Tales of Bearach Candlestick O’Floinn
By Maximilian Cummings
Tale I – Part 1
You really haven’t heard? No? You must have; surely everyone has heard of Bearach Candlestick O’Floinn? Perhaps it’s just in this corner of the mountains then? Mountains? Yes, the Mountains of Mourne. He’s as well known here as, as... well his sister for one.
Pretty you say? Well I wouldn’t have used that adjective in connection with Bearach Candlestick O’Floinn even on a dark rainy night; I might use several others though! Oh, you meant his sister! Well they say beauty is in the eye of the beholder but, perhaps, it will suffice if I say I wouldn’t behold if I was you...
Now Bearach Candlestick O’Floinn is certainly someone to meet, that is if you are able: because he can be rather circumspect about whom he sees. He doesn’t like to be caught... caught unawares I mean.
Oh, you’d like to meet him then, but where does he live, where can you find him? Well this pub would be a good place on another night, some nights, well the odd night perhaps. And certainly with his long nose in a jug or then, perhaps, at a crossroads leaning on a stick.
Can’t you just go to his house? Of course you can’t you amadán. Where would it be do you thinks Bearach Candlestick O’Floinn lives? He doesn’t advertise that, you know, or where he keeps his gold.
Sounds like a leprechaun! Well what else do you think I was talking about- that’s Bearach Candlestick O’Floinn, as fine a leprechaun as ever you’ll meet, if you do, isn’t that so Feargus O’Dubhthaigh?
There was a grunt, presumably of agreement down the bar.
You don’t believe in ‘em! Dangerous talk. Green waist coated suit, silly great green top hat with a shamrock or perhaps a four leaf clover stuck on, buckles to belt, hat and shoes and stripey green socks indeed! What sort of idea do you be having of leprechauns? Haven’t you seen ‘em? You might find them across the water dressed like that, all Americanised, but I don’t think you’d find Bearach Candlestick O’Floinn in such garb. Mind you there was this girl who dressed up like such a Mac Leprechaun who took Bearach Candlestick O’Floinn’s fancy one night and I don’t think she’s been quite the same about leprechauns ever since... or the colour green.
What happened? Well I’ll tell you and, no, I don’t mind if I have another. Thank you kindly, a drop of the black stuff—aye a pint. Good man yourself.
It was like this.
It all started at the dance you see at this very pub. Colleen was up from the town visiting and she came along dressed, it being a fancy dress party and all, in the sort of get up you might find in the town but it caused a bit of eyebrow raising I can tell you. She a pretty wan alright, with long red hair and the boys liked her well enough as soon as they saw her and so she was never short of a partner. It’s thirsty work dancing, thank you kindly, and perhaps she’d drunk more than she should have. Anyway the disco had stopped and we were into the fiddle time and still the young ones were around. I remember the lights flickering a bit and then in he came. Who? Why Bearach Candlestick O’Floinn himself. Smart he looked. He’d brushed up well; you couldn’t fault the cleanliness of his ruff or the pressing of his red jacket or the set of his cocked hat. His sister would have been proud of him. Well, yes perhaps I overstated that, not proud of him - that would have been a first!
“There’s an awful drought on me,” he’d said. Well that was no surprise and you’d hardly refuse him a jug. No, believe me you wouldn’t. So he soon had that nose of his in a jug and the fiddling started again and he’d smiled round at the company in a friendly way which was good until, that is, he saw Colleen, when a frown came over his features. Now it might’ve been her shoes he didn’t rate but I don’t think it was just that.
‘Course Colleen was oblivious; worse still, and I do think she was not as clear headed as she might have been on account of the drink, she spoke to him.
“Old man,” she’d said. Well, that wasn’t a good start. “I didn’t see you here earlier.”
“Doesn’t mean I wasn’t here,” he’d snapped back.
“Yes it does, I don’t miss much.” It was all superior town like talk. Not a good idea.
“Oh don’t you, miss?” Bearach Candlestick O’Floinn’s teeth shone. He was amused now. Not a good idea.
“And what might you be dressed as?” He looked her up and down and well he might. I know I had when Colleen wasn’t looking right from those green shoes up to that silly hat. His gaze, like mine had lingered on those green and yellow stripey socks rising up above her knee or were his eyes really on the creamy thighs before the green of that short skirt? The green jacket with the buttons had long been discarded but there was the green blouse with a very generous thrust of breast straining the material. Oh, did I mention the belt with the big buckle? Then there was the hat but he didn’t miss her face, pretty as I said with freckles and a stub nose and all that red hair. Now the hat, all floppy like, but a sort of top hat, squashed with a ridiculous belt and buckle around it for no apparent purpose. It was green to match and with a great sewn on Shamrock. Well we all knew what Colleen thought she was dressed as but we hoped she wouldn’t say it.
“A Leprechaun of course, silly, what did you think I looked like!”
Now Bearach Candlestick O’Floinn can smile wide and he did; you could have posted a letter to Father Christmas. “Oh, the Logherymen dress like that do they now? Have you seen one to copy, perhaps?”
“Don’t be silly there are no such things.” She’d giggled. It was not an unattractive sound, no far from it. “Nor hobgoblins, nor faeries nor banshees.”
Well, I wouldn’t swear to it, my friend, but I thought that knocked the smile of Bearach’s face for a moment as he looked around a little alarmed; but it didn’t last.
“So you don’t rate the little folk then—and where might you be from?”
Well, the smile was back as wide as a gull’s wing, when she said the big town. He thought that pretty funny which annoyed Colleen. She said crossly, “and, well, have you seen the wee folk? Today perhaps?”
Bearach of course could not resist being a little disingenuous, “No, I can’t say as rightly I have this day, my sister being poorly and all.”
Colleen went back to dancing and Bearach to drinking and both did mighty well, I can tell you. Of course, as all good evenings do, this one had to come to an end and it was a late one. Colleen’s friends were around her as she made to leave the emptying pub. It was lovely and warm in the pub with the fire roaring away, the happy evening still hanging on the air and the yellow-cream of the smoke cured plaster looking all friendly like and it must have seemed a shame to leave it and go out into the cold night. Colleen turned for a last look at the happy scene before she left and caught Bearach Candlestick O’Floinn’s eye. Oh he hadn’t left. He winked and when she turned back to leave, her friends had gone.
Well, I say, my friend, that her friends had gone but I can’t vouch for the truth of that as I didn’t see it. Oh, I was there alright, I didn’t leave the bar until the last of them and that was after she and her friends left but I didn’t see it, so what I tell you is what I’ve heard from Colleen and himself, but he embroiders—if you know what I mean. Leastways it depends. He talks his stories down if he thinks his sister might get to hear but if you catch him unwary like, that’ll be in his cups, then the story grows in the telling and some of ‘em grow mighty long!
Well, Colleen thought her friends had gone out the door but then she found it locked when she tried it with no key so she turns and comes back into the bar; only there’s no one there now other than old himself, Bearach Candlestick O’Floinn, and he’s sitting up on one of the tables with a pint pot in his hand and a smile as wide as the sea. All the while the fires burning and the room’s as cosy as a maiden’s placket, if you’ll excuse the expression.
“You don’t want to go out in the cold, missy, when it’s all warm and snug here with beer to drink.”
Colleen did not give him so much as a nod in reply but went to try the other door only to find that didn’t open either. She turned to Bearach rather crossly, “Why’re the doors locked?”
He shrugs his shoulders, takes a pull at his pot, and says, “No worry to me. Rather big for a leprechaun lass aren’t you?”
And she replies, snaps back, and I have it straight from the horse’s mouth; well Bearach Candlestick O’Floinn’s anyway. Yes, he was standing over there, just there; in his red coat when he told me and he said she’d said,
“I’m not a fucking leprechaun.”
Bearach Candlestick O’Floinn says he quite fell off the table. No, he did! He says he fell off the table backwards, and he don’t often tell something against himself, with laughter and the beer went all over him. He picked himself off the floor and could barely say, because the tears were rolling down his cheeks and onto his red jacket, now rather soaked with beer,
“Oh, but I am!”
You can imagine Colleen’s face as his words sank in. Well of course they didn’t to start with. She was going on about where had everyone gone, how could she get out of this place, where were her friends, why were you, ‘old man,’ laughing as much to wet yourself and so on when I think she became aware of how quiet it all was—just her prattle and the laughing of Bearach Candlestick O’Floinn. It was mighty quiet, not even the clock a ticking, just the crackling of the log fire but not even the sound of the wind.
It was as if she was looking at him for the first time. The words were sinking in. “You’re oddly dressed yourself, old man.”
“Not that old, what you take me for a hundred? And what is wrong with these clothes? Smartest you’ll find.” He looked idly at his shoes with a smug expression.
“But you’re wearing a ruff and lace. Breeches and black stockings and the cut of that jacket is so, so...”
And it seemed to Colleen that the drink was getting the better of her for her focus seemed to go of a moment and when she had blinked a bit she saw the old man looking rather different. Still sitting on the table but his feet were no longer on the floor. How could they be as he was now about three feet high though the beer jug had not got any smaller?
“So fitting for a leprechaun, you was about to say I think?”
“Oh.” said Colleen which I think was about as good a thing as you might say in the circumstances. The import of Bearach’s words had sunk.
“Not green?”
“Can’t as say I have ever worn the colour. Countryside couldn’t be greener but not me. Now I come to think of it my sister once... but then it suited her complexion.”
“But I thought...”
“Now where would you be getting that idea from? In the town I suppose.”
Now you can’t blame Bearach for his prejudice and he wouldn’t have known of the Media or the U.S. of A. if you’d asked him (though that was then before, before he went Stateside—but that’s another story entirely; and a long way to go to avoid your relations if you ask me).
“You don’t like my clothes then?”
Bearach Candlestick O’Floinn put down his jug. “No, I was rather thinking, and that was my idea, that they would be better off... than on.”
It did seem to Colleen that it was rather warm in the pub what with the fire blazing away. “It’s a silly hat,” she said, “it keeps falling off. And it’s a bit hot for this jacket.”
Well that brought the creamy thighs and long stripey socks back into view given as how the green skirt was quite short. Not that I’m saying, you understand, the blouse and face above it weren’t worth the looking, because they were I can tell you. I can imagine her standing there, hands on hips, legs apart and old Bearach sitting on that table swinging his legs and his eyes moving up those legs, up those stripey socks, past her knees to where the gap between the creamy thighs began to narrow and the skirt hem started and wondering what lay beyond. Well wouldn’t you? I’ve wondered oft times but not seen, though I’ve been told... no, I’m getting ahead of meself.
“Cosy I’d say,” says Bearach, “now wouldn’t you be better off without that green blouse?”
And to Colleen all of a sudden it did appear unnecessary in such a cosy room. Funny that, not the sort of thing you’d expect of a girl but these leprechauns have a bit of magic about them and can slip the mind a bit one way or the other and no doubt, in her rather befuddled state, it was not too difficult for wily old Bearach to trick her mind just a touch. Now you can imagine old Bearach nodding as Colleen’s white lacy bra came into view. Now I don’t as know if it was lacy and white—that’s my own imagining. Now perhaps I shouldn’t do such imagining, but there it is. Of course that wasn’t going to be enough, was it, for himself? So you can imagine that it wasn’t long before that white lacy bra was on top of the coat. Well Bearach he picks up the fiddle lying there and begins to play. The music was not quite as Colleen had ever heard before. Now I’ve heard it on a dark night and right entrancing it is. And as he began to play Colleen began to dance. Of course she’d been dancing earlier but you can imagine how prettier her dancing was without her top and with her goodly sized breasts swaying in time to the music above that short green skirt and those stripey socks. I expect he danced her up into a bit of a frenzy, danced those nipples up if you like. No doubt it was a sight to have seen but I didn’t, more’s the pity.
I am told, and this is from what Colleen told her friends, that the more it seemed she took her clothes off the bigger old Bearach became. He just grew from his three foot, taller and taller. Now why would that be, do you think?
Bearach stopped at the end of his reel and looked sadly down at Colleen’s shoes. “They really won’t do, won’t do at all. I think we can do much better than that.”
So they came off too.
Well, there Colleen was, naked from the waist up but still with her skirt, long socks and presumably panties. You can guess, I am sure, what happened next.