The Blindboy Podcast - Pigs, Saints, Haircuts & Bicycles in Tulla Town

Episode Date: December 19, 2023

The story of why I'm not getting a bicycle for Christmas Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Bros the useless Christmas ghosts you sprucey owners, welcome to the Blind Boy Podcast. Are you feeling you'd tide now? Will you allow the tide of yule to wash over your Santa Claus? I'd like a new bicycle this Christmas, but I won't be getting it off Santa Claus. I'm gonna get the bicycle off me. I'm going to get me a bicycle for Christmas. I want a commuter bicycle. It's not quite a mountain bike. And it's not quite a racer. It's designed for comfort on public roads. Mountain bikes are nice and sturdy.

They have good suspension. Great grip. You'll never slip off a mountain bike. But when you use a mountain bike for your commute, in and out of work on a public road, it's hard work. You really got to use your legs with a mountain bike. Now a racing bike, very fast, not a lot of effort, very thin tires, perfect for a public road, but the seat will vandalize your rectum. So I want a commuter bike, the comfort and stardiness of a mountain bike, with the speed and agility of a racing bike. A commuter bicycle,

very fast, with a seat that is compassionate to one's fundament. That's what I want to get myself for Christmas. So this is what I tried to do last week. Now at first I went looking for brand new commuter bicycles but I just couldn't resist second hand. I can't bring myself to buy a brand new bicycle if I know that there's perfectly good ones out there for second hand just on principle. So I found one. I found a second hand commuter bicycle rally just like new, fucking fantastic so I contacted the seller who were located in the Munster area the bicycle was in East Clare

the person selling the bicycle asked if I'd meet them in a village called Tulla, specifically in front of a Chinese takeaway and I said which Chinese takeaway and they said there's only one Chinese takeaway in Tulla. It's on Main Street but I'd never been to Tulla. I'd never even heard of Tulla to be honest.

So I looked for it on Google Maps and it's about 20 minutes north of Limerick by car. It's quite close to a village called Scariff on Loch Derg. And I happen to have a friend who lives in Scarif, who owns a van, who goes back and forth from Scarif to Limerick all the time. So I said, I'm buying a bicycle in Tulla. Can I have a lift there, please, and a lift back when I buy the bicycle? And they said, sure thing.

So I made the trip to the little village of Tulla to get my commuter bicycle. So I arrived in Tulla at 2pm and I was meeting the person for the bicycle at 3pm. The first thing I noticed was the wind. It was a chilling breeze that smelled particularly fresh and I felt it on my neck. The breeze was blowing diagonally from the ground up and entering my nostrils. Because Tulla is at the top of a very big hill and the main street acts like a cavern, like a funnel for wind to travel diagonally from the ground up. So it was chilly and unpleasant. But also, when a breeze is directed right up into your nostrils, you experience something very familiar, but in a new way.

Like the wind has taken its top off. When I got to Tulla, I was quite impressed by its size. In my mind, this would be a really tiny Irish village, but I had more of the makings of a town, but it was quite empty. The sense that I got with this place called Tulla was

this town used to be important at one point in its history and something happened and it stopped being important. This village of Tulla it felt a bit like being in Cuba but nothing like Cuba. A strange little grey Irish town, a time capsule town, as if nothing new had been built since the 1950s. Everything needed a lick of paint. I couldn't decide what to call the place. It was the size of a village, but it was built like a town. And the buildings were like old, rural, middle class money, like the house a priest would live in. The names of the local businesses were quite unique. There was a restaurant called Flappers.

I'm like, what the fuck did they call it Flappers for? Are they referring to the 1920s American dancers known as Flappers? Or is it because of the wind? Is it because the wind makes everything flap? There was a beauty salon called Wind Swept Beauty Salon. A windy theme was emerging in the naming of the businesses and I adored that because like I said I'm walking up this hill, this main street and I'm noticing the breeze, this diagonal breeze that comes from the ground and goes up and then they called the the beauty salon

Wind Swept which to me meant that if you went into the beauty salon and got your hair done, as soon as you came out it was fucked because of that diagonal hill taller breeze, like a disclaimer so it's very quiet as I walk along and I'm searching for the Chinese

takeaway on the main street and then I see it and it says teach China and I'm like what the fuck are they calling the Chinese takeaway teach China for what the fuck does that mean teach China what teach China how to cook is this a Chinese takeaway where there's no Chinese people involved and it's just people from Tala going, we're going to teach Chinese people how to cook Chinese food. Is that why it's called Teach China? And then I realise, no, it's not Teach China.

It's Choc China. Choc is the Irish word for house. So it means China house. T-E-F-A-D-A-S-E-H is Choc. But they didn't put a Fada over the E. So it just says Teach China. So I got a ferocious chuckle off that. But the China house was closed, and Chuck China was closed, and it was 2pm, and I'm like,

I'm meeting some cunt here for a fucking, for a bicycle in an hour. What am I going to do? What am I going to do on the main street of Tulla? I'd already exhausted the novelty of the diagonal breeze. I can't marvel at the wind anymore. The windswept beauty salon was actually open and I didn't need a hair cut but I will need one in about two weeks so I thought. I started getting angry with my own hair. I started thinking fucking pre-emptive strike. I'm gonna get you before you start growing, before you become a problem. But I don't think the windswept beauty salon did men's hair. And I've actually had negative experiences in the past trying to

get a haircut in women's beauty salons. About 10 years ago, I just didn't want to walk to the barbers. So I walked into a beauty salon and I said, will you give me a haircut? And then they said, we don't cut men's hair. And I said, come on, it's just hair. Will you cut it? They're like, we don't cut men's hair. And then I said, said to be honest the type of haircut I'm looking for isn't too far off what a middle-aged woman would want so can you just do that just pretend it's a middle-aged woman's head and give me that give me the Philomena Begley which I now realize was a slightly offensive and they said no we don't do men's hair and I didn't want a repeat of that in Tulla. I didn't want to get ran out of town for demanding a haircut in the windswept hair salon.

I got paranoid. I was thinking if I called the scene like my book my book is high up in the charts so if I called the scene that could make the fucking papers. Blind Boy gets unmasked for demanding a Philomena Begley haircut in Tulla. I don't need that type of attention and even if they said yes I'd have managed to fuck up the hairdresser small talk anyway. They'd be like what are you doing in Tulla? You don't seem like you're from around here and I'd be like I'm here to purchase a bicycle that won't vandalize my anus. So I stood outside teach China with a windy cold face going what the fuck am I gonna do for an hour? Because it was up at the top of a hill and it's quite rural and isolated there wasn't great reception on my phone I was getting bits of 3G and then the 3G was disappearing so I couldn't even go on the internet for a little bit so I

said look fuck it there's an hour let's just go for a little wander a small wander don't get lost just a little wander so I leave the front of teach china and walk a little bit up the road and I take a right and I go up this kind of boring like a small small kind of road towards a school and then I see an old graveyard like really fucking old graveyard with the the ruins of a mad old looking church. So I start getting excited going, alright, a bit of history here. Let's find out what's happening. And as I walk up towards the graveyard, to the right, I see a fucking holy well. I see a holy well.

A sacred well. Now I start getting excited. Because here's the thing. Tala, like the area where I am in East Clare. It's quite close to Loch Derg. I've spoken about Loch Derg in a few podcasts back. It's quite close to Loch Derg. Loch Derg is named after the Dagda in Irish mythology.

So I know I'm in an area that's quite historically ancient and now I'm looking at a holy well not only am I looking at a little holy well there's the ruins of a church beside it and you know from listening to this podcast for the past two years holy wells pre-christian Irish folklore this is something I'm obsessed with. So based on the visual information there, I can start making assumptions. If you see a holy well, and it's right there beside an old church, you're dealing with something that's minimum 1,000 to 1,500 years old. And because of the holy well, you could be talking 2,000, 3,000 years of historical significance in that one area. two, three thousand years of historical significance in that one area.

Before Christianity in Ireland, natural springs, sacred wells, were sites of spiritual and social importance in indigenous Irish culture. People would gather and worship at natural springs because they believed that these springs were little portals to the other world to the parallel dimension and after saint patrick around 500 a.d when christianity took hold in ireland what saint patrick would do is he would convert people to christianity by being respectful and

absorbing pre-existing beliefs so the people were already worshipping around these wells and Patrick would make a Christian and baptise people in these wells and teach them about Christ through this, through the well and the water or the plants that grew around the well. So people are gathering at this well anyway because that's their spiritual belief

and then the Christian missionaries like St. Patrick would go would go well let's just baptize you in this water and I'm going to build a little church here beside the well because you've been coming here for a thousand years anyway so let's not fuck with things too much still come to the well except now there's just a little building beside it and it's Christian and it's it's different but it's the same we'll figure something out so I get to this little well and it's like entombed in a like a cairn which is loads of stones mounted on top of each other and there's an ancient Celtic cross and I couldn't tell you how old the Celtic cross is but just inside the wall it's like a carved stone with inscriptions I couldn't read and a cross carved into it and that was definitely more than a thousand years old and then poking out of the well

was this big tree like a pine tree but it was unlike any other tree that was around it stood by itself and that meant that that was a sacred tree. Trees that grow from holy wells, no one ever fucks with them. You don't fuck with them. Because with sacred wells and holy wells, they're kind of half Christian, half pagan. So on the one hand, it's a holy well beside a little church and Christ is there. But also, the fucking fairies are involved. The fairies are involved and the other world is involved so don't fuck with that well and definitely don't fuck with the tree that grows

from the well because that's a sacred tree so this weird tree is poking out and I know now that this is a sacred tree so I'm beside myself in Tulla absolutely thrilled now that I'm I can confidently say that I'm at a holy well that I know is very, very old and very important. But now I need to know everything about the well. Because I couldn't find like an inscription or a modern signage anywhere that's pointing towards the well or why it's important or who it's associated with. So I need to start looking this up but the internet is shit. I can't get decent reception on my phone to start researching this well. I don't want to call down to the windswept beauty salon to ask them if they know anything about the

holy well. So I hatch a plan. I go into the graveyard beside the well and I look for the tallest gravestone. Now these are real old gravestones, really, really old. I look for the tallest gravestone and I put my phone on the top of it and then I get my iPhone cable going into my laptop to try and get good reception so now I'm tethering in internet off the top of this tall gravestone now the internet was shit but I did get reception so now I'm sitting on a fucking sitting in front of some cunt's gravestone from the 1600s googling about the Holy Well. So first off I'm in this graveyard and there's the ruins of a little church right there beside me so I need to find how old is this church because to my eye it looks more than a thousand years old.

I google it, it was built in the 600s so the church alone is 1400 years old. Holy fuck. So the sacred well is called St. McCullagh's Well. The little church is St. McCullagh's Church. So I'm correct. This is a very ancient Christian site where a church was built directly beside a sacred pagan well. So now I'm in my academic sites. Who's St. McCullagh? What's his crack? And I find a journal article in the Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland from 1911. And this is quoting a manuscript written about the life of St. McCulloch

that was written by monks in Ireland in 1141. So first off, the well, the holy well, the pagan well. Going back could be a couple of thousand years. Don't know how long it is. It's a T nishul which is an eye well so the indigenous people of Ireland long long long ago worshipped that well because they believed that it cured ailments of the eyes people would come there and they'd pick moss from around the well and they'd wipe their eyes with it and it would cure if they had conjunctivitis whatever the fuck the water in this well would make your eyes healthier now tubber nishule wells that cure the eyes because there's all different

wells all over ireland with different curative properties wells that would have cured the eyes these are natural springs so it's water that's coming deep deep underground and bringing up minerals with it so wells that cured the eyes usually contained a lot of zinc so 1500 2000 years ago you've no fucking pharmacies you've nothing you've no modern medicine but you find a little well and you might have an eye infection and you wash your eyes in this well and all of a sudden your eyes get better. You're probably getting minerals like zinc or other minerals that might have antiseptic properties and it was helping people's eyesight. So the people would go

this isn't a well, this is magic, this is a portal to the other dimension, to Tirnanog, to the land of eternity and this is life-giving water that can cure blindness because a simple eye infection that you and I now cure with some topical cream that you get in a pharmacy it could lead to blindness back then but Saint McCulloch he founded the town of Tulla he built a monastery there around this holy well he built his monastery now what's interesting about saint mccullough he was a disciple of fucking palladius i get very excited in the graveyard this is why this is mad now you might be thinking look jesus it's fucking december blind by you're not freezing

in the graveyard trying to tether internet onto your laptop it was actually quite a beautiful afternoon like it's the middle of december so the sun is pure low in the sky and everything felt pink. It was quite beautiful but here's why I got excited when I heard Palladius. St. Patrick popularized Christianity in Ireland around 500 but he wasn't the first Christian in Ireland. He wasn't the first Christian missionary. Before St. Patrick there were Christians in Ireland, a tiny amount of them and Palladius, he was from Gaul which is like France or Belgium, Palladius was sent to Ireland by the Pope in the 400s, that's a hundred years before Saint Patrick, Palladius was sent to Ireland to be a bishop of the tiny amount of Christians that were in Ireland. So St.

McCulloch, who founded Tulla, was a disciple of Palladius. So I'm now sitting in some fucking ground zero shit. A pagan Christian well that might predate fucking St. Patrick. And the beauty of the first Irish Christian missionaries is that they weren't treated as regular human beings. They were absorbed into mythology. You see, we didn't take Christianity hook, line and sinker. Rome didn't conquer us. Rome stayed the fuck away from

us. So we remixed Christianity. We made it surreal. We made it bizarre. We made it our own. The oral storytelling culture would speak about these missionaries as if they were mythological figures, gods, magical, pagan. So Saint McCulloch who founded the monastery in Tulla beside that holy well and his little church, he had the magical ability to tame bulls. I spoke last week about the Tyne, an epic in Irish mythology.

About the hero Cú Chulainn who single-handedly defended Ulster. Because a war was started because a queen and a king couldn't decide who owned the most cows. Ireland around 400. The importance of a ruler or a petty king, It was about how much cattle they owned. Cattle was really important and bulls in particular. A particularly aggressive or ferocious bull was a venerated animal in Irish society around 400 AD. So Saint McCulloch of Tulla, he had the ability to tame bulls. So if the bull is this feared and venerated creature in the local folklore, it's basically saying, well, this Christian fella, he's more powerful than all

the Druids. He's more, he's got Christ. This Christian thing is way more powerful than any in that because he can tame fucking bulls. So that the bull was no longer aggressive. It was still a big, strong bull, but Saint McCullagh was so magical he could control nature and make bulls docile servants. So the legend goes that Saint McCullagh when he was building this tiny little church that I was staring at, I was staring at the ruins of this thing while I was under this gravestone tethering the internet, I'm there staring at this little church reading about the legend of Saint McCullagh. Saint McCullagh built that church with his own hands, with no help.

He built it himself. But he was so busy building this church that he had no time to go and get food for himself. But he had a trusted bull, one of the most powerful, dangerous bulls in all of Munster. But Saint McCulloch was able to use his understanding of nature and the compassion of Christ to make this bull friendly and docile. So what McCulloch would do is that he'd be building the church by himself and then he'd send the bull off with like shopping bags on his back and then the tame bull would wander the land and go to other monasteries and bring food back. And everyone all over the land, whenever they saw this bull, they'd never run away in fear. Like there's a big mad bull. They'd be

like, no, that's St. McCullough's bull. He's a lovely fella. Leave him alone. He's just collecting the shopping. But one day the bull went off on a journey. And when he came back with the food for St. McCullough, the bull was attacked by seven robbers but the bull couldn't defend itself because it was such a lovely compassionate bull that was filled with the love of Christ. So the robbers were beating the bull and the bull was screaming in pain and couldn't defend itself because it didn't know anger and the screams of the bull were so painful that they resonated all around Munster and made it to Saint McCullagh's ears as he was building his church up on the hill on Tulla. And then when St McCullagh heard the cries of the bull he cast a spell that went throughout

the lands and immediately turned all seven of the robbers into pillars of stone. And you can visit the pillars of stone. They're called the Clooney Stone Row in Spence Hill, which is close by. But what's so beautiful about this is that it's a collection of seven standing stones. They were put there by humans, but they could be 5,000 years old. We don't know. These seven standing stones, about six foot tall, they were put there by an ancient culture. Why are they standing after 5 an ancient culture. Why are they

standing after 5,000 years? Why are they still there now? Because it's a fairy fort. You don't fuck with a circle of standing stones in Ireland. The superstition is strong that's a fairy circle, a fairy fort. No one ever fucked with them. Not even the Brits would fuck with them. You just left them there because they belong to the fairies and anyone who fucks with a stone fort in Ireland just don't bother something bad will happen

so they're left there for thousands and thousands of years but what I found here is this story that the people's explanation for why those stones are there is they're robbers who tried to rob Saint McCullough's compassionate bull and they

were turned immediately to stone and that's what they are petrified robbers from 1500 years ago but then what happens the robbers were part of a gang so then the rest of the gang members go looking for those robbers and they get to the site and all they find are the seven stones. And they see all their friends petrified in stone. And in the middle is the dead bull. So they try and collect the bull's body and cook the meat. But the meat wouldn't cook. The bull wouldn't cook. So the robbers become enraged.

They're like, first of all, this fucking McCullough prick. First of all, he's after turning our bodies into stone. And now he's laughing at us we can't even eat his bull the meat won't cook and the robbers become enraged and they go up to Tulla to the monastery to kill Macaulay and they arrive up there with their weapons to kill him and then Macaulay casts a spell and their limbs stop working all All the robbers go limp, and they're paralysed, every one of them, left to die, completely unable to move. But then St. McCullough walks among them,

and cures them of the paralysis that he just gave them. And these furious, angry criminals, these robbers who had come to kill him, they drop down to their knees, and they become his first followers. And he baptises them in the well. And they help to build the church. The church that I'm fucking sitting beside.

Tethering Wi-Fi off a grave. Now of course none of this is real. I'm sure the church was built in a very conventional fashion. But it doesn't matter. This is the mythology. This is the story that has fucking survived for 1500 years. This is the Irish oral tradition. This is what I adore, what I love.

In the absence of writing, the landscape tells the story. The church, the standing stones that are five miles down the road, the well, the tree. The oral story is a map of the land around me. But one detail from the myth that sadly isn't relevant anymore is it mentions the standing stones which like I said you can go and see them.

They're still there. But also McCulloch's bull repelled wolves. Wolves were afraid of the bull. But there's no more wolves. The wolves are dead. The wolves are extinct. There were wolves in Ireland,

and people were afraid to travel the roads in case of robbers and wolves. Robbers are still there, but the Irish wolf is sadly extinct. I mean, this is why, even in Tulla today, the first thing I notice is this breeze, because it's up on a hill, and then the salon is called the windswept salon

and then the restaurant is called flappers. That could be my autistic hunger for patterns but I think that's relevant. I think there is a windy theme even in the naming of the businesses whether the people who named those businesses know it or not. The windswept hair salon lets you know something about the wind on the hill of Tulla. Same with flappers flapping in the wind. And so does Teach China. Choc China. A Chinese restaurant trying to assimilate in an Irish village. And then I start thinking about the significance of this story and what it means and why it survives. Because thing is with oral with oral stories the best stories survive because they're useful and remember I said earlier when I got this little village Tulla the feeling I got was is this

place was once very important it was Tulla was a market town this was a market town Tulla once had a population of about 10,000 people and then the famine destroyed it. The famine reduced the population by 90%. It's a famine ghost town but it was once a very important market town. Goods would come in from Loch Derg, they'd be sold in Tulla and from Tulla, from the monastery, people would travel and bring their goods all around but this was obviously dangerous if you were a trader and you had animals or food or spices whatever the fuck people are trading going out throughout history you leave Tulla now you're at

the danger of robbers on the roads so if you've got this saint who can turn robbers to stone when they try and steal from his bull who's just transporting things to different towns the subtext of that story the comfort of that story to the people is saint mccullough will bring law and order this christianity that he's bringing with his monastery it will protect you from robbers in this market town don't be afraid to travel the roads with your goods because if you're a Christian and you're a disciple of Saint McCulloch you'll be protected and the robbers will turn to stone. They'll be afraid of you. So now I'm having a great time in

Tulla. I am thrilled that I came to Tulla to get this bicycle and I'm having lots of fun up in the graveyard with my laptop and then I went back went back over I got up and went over to the holy well and I washed my eyes with the water because why the fuck not people have been doing it for thousands of years I can't go to a fucking a holy well and not wash my eyes in the eye well then I get paranoid again I'm thinking you can't go up the fucking tolla with a name like blind boy and then wash your eyes in the holy well looking for a Philomena Begley haircut and a bicycle that won't vandalise your hall that'll definitely make the papers and then I find out

just beyond the holy well outside the gates of this cemetery there's what's called a killeen throughout Irish history if a baby died before it was baptised before it received a Christian baptising the baby couldn't be buried in a christian cemetery and the parents didn't know what to do with their their baby's

body so these people would turn to the pagan mythology of the earth instead so they would create little unofficial graveyards for unbaptised babies close to sacred sites and sacred trees and sacred wells. The ancient pagan spirituality of the land was seen as an option B when Christianity was denied and that made me feel a little a little more sad and sombre and I walked I closed up my laptop. And I put my phone back into my pocket. And walked around. The ancient graveyard. Real fucking old graveyard. I looked at the time on my phone.

It was quarter to three. I was like fucking hell. Those 45 minutes just flew by. I'm thrilled I came to Tulla. I learned so much. That was phenomenally interesting. I'm going to came to Tulla. I learned so much. That was phenomenally interesting. I'm going to go up to the Teach China now in 15 minutes and I'm going to meet that man. I'm going to buy that commuter bicycle. Then I'm going to get collected in the van, bring it back to Limerick.

Everything's going well. I'll just have another look around this graveyard for the next 15 minutes. So I start wandering around the graveyard and looking at all the different headstones and they're so old looking at all the different names knowing too that even though the gravestones are from the 1800s 1700s knowing that this little church the ruins of the church not knowing that it's 1300 years old that even underneath those graves are older graves still

layers of life and death underneath my feet and the diagonal breeze is whistling through the Celtic crosses and wind sweeping my hair and I look down and I see this strange little gravestone that's not like any of the other gravestones and it's old it's from the 1800s it's got lichen all over it and I can

barely make out the inscriptions but what's very clear and what makes this gravestone so strange. Carved into it in stone are two pigs. Two fucking pigs on a gravestone. So now I'm like, what the fuck is this? What's going on here? I thought this journey was over. I need to know why I'm in a fucking graveyard and there's a gravestone here with two fucking pigs on it in consecrated ground in a church the fuck are there two pigs doing on a gravestone what type of pagan shit is this so i immediately whip out the laptop again and the phone goes up onto a taller gravestone and i'm tethering wi-fi and what i found out fucking blew me away and i don't want to interrupt this story so i'm gonna go straight for an ocarina pause right now so i'm in my office so i don't have an ocarina pause right now. So I'm in my office, so I don't have an ocarina.

But what I do have is a copy of the Dublin Review. The Dublin Review is a little Irish literary journal that publishes short stories. And I subscribe to it. And I get four of them a year. And I enjoy it because I get to read contemporary short stories in it. So I'm going to hit myself into the head with the most recent copy of the Dublin Review, 93

issue number 93 and when I do this you're going to hear an advertisement for something. This looks like it's going to be a painful book to hit myself into the head with because it's it's floppy. You'd think the heavy books are the sore ones.

It's not. It's the small little ones that have a whip to them. So I'm going to hit myself into the head with issue number 93 of the Dublin Review. Yeah. That's not pleasant. Not nice at all. On April 5th... You must be very careful, Margaret.

It's a girl. Witness the birth. Bad things will start to happen. Evil things of evil. It's all for you. No, don't. The first omen. I believe the girl is to be the mother.

Mother of what? Is the most terrifying. Six, six, six. It's the mark of the devil. Hey! Movie of the year. It's not real. It's not real. What's not real?

Who said that? The first omen. Only! Movie of the year. It's not real. It's not real. It's not real. Who said that? The First Omen, only in theaters April 5th. Rock City, you're the best fans in the league, bar none. Tickets are on sale now

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A snap. There's a snap to that. Which will leave my forehead red no doubt so there you go that was the hitting myself into the head with the Dublin Review pause support for this podcast

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And I want to keep this going for as long as possible. And so long as I'm listener funded with patrons, so long as that's the case, it can keep going. So it's patreon.com forward slash the blind boy podcast. Just to promote some gigs for 2024. On Monday and Tuesday the 22nd and 23rd of January. I'm up in Dublin and Vicar Street doing some live podcasts. Wonderful Monday, Tuesday gigs. A relaxed night.

You'll be home in bed. Ready for work the next day. Come along to my Vicar Street gigs. There's so much crack. February 5th. I'm over in Oslo. Doing a live podcast in Oslo in Norway I cannot wait to come over and do a live podcast for my listeners in Norway so come along to that gig in Oslo on the 5th of February then where am I I'm in Berlin on the 8th and the 9th

they're mostly sold out but come along to Berlin if you want to see me in Berlin, 20th of February, I'm up in Derry, I'm up in Derry in the Millennium Forum doing a live podcast for the Science Festival, I'm in Galway doing a live podcast on the 22nd of February, I forgot to fucking promote that gig, but there's only like 4 tickets left, but if you're in Galway and want to come along, come along that in February Killarney on the 23rd of February I think I'm in the eye neck in Killarney on the 23rd of February and then April I'm back over in Scotland England and Wales I announced this tour last week and it's selling out very quickly if you want to come along to this um It's starting on the 21st of April. I'm in Newcastle.

Glasgow. Nottingham. Cardiff. Brighton. Cambridge. Bristol. And then finishing off on the 1st of May. In the Hammersmith Apollo in London.

Which is going to be my biggest London show to date. Come along to those gigs. They're going to be wonderful. If you're looking for nice last minute Christmas presents, come along to one of my gigs. Also my book of short stories, Topografia Hibernica is in shops. So back to this graveyard in Tulla. The wind is sweeping my hair. It's approaching three o'clock. It's starting to get a bit dim, a bit dark, a bit grey. The wonderful pink sun that had been there is disappearing. The horizon turned kind of a gloomy navy colour. And I start to get a little bit jittery that I'm standing in an ancient graveyard.

While the light disappears into a gloom and the air gets a chill. But I'm staring down at this fucking limestone slab with a carving of two pigs on it and I crack open my laptop and that was the moment I started to get a little bit uneasy because the glow from my laptop was more visible now it was becoming a light source as the sun was disappearing I start squinting down at the gravestone trying to make out the inscriptions because it's getting dark and the inscriptions are kind of it's weathered because this is an old limestone and the rain over the years has eaten away at it but I make out a name the name says Michael O'Sullivan who departed this life on the 15th of April 1818 and then clear his day

above it the carving of the two pigs. It had looked almost as if someone had made sure that the pigs were visible like someone had been cleaning this grave slab so I start searching online for gravestone in Tulla with pigs and I come across a piece of a piece of folklore that was recorded by the great Eddie Linehan who I've had as a guest on this podcast Eddie Linehan is a Shanakí a Shanakí is

someone who preserves old stories it's a traditional Irish storyteller you can't just become a Shanakí you can't go to college't just become a Shanakie. You can't go to college and qualify as a Shanakie. No one person or organisation can bestow the title of Shanakie upon you. It's like the people just agree that this person is a Shanakie. It really has to be earned through years and years of collecting oral tales of the land.

And Eddie Lenehan is a fucking Shanakie he's been doing this for years and a story that Eddie recorded from the area of Tulla by speaking to older people in the area Eddie recorded and preserved the story as to why there's two pigs on this gravestone and this is the story I'm going to tell you and it's fucking mad and this is real. In 1818 in Tulla when it was a thriving market town and this is 20 years before the famine when Tulla was a thriving market town a man called Michael O'Sullivan was a pig breeder and he had two prize pigs pigs that were well fed that he had spent the whole winter feeding and getting strong so that he could sell these pigs and earn money from them these were prize pigs so Michael was like I'm gonna fucking sell these pigs in Tullamarket they're brilliant pigs I'm gonna sell them I'm gonna sell fat, massive pigs. So he loads the two pigs up onto his cart and he goes to market to Tulla, hoping someone's

going to buy these pigs. But for whatever reason, nobody in Tulla market purchased Michael's pigs. He tried all day long to sell these pigs. No one wanted them. So he left the market at night time really fucking disappointed. Really sickened because these pigs that was going to be his wages. So he's got a donkey and cart. He loads the two pigs back onto the cart. Gets onto the donkey and says fuck it I'm going to head back home without selling these fucking pigs. Real disappointed. So he's so pissed off on the way home that he just decides, Jesus, I'll have a pint. I'll have a fucking pint.

So he goes into a shabine. Now a shabine, it's not a pub. It's like an illegal pub where they sell poutine. So Michael O'Sullivan goes into the shabine, leaves the two pigs outside with the donkey and cart, and gets fucking shitfaced on Puchine, really drunk. Gets back out, it's dark now at this point, hops back up onto the cart with the two pigs and the donkey. Now the thing is, there's no such thing as drink driving back then, this is 1818. If you got shitfaced in the pub, the donkey knows the way home way home you can be drunk and this is the bit people are unsure of that night michael o'sullivan's wife is at home and she hears an

unmerciful disturbance out in the yard so she runs out it's the donkey the cart the two pigs and no michael and the donkey is fucking terrified really frightened now it's pitch dark it's 1818 so she's trying her best trying to see where the fuck is michael where is michael so she freaks out she gets her family out michael is lost he's in a ditch somewhere we don't know what's happened so a search party is sent out to try and find michael along the route to tulla but they can't find him they search the roads high and low. They cannot find Michael O'Sullivan. So they call off the search and they say,

let's start again as soon as the sun comes up. It's pointless trying to find him in the pitch dark. The next morning when the light comes up, they look at the back of the cart and there's a fuckload of blood and Michael's two shoes but no Michael they don't really know what happened was Michael murdered or killed along the way and that's why there was blood all over the back of the cart was there a scuffle was he robbed on the road accidentally

killed and whoever killed him hid his body because Because like I said, Tulla, it's the market town. And going back to that legend of McCullough, robbers would rob people on the way to the market town. So it's not absurd to think that Michael was martyred by robbers and then they hid his body or destroyed it. They don't know. All they do know is that Michael isn't here. He's gone.

And the donkey and cart is there and so are the two pigs. We don't have a body. And then they start to think. What if, what if Michael got really fucking drunk in the cart? So drunk that he climbed into the back of the cart and lay down beside the pigs. The pigs that he was annoyed with because he couldn't sell them. Maybe he didn't feed the pigs because he was pissed off at him and went and had a lot of pints or poutine instead. Maybe he was so paralyzed with drink that the pigs thought he was dead and they started to eat him while he was alive. But he's so drunk on poutine that he's not

going to wake up. Maybe that explains why the donkey was so frightened. That's why the donkey ran back home. Maybe the donkey could smell the blood and the violence that was happening behind it on the cart. The family didn't know what to do. It's fucking 1818. Do we call a priest or do we call a guard? So they called the priest and the priest said Michael is inside those pigs. Michael's inside those pigs. And Michael is a Christian man. And he's going to need to be buried in the old church in Tuller Graveyard.

So they quickly kill the two pigs and make a coffin that can fit the two pigs. And that's what's buried in Tuller Graveyard. That's the gravestone that I was standing over. That's why it has a carving of two pigs. There's two pigs buried underneath that gravestone which they believe has the body of Michael O'Sullivan inside them but no one has exhumed it. Nobody knows. The family chose not to get the guards involved. So it could also be an elaborate cover up for a fucking murder. In 1818, once a body goes down into the ground in consecrated ground, they're not going digging someone up to do a forensic investigation. And the only clue we

have left is on that gravestone, on that gravestone that I'm looking at where it's covered by lichen except for the carving of the two pigs. Someone keeps coming along and making sure that you can still see those two pigs. Someone in Tulla knows that legend and keeps scraping away the lichen as it grows over the limestone so that the story is never forgotten. If the lichen is allowed to grow over it I wouldn't have seen those two pigs it just would have been another gravestone. Someone cleans the slab to keep the story alive. So what I came across there was an utterly bizarre murder mystery. A man might have been murdered and they came up with this story or a man was eaten by his two pigs and the priest decided

well you have to bury the pigs then because he's a Christian he needs to go to heaven and I felt sad for that little graveyard just a couple of metres away by the holy well that pagan graveyard of all the unbaptised little babies that they had to put the little babies outside in the pagan land

but the priest says it's fine to bury two pigs, which is the most pagan shit I've ever heard of. And I was trying to think of the priest's logic at the time. He must have been thinking of transubstantiation, that when you eat the body of Christ, Christ is inside you. So if the two pigs eat a Christian man, then the pigs have a body of a Christian inside them, so therefore they can be buried in a Christian man, then the pigs have a body of a Christian inside them, so therefore they can be buried in a Christian graveyard. And this story, it's not one of those ones where you're like,

did it happen or did it not? Because I'm there at the fucking gravestone with the pigs there, so something definitely happened. And what I find so fascinating and ironic about it is that happened in 1818. But the legend of St. McCulloch of that very churchyard, his entire legend, which is 1500 years old, is about the dangers that face market traders who are coming and going from Tulla, who are liable to be murdered along the way from the market town. And you have this fantastical bizarre unrealistic story about Saint McCulloch's tamed bull being killed by the robbers and they being turned to stone something utterly ridiculous but now you have something equally ridiculous and bizarre

that may have actually happened a thousand years later in the same fucking graveyard in the same area and that gave me fucking chills that sent chills up me and by the time I came out of that research it was pitch fucking dark it was pitch fucking dark in the graveyard and I'm staring at the blue screen on my laptop going I cannot believe this

this is amazing I can't believe I'm fucking reading this oh shit I'm in reading this, oh shit, I'm in a fucking graveyard and it's dark, get the fuck out, and I look at my phone and it's a quarter to four, and I've just spent the bones of a fucking hour inside in that graveyard, reading about Michael O'Sullivan and his death, and the pigs and the gravestone, and I've got two missed texts, from the man who was selling me that bicycle where are you

where are you and I texted him I'm so sorry I was late can you come back with the bike and I got no text back so I didn't get my bicycle I went to Tulla

I went to Tulla to buy my commuter bicycle and I missed the opportunity because I was up in a graveyard tethering the internet I went to Tulla to buy my commuter bicycle. And I missed the opportunity because I was up in a graveyard tethering the internet learning about pigs and saints and murders. But you know what? There'd be other bicycles. I'd rather have had an amazing adventure like that than get a new bicycle. That's worth a million fucking bicycles.

So it was pitch fucking dark. Teach China was open. So I went in and I got myself a chicken curry and fried rice and I thought about the barbecue pork spare ribs, but I was like, no fucking way. I'm not eating pork spare ribs tonight. I headed back to Limerick in the van and I burned the air off my buddy telling him about everything that had just happened. And he goes, there's your podcast now for next week. Tell everyone about that. And I went, fuck it, yeah I will.

That's a podcast. Because I'd intended this week's podcast to be almost my Christmas tradition where I do, every Christmas I do a little psychology podcast where I speak to everybody and I say to you, Christmas is a very stressful time. Christmas is a time where you have to be very mindful of your own mental health

because we return home to our family of origin. You can be a fully grown adult with your own life and your own solid sense of identity and an idea of who you are. But the second you go back home to your family for Christmas and your brother is there and your sister is there and your ma's there and your da's there, emotionally you can find yourself regressing to a childhood state. Your mother or father might say something to you that's deeply hurtful that takes you back to being a little kid or you might bicker with your brother and sister you're back in your old fucking

childhood bedroom experiencing emotions and stresses that feel alien to you now as an autonomous adult and you're left going what the fuck is this about why am i why did that one tiny comment that my mother made make me feel absolutely tiny and as if I'm in competition with my brother now? Why do I feel like that sister over there is the favourite and I'm a piece of shit? Where's all this insecurity coming from? And within family systems psychology that's known as enmeshment. We can become, our sense of self and our sense of identity can become consumed by our family and our childhood relationships. We can lose our sense of self within the dynamic of the family of origin. Just like that man got consumed by those two pigs, he became enmeshed

with those pigs. Maybe there's a lack of boundaries in your family and all of a sudden your siblings feel entitled to your personal affairs. Maybe your ma and da argue and then they pit members of the family off against each other. You find yourself getting highly emotionally reactive, throwing tantrums, behaving in a way that you'd never behave in your autonomous adult life away from your family. Is that man who's buried with the two pigs, was he really eaten by two pigs? Or is it just an empty coffin and a story of family dysfunction? Is it a story of murder with years and years of

generational secrets and shame and this bizarre story about pigs? Or is it just a man who was eaten by two pigs? We'll never know. Michael O'Sullivan was buried without a solid sense of self or identity. Is it him in there, or is it two pigs? But be mindful of your mental health this Christmas as you return to your family of origin. And when I say be mindful, just notice. Notice if you're behaving differently, if you feel differently,

if you're reacting in certain ways or feeling emotions that are confusing and that are much more relevant to a younger version of yourself. Just bring it into your awareness and go, ah, this is okay, this is a meshment. This is what can happen sometimes when we return to our family of origin. All the insecurities and rivalries, they bubble up.

I'm around my family. It's okay. And now that I've noticed this and taken it on board, I've got a choice around how I react to this environment and these triggering situations. All right, dog bless. I'd like to say I'm going to be back next week. I'd like to think that I'm going to have a podcast next week, but I can't promise it.

And I'll tell you why I can't promise it. I'll be recording this podcast next Monday and Tuesday which is Christmas day and Saint Stephen's day but my office the building is actually closed on those days on Christmas day and Saint Stephen's day and my house where I record my podcast that's going to be quite busy on those days because people are coming over. So I may not have the time or the space or the quietness to record a podcast, but I'm going to fucking try if I can. So if there is no podcast next week,

understand that's the case. In the meantime, rub a dog, kiss a swan, tame a bull. rock city you're the best fans in the league bar none tickets are on sale now for fan appreciation night on saturday april 13th when the toronto rock hosts the rochester nighthawks at first ontario center in hamilton at 7 30 p.m you can also lock in your playoff pack right now to guarantee the same seats for every

postseason game and you'll only pay as we play. Come along for the ride and punch your ticket to Rock City at TorontoRock.com Продолжение следует...