The first two stories are written from memory by my sister Mary.

The Grove

We sat on opposite sides of the fireplace, the old man and I. He in his favourite rocking chair, I in my armchair. I watched as he leaned forward and rested his frail elbows on his knees, put the palms of his hands together and slowly touched the tips of the fingers of his right hand, one after the other, to the corresponding fingertip of his left hand. When all fingers touched, he moved his hands apart and after a few minutes began the movement again. I admired again, as I had many times before, those beautiful slender hands with their long tapering fingers and thought, "They are the hands of a great artist.'

"You know" I said, "It's a pity you never had a chance to study painting. With those hands I'm sure you could have painted beautiful pictures."

He stopped his movement, held his hands out, studied them for a while and replied, "They painted no pictures for me but they held my children, my grandchildren and my great grandchildren. That's immortality; that's the greatest gift a pair of hands can give to the world."

We lapsed into silence again. He rocked slowly and the fingers began to touch again.

I remembered...

Strong young hands lifted me up on two strong shoulders and held me there. "You and I" my father said, "Are going to Charley's Grove. I have something special to show you." We headed off across the fields on a lovely warm sunny spring morning. When we had to cross a fence he took me from his shoulders, lifted me over the fence and then climbed across and put me effortlessly on his shoulders again. From my perch I could see the countryside, I thought for miles around. All the while he told me stories of birds, rabbits and foxes.

As we neared the edge of the grove he told me, "From here on you must walk and hold my hand." So hand in hand we went into the grove. In a soft voice now he pointed out to me the tracks in the grass where the animals of the grove travelled to and from their nests at night. "Now" he said, "you must close your eyes and don't open till I tell you." I squeezed my eyes tightly shut, held very tightly to his hand and we walked on side by side.

He paused. "Open up!" he said. I did as I was told and could hardly breathe with excitement. There before me was a carpet of bluebells under the trees. The sun shone through the branches and turned some flowers and leaves to gold.

"Daddy" I whispered, "Is this Fairyland?"

"Maybe it is", he said. "In any case, in this world it's as close as we can get to it."

We wandered slowly through our Dreamland for what seemed like hours. There seemed to be no need to talk. Peace and beauty all around, a safe strong hand to hold; in a child's eyes a glimpse of magic.

"Now" he said, "You can pick a bunch for your mother, but remember to pick them here and there. You must never take all the flowers from one patch and leave it bare. Always leave some there for the Fairies." With my big bunch of bluebells in my arms we headed home again. I walked by his side or sat on his shoulders, always held safe by his strong hands and bringing the magic of that glimpse of Fairyland with me.

As I look across the fire now I see those hands again, no longer old and worn and mottled with dark brown and blue patches, but young and strong and safe. I think, 'No, he did not take a brush and canvas to paint a picture. He took a child's eyes and opened them to the beauty that was all around, just waiting to be seen.'

The grove is gone now and so is he. The grove was cut down in the name of progressive farming. He, like the bluebells, lived his appointed life span and then faded away, in his own words, 'to make room for younger growth', but I will always remember him and the grove of bluebells on that magic spring day and perhaps at dusk and dawn the fairies remember too.

Mary v Rumohr

Home

The Cloyne Hero

"So I shouted the Spit Lane war cry 'Scrub and wash clothes' and when they heard that they knew the game was up and they would have to surrender." That was the last sentence to many of my father's bed time stories. With that blood-curdling war cry, he, the fearless fighter put paid to big Chief Sitting Bull, to Rommel in the desert, to a variety of witches and to 'Baddies' in general. We, his eight children and greatest fans went happily to bed knowing that for us and all the children in the village the world was a wonderful, safe place. How could it be otherwise when our father was the greatest hero the world had ever known.

He was the man who flew the first plane single handed over the North Pole, the man who fought and captured Moby Dick (the whale was naturally called after him) and Gregory Peck played his part in a film which was later made). If he had not, single handed, surrounded Rommel and Panzers in the desert, Germany might have won the war.

He was the man who joined the Foreign Legion and gave his comrade a Viking funeral in their fort in the desert. And no witch or demon would dare to live in Ireland the home of Fearless Dick. So we grew up safe and secure and never afraid of the dark. No monster or ghost, no matter how fierce, would dare to approach our house and if by chance one was foolish enough to try then he would be quickly dispatched by our own personal Hero.

In later years i discovered that my father was born and grew up near our village and in fact left it only once. He went to work in Jersey and was so homesick that he returned after six weeks and never again strayed. Strangely enough, that knowledge was not a disappointment to me. In my childhood memories he is still the hero. I can still remember seeing him landing his single engine aircraft in the Ring at St. Coleman's Terrace and I know that I helped him to scrape the ice off his leather coat and goggles.

When we were children we had no TV or radio and so on winter evenings Daddy's storytelling was our window into the world outside our village. Sitting around the fire on those Winter evenings we learned about history geography and great world events not as children in school who learn dry facts, but as children who were part of a fantastic adventure. We suffered with our hero as he dragged himself across the Sahara Desert. When his throat was parched and dry we could hardly breathe and when he stumbled past a huge boulder and saw a lemonade tree our spirits soared and we tasted with him the ice-cold lemonade from the bottles that hung there. So off to bed happy in the certainty that goodness and justice had once again prevailed and always would because the hero was always ready.

The father who came home every evening on his trusty Raleigh bicycle cold and tired and dusty from his work as a County Council labourer was transformed in our imagination to a fearless fighter on his trusty steed. The dust from breaking stones in Carrigacrump Quarry became changed into dust from the Gobi Desert, the wide plains of America or the deep dark jungles of Africa. Red Indians, Aborigines with poisoned arrows and fierce wild animals of all descriptions stood no chance against our Irish warrior with a pocketful of gravel stones and his catapult. He never needed any weapon other than his 'cattera', a bunch of nettles (for wicked witches) an ash plant - for male baddies - and of course his ability to surround single handed not only half-a-dozen bank robbers but tribes of Indians and herds of buffalo.

My father was tall and straight with black hair worn in the fashion of those days &emdash; long on top and combed straight back from his forehead. Sometimes as a special treat I was allowed to sit on his knees and comb the hair down over his eyes and tie it in a plait. This was always accompanied by a great deal of laughter from us children. He had a fairly long nose which he claimed was proof of his Roman ancestors. His hands were long and slender as were his feet which he told us was proof of his noble blood. He certainly was not lacking in pride or imagination and had a story ready for every occasion. When my mother made her special bread pudding from left-over bread he told us that this was Donkey's Wedding Cake and because of that an ordinary bread pudding became for us a very special treat.

Mary v Rumohr