Tales Of The Gurrier

Good people today I bring you a rare treat. A tale crafted by The Bastard Kesey’s own fair hand. There are but two or three of these known to exist and this one came into my possession through great personal risk. I present it here that you may delight in a true talent at work.

A Paddy’s Day Parable featuring

. The Gurrier Murphy
. “An Bastard” Ua Ceasaigh

An indifferent grey sleet was falling on Dublin like the dandruff of a hobo. God but did little to quench the spirits of the Paddy’s Day revellers therein: here, a gang of butterball Americans in green plastic Tam O’Shanters, their “Kiss Me I’m Irish” T-Shirts drawn taut over wobbling manboobs, vomiting green beer onto their shoes while rat-faced knackers in Celtic tops stole their passports; there, a giggling chavette giggling and trying desperately to hold onto her chips as her sozzled boyfriend pawed at her front like an overexcited panda bear confronted with a clump of particularly succulent bamboo, while her Fat-Frog-skulling mates pointed and laughed and shouted advice — “left a bit, down a bit, yeh good thing, yeh”; yonder, a clump of rat-arsed students wending their way up the street, an alcoholic centipede singing the one semi-patriotic song they knew,their uncontrolled bouts of projectile vomiting lending it a novel syncopation: “low — barf!– lie the — hughie!– Fields of — rolf! — Athenreeeeeyyyyyy”…

Just another Paddy’s night in Dublin… Hieronymous Bosch in a leprechaun hat… The Gurrier looked out the window at the hellish scene below, wishing for some kind of explosive device, or perhaps a slow-acting nerve toxin. Kesey must have something in that line, always leafing through those Weishaupt and Chang catalogues, giggling like a fiend. He’d have to ask him… once he shut up for five seconds.

“The Dublin Coddle,” Kesey was saying, “has a long and proud tradition, and though many today might find the dish of boiled bacon and sausages not a little nauseating, countless generations of Dubliners were reared on this honest working man’s repast. It’s what made them the people they are today. Runty. Shifty. Slightly greasy to the touch.”

“Is that a fact?” asked the Gurrier, feigning politeness while keeping a sharp eye on Kesey as he busied himself about the cramped tenement kitchen. Seeing Kesey wielding knives and other utensils in a confined space was always unsettling, but when he had one of his “cooking spells”, things could get ugly. Rumour had it the bastard had once grated a man’s skin off to add to one of his stews…

“The name is supposedly derived from ‘codail’, the Irish word meaning ‘to sleep’, in reference to the dish’s long, slow cooking time,” came Kesey’s muffled voice as he rummaged in the oven. “Some families could keep a good coddle going for years, adding new bits to the mixture as they were depleted. ‘Twas probably where the legend of the Other Coddle started in the first place.” Kesey grunted and heaved an enormous old-fashioned three-legged cooking pot onto the worktop, its surface black and pitted and corroded by years– centuries?– of hard use. It resembled less a cooking utensil than
some sort of nefarious device used to mine shipping lanes.

“The O-Other Coddle?” The Gurrier did not like the sound of this.

“The Other Coddle,” said Kesey. “Everyone _thinks_ they know how to make a coddle; sure, they print it on tea-towels for Yank tourists to take back to the States with them and remind them of the terrible food they had here. But the real coddle– the Other Coddle– only a few of the real Dubs know how to make it. It’s said they got the recipe from Tuan the Deathless himself, the first man in Ireland after the Flood. Only the real Dubs Know. Know what it’s for. Know its power.”
“Power? The Coddle?”

“The Coddle.” Kesey’s Dublin accent shifted a notch; the double-d’s of “Coddle” rattled around the back of his throat like a pair of loose teeth.

The Gurrier stole a fearful glimpse over the rim of the terrible pot. His brain recorded the merest snapshot– half-formed… things… floating in a viscid slick of grey lard — before shutting down. He quailed.

“I can’t eat that!” he exclaimed. “Don’t you know I can’t eat meat?”

“The odds of there being any meat in this are slim indeed,” countered Kesey. “Old-fashioned Dublin sausages they are, from the Gooter McGuirk’s stall on Moore Street: I think I got a splinter off one of them.”

“Why in the name of God would you want to eat something like that?” said The Gurrier, panic-stricken. “It’s tetanus or worse if you do! It’s not right!”

“It’s like those Injun fellas,” said Kesey. “It’s shimministic.”

“Shimministic?”

“It lets you see things,” said Kesey, licking his lips, “hidden things. Secret things.” He grinned like a stoat. “Deadly things”.

So saying, he lifted the blackened, battered container to his lips and took a long, gurgling draught. Bits of grey onion and unidentifiable gristle slopped down his front and puddled greasily on the worktop. Finally, sated, Kesey threw the now-empty cauldron aside and burped loudly.

“Jaysis,” he said, “that hit the spot.” He blinked twice and collapsed senseless to the floor.

“Bother,” said The Gurrier. It looked like he wasn’t finding out where Kesey kept the nerve toxins. From the window, the noise from the Paddywhackian bacchanal gave no sign of winding up. Stepping over Kesey’s twitching frame, he picked up the discarded pot– it was time to improvise. If he filled it with boiling chip fat, he might be able to take a few of them out…

Read more of the excellent Mr. Kesey’s writing at Beer & Loathing

This entry was posted on Monday, March 27th, 2006 at 8:18 pm and is filed under Tales of the Gurrier. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.