Clanwe Yashpack

Prologue

I am 214 years old, although people tell me I have the appearance of a man in his sixties. Understandably, I have frequently been asked about the reasons for my longevity. After all, I am more than 80 years older than any other human being on the planet. Usually, I try to avoid answering the question directly. Often, I explain why I do not think genetics play any great part. I point out that my father died at age 59. My mother was just 70, and two of my grandparents died before they reached 60. My children and grandchildren have all predeceased me with none of them reaching 85 years of age. Just one of my great grandchildren is still alive having reached 92 years of age. If pressed, I waffled on about eating a healthy diet, getting plenty of exercise and drinking the occasional glass of red wine. The healthy diet and exercise are essentially true, but the bit about the red wine is very much an understatement.
The real reason for my longevity is well-known to me but, until now, I have been unwilling to divulge it for two reasons. Firstly, it was always most probable that people would not believe me and would dismiss me as either a fantasist or as someone suffering from senile dementia. Secondly, I was afraid of the consequences for some very good friends of mine. But circumstances have changed, and I am now prepared to tell all.
Strange as it may seem, the whole matter has its origins in my not possessing a television. Following a relationship breakdown, I moved into rented accommodation where I lived alone. Before this, I had watched very little television other than news or sports. So, I made the decision not to have a television. In due course, that led to the receipt of a letter each month from the television licensing people threatening dire consequences if I was found to be watching or downloading programmes without a licence. These I ignored because, even if I were to inform them that I did not have a television, they would come to check anyway.
I still watch television occasionally. If I wished to watch a particular sporting event, I watched it in the pub. So, it was then when I happened to be in the Phoenix in the evening that it all began.
Liverpool was playing in the Champions League that evening. During half-time, a chap called Billy McConkey arrived at the bar. Billy described himself as a businessman, and he certainly was involved in various ventures. Whether all of these ventures were legitimate was very much open to question.
Whatever about his business activities, Billy’s generosity was never called into question. By all accounts, he paid his employees well, and he was known to buy rounds of drinks for the entire bar.
Billy enquired if anyone knew of a water diviner. He explained that he had purchased a plot of land on which he intended to build a home. He had been informed that an underground stream was suspected to be running through the plot, and he wanted to track its course so that he would not receive any nasty surprises whenever the foundations were excavated. There was also the possibility of sinking a well or using the stream to feed a pond or small lake. Billy’s enquiry provoked much discussion. Some of the bar regulars expressed great scepticism regarding water divining. Others said they had an open mind on the subject. None of them knew of any water diviners. All were amazed when I stated that I could divine water.
Billy asked if I would undertake the work stating that he would pay well. When asked, he said the plot was just over three acres. I told him that surveying a plot of that size would take quite some time and was just about to suggest a fee of £300 when Billy offered a fee of £500. We agreed to meet at 9.30 the next morning so that Billy could take me to the land in question. When he asked if there was anything he would need to bring, I told him I would need a couple of cans of spray paint of any colour except green.




Chapter 1

Billy gave me a quizzical glance when I climbed into his SUV. In addition to a rucksack containing a packed lunch, I was carrying two wire coat hangers which I had straightened out into straight rods. He had been expecting me to have a forked piece of hazel. His questions kept coming. How did I learn to divine water? Why did I have metal rods? Was I a seventh son of a seventh son?
My answers surprised him. For the first 63 years of my life, I had been blissfully unaware of my ability. It so happened that the installation of a water metre at a friend Brigid’s house in County Louth indicated that there was leakage in the system within the bounds of the one-acre property. Brigid had brought in Johnny, who is a water diviner, to trace the route of the connection to the mains. This he did using two straightened wire coat hangers. He held them loosely by their ends around waist height, parallel to each other pointing straight in front of him as he walked slowly. When he came over the water pipe, the rods swung so that they crossed each other and pointed downwards.
After Johnny had left, I took the rods and, out of curiosity, imitated what he had done. To my amazement, I got the same reaction from the rods, although others who tried did not. I still do not know how the rods work or why only a small minority of people can divine water.
Billy’s plot was in an idyllic location. It was gently sloping and overlooked a broad valley. Behind part of it rose a high steep hill whilst the rest was in front of a col between that hill and a lower neighbour. The view from in front of the col was breathtaking, and it was there on that side of the plot Billy wished to build. He marked the circumference of his proposed house which, in my estimation, covered just over 4,500 square feet. “So, it is not going to be a small bungalow?” I asked. “Who said anything about a bungalow?” replied Billy. “If it is two storeys, it will be some house,” I remarked. “Not two,” he said. “Three, or, more accurately, four, if you count the garage and wine cellar, I will have under part of it.” It emerged that he intended to have two full storeys and a third extending to around half the width of the lower two with a roof terrace occupying the other half.
Such a building, however well designed, was most unlikely to comply with planning regulations, but Billy was confident he would obtain planning permission. Aware of Billy’s shady reputation, I referred to brown envelopes. He laughed and said, “Suppose, just suppose, a hypothetical situation exists. Suppose a Chief Planning Officer has a gambling problem. He has an account with a bookmaker who has permitted him to run up a debt of enormous proportions. He is way out of his depth. Now, suppose that bookmaker submits a planning application. Can you really see it being refused?”
The picture was now clear. Billy had a majority stake in Winbig, a local chain of bookmakers. His behaviour, whilst not actually illegal, stank to high heaven. Still, it was none of my business. Whilst I was not happy about going along with such activity, there was probably nothing to be gained by backing out of our arrangement. The thought occurred to me that I could expose the situation to the authorities or the media. But, aside from not relishing making enemies of Billy and his associates, it was quite possible that all I would achieve was to make a fool of myself. Billy probably had yet to submit the application. After all, the application would need to specify the precise location of the planned dwelling, and Billy was using my services to avoid picking a location affected by the underground stream. Besides, he could probably find some other water diviner or even use a few test boreholes. I would just have to hold my nose and do what I had agreed to do.
So, I told Billy I would start by checking the proposed site of the house and then cover the rest of the land. Although no expert, I did not expect the stream to interfere with the site, but I did not tell Billy this lest he decide that he no longer needed my services. Just as I was starting, Billy received a call on his mobile. After a brief cryptic conversation, he informed me he had to head off to sort out a problem, but he should be back within an hour or so. Off he went. I was aware that the “or so” could well prove to be longer than the hour but I was not concerned. It was a beautiful spring morning. I had my lunch with me and, if needs be, I could walk home in a little more than an hour.
Walking slowly up and down with the rods was quite relaxing. Each time I turned, I shifted about two feet across the site. I had already formed the view that it was most unlikely I would find the stream in this part of the plot, but it was safest to make certain. Even if I found a stream elsewhere in the plot, that would not be a guarantee that a second stream, either a tributary or fully separate from the first, did not exist. So back and forth I walked until my rods suddenly jerked upright so that they were vertical and became very warm, almost hot.
That really surprised me. It was something I had never previously experienced. So, I took a couple of steps backwards and walked forward again. The same thing happened. I tried to move forward, but the rods seemed to be against a solid barrier. I tried walking forward holding the rods hanging loosely at either side of me but again they swung upwards. Setting the rods on the ground, I had no problem walking forward.
After marking the spot, further attempts to walk on parallel tracks revealed that the barrier followed a straight line that intersected with one proposed side wall about halfway along and with the proposed back wall about one-third of the way along. I wondered what I would find if I approached the barrier from the other side and discovered I could take the rods through, provided I carried them in one hand. When I approached from several feet away from the first barrier, a second one revealed its presence running parallel to the first about five feet away from it. Curiously, if I approached from less than five feet away, the first barrier did not seem to exist.
If one looked along the direction of the barriers, one would be looking through the col, so up I went and surveyed the next valley. It was then that a realisation dawned on me. On the far side of the valley was Knocknashee – the hill of the fairies. That is where there is a reputed fairy fort. There is not much to see other than an old hawthorn tree standing in the centre of a circle of standing stones, which is about forty feet in diameter. Despite its description as a fairy fort, I had never heard about any tales of reputed fairy activity at the spot.
But what, if anything, lies in the other direction? Trusting that Billy would not return too quickly, I set off in the other direction. I had not gone more than a quarter mile when I came across an old hawthorn tree standing in the middle of a field. Almost certainly, any local would tell me it was a fairy thorn.
I recalled as a child hearing stories about a house that had experienced problems because it was built straddling the route between two fairy thorns, or so the story had gone. Could a similar fate befall Billy’s planned creation? The thought caused a shiver to run up my spine. It is a brave, perhaps foolhardy, man who will interfere with any fairy thorn or the route between the two of them. Legend has it that the fairies tend to exact revenge. I was not the one who was going to build across the route or live in the house, but I was associated with the project. Billy must be persuaded to move the site of the house.
That might prove easier said than done. For a start, Billy definitely did not believe in fairies. One night in the Phoenix, the talk had been about ghosts. Billy had been quite vehement in dismissing the possibility of their existence. “Ghosts, vampires, werewolves, poltergeists, fairies, leprechauns! All a load of total shite!” had been his contribution to the discussion. Worse still, persuading Billy that a fairy pathway crossed the property would in no way help the situation. Billy’s instinct would be to try and profit from the situation by turning the fairy road into a visitor attraction. If Cooley could profit from leprechauns, then Billy could profit from fairies. That could well bring down the fairies’ wrath on all concerned.
While walking back to Billy’s land, it occurred to me that the solution might lie in persuading him that there existed some other problem within the site. So, I erased as best I could the marks outlining the fairy road and then drew a circle with a diameter of around fifteen feet towards the other end of the house. This was going to be where the “problem” lay.
Locating the underground stream proved straightforward. It was pretty much where I expected it to be. It was also sufficiently far away from his planned site to allow a fresh site to be used between the stream and the original site, thus avoiding any interference with the fairy road.
Billy arrived back just as I was finishing marking the route of the stream. His initial reaction was one of delight because the stream would not interfere with his site. He was much less pleased when I drew his attention to the “problem” ground. My story was that I was finding a strange reaction by the rods over that area. It was a lot weaker than that from the stream, and I really did not know what the cause was. All I could offer by way of explanation was, of necessity, speculation. One possibility was an underground deposit of a metallic ore with magnetic properties. This would not cause any problems with the construction of the house but who knows what effect it might have on electronic equipment. Many items, including computers, televisions, game consoles, alarms and security cameras were likely to be affected. Another possible explanation was that there was soft or swampy ground beneath the surface that could cause problems with construction.
I told Billy I would like to investigate the matter further. If I could replicate the rods’ reaction, that should give me a good idea as to what the problem was. Firstly, I would like to try the rods over different pieces of soft or swampy ground. One area where there was a large area where the ground varied from just a little soft to very swampy was the great bog beside the Newry-Portadown canal. The other theory might prove more difficult to investigate, but I thought I should be able to set up experiments with magnets of various strengths. I did not tell Billy that I was already aware that power lines, whether overhead or buried, elicited a strong reaction from the rods. I wanted him to believe that swampy ground was the cause of the “problem.” The nonsense about a magnetic deposit was designed to muddy the waters. By way of demonstration, I faked a weak reaction over the ground within the circle and then showed him a much stronger reaction over the stream. I had a moment of panic when Billy asked if he could try using the rods to see whether or not he could divine water. I could not very well refuse and so I was distinctly relieved when Billy got no reaction from the rods over the stream. Had he done so, the lack of any reaction over the ground within the circle would have occasioned me major difficulty.
Billy really did not want to move his site. It afforded a better view than anywhere else on the plot. He took the line that neither possible cause presented an insurmountable problem. If it was swampy ground, then the site could be piled if necessary. If it was some sort of magnetic deposit, then the foundation and subfloor could incorporate some sort of Faraday cage that would eliminate the problem. He reckoned that it need not involve much more than incorporating steel mesh reinforcing into the founds and subfloors. He added that, even without a Faraday cage, only a small portion of the site was affected, leaving plenty of room for electronic equipment within the rest of the house. There was no effective argument I could deploy to convince him the site needed to be moved. Additional expenses did not appear to present any problem. I was also aware that if I tried too hard to persuade him to move the site, it could well arouse suspicion. Once I had made him aware of a potential problem, how he handled it was up to him.
Having handed to me twenty-five twenties, Billy dropped me home. That night, I found sleep very elusive as I tried to come up with some solution to the situation in which I found myself. The £500 which had first appeared to be easy money now seemed poor compensation for my present trouble.




Chapter 2

In the days that followed, I tried to push the matter to the back of my mind. If I was going to fall foul of the fairies, there was nothing I could do to prevent it. But my thoughts kept returning to the subject that led me to researching the evidence for the existence or otherwise of fairies, especially at Knocknashee.
My efforts brought me into contact with Ciaran Donnelly, a local historian who had given a talk on fairy folklore a couple of years previously. He was quite delighted at my interest in the subject and invited me to his house one evening. He had little useful information to offer regarding the fairy fort at Knocknashee. Yes, he could find references to the fairy fort in old records and documents dating back centuries, but that, in itself, meant very little. The name, Knocknashee, is a corruption of the Gaelic Cnoc na Sí, meaning hill of the fairies, commentators could well have referred to a fairy fort without any other evidence whatsoever. Certainly, references to fairy activity in the area are fewer to the extent of being nonexistent. Ciaran told me I might have had more success if I had started my enquiries a couple of years earlier and proceeded to recount what he knew about Mickey McAteer.
He had first heard about Mickey from his Uncle Alec who, like other locals, regarded Mickey with more than a little curiosity. On first impression, Mickey was a typical bachelor farmer with a cottage and around forty acres. He did not farm the land himself. Instead, he let all the land on conacre. He claimed to be the last of his line, which could very well have been true. Nobody in the locality had any memory of Mickey’s parents or of any siblings of his. Stranger still, nobody had any memory of Mickey as anything other than a middle-aged man. Alec had told Ciaran of walking to primary school and seeing Mickey leaning over a five-barred gate smoking his pipe. He looked the same then as he did when Alec started drawing the old age pension.
Mickey mostly kept to himself. Indeed, he would not be seen around the locality for weeks at a time, even months. Even on the rare occasion when he visited McGeough’s Pub, there was little conversation to be had with Mickey. He sat in a corner, and his replies to any attempts to start a conversation with him tended to be monosyllabic. The locals regarded him as an eccentric old boy and, while they harboured a great deal of curiosity about him, for the most part, left him alone. However, one night, Mickey consumed more than his normal quota of drinks and became quite intoxicated. In his drunken state, he told the assembled company that he was friends with the fairies, had visited them and that he could speak a little of their language. He uttered a few phrases which, for all his listeners knew, could have been Swahili, Double Dutch or just plain gibberish. Most of those present watched and listened with mild amusement, but a couple of them started to take a handout of Mickey by coming out with their own pieces of gibberish, claiming to speak Leprechaunese.
At this, Mickey became ferociously angry, roaring at them that the fairies would punish their insulting behaviour. He cursed them roundly and stormed out of the pub. There followed his longest absence from the locality of around three and a half years.
Ciaran said that he had been fascinated when he heard all this from his uncle and had resolved to interview Mickey as part of a project on folklore on which he was then engaged. However, the interview proved difficult to arrange because Mickey seemed to spend more time away from the cottage than he did living in it. On numerous occasions, he had called to find the cottage deserted. Eventually, he heard that Mickey had been seen a couple of days earlier and, approaching the cottage, saw smoke coming from the chimney.
When he knocked on the door, he was surprised when it was answered by a woman. She explained that she lived a couple of hundred yards down the road. She had seen Mickey the previous day, and he seemed quite unwell. Overnight, he had become worse and was suffering from a very high fever. The doctor had been there and wanted Mickey to go to hospital but he had refused. He had nobody else to look after him, and she was being a good Samaritan, trying her best to tend to him and make him comfortable. But he seemed to be getting worse and was now delirious. She asked Ciaran if he would be kind enough to sit with Mickey for an hour. She needed to go home to get a few things done, including feeding the chickens.
Ciaran agreed as it would have been heartless not to. As he sat by the bed, he listened to the ravings of the man lying in it. But as he listened, he gradually realised that the ravings were remarkably lucid. He heard a detailed description of what Mickey had seen as he watched King William and his army pass by heading southwards. Having studied the Williamite campaign in Ireland, Ciaran was struck by how closely Mickey’s description tallied with what he knew. It was quite amazing that this man knew so much about William’s army. Then the narrative switched, and Mickey recounted details of a spell spent working on the canal from Portadown-Newry. This had been built during the 1730s, and, again, Mickey’s account accorded with the very detailed research Ciaran had conducted into the relevant historical documents. Ciaran was well acquainted with all historians in Northern Ireland and had never come across Mickey in historical circles. So how did this man know so much?