A Hitchhiker’s Guide to Superstition
Fairies, Elves, and Gnomes — Reality or Imagination?
Banshees, Clurichauns, and Leprechauns — Myth or Legend?
Fairies, Elves, and Gnomes — Reality or Imagination?
It all depends on where you stand — and if you’re standing in Ireland, you’d better be ready to believe! Because the Emerald Isle is not only characterized by strong Christian beliefs, but also by an unshakeable belief in the realm of the supernatural.
Ah, I feel in my bones that we have some non-believers in our midst, so I’m going to tell you a story that may change your minds. This tale of the supernatural concerns one Liam O’Doherty. You’ll be meeting him soon, but first, please let me paint the scenery for this little adventure. If you like (unless you’re reading this), you can close your eyes now and let your imagination take over.
Our story is set in the middle of March — winter in the northern hemisphere. And to use a local expression, it was pissing down with rain. On this particular day, St Peter — he’s the one in charge of the weather in Ireland — so, St Peter had decided to open the gates of heaven and send down the rain at least 20 times. Not that he was being mean or nasty or anything, because at the same time he had painted the sky with rich tints of gleaming gold with added dazzling splashes of azure blue. And in between all of this, brilliant rainbows — just to comfort us.
As the story begins, we find ourselves on the road from Dunlewy to Letterkenny via Kilmacrennan in County Donegal, in Ireland’s wild, wild, northwest. And if you had decided to hitch a ride on this road, especially on this day and in this weather — well, you’d need to have a few changes of clothes with you, to say the least. That is if you wanted to stay comfortable while waiting out on the open road, in-between rides like I was.
By the way, and in case you didn’t know, they call County Donegal “Ireland’s Alaska”. In these parts, there roams a legendary beast called the Celtic Tiger, who leaves his mark by causing a pothole in the road every time his paw hits the ground. I could see that the Celtic Tiger had been lurking around here for some time because his paw prints were everywhere.
The “third-world condition” of these local roads provides a significant and unexpected advantage for hitchhikers: In some sections, the potholes are so terribly bad and the corners so dangerously sharp and the road so misaligned, that even the toughest and bravest of the high-speed Celtic cowboys have to slow down. And once they slow down, it’s not such a big step for them to make a complete stop. And pick up a friendly hitchhiker. Like me.
So it was under such circumstances I first met Liam O’Doherty. Me with my backpack at my feet and Liam roaring towards me over the crest of the hill. We were right behind the village of Dunlewy, where Mount Errigal rises up steeply to scrape the sky at 752 meters. Here, too, the Dunlewy Lake ripples silently below the mighty slopes of bizarrely formed ravines in the Poisoned Glenn.
This position also seemed to mark some invisible and abrupt border where the roadworks budget had been finally and thoroughly exhausted. The regular asphalt on one side of this border transformed sharply and instantly into the traditional Irish patchwork surface on the other side. It was precisely here that I waited, with my backpack at my feet.
I could see Liam’s face through the windscreen of his car: his eyes were wide in shocked surprise at the new road conditions in front of him. It looked like he was actually standing up and pushing himself off the back of his seat, trying to put all his weight onto the brake pedal. Whether by accident or misjudgment or both, his vehicle came to a shuddering stop with the passenger’s door handle right at my fingertips.
Not being one who needs to be asked twice, I opened the door and squeezed myself and my backpack into the front of Liam’s rather battered and ramshackle Toyota. It was about 30 years old, but I only made that estimate based on the car’s general body shape. The vehicle could have been more like 130 years if I’d taken its rust stains and dents and general condition into account.
In some ways, the driver looked in even worse condition than his car — well, perhaps without the rust stains. And, judging by the strong smell of booze on his breath, he seemed to be adequately fueled up for his trip.
Under circumstances like these, regardless of one’s religious beliefs, it is always safer to have God on one’s side than not. I assure you that I felt safer when I noticed the four holy crosses in clear and prominent display inside the car. My faith and feeling of well-being soon became total — installed just below the dashboard was a mini-altar, complete with lifelike micro-statues of some very impressive saints.
Liam leaned across and touched the mini-altar, asking in earnest as he did so for a holy blessing. “I always do that on this road,” he commented. To me, his method had already been proved to be an undeniable success. After all, he had managed to survive the local roads with the roaming Celtic Tiger and still be alive to this day.
It wasn’t until we moved off again that my faith began to fail me. We didn’t drive, we flew. Not only did Liam fail to take any evasive action to avoid the largest of the potholes, he actually seemed to aim straight for them.
My back-side continuously freed itself from the seat of the car and the ties of gravity. I was able to experience, momentarily, how the astronauts would have felt in space. But no astronaut ever experienced as many re-entries as I did when I reconnected each time with the rock-solid upholstery of the aging Toyota.
Throughout this entire nightmare, Liam talked and talked and talked. This boy could talk the hind legs off a donkey. He told me almost everything there was to tell about the traditional folklore and supernatural beliefs of the Irish people. At some point on this trip, I began to accept that maybe he was right, and all of us unbelievers were wrong. One thing I’m sure of — if I hadn’t come to accept that he was telling me the truth, I would have left that car a physically and mentally broken man with nothing to live for.
Here are some of the things he told me.
“You know, the secret of my well-being is simply that I never step under a ladder. And I never accept the third light for a cigarette from the one match. They’re both bad luck!” he explained.
“I’m a fisherman,” he told me, “I spend one week at sea, followed by a week ashore. That’s the rhythm of a fisherman’s life. But this rhythm don’t mean nothing if I catch sight of a red-haired woman in the morning. I’ll just turn right around and go straight home again. I mean, a law’s a law, ain’t it!”
“And I’d never ever offer to light a cigarette for anyone on a Monday. See, whoever does that, they’ll give away all their luck for the whole week.” (That particular day being a Tuesday, it seemed that we would both be safe from this hazard.)
“We Irish fishermen don’t usually clean our boats ahead of the season’s end. Otherwise, we won’t ever have full nets anymore.” My remark that it seemed like a good excuse for laziness was met with a devilish grin and a quick shrug of his shoulders.
Being a weekend sailor myself, one other remark really alarmed me: “Be careful, lad, that ya don’t fall overboard, since no-one’s ever rescued around here. Every time you go to sea, you meets your destiny in the waves. And anyone who meddles with your fate will only bring tragedy on himself and his family.”
In my imagination, I saw this dramatic scene: a sailor falls overboard off his boat, and his colleagues just stand there and refuse to help him. What would they do, would they ask “Just throw us your watch over here, will you?” or “Can I have your CD player if you don’t need it anymore?”
Nevertheless, I have since decided to keep Liam’s warnings in mind, and I always take at least two life jackets with me when I go offshore fishing”.
By the time we reached Kilmacrennan, my destination for the day, the road had returned to a reasonable condition. My pulse had calmed down, and my back-side had stopped lurching off the seat.
“Come on,” I invited Liam, “we’ll have a couple of pints of Guinness in the pub, just to say goodbye.” Like me, he didn’t need to be asked twice, and he got cracking on again as soon as we hit the bar. He pointed to a copse of trees where he said the fairies had celebrated some wild dance orgies just a few nights before. He told me that in a dead man’s house, all the doors and windows had to be opened wide so that the soul of the deceased person could escape from out of the walls.
And one other thing he told me: “Whenever you come to Mullaghdearg Beach, be sure to put a stone on the heap there, and make a wish.” “It’ll come true for sure!” he called to me as I walked away into the frosty night.
I did what he said on my next visit to Mullaghdearg beach, halfway between Kincasslagh and Mullaghdubh. I put my stone on the heap. One week later, I was the Irish Lotto king — I had 3 crosses in the right place in the Lotto Plus 1 draw. The prize was one lottery scratch card. I’ve still got it — unscratched and framed — in my Irish trophy collection.
Now, whenever I see it, I think of Liam O’Doherty and our ride together and all the things he taught me that day.
