnaraha. He had a great castle and estate which covered most of the Boggeragh Mountains. He and his family before him since the days of the English conquests and the flight of our noble families to Europe. The estate was a prosperous one and the Earl of Musheramore was rich and powerful."

His voice assumed a droning tone, hypnotic and soporific.

The real point of his story had taken place in the days of the "Great Hunger". During the mid nineteenth century, the potato crops failed. Because the peasants of Ireland had been so reduced in poverty by the absentee English landlords, the potato had become the staple diet, mixed with a little poaching on the estate, game from the land and fish from the rivers and lochs. The lords of the land severely punished any people caught taking the game or the fish. One young man who had dared to poach a couple of rabbits from Lord Musheramore, to help feed his large family, was transported to Van Diemen's Land in Australia for seven years. That was the type of fate that awaited any peasant who poached on their lord's land. The law was vigorously imposed by landlord's agents, usually impoverished former officers of the British army, who were employed to run things in the absence of the owners.

So, of course, when the potato crop failed, the people began to starve. In a space of three years the population of the country had been reduced by two-and-a-half million. Yet the landlords and their agents still demanded the rent on the tiny peasant hovels, evicted people into the winter snows and frosts; men, women, children and babes in arms, if they could not pay, were evicted, their cabins torn down to prevent reoccupation. Under such straits they perished from exposure, malnutrition and other attendant diseases. Cholera struck everywhere.

Yet the landlords prospered. Great shiploads of the landlords' produce - grain, wheat, flax, cattle, sheep, poultry - were being loaded aboard the ships in Irish harbours and sent to England for sale. For every charity relief ship, raised by the Irish communities abroad, sailing into an Irish port, six ships loaded with grain and livestock were sailing out of the ports to England.

A great bitterness spread over the land. An attempt to rise up against the rulers was severely crushed by the military.

On the estate of Lord Musheramore, the peasants gathered in a body, kneeling on the well-kept green lawns outside Musheramore Castle, holding up their hands in supplication to his lordship, pleading for his help to keep them alive for the forthcoming winter, a winter that many were already doomed not to see, so wracked by malnutrition had they become.

Lord Musheramore was a vain young man. He was about thirty years old, with a dark, aquiline face and sneering mouth. Since his inheritance he had only visited his estate once. He preferred to live in a house in London where he could visit the playhouses, taverns, and the gaming houses where he loved to win or lose moderate fortunes on the throw of the dice or the fall of cards. But he had come to visit during that summer to ensure that the produce of his estate was not being squandered on any "famine relief".

He was somewhat alarmed at the concourse of people that gathered on the castle lawns. There were hundreds of people from the cottages and the villages which his estate encompassed. He sent his overseer straightaway to the military at Mallow and three companies of English hussars soon arrived and surrounded the castle to protect it from attack. The captain in charge, acting on Lord Musheramore's orders, told the people to disperse. When they hesitated, he charged his troops into them. The hussars went berserk, swinging their sabres and shouting like banshees. The result was that many died, including the local priest who had come to add his authority to the pleas of the peasants.

Now among the people gathered that day was an old woman named Brid Cappeen. She had been shunned by the people in better days for she had the reputation of being something of a witch. She was, indeed, a wise woman. She had escaped the soldiers with no more than a sabre's cut across her thin, angular face. But the scar on her heart was deeper than that. Old Brid Cappeen knew the ways of the ancients, the old ways that were practised from time immemorial, whose origins were forgotten even by the time of the coming of Christianity. She could search the entrails of a dead chicken and find the answer to the future in its bloodied remains.

Brid Cappeen had fled to the gorse covered mountainside when the soldiers attacked and had hidden all day there. That night she crept down the mountain to the lawn where the corpses of the peasants had been laid out ready for disposal. She searched the pile of corpses, wild and demented, until she found the one she wanted. The body of a man whose wounds had not caused any limbs to be severed. Then with the strength derived from God alone knows where, or maybe from the Devil, Brid Cappeen hauled that corpse away into the night. She hauled it up to her lonely cave in the mountain.

There, in the cave, she practised the old rituals, conjuring words that no scholar of the ancient Gaelic tongue would recognize. She sought and found herbs and threw them into a steam kettle on a small fire and bathed the body of the man and, finally, as the moon reached the point in the night sky which signified the hour of midnight, the limbs of the man began to tremble, to pulsate and the eyes came open.

Old Brid Cappeen let out a growl of satisfaction.

She had created the marbh bheo; she had conjured the "living corpse" to her bidding.

In the ancient times it was told that vengeance could be visited on a wrongdoer by a druid or druidess who could reanimate the body of a person wrongly slain. Old Brid Cappeen began to enact that vengeance.

She sent out the reanimated body of the corpse on its dreadful quest. Lord Musheramore, Baron of Lyre and Lisnaraha, was about to board the ship for England in Cork harbour one evening when he was attacked and literally torn apart by a man whom no one could identify. The police and soldiers swore that they opened fire and hit the attacker several times. The local magistrate took this with cynical humour, for the attacker escaped clean away and there was no blood on the cobbles of the quay except the aristocratic blood of Lord Musheramore.

The captain of the hussars was attacked next in his own quarters, safe in the barracks at Mallow. He, too, was torn apart. The attacker was evidently a man of amazing strength and iron purpose for he had broken through the stone and iron walls of the barracks to get into the captain's quarters. When they found what was left of the captain, many soldiers, veterans who had served in campaigns in India and Africa, were sick and broke down in terror.

Then, Major Farran, the overseer of Lord Musheramore's estate, was set on one evening while out with his two great hounds. Farran was a stocky man, afraid of nothing in this world nor the next, or so he boasted. He carried two hand pistols and the hounds that bounded at his side were not just for company. They had been known to tear a person to pieces at his command. Major Farran was hated amongst Musheramore's peasants. He knew it and, curious man that he was, thrived on it. He liked the aura of fear that he was able to spread around him. But he was wise enough to take precautions against any attack those who hated him might make.

But pistols and hounds did not protect him that evening.

It was three full days before all his remains were found along the bloodstrewn pathway. And the doctor confessed that he had no way of knowing the flesh of Major Farran from the flesh of the mutilated hounds.

And all the while Brid Cappeen crooned away in her cave on the slopes of the mountain.

She was not satisfied with immediate vengeance on those who had wronged the people of Musheramore's estate. She became determined to make all who were connected with the Musheramore family pay for the deaths of her relatives and fellow villagers. Vengeance became her creed, her passion, her overwhelming desire. And the marbh bheo was the instrument of her vengeance.

For years, thereafter, there were reports of the demented Brid Cappeen scouring the night shrouded country of the Boggeragh Mountains in search of vengeance with her living corpse at her side.

Father Doheny stopped talking abruptly, leaving me forward, open mouthed, on the edge of the seat.

"That's a fantastic tale, Father," I stammered at last, realising that he had come to an end of it. "Was there really such a person as Lord Musheramore?"

He made no reply, sitting gazing down at the smouldering turf.

I shivered slightly for the turf was not sending out any warmth into the tiny cottage room.

"Would you be prepared to come to our studios in Cork and talk on the programme about the marbh bheo? We could pay you something, of course."

I suddenly felt a draught on the back of my neck.

I turned and saw the cottage door had opened. To my surprise, because of the lateness of the hour, I saw the old woman I had met in the occult bookstore. Her black shrouded figure was framed in the gloom of its opening. Her Victorian dress seemed to be flapping around her in the wind that had risen across the mountains; flapping like the wings of a dark raven.

"Your business here is finished," she said imperiously, in a voice that cracked with age.

"I am here to see Father Doheny." I smarted at her lack of manners and turned to the old priest seeking support. "At your suggestion, too," I added, perhaps defensively.

The old man seemed to have nodded off in his high-backed wooden chair, for his jaw was lowered to his chest and his eyes were closed.

"Well, you have seen him. He has spoken to you. Begone now!"

I stared incredulously at the effrontery of the old woman.

"I rather think that it is none of your business to instruct me in another's house, madam," I said sternly.

Behind the blackness of her veil, she opened her mouth and an hysterical cackle caused the hairs on the nape of my neck to prickle with apprehension.

"I am in charge here," she wheezed, once she had recovered from her mirth, if that horrific sound was mirth.

"You mean, you are Father Doheny's housekeeper?" I could hardly keep the astonishment from my voice for the old woman looked incapable of carrying a teapot from the hearth to the table, let alone performing any of the chores expected of a housekeeper.

She cackled again.

"It is late, boy," she finally replied. "I would be about your business. There is an evil across this mountain at night. I would have a care of it."

She threw out a gnarled claw in a dismissive gesture.

I glanced again at Father Doheny but he showed no sign of stirring and so I gathered my notes, rose and put on my coat with all the dignity I could muster.

She ignored me as I bade her a "goodnight" but simply stood aside from the door.

Outside the cottage the moon was up in a sky across which fretful clouds moved hurriedly as the wind blew and wailed over the crevices of rocks. A frost lay forming its white veins over the ground. The temperature must have dropped considerably since I had arrived. In the distance I could hear the howling of dogs. The sound seemed ethereal and unreal in the night air.

I went to my motorcycle and, trusting that I was not disturbing the old priest's slumber, I kicked the starter. It took a while to get the Triumph's engine warmed and ready enough for me to begin to wind my way down the mountain track.

I had not gone more than a mile when I realised that I had left one of my notebooks on the small table in Father Doheny's cottage. With a sigh I halted and turned the Triumph gently on the muddy track and pushed back towards "Teach Droch-Chlu".

I halted my bike and made my way along the track to the dark outline of the cottage.

Something caused me not to knock but to halt outside.

A shrill chanting came to my ears.

It was the voice of the old woman. It was some time before I could actually make out the sound of the words and then they meant little to me for they were in an ancient form of Irish.

Something prompted me to peer in through the small panes of the window.

I could make out the old priest, now standing still in the middle of the room. The old woman was before him, huddled with bent shoulders, crooning away. I was surprised to see that in her hands she held one of those old fashioned cavalry sabres, with a curved blade. There was something peculiarly disturbing about the way she was carrying on, chanting and crooning in that shrill voice.

Abruptly she stopped.

"Remember, Doheny," she commanded.

The old priest stood stiff and upright, his colourless eyes staring straight above her.

"You must remember. This is what they did."

Before I could cry out a warning, the old woman had raised the sabre and, with the full force of her seemingly frail frame, she thrust the point of the weapon through the old priest just about the level of his heart. I saw the end of the blade emerge through the back of his jacket. Yet he had not even staggered under the impact of the blow.

My jaw hung open. There are no words to express the shock and terror that scene gave me.

Worse was to come.

The old woman let go of the sabre and stepped away from him.

"Remember, Doheny!"

The old priest's claw-like hands came to the handle of the sabre and then, with a mighty tug, he pulled the great blade out of his body with a slow, deliberate motion. It was bright and shining and without a speck of blood upon its blade.

I stood at the small window transfixed with terror.

I could not believe what I had seen. It was impossible. She had thrust a sharp sword through a frail old priest and the priest had not batted an eye. He had merely withdrawn it. And it had made no wound!

"Remember, Doheny!"

I suppressed a cry of fear, turned and ran back to my bike. Panic seemed to impede my every move. I tried to start the motor but everything I did seemed wrong. I heard a cry from the old woman, became aware of a shadow on the path. I could feel fetid breath on my neck. Then the bike started with a roar and I was speeding away.

The track was twisting, the mud on the road slowed the machine. I felt as if I was in some cross-country bike race, swerving, twisting, leaping down the mountain pathway in the direction of the nearest village which was Ballynagree. I had never ridden so hard in all my life, ridden as if a thousand devils from hell were at my heels.

Just as I was beginning to relax, I saw a small hump-back bridge over a winding mountain torrent. I knew it to be an old granite stone bridge which was scarcely the width of three people walking. I eased back the throttle on my machine to negotiate it in safety and then…

Then, by the light of my front lamp, I saw the pale figure of the priest standing in the centre of the bridge; standing waiting for me.

In fright, I tugged at the handlebars of my machine, wrenching them, as I made a silly and futile attempt to ride through the gushing stream rather than run over the bridge.

My front wheel hit a stone and the next thing I knew was that I was cart wheeling over and over in the air before smashing down on a soft muddy surface of the bank. The impact still drove the breath out of my body and I lost consciousness.

It was only a momentary loss. I remember coming to with a swimming, nauseous sensation. I blinked.

A foot away from my face was the pale, parchment features of the priest. The colourless eyes seemed to be staring through me. His breath was stale, fetid and there was a terrible stench of death on him. I felt his hands at my throat. Large, powerful claws, squeezing.

"Stop, Doheny!"

It was the old woman's shrill tones. Beyond the priest's shoulder I caught a glimpse of her, the veil thrown back, while the skull-like face was staring in triumph with a livid weal of a scar showing diagonally from forehead to cheek.

The pressure eased a little.

"He is not one of them, Doheny. Leave him be. He is to be witness to what we have done. Leave him be. What we have done will live in him and he will pass it on so that it will be known. Leave him be."

The old priest, with incredible strength, shook me as if I were no more than a rag doll.

"Leave him be," commanded the old woman again.

And then I must have fainted.

When I came to, there was no one about. I pressed my hand against my throbbing temples and rose unsteadily to my feet. For a moment or two I could not remember how I had wound up in the mud of the mountain stream. Then I did remember. I gave a startled glance about me but could see no sign of the old priest and woman. The mountainside was in darkness. The only movement was that of the trees whispering, swaying and rustling in the winds that moaned softly over the mountain.

I stood a moment or two attempting to get my bearings. Then I saw the black heap of my Triumph motorbike lying in the shallows of the stream. I tried to move it out of the water but saw immediately, by the buckled wheel and splintered spokes, that even if I could start the machine it would be useless. Nevertheless, I attempted to start it. The starter gave a weak "phutt" and remained lifeless. It was obviously waterlogged.

I manoeuvred it to the bank of the stream and then waded up to the humpback bridge. There was nothing for it but to start walking down the mountain to Ballynagree. My head was throbbing and my mind was a whirl of conflicting thoughts. Was someone playing some terrible joke, a joke which was in bad taste? But no one would go to that extreme? Surely?

It took three hours of trekking down the muddy pathway before I saw the first signs of habitation.

I finally saw the dark outline of the garage where I had stopped for petrol. I stumbled towards it numb and frozen and hammered on the door. It was a while before I heard a window go up in the room above the garage front. A light shone down and a voice cried: "Who's there?"

"My motorbike has broken down and I'm stranded," I yelled. "Can I get a taxi from here or stay the rest of the night?"

"Man, do you realize that it is three o'clock in the morning?" came the stern reply.

"I was stranded on the mountain, on Musheramore Mountain," I replied.

A woman's voice came softly to my ears although I could not hear what was said.

The window came down with an abrupt bang. I waited hopefully. A light eventually shone in the downstairs window. Then the door was opened.

"Come away in," said the male voice.

I entered, feeling ice cold and drained from my experience.

As the light fell on me, the garage man recognized me.

"You're the young man who asked me the way to 'Teach Droch-Chlu' earlier this evening, aren't you?"

I nodded. It was the man whose overalls had proclaimed his name to be "Manus".

"That's right. My motorbike has broken down. I need a cab."

The man shook his head, nonplussed.

"You look all in." He turned and drew up a bottle of Jameson from a cupboard and a glass. "This will warm you up," he said pouring the whiskey and pushing the glass into my hands.

"What were you doing up at 'Teach Droch-Chlu' at this time of night? Are you a ghost hunter? Is that it?" And without waiting for a reply he continued: "I can telephone Macroom for a car to collect you, if you like. Where do you want to get to?"

"To Cork City."

"And where did your bike break down?"

"Up the mountain track somewhere, near a river crossing. By a humpbacked bridge."

"Ah, the spot is known to me. I'll go and pick your bike up tomorrow. Give me a number where I can contact you and I'll let you know what repairs need to be done."

I nodded, frowning at him as I sipped my whiskey.

"Why did you ask if I was a ghost-hunter?"

"You asked for 'Teach Droch-Chlu'. That's what the locals call it hereabouts, the house of evil reputation. We call it that on account that it has a reputation of being haunted. You know, it is one of the old 'famine' cottages which have survived in these parts."

I gave a diffident shake of the head and pressed the whiskey to my lips, enjoying its fiery warmth through my chill body.

"I was looking for Father Nessan Doheny," I explained.

The burly man stared at me a moment as if in surprise and then gave a low chuckle.

"So I was right then? Well now, I hope that you didn't find him."

I stopped rubbing my hands together and gazed at him in astonishment.

"Why do you say that?"

"Because Father Nessan Doheny has been dead these last one hundred and sixty years."

A chill, like ice, shot down my spine.

"Dead one hundred and sixty years?"

"Surely. Didn't you know the story? He led his flock to Musheramore Castle during the time of the 'Great Hunger' to plead with Lord Musheramore to help the surviving peasants and stop the evictions. The soldiers were called in from Mallow and given orders to charge the people who were kneeling on the lawn of the castle in prayer. Father Nessan Doheny was sabred to death with many of his flock."

I swallowed hard.

"And… and what happened to Brid Cappeen?"

He roared with laughter.

"Then you do know the old legend! Of course you did. It is local knowledge that 'Teach Droch-Chlu' was her old cabin. All part of the old legend. Well frankly, I think it is simply that. No more than a legend. Poor Father Doheny and the demented Brid Cappeen are long since dead. To think on it, the idea of an old woman reanimating the corpse of a priest to enact vengeance on Lord Musheramore and his ilk! God save us!" He genuflected piously. "It is a legend and nothing else."