An Irish Country Village Read online

  8 ounces fresh or frozen raspberries (no need to defrost)

  2 bananas

  10 ounces custard

  (I make my own custard:

  2 egg yolks

  2 tablespoons sugar

  1 cup of scalded milk)

  But if you can get it Bird’s custard is grand

  whipped cream

  2 ounces flaked almonds, lightly toasted (omit if any of the diners

  is sensitive to nuts)

  Break the cake into pieces, then spread a little jam on each. Put them into a large glass bowl. Then sprinkle the raspberries and sherry over them, stirring to let the sherry be soaked up.

  Slice the bananas, and set the slices evenly over the raspberries. Pour 10 ounces of custard over the top. Spread the whipped cream evenly over the custard, and sprinkle on the flaked almonds. Chill for 3 to 4 hours before serving.

  MOCK TURTLE SOUP

  _______

  This recipe will feed 4 to 6 people but, och sure, the way himself eats there might just be enough for himself and young Doctor Laverty, so.

  1 large onion, finely chopped

  1 tablespoon butter

  2 tablespoons olive oil

  2 pounds meaty oxtails

  1 garlic clove, mashed

  3 whole cloves

  ¼ teaspoon thyme

  1 bay leaf

  ¼ teaspoon allspice

  1 tablespoon flour

  3 cups hot water

  3 cups chicken stock

  1 cup peeled, chopped tomatoes

  salt and pepper

  ½ thin-skinned lemon, chopped with the rind still on

  1 tablespoon parsley

  2 hardboiled eggs

  Brown the onion in the butter and oil. Add the oxtails and brown them slightly. Add the spices and herbs. Stir in the flour until it bubbles. Add more butter and oil as needed. Pour in the stock and hot water. Bring to the boil. Then add all the other ingredients except the eggs. Simmer for 2 hours. Take out the oxtails, and cut off the meat and the marrow. Discard the bones (Arthur Guinness is very partial to them in this house), and put the meat and marrow back in the broth.

  Serve into individual bowls, adding coarsely chopped eggs and a teaspoon of sherry to each bowl. Garnish with parsley.

  That’s it then. I’m off to my bed. I know I’m going to be busy tomorrow, and it looks like I’ll be cooking for two, now Doctor Laverty has agreed to stay on . . . at least until he gets a place of his own with that Patricia Spence of his. Lord knows when that’ll be, her off to Cambridge and all. Och, but sure the course of true love never did run smooth.

  And if that fellah Patrick Taylor gets round to spinning more yarns about us folks in Ballybucklebo, and he’s not showing any sign of drying up yet, before you know it I’ll be back at this table writing more myself, so.

  Until then, always remember, is fearr an tsláinte ná na táinte—health is better than riches—and you’ll not be healthy if you don’t eat right. I just wish I could persuade himself to eat a toty-wee bit less.

  Slán agat.

  Farewell,

  Mrs. Kinky Kincaid

  Housekeeper to

  Doctor Fingal Flahertie O’Reilly, M.B., B.Ch., B.A.O.

  1, Main Street

  Ballybucklebo

  County Down

  Northern Ireland

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Doctor Fingal Flahertie O’Reilly and the denizens of Ballybucklebo first appeared in 1995 in my monthly column in Stitches: The Journal of Medical Humour. It was suggested that these characters might form the foundation for a novel.

  I had just finished a thriller, Pray for Us Sinners, and was beginning to construct its sequel, Now and in the Hour of Our Death, but found myself hesitating to delve once more into the misery of the Ulster Troubles. The idea of writing something lighter was appealing, and so An Irish Country Doctor took shape. The good folks at Forge had sufficient faith in this work to commission it and its sequel, An Irish Country Village.

  Like Only Wounded and Pray for Us Sinners and more recently Now and in the Hour of Our Death, the Laverty-O’Reilly novels are set in the northeast corner of Ireland. But unlike my other works, which I strove to make historically accurate, these stories have taken some liberties with geography.

  The setting is a fictional village, the name of which came from my high-school French teacher who, enraged by my inability to conjugate irregular verbs, yelled, “Taylor, you’re stupid enough to come from Ballybucklebo, pronounced Bally-buckle–bo, not ‘boo.’ ”

  Those of an etymological bent may wish to know what the name means. Bally (Irish, baile) is a home or townland—a mediaeval geographic term encompassing a small village and the surrounding farms; Buachaill means “boy,” and bó is a cow. In Bailebuchaillbó, or Ballybucklebo—the townland of the boy’s cow—time and place are as skewed as they are in Brigadoon.

  Since the publication of An Irish Country Doctor, I have been amazed by the number of my Ulster friends who insist on trying to pinpoint Ballybucklebo as a real village in North Down. It is clear that the old Irish pastime of chasing moonbeams is not yet dead.

  I have been at pains to use the Ulster dialect. It is rich and colourful, but often incomprehensible to one not from that part of the world. For those who may have some difficulty, I have taken the liberty of appending a glossary (page 421), but I have been sparing in my use of the Irish language as it is not spoken by most of the citizens of Northern Ireland.

  Sadly, although the Ulster folk still use their colourful idiom, the rural Ulster I have portrayed has vanished. The farms and villages still look much as they did, but the simplicity of rural life has been banished by the Troubles and the all-pervasive influence of television, which was not seen in colour in Ulster before 1967.

  The automatic respect for their learning shown to those at the top of the village hierarchy—doctor, teacher, minister, and priest—is a thing of the past, but men like O’Reilly were common when I was a very junior doctor.

  I was a very junior doctor at a time when, only five years earlier, the link between thalidomide and birth defects had been established. In 1963 the first cadaver kidney transplant had been performed in Leeds, and in 1965 cigarette advertising was banned from British television. It was not until 1967 that Doctor Christiaan Barnard gave Louis Washkansky the first heart transplant. We had to wait until 1978 for the birth of the world’s first baby conceived by in vitro fertilization.

  Diagnostic tests were rudimentary, both in the laboratory and in imaging departments. Not until 1979 was Godfrey Hounsfield awarded the Nobel Prize for the invention of computerized axial tomography, the CAT scan. The eighties, the decade that saw the identification of the AIDS virus, was also the time lasers began to appear in operating rooms.

  By today’s standards the practice of modern medicine in the 1960s was in its infancy, and much depended on the clinical skills of the Doctor O’Reillys. And on that subject, may I lay to rest once and for all two questions I am frequently asked by readers of my columns in Stitches? Barry Laverty and Patrick Taylor are not one and the same. Doctor F. F. O’Reilly is a figment of my troubled mind, despite the efforts of some of my expatriate Ulster friends to see in him a respected—if unorthodox—medical practitioner of the time.

  Lady Macbeth does owe her being to a demoniacally possessed cat, Minnie, and Arthur Guinness owes his to a black Labrador now long gone who had an insatiable thirst for Foster’s lager. All the other characters are composites, drawn from my imagination and from my experiences as a rural GP.

  PATRICK TAYLOR

  GLOSSARY

  The Ulster dialect, properly called Ulster-Scots, is rich and colourful but can be confusing. In my mind I hear the expressions used by my characters as clearly as if I were living back in the north of Ireland, and I have tried to reproduce their idiom as accurately as possible. I was, after all, immersed in the northern speech patterns for thirty years. For those unfamiliar with Ulster-Scots, however, I have taken th
e liberty of appending this short glossary.

  Like all patois, Ulster-Scots is not one bit shy about adopting useful phrases from others. For example, the reader should not be surprised to find examples of Cockney rhyming slang here.

  acting the goat: Behaving foolishly.

  apples and pears: Cockney rhyming slang for stairs.

  argy-bargy: Voluble disagreement.

  arse: Backside (impolite).

  aunt Fanny Jane, my: Nonsense.

  away off and chase yourself: Go away.

  away off and feel your head: You’re being stupid.

  away on: I don’t believe you.

  bamboozle: Deliberately confuse.

  banjaxed: Exhausted or broken.

  banshee: Female spirit whose moaning foretells death.

  barmbrack: Speckled bread.

  bashtoon: Bastard.

  beagle’s gowl: Very long way; the distance over which the cry of a beagle can be heard.

  bee on a hot brick: Running round distractedly.

  bigger fish to fry: More important matters to attend to.

  bit my head off: Expressed anger by shouting or being very curt.

  bloater: Salted and smoked herring.

  blow you out: Tell you to go away.

  bob, a few: One shilling; a sum of money.

  bodhrán: Irish. Pronounced “bowron.” A circular handheld drum.

  boke: Vomit.

  bollocks: Testicles (impolite). May be used as an expression of vehement disagreement or to describe a person you disapprove of; for example, “He’s a right bollocks.”

  bonnet: Hood of a car.

  boot: Trunk of a car.

  both legs the same length: Standing about uselessly.

  bowsey: Dublin slang, drunkard.

  boys-a-boys, boys-a-dear: Expressions of amazement.

  brass neck: Impertinence, chutzpah.

  bravely: Feeling well.

  buck eejit: Imbecile.

  bun in the oven: Pregnant (impolite).

  cailín: Irish. Pronounced “cawleen.” Girl.

  call the cows home: Be ready to tackle anything.

  capped: A cap was awarded to athletes selected for important teams. Equivalent to a letter at an American university.

  caubeen: Traditional Irish bonnet.

  casualty: Emergency room.

  céili: Irish. Pronounced “kaylee.” Party, usually with music and dancing.

  champ: A dish of buttermilk, butter, potatoes, and chives.

  chemist: Pharmacist.

  chiseller: Dublin slang, a small child.

  clabber: Glutinous mess of mud, or mud and cow clap.

  clatter, a brave: A large quantity.

  colloguing: Chatting about trivia.

  conkers: Horse chestnuts. Used to play a children’s game.

  cow’s lick: Tuft of hair that sticks up, or hair slicked over to one side.

  cracker: Excellent (see also wheeker).

  craking on: Talking incessantly.

  crúibins: Irish. Pronounced “crubeen.” Boiled pigs’ feet, served cold and eaten with vinegar.

  cure, wee: Hair of the dog.

  dab hand: Skilled at.

  damper: Device for restricting the flow of air to a coal or turf fire to slow the rate of burning.

  dander: Literally, horse dandruff. Used to signify either a short leisurely walk or anger. For example, “He really got my dander up.”

  dibs: A claim upon.

  didny; didnae: Did not.

  divil: Devil.

  divil the bit: None. For example, “He’s divil the bit of sense.” (He’s stupid.)

  doddle: A short distance or an easy task.

  dote: Something adorable.

  dote on: Worship.

  do with the price of corn: Irrelevant.

  drill-the-dome boys: Medical slang, neurosurgeons. See also nutcracker.

  drouth, raging: Pronounced “drewth.” Alcoholic.

  drúishin: Irish. Pronounced “drisheen.” Dish made of cows’ blood, pigs’ blood, and oatmeal. A Cork City delicacy.

  dulse: A seaweed, which when dried is eaten like chewing gum.

  eejit: Idiot.

  egg-bound hen: A hen with an egg that cannot be laid stuck in the oviduct. Applied to a person, it suggests extreme distress.

  fag: Cigarette.

  fall off the perch: Die.

  fenian: Catholic (pejorative).

  field, the: A place where Orange Lodges and bands congregate after the Twelfth of July parade.

  finagle: Achieve by cunning or dubious means.

  fit to be tied: Very angry.

  flying: Drunk.

  fornenst: Besides.

  foundered: Chilled to the marrow.

  full of it: Being either stupid or excessively flattering.

  gander: Take a look at.

  get (away) on with you: Don’t be stupid.

  get on one’s wick: Get on one’s nerves.

  give over: Stop it.

  glipe, great: Stupid or very stupid person.

  gobshite: Dublin slang used pejoratively about a person. Literally, dried nasal mucus.

  good man ma da: Expression of approval.

  grand man for the pan: One who really enjoys fried food.

  great: The ultimate Ulster accolade; can be used to signify pleased assent to a plan.

  grotty: English slang. Run-down and dirty.

  guttersnipe: Ruffian.

  hairy bear: Woolly caterpillar.

  half-cut: Drunk.

  hand’s turn: Minimum amount of work.

  having me on: Deceiving me.

  head staggers: Making a very stupid decision. Literally, a parasitic disease affecting the brains of sheep and causing them to stagger.

  heart of corn: Very good-natured.

  heifer: Young cow before her first breeding.

  hirstle: Chesty wheeze.

  hit the spot: Fill the need.

  hobby-horse shite, your head’s full of: Literally, sawdust. You’re stupid.

  hold your horses: Wait a minute.

  hooley: Party.

  hoor: Whore.

  houseman: Medical intern.

  how’s (a)bout ye? How are you? Or good-day.

  humdinger: Something extraordinary.

  I’m your man: I agree to your plan and will follow it.

  in soul, I do: Emphatic.

  in the stable: Of a drink, already paid for before being poured.

  jar: An alcoholic drink.

  jaunting car: An open, high, two-wheeled vehicle. The passenger accommodation was two benches, arranged along either side so the passengers sat with their backs to the cart bed. By the 1960s it was rarely seen except in the most rural parts of Ireland or as a tourist attraction.

  jigs and reels, between the: To cut a long story short.

  knackered: Very tired. An allusion to a horse so worn out by work that it is destined for the knacker’s yard, where horses are destroyed.

  knickers in a twist, in a knot: Anxiously upset.

  knocking: Having sexual intercourse.

  Lambeg drum: Massive bass drum carried on shoulder straps by Orangemen and beaten with two sticks, sometimes until the drummer’s wrists bleed.

  length and breadth of it: All the details.

  let the hare sit: Leave the thing alone.

  like the sidewall of a house: Huge, especially when applied to someone’s physical build.

  liltie: A madman. An Irish whirling dervish.

  load of cobblers’: In Cockney rhyming slang, “cobblers’ awls” means “balls.” Used to signify rubbish.

  lough: Pronounced “logh,” almost as if clearing the throat. A sea inlet or very large inland lake.

  lummox: Stupid creature.

  main: Very.

  make a mint: Make a great deal of money.

  moping: Indulging in self-pity.

  more power to your wheel: Very good luck to you; encouragement.

  muggy: Hot and humid.

  mul
let, stunned: To look as stupid or surprised as a mullet, an ugly saltwater fish.

  Mullingar heifer, calves like: Cows from Mullingar were said to have very thick legs.

  my shout: I’m buying the drinks.

  near took the rickets: Had a great shock.

  no dozer: Clever.

  no goat’s toe, he thinks he’s: Has an overinflated sense of his own importance.

  no spring chicken: Getting on in years.

  not as green as you’re cabbage looking: More clever than you appear to be.

  not at myself: Feeling unwell.

  nutcracker: Neurosurgeon.

  on eggs: Extremely worried.

  Orange Order: Fraternal order of Protestants loyal to the British crown.

  orange and green The colours of Loyalists and Republicans, respectively. Used to symbolize the age-old schism in Irish politics.

  ould goat: Old man, often used affectionately.

  out of kilter: Out of alignment.

  oxter: Armpit.

  oxter-cog: To carry by supporting under the armpits.

  pacamac: Cheap, transparent, plastic raincoat carried in a small bag.

  Paddy hat: Soft-crowned tweed hat.

  pan loaf: Loaf of ordinary bread.

  Paddy’s market: A large, disorganised crowd.

  peat (turf): Fuel derived from compressed vegetable matter.

  penny bap: A small bun, usually coated in flour.

  petrified: Terrified.

  physical jerks: Gymnastics.

  piss artist: Alcoholic.

  poke: Have sex with; a small parcel.

  pop one’s clogs: Die.

  poulticed: Pregnant, usually out of wedlock.

  powerful: Very.

  power of: A great deal of.

  quare: Ulster pronunciation of queer. Very strange.

  raring to go: Eager and fully prepared.

  recimetation: Malapropism for recitation.

  registrar, medical: Trainee physician equivalent to a North American resident.

  rug rats: Children.

  run-race: Quick trip to, usually on foot.

  script/scrip: Prescription.

  scunner, take a scunner at or to: Dislike someone intensely and bear a grudge.

  semi: Semidetached house. Duplex.

  sheugh: Bog.

  shit, to: To defaecate.