THE BOOZY BANSHEE OF BRANNOCK-A-BEND

Chapter 2: Ish Kabibble, the Water of Life!

by
Peter "Lou" D'Alessio
Copyright © 2012

When the Irish say that St. Patrick chased the snakes out of Ireland, what the Irish don't say is that good old Paddy was the only one who saw any snakes!  And it would behoove you to note that there are no longer pink elephants or nine-legged, six-foot-tall spiders roaming the Emerald Isle.  They went right after the snakes.  There’s a scientific reason for this.  St. Paddy was a big fan of the water of life, or so tradition says.

Now, for the uninitiated, Scotland and Ireland became the centers of the whisky/whiskey world around the seventh century, maybe earlier.  Irish whiskey traditionally is not as smokey as a Scotch whisky.  Whiskey with an “E” is the Irish spelling.  The Scots most likely learned about distilling from the Irish (though they’ll never own up to it).  The Irish in turn learned about it, according to the Irish at least, from missionary monks who arrived in Ireland in around that seventh century mark.  That be as good an excuse as any.  Then information gets all fuzzy for the next few centuries, but it does seem reasonable to believe that monks in the various monasteries were distilling aqua vitae (“water of life”), under the guise of making medical compounds.  Nobody has yet to determine what the Irish were sick with, but whatever it was, it’s still going on.  The monks would brew up the booze and store it to age in barrels in basements under the monasteries.  Often the Abbot of the monastery would instruct the biggest, strongest monk to stand in front of the barrels holding a hand-printed sign that stated that there was “no underground testing” permitted.  This is the first known example of Irish whiskey and Irish literature going hand in hand.

These first distillates were probably grape or fruited brandy rather than grain concoctions, as most people were starving back then and using the grain for bread.  Barley-based whiskey (the word derives from uisce beatha, the Gaelic interpretation of aqua vitae) first appears in the historical record in the mid-1500s, being called by that name by the missionaries who had brought the distillery process back to Ireland, and the name seemed to fit.  Anyway, the Monks had found, in their travels in the East, a process for distilling alcohol being used for the making of perfumes.  The Christian Monks, being rather creative fellows, realized quickly that God had given them a greater use for... well, the still!  That reason?  Uisce beatha, the water of life!  The old boys realized that by cooking up grains (Bread!?!  We don’ need no stinkin’ bread!), converting it to alcohol, and then aging it in a barrel, a replacement could be found for pagan Ireland’s favorite drink.  Before whiskey, the Irish drank hooch made from wine, ginger, honey and different spices called Piment.  Historically, it has often been credited as the reason pre-Christian Ireland was so warlike.  With the advent of uisce beatha—Irish whiskey—the warlike tribes calmed right down.  It was being seen as a good thing, a gift from God so’s the Irish wouldn’t go off and conquer the world.

Nevertheless, it should also be noted that the citizens of Aaron’s Isle never lost their taste for a good donnybrook.  Since they were no longer considering conquering the world, they stayed at home and fought.  First with the English (then again... who hasn’t?) and then, when Ireland split Catholic and Protest, they did a great job of beating themselves up.  The Politics of the Irish, however, are of no concern to us and certainly not to O’Neil and Calhoun.  The matter of importance is this: for a long time, what you drank on a Saturday night depended on where you prayed for forgiveness on Sunday morning.  Jameson whiskey was the inclination of Catholics, as Jameson was distilled and bottled in the Catholic south.  If you were a Protestant, your drink was Bushmills, made in the town of the same name in Protestant Northern Ireland, the part of the island that stayed with the Brits after the partition.  Today?  The lines are kind of blurred—with enough Irish whiskey, a lot gets blurred.  Irish whiskey is helping to keep the Irish from conquering each other.  Which is handy, as the conglomerate “Irish Distillers” owns both Bushmills and Jameson now, and “Pernod Ricard” owns the conglomerate, so there’s no longer a reason to fight over which is the better “Irish” whiskey.  Technically, you could say the French own all Irish whiskeys.  What’s the point?  In the whole of Ireland, there isn’t one uneducated pallet in the mouth of any Irisher, and where the whiskey comes from doesn’t matter that much anymore if it meets a certain humanitarian standard.

In 1608, King James I gave Bushmills the first license for the making of Irish whiskeys.  It was not long after the first taxes on alcoholic beverages were levied that someone started making barrels of booze in the old tool shed behind the farmhouse (sound familiar?) and began to smuggle them to the folk looking to avoid the taxes on a good time.  The British government had people in place to try and stop smugglers as early as the 16^th century.  Poitín (anglicized as poteen or potcheen—hell, it’s Irish moonshine!) is a traditional Irish-distilled, highly alcoholic beverage.  Poitín was traditionally distilled in a small pot still, and the term is derived from the Irish word meaning “pot.”  Distilled from malted barley grain like other whiskeys, or potatoes like vodka, it is one of the strongest alcoholic beverages in the world, and for centuries it was illegal in Ireland—probably for fear of the Irish rising up and trying to conquer the world again.  Irish moonshine. along with all other zip wine/cleaning fluid combinations not specifically licensed by the state, was outlawed in 1661.  But the Irish loved their ’shine as much as any red-necked Alabamy-boy loves his, and them small backyard pots kept a’boilin’.  There are a million tales about poitín that have developed through the centuries.  According to one legend, Saint Patrick, having run out of sacramental wine to use at mass, brewed up the first batch of poitín.  Which brings us back to the snakes!

Irish whiskey’s first run-in with crowned heads happened when the Tudor Kings consolidated their control of Ireland in the mid-1500s.  Queen Elizabeth I was said to have been a fan and dedicated drinker of Irish whiskey, and she had barrels of the stuff shipped to London.  When people found out about the Queen’s proclivity for drinking Irish whiskey, the price of a bottle of leprechaun juice (as the English court called it) tripled.  Everyone who was anyone in Lizzy’s court was on the stuff—which was interesting, as the Irish and English were pretty much at war throughout the entire reign of Elizabeth.  It might be imagined that barrels of whiskey were smuggled from Ireland to London by only the shine of the moon, on the down-low—hence the term “moonshine.”

Fans of Irish whiskey were not restricted to the English, either.  Czar Peter the Great of Russia said, “Of all the wines of the world, Irish spirit is the best.”  Then again, he never had to fight them.  But love of the water of life wasn’t limited to the old world.  No, indeed.  When the English, Irish, and Scots traveled to the New World, they took their stills with them.  George Washington, good red-necked Virginian that he was, ran up a staggering bill buying kegs of whiskey to bribe voters into electing him into the colonial congress in the mid 1750s.  After the Revolution in 1794, George had to send more troops out against American farmers than he had against the British to quell the Whiskey Rebellion and collect all the taxes due—which was kind of hypocritical, seeing as to how George himself had the biggest distillery set-up in the new country.  History doesn’t seem to tell if George paid his taxes on the stuff he was cranking out.

So the scene is set.  Our two American redneck heroes winged their way across the Atlantic to a land as attuned to the possibility of banging out fifty or sixty gallons of boom-boom juice in the tool shed as they were.  It’s a land where approximately 3,650,000 or more gallons of legal or illegal whiskey are knocked down on a yearly basis, just like Mississippi!

And where is the tool shed located?  There was a reason O’Neil couldn’t find that small place on a map.  Connemara is a not a governmental unit like a town or county.  It is a place of rocky mountain peaks, sandy beaches, and a water system of lakes and streams.  Connemara territory exemplifies the serene isolation and rugged beauty of the west of Ireland... in other words, it’s God’s gift to moonshiners!  It’s a place where the wealth is shared as neighbors meet when a new still is run off, and they stay until every ounce of it is consumed and approved!  In the little community where O’Neil’s property is, there’s a yearly tasting-fest to determine who has concocted the best batch of moonshine.  The winner is bottled with the help of the whole town as if it was legal, just to give the four licensed distilleries fits!  Ah, Connemara!  Good water, good places to hide from government agents, and far enough from the north and south to keep its business to itself!  Dominated by the magnificent Twelve Bens mountain range, dotted with lakes, and fringed by the deeply-cut Atlantic coastline, there’s plenty of places to do all kinds of fishing while you’re waiting for your mash to boil down.  Broken into countless creeks, bays, and little harbors, Connemara is one of the most picturesque regions in Ireland.  A better place to open up a hooch-cookery doesn’t exist in the world.

Except for maybe somewhere in the hills of Appalachia.

It didn’t help that they took a flight to the airport in Dublin.  Dublin was the only city they had heard of—except for Belfast, and they were pretty sure they didn’t want to go there.  When they landed, there wasn’t an Irishman for a hundred miles that had heard of a place called Brannock-A-Bend, mainly because it was by Galway Bay and was more than 150 miles away on the opposite coast.  A phone call to the lawyer handling Aunt Idy’s estate, a Barrister named Fitz-Ryan, got them a taxi to take them to Galway, where he picked them up in 1969 Caddie convertible.  He was a man on the darker side of middle age, and wore a suit nearly as old as the Caddy.  “Fitzy” became guide, mentor, translator, and later bottle washer for the two American invaders, a role he didn’t seem to mind.

First, he was always up for educating the pagans as to the history of the Irish, more specifically the history of the Connemara Mountains and more correctly the history of Brannock-A-Bend...

Second, these weren’t your typical Yankee tourists looking to kiss the Blarney Stone or catch a leprechaun.  Their eyes lit up when he mentioned stopping by the “Widder” Effie Browne’s place for introductions and a taste a’ole Ireland, and...

Third, they'd already settled accounts for Idy’s estate, and he was reasonably certain they were good for a lot more, should situation merit it.

It was nearly three hours' travel time through the mountains to reach Brannock-A-Bend, the roads being a bit rough, and day was darkening as they drove by the Widder’s place, propriety to be kept.  As much as the trio could have used a drink, it’d have to wait for a more socially proper moment.

In the failing light, Beau and O’Neil were becoming almost sexually excited.  Every square foot of road seemed to run across, by, or over what appeared to be prime trout water.  There were boats, docks, and fishing tackle all over.  In fact, the only water that didn’t seem to be a working fish stream was Idy’s!  It made O’Neil openly wonder why.

“Why? ” Fitzy said.  “It’s private fookin’ property, ya twit!  Ida Mildred O’Neil wouldn’t so much as h’allow a hooked worm in her pond.  Said it’d sperl d’pristene wader.  She meant it!  I seen ’er run off more than more than one angler with a dooble barrel!  Old Charley MacPhail, Idy’s groundskeeper, use to worra dat d’old girl would plant a shipment a’ buckshot in his backside when he was comin’ home with half a load on!”

“Idy has a groundskeeper?”

“Had... had a groundskeeper.  When Idy went ta God, Charley buried ’er somewhere on the grounds.  Then he kicked it, snoofed it good.  A week later, the postal service deliv’rin Idy’s mail found him dead—and pretty well preserved.”

“Preserved?”

“Pickled as a herring!  Went before he could tell anyone where Idy’s final resting place was.  We tink he caught a short barrel of not-quite-fully-brewed homemade...”

“Home made?  Shine?  Ya’ll make moonshine ’round here?”  Fish and shine?  Had he found heaven?  Beau’s eyes were getting big as full moons—a fact not missed by Fitzy in the rear view mirror.

“Moonshine?  Yer heard of it?”  There was a dead silence in the back seat.  “You boys’ll fit in joost fine here,” the barrister mumbled to no one in particular.

It was dark when they pulled up in front of the stone house, which was somewhat larger than O’Neil had imagined.  It was nestled amidst hills and small mountains with little patches of level land.  There was about  an acre and a half of cultivated wheat and some corn, which had reverted to wild from lack of care.  The property was a bit archaic; it had indoor plumbing but no electricity.  What Fitzy had referred to as a “pond” was a full-fledged lake as far as Calhoun was concerned, making him regret selling his bass boat to his cousin.  There was a long dock with good-sized fish jumping around it, and an old wooden rowboat tied to it that probably had traveled with Columbus after the original owner had sold it for firewood.  There were mountainish hills lining the lake on both the far and near sides, and O’Neil was starting to develop a new liking for generous old Aunt Idy.

The lawyer was fumbling loudly with the trunk key as he tried to retrieve their luggage from the Caddie.  Both O’Neil and Beau noticed the lawyer’s eyes racing around the property as if he was looking for something he didn’t want to see.  “Ah, yer might want to git some ’lectricity lines soon.  It helps to see...”  Before the lawyer could finish his sentence, off in the distance, a loud, whining shriek could be heard.  It carried, echoing off the mountains, and it ended in three quick wups.  It froze the lawyer in a bending position over the opened trunk.  “Er, did I fergit to tell ya?  Yer property’s haunted.”

O’Neil brushed past the lawyer, fished through one of his bags, and pulled out a small high-intensity flashlight.  “Beau, help him get the luggage inside.  I’m gonna go look for where that came from.”

“Mr. O’Neil, sure ya don’t want to find dat ting!  It’s the banshee of Brannock-A-Bend.  To hear a banshee wail means death be near!  Legend has it, this banshee is trapped somewhere in the mountain caves by the lake.  He’s been trapped there fer hundreds....”

O’Neil just nodded to Calhoun to get the gear inside and walked off towards the pond.  “Well, Fitzy, better him than me,” Beau said.  “I’ll get this stuff.  Git inside and find somethin’ to light.  A lamp.  A candle.  Anything.”  And the lawyer did just that, groping around in the dark and finding a lamp with a little kerosene still in it.

Beau struggled in to find the lawyer swishing a liquid around in an earthenware jug, and figured it was kerosene.  Beau put the bags in two of the four bedrooms, then dragged a couple of mattresses into the front yard and slung them up against the picket fence to air out.  As Beau finished his burdens, Fitzy walked up to him and held the bottle under his nose.

“Moonshine?”

“A kind a’ Irish whiskey the monks made a thou-sen years ago, uisce beatha.  It means the ‘wader of life.’  I don’t know where Idy’d have gotten it.  Would ya care for a small pull on the jug, Mr. Calhoun?”  No one ever had to ask Beauregard Eustace Calhoun twice if he wanted a pull on a jug, and it warmed Fitz-Ryan’s Irish heart to see Beau’s proper form, hoisting the jug to his shoulder and tilting his whole torso to pour the sacred fluid into his face.  It was a copious swallow, and what followed surprised the hell out of the lawyer.  Beau’s eyes seemed to cross and his face turned dark red.  His mouth opened and suddenly he emitted a loud, shrill yelp.  “EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEYYYYYYYAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!”  A smile crossed the American’s face as he sucked for air.

“Wad d’fook was tat???”

“Ya ain’t never heard of a rebel yell?  It goes with a good fight and a good pull on a jug a’ good shine—an’ dat, Mr. Fitzy, is definitely a good jug a’ shine!”  At that moment, O’Neil returned.  He was about to say something when he saw the jug still on his friend’s shoulder.

“Beau.  Was’ dat?”

“Dis?”  He lifted the jug a bit and shook.  The liquid swished loudly.  “It’s... its... ish... Ish Kabibble, the water a’ life.”

“It’s a trumpet-playing comedian in Kay Kyser's band?  Forget it.  Ya gots to see what I jus’ found!  I’m startin’ to like ole Aunt Idy more and more!”

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