An Early Childhood Chapter 25 Part 1

CHAPTER 25: THE BLOWING UP OF IRELAND (PART ONE)

Continued from the end of Chapter 24.

                Well, it wasn’t long afterwards that the whole War of Independence came to an end, with a cessation of the hostilities and the beginning of the talks in Londing. The Irish Civil War was its inferior sequel. That nefarious excuse of an Irishman, deVilera, who had gotten away with blue murther in the Easter Revolution stuck up there in his biscuit factory on account of his being a Yankee Doodle Dandee in real life – and the Brits being “diplomatically obliged” not to execute him – had sent over Griffith and Collins and the lads to London to meet with the Brithish government.

                 The lads returned a few months later, after a spot of bother with the telegraphies, and they had a sheet of paper and a piece of rock. The Big Fellow, Collins, heralded the piece of rock as a stepping stone to independence, but sure, that deVilera whipped out his lad, threw his head back in hysterics and peed all over the rock.

               And didn’t everyone draw out pistols, pointing from one to the next and sure you didn’t know who was on who’s side ar chor ar bith, and myself, Sean Tubridy O’Reilly and Tancred Moorphy M’Nally ran out of the building.

                I turned to the lads and I said, I sez:

                “I don’t know who’s side to take,” sez I, before my feet were lifted from under me and a Brackentan (British soldiers so called because of their ability to masquerade as dead undergrowth) that I thought was a bush, he grabs hold of me, pulling me down to the concrete footpath and pulling my arm round my neck, over my head and under my legs and didn’t I spend the next few months in hospital with a badly broken arm under armed guard strapped at my elbow after the Brackentan says to me:

                “Awroight, bustah, youh nicked!”

A camouflaged Brithish soldier known as a Brackentan

                And Sean and Tancred running off down the road with the fright ar cipíní. And so Sean Tubridy O’Reilly and Tancred Moorphy M’Nally went into hiding in the smelliest, most stinkiest mountains in Western Europe, the Macgillicuddy Reeks. No Englishman nor Irishman worth his fish and chips nor stew – after having been kept in a warm moist place in the house for more than six months – would approach that mountain range with any sensible proximity.

Continued in Chapter 25 Part 2.