This time of year, I can become a touch weary with the wearing o’ the green. The sweeping and wonderful Irish folkloric culture seems a bit, well, debased in March, with the fairy folk diminished to cartoonish leprechauns and powerful old tales reduced to green costumes and green beer.
I am of Celtic heritage and definitely of Celtic inclination. I have sat in a pub and heard a fighting song in Irish, sung by every voice in the place. I have an untidy stack of papers that will someday turn into an extended journey to places my people died in, and left from. There are a host of them, and I expect to feel at home there. I do not disbelieve in mystery or the unearthly or even the otherworldly. I sit quietly with myths and legends. I never sit quietly for the music.
I’m not immune to incongruity. I do like a parade, especially if it includes Irish wolfhounds. I have an old music box, in fact, in the shape of a thatched cottage. There is nothing beautiful or remarkable about it.
Except that the other night, the middle of the night, it started to play in our bedroom. By itself.
The music box cottage was untouched, un-wound, and had been silent for years in a distant corner of a bookshelf.
Wakeful, I was starting to drift off, with only a booklight burning. The room was quiet. When it sounded one piercing note, and then another, I startled and clutched my husband’s arm. “Hey,” I said and as he started to rouse, it began to sing again, a fragment of halting melody, an Irish lullaby. Without thinking, I held him back, saying, quite urgently, “No. Don’t touch it.” And we stayed still.
“Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ra…” While we watched, it stopped. In the silence, we turned on a light and rose and approached. It seemed the same. Then I noticed that the little wooden door into the cottage hung halfway on its hinges, ajar, as if something had moved it, while going in or coming out into the dark room.
It seemed a little chilly then. No blarney.
***
Photo by the author.