The decision to hold the Tubbernablaw wren-dance earlier than usual was brought about by a number of factors, the chief of which was an ominous forecast in Old Moore’s Almanac concerning dire events in early January. First would come a blizzard so dense and driving that foolhardy travellers would not be able to see their own outstretched palms out of doors. This, according to Old Moore, would be followed in short order by a veritable deluge of rain and in the wake of these calamitous events there would come a frost so sharp that it would freeze the bark off the trees.
‘I see nothing for it,’ Billy Bonner the king of the Tubbernablaw wrenboys informed his wife on the night after St Stephen’s Day, ‘but to hold the dance tomorrow night. Otherwise we might have to wait until the spring and whoever heard of a wrenboys’ dance in the springtime!’
The second factor to influence the decision was a sermon delivered by the parish priest in the nearby town on the Sunday before Christmas. He had begun as usual by admonishing wrenboys young and old and, as the sermon proceeded, whipped himself up into a frenzy while he denounced the debauchery and the drunkenness which were part and parcel of such orgies.
‘If it comes to my attention,’ said he, ‘that a single wren-dance takes place in the New Year then woe betide the instigators. There can be no luck in a parish that allows these monstrous activities to take place. Therefore let it be known,’ he concluded with upraised hands and tone hoarse with fury, ‘that I shall come a-calling if word comes to my ear that the laws of church and state are being flouted.’
‘If,’ Billy Bonner addressed his wife who lay beside him in the bed, ‘we hold no dance in the New Year we will be flouting no laws, whatever the blazes flouting is.’ Beside him his wife murmured agreement. ‘I therefore propose,’ he declared solemnly as though he were addressing an assembly of wrenboys, ‘that we go ahead with our dance tomorrow night and have done with it.’
‘I second that,’ his wife agreed with matching solemnity and with that she placed her arms round his neck and enquired if there was any law of church or state which might proscribe the unmentionable activities which her proximity suggested.
‘Not that I know of,’ Billy replied as he took her in his arms and implanted a gentle kiss on her receptive lips.
Early next morning the king of the Tubbernablaw wrenboys mounted his ancient bicycle and went westwards into his dominions in order to notify the wren-boys and wren-girls of his decision to advance the date of the wren-dance. The decree was widely applauded and in every abode to which he called he was graciously received as befitted a man of such stature. While ordinary mortals might be offered stout or beer or even whiskey out of Christmas stocks Billy was obliged to walk home leaning on his bicycle for support after the vast quantities of brandy which had been thrust upon him. Others, less valuable in the community and to the business in hand, would travel far and wide in his stead, spreading the news of the royal pronouncement. There was no dissenting voice. Billy arrived back at his home in Tubbernablaw shortly after noon. He slept for several hours before his wife deemed it prudent to rouse him from where they had cavorted so wantonly the night before. Two trusted deputies had already tackled the black mare to the common cart. All three set out earnestly for the town where they would purchase the wines, whiskeys, cordials, minerals and the indispensable two half-tierces of stout which should see them safely through the festivities which would end at the breaking of day on the following morning.
Maggie Bonner had already visited the town with the wives of the two viceroys. Cooked gammons, crubíns, dozens of shop loaves freshly baked, Yorkshire relish, sweet cakes and barm bracks had all been safely deposited in the vast kitchen of the Bonner farmhouse and presently the preparations for the most important element of the entire proceedings would be complete. A huge cauldron rested atop the great table. Inside sat four hocks of prime beef and a stone of freshly peeled potatoes. The three females chopped great bundles of carrots and parsnips preparatory to adding them to the cauldron’s contents. A stone of onions, hard and mature and of uniform golf-ball size were peeled and quartered and then added. The Bonner soup was always the pièce de résistance of the wren-dance and was praised far and wide for its richness and sobering effects. When all the groodles had been added the three women lifted the cauldron between them and bore it to a great fire which burned brightly beneath an iron grid specially designed and wrought by the local smith. The soup would be allowed to boil and simmer for the duration of the wren-dance until all the constituents had disintegrated and become part of the mouth-watering mixture.
‘The groodles is what does it,’ Billy would proclaim to his cronies as they savoured the first delicious mouthfuls of the much-lauded soup.
‘Groodles,’ he would go on in his homely way, ‘especially parsnips, is the backbone of all soups. As faith without good works is dead so also soup without groodles is dead.’
By eight o’clock in the evening all the guests had arrived. They were carefully vetted by Billy from his vantage point in the doorway of his house and by the great grey tomcat which sat astride the warm chimney on the thatched roof of the rambling farmhouse.
There were fiddlers and melodeon players, saw and bodhrán players, didlers and concertina players, comb players and bones’ tippers. There were, in fact, all kinds of traditional musicians and exponents of horn-pipe, jig and reel.
In the early part of the night unwanted gate-crashers and known trouble-makers were ejected without ceremony by the king and his faithful subjects. During these minor skirmishes which were quickly quelled several black eyes were sustained and one of the invaders’ noses was broken but otherwise the wren-dance was a most harmonious occasion which was enjoyed by all who attended.
Even the intelligence officer for the local Catholic Church, also the part-time parish clerk, in his verbal report to the parish priest spent several minutes describing the character and natural consistency of the soup.
‘You would want to brief the housekeeper in that respect,’ the parish priest interjected jokingly. Only the clerk knew how serious he was. The parish clerk’s report also included an account of the drinking and philandering although truth to tell there was little of the latter and an expected excess of the former. There had been several proposals of marriage but since these came chiefly from octo- and nonagenarians as well as several drunken gentlemen who forgot that they were already married, no great notice was taken. Matters proceeded happily until midnight when the Rosary was said. Not a solitary titter was heard while the holy recital was in progress.
With regard to the serving of the food there was no formal procedure. Buffet rules were loosely applied but there was no evidence of the hogging one associates with such activities at higher levels.
Meanwhile on the outside the contents of the huge cauldron gurgled and spluttered propitiously. From time to time the king of the wrenboys and his queen, the gracious Maggie, inspected the interior and intimated to interested parties that all was going according to expectations.
Now all this happened at a time when motor-cars first began to make their appearance all over the countryside so that the wives of the inexperienced drivers entertained genuine worries about the fitness of their partners to handle the highly deceptive vehicles when under the influence. To counteract the effects of the night’s drinking Billy Bonner hit upon the idea of the soup. This was the third year of the innovation. It had proved highly successful. There had been no accidents and no injuries and if drivers ended up in dykes and ditches no great harm was done to the cars’ occupants. In part this would have been due to the shallowness of the roadside hazards but it was generally accepted that it was largely due to the reviving concoction so carefully prepared by the wives of the wrenboys.
It was widely believed also that Billy added a secret ingredient to the cauldron during the latter stages of the boiling but whether this was true or not was never really determined. There was, however, on this particular occasion an unexpected addition to the concoction. It was a most fortuitous supplementation and it came about in a most unusual manner.
The top of the cauldron was covered with two flat slabs of bogdeal. These would be removed from time to time to facilitate stirring with a specially rinsed, long-handled coarse brush which Billy and Maggie Bonner used with an expertise that made no concession to the clotting or cloying which is so detrimental to the consistency of all such mixtures.
Now it so happened that the large grey cat which spent most of its time stretching itself and licking its whiskers in the vicinity of the rooftop chimney was possessed of that curious streak which is part and parcel of the feline make-up. As cats go, the grey tom was a respected figure in the countryside. In his younger days he was known to roam far and wide in search of diversion, sometimes disappearing for days at a time. Now well advanced in years he had become more of an ogler than an adventurer and contented himself by maintaining his rooftop vigil during the day and, the occasional romantic saunter apart, hugging the kitchen hearth by night. He found as many tomcats do when the years mount up that dabbling suits their age and temperament far better than the full-time fornicating in which young toms wantonly indulge.
From early morning on the eventful day he knew that something was afoot. In his younger days he would have made non-stop forays to the kitchen, making a general nuisance of himself and as a result testing the patience of his mistress and her co-workers. Nowadays nothing short of a cat invasion would lure him from the cosy precincts of the chimney when squatted in one of his reveries. Towards evening he betook himself leisurely downwards and did the rounds of his domain. Elderly cats never indulge in the exaggerated slinking or the fancy oscillations to which younger cats are addicted. They tend to slouch and sit. They start to take things for granted and this is always a mistake.
For all his years the grey tom leapt without difficulty on to the bogdeal slabs which covered the cauldron. The contents had not yet begun to simmer but an appetising odour issued upwards nevertheless. He peered between the bogdeal slabs but only darkness greeted his gaze. He sniffed appreciatively and would have sat for a while had not a female flung a wet dish-cloth in his direction advising him at the same time that he should make himself scarce if he knew what was good for him. Unhurriedly he leaped downward and made his way to an outhouse where there was always the outside chance of an encounter with an unwary mouse. The outhouse was empty so he sat for a while preening himself in the shadows. He recalled past encounters with pretty pussies beyond the bounds of Tubbernablaw and nearer home as the passing years confined him. Darkness fell while he sat immobile. With the darkness came a hard frost which decided him on his next move. He would discreetly explore the kitchen and partake of some supper before returning to lie in the lee of the chimney for an hour or two.
Indoors the festivities were at their height. The younger members of The Tubbernablaw Wrenboys’ Band circulated on a regular basis with freshly filled buckets of stout drawn from the second half-tierce which had just been broached.
Pannies, mugs and cups as well as glasses, canisters, jam-pots and ewers were pressed into service. Even the grey tomcat was drawn into the revelry. He mewed for more after he had lapped up a partially-filled saucer of stout. He took his time over the second saucer, purring with uncharacteristic abandon as the drink began to take hold. Finishing the saucer he staggered out into the moonlit night. Stars twinkled in every corner of the heavens and a full moon shed its pale light on the cobbled yard where simmered the life-saving soup on its iron grid. The tomcat leaped and landed on the smaller of the bogdeal slabs. He was assailed by giddiness for a moment or two but recovered almost at once and sat himself on the larger of the slabs. He savoured the tantalising odour and held his head over the space between the slabs from where the odour emanated. Finding the larger slab a trifle too hot he removed himself to the smaller and arched himself drunkenly before composing himself catlike for a short sojourn away from the hustle and bustle of the kitchen. For the second time that day he lapsed into a reverie which saw him in his heyday seducing she-cats at every hand’s turn and devouring fish and fresh liver between bouts of concupiscence. It could truthfully be claimed that there wasn’t a happier tomcat in the whole of Tubbernablaw that night.
Then the hand of chance imposed itself on the blissful scene. The sleeping tom felt neither its fingers or its shadow. He slept, impervious to the comings and goings near the house. He did not see the pair of drunken youths who had entered the moon-drenched haggard for no other purpose than to ease the strain on their over-pressed bladders.
When the business was complete they yelled loudly in unison at the unimpressionable moon and, finding that no response was forthcoming from that quarter, looked around for some other form of diversion. It was then they beheld the sleeping cat.
‘Look,’ said the drunker of the pair, ‘at the neck of that cat, sleeping on top of the soup.’
‘Let him be,’ said the other, ‘what harm is he doing?’
‘Suppose,’ said his companion in an outraged tone, ‘that he piddles into the soup or maybe even worse!’
The pair tiptoed noiselessly until they reached the turf rick which dominated the far end of the haggard. Here they located two small black turf sods and, taking aim, dispatched both in the direction of the slumbering tom. The chance of either reaching the target, in any reckoning, must surely attract odds of thirty-three to one. The first of the small but rock-hard missiles veered left and landed harmlessly on the farmyard dung-heap. The second sped unerringly towards the victim as it raised its head, instinctively alerted by a sixth sense. It was, alas, too late. The sod landed on the crown of its head and laid it senseless. It slumped and then slid between the bogdeal slabs. It subsided without a miaow into the simmering soup.
The buck who pelted the fatal sod turned at once and rejoined the revels in the kitchen. He salved his conscience by making the sign of the cross and spitting over his left shoulder. Wisely, he and his friend decided to keep the story of the tomcat’s demise to themselves. Why waste a perfectly good barrel of soup, give or take a cat!
Such were the philosophies that were in the air at that time and in that place. A cat could be replaced in due course but a cauldron of soup, in the circumstances, could not. In the kitchen the revelry went on unabated until dawn. Then at eight forty-five in the morning Billy Bonner stood on a chair and announced that it was time to bring the proceedings to a close. The announcement was made seven hours and fourteen minutes after the demise of the family cat. At first there were some minor protestations but common sense soon prevailed especially when the head of the house reminded his listeners that the soup was ready and would be served forthwith, that it would be served under the wide and starry sky and that those who were interested should proceed without delay into the night bringing with them whatever vessels were at hand. There was an immediate exit. Mugs, cups and canisters were waved aloft as the delighted revellers cheered with all their might in anticipation of the incomparable composition which awaited them.
There were gasps and cheers and screams and diverse exclamations of delight as cup after mug after canister of soup was consumed. The steam from hundreds of mouths, nostrils and receptacles ascended the frosty air while from the cauldron itself there issued a perpendicular column which disappeared into the heavens overhead and tempted the moon herself to indulge in an unprecedented descent from her starry climes.
Standing to one side in the shadows were the youths who had so unceremoniously dispatched the cat to the hereafter. They hugged their sides with glee as they eagerly awaited the convulsions and upheavals which they felt must inevitably assail the soup drinkers of Tubbernablaw and its hinterland. They waited but all that transpired, as the time passed and the morning brightened, was a clamorous demand from all present for more soup. As things turned out there was plenty for everybody.
When the cauldron was drained of its last drop Billy Bonner and a retainer spilled out the bare bones that remained on to the frozen ground. The cat-killers edged forward but before they could draw a solitary person’s attention to the fact that they had all partaken of cat soup and that the evidence was there to prove it the three household dogs, a red setter, a suspect Collie and a retired coursing greyhound had fled the scene with mouthfuls of bones ranging from the head of the grey tomcat to the denuded hock bones of bullock and heifer. They would return almost at once to recover the few lesser bones that remained and add them to the others secreted where none but themselves would find them.
Search as they might, the disgruntled cat-killers failed to find a trace of their victim.
Nothing remained, not an eye nor a tooth nor a single, solitary cat’s whisker nor any evidence whatsoever of any one of the nine lives which are the God-given right of all cats great and small.