Beware the Caribbean Curse

By Cormac MacConnell

THE evening before he went to visit the Quare Fella up in the mountains on the county border with Galway, it is fair to say that Droogan made every effort to settle the dispute between himself and the Tuohys. 

He has felt unhappy about the affair right from the beginning and said so to his wife, to the brother in Galway, and, after the court case in August, when both parties were bound to the peace for 12 months, both to the police involved in the matter and to the Judge himself.

“Your Honor,” said Droogan from the box, “the truth of the matter is that I know we are all making fools of ourselves over a piece of land that’s not worth an awful lot and I’m sorry for my part in it. It is true that I struck both Sean Tuohy and his son Eddie when the dispute arose at the disputed gateway and I’m ashamed of that, even though, in the end, I suppose I got the worst of it. 

“But I did not know how to get out of it and when they closed the gate against me I lost my temper and my reason as well. We have been good neighbors for 30 years, and our parents before us, and it is too bad that this bad thing has happened between us. I promise to avoid any conflict in the future as far as I can.”

That was probably the reason why the judge did not impose a jail sentence all around. He bound them to the peace for a year and commented, in doing so, that he thought land disputes over little bits of bog in the mountain were a thing of the past. 

“Go home all of you,” he said, “and behave yourselves.”

And it is fair to say that Droogan did. And objectively it would be fair to say that the Tuohys did not. 

In a thousand petty daily ways from the day after the court they set about making life Hell for Droogan and his wife and two young daughters. It was all petty stuff, remarks out of the side of the mouth while passing the road, driving through puddles of water on the road while Droogan’s two daughters were walking to the bus stop and drenching them to the skin. 

Gates were left open on Droogan’s land and once the fire brigade arrived to the house on a false alarm. Eddie Tuohy knocked over Droogan’s pint in the pub on the first Saturday night in August and made a great fuss about paying for a replacement. 

“Give this decent man another pint, Tommy, because his life is hard enough at the moment – and about to get worse,” is what young Tuohy said. 

Droogan, true to the terms of his bond, lowered his head and said nothing at all. It was not that he was cowardly either. The whole parish knew that when the row started at the gate in August that he nearly hammered both the Tuohys, father and son, even though he was a good 10 years younger than the father.

But the worst thing that happened was the planting of the eggs on his land. That was the worst thing.

He started to find eggs all over the place. There might be two or three of them in a hole inside one of the plastic bales of hay. 

He found them in the sheds in the morning. He found them inside the gates of his fields. He found them buried shallowly in the vegetable garden. When he broke two of them while digging spuds in the middle of September his heart sank down to his boots and his face went pale. 

Everybody knows that bad luck comes to a place when people who are commonly called “bad friends” leave eggs or cooked meat on your land. That’s a pishogue that goes away back, a very ancient superstition altogether. 

Droogan could do nothing but ask the curate to come to the house the following evening and celebrate Mass in the house. He never told either Mena or his daughters about the eggs. That was real black stuff. You’d think it was gone; it’s not at all.

It was the following Tuesday morning that Droogan made his final attempt to end the dispute. He drove the few hundred yards down the road to Tuohys house about 11 o’clock in the morning. 

He knocked on the open door and when Sean Tuohy came out he said, “Sean, can we finish this nonsense and shake hands like good neighbors and finish it up.” 

And all Sean Tuohy did was the horrible thing of spitting straight into his face and effing and blinding and ordering him off his place. And the next morning there were eggs on the land again, left where you could not avoid seeing them, the shell of one crunched under his wellington. 

And Droogan went into the house and took off the wellingtons and put on his black leather shoes and went up to Galway to visit the Quare Fella in the mountains his brother told him about. All I know about that trip is that there would have been a fee of about $150 in your money and a bottle of good brandy.

The house of the Quare Fella, who is from the Caribbean, and whose fame is spreading by the month, is right on the top of the mountain. I could find it if I had to. 

It is said that he has two wives and a lot of children and great knowledge of what we have always called the black art. They have a different name for it where he comes from. 

The postman in the area has told of seeing clay dolls on a tin tray drying in the sun on the windowsill one morning. A wife came out and covered them quickly with her shawl, but Acheson saw them before that. It sounds like voodoo to me.

I have never seen the Quare Fella but I’m told he is a tiny man with very bright eyes. I’ll meet him yet.

The Tuohys, father and son, were coming home from town in their Land Rover early last Friday evening. They had bought a new iron gate and some rolls of barbed wire. The road was dry and it was bright.

Nobody knows how or why the car collided with the parapet of Cooper’s Bridge at some speed. Sean died instantly and Eddie, who was driving, lasted until the Sunday evening. 

The neighbors, including Droogan, in the old traditional way, are looking after the milking and the stock since until it finally decided by the family what will be done with the place. It will probably be sold. You’d fancy Droogan to buy it himself . . .