Ready to Take on King Puck

YOU may not be hearing from me as normal for a while because I'm on my way to the pagan extravaganza in Kerry that is called the Puck Fair in Killorglin, and terrible things can happen to a man like myself down there in midsummer.

The last time I was there was a few years ago now, and I was dispatched to the normally quiet and serene village to write a yarn for some outfit in Dublin.

I arrived at the heart of the weekend festivities under the high throne of King Puck himself, and in fairness I did write my yarn and send it off, but all that happened afterwards is still a blur.

I'd met my brother Mickey on arrival, and Mickey has a clearer recollection of what happened than I have. He claims that at one point I wanted to climb up King Puck's throne to give him some sweet grass.

He also claims (and this amazes me) that on the Sunday evening, following some imagined slight, that I challenged a huge traveler then believed to be the King of the Tinkers to come outside into the backyard and settle things there and then.

Craven coward that I've always been I rather doubt the latter story, but it is factual that I did not get home to Galway from Puck Fair for five days and paid a high price for that. And was not the better of it for a month.

I've avoided the Puck Fair ever since, but I feel strong and serene this summer so I will chance it again.

There is no other event in Ireland quite like Puck Fair. There is a raw, earthy, pre-Christian reek to it that is typified by the towering platformed presence above the chimneys of the village of King Puck himself.

He is, of course, a huge wild billy goat captured for the occasion on the high peaks of the McGillicuddy Reeks. His long curved horns and those incredible mystically flaring eyes encapsulate the genetic paganism which I've always claimed is very close to our skins.

There is a menace in him, a primitive quality, more than a hint of the kind of netherworld of the old druids and the fierce warriors of the reeks of times of yore.

Throw in up to 150,000 visitors over the weekend, a horse fair and a cattle fair, fairgrounds and food vendors and hawkers and the traveling people, a wild sense of midsummer merriment, hundreds of thousands of pints and shorts and the mix is bubbling.

I think that if St. Patrick arrived in Killorglin during Puck Fair he would have taken it all in and departed Ireland immediately, regarding its people as a lost cause. I suppose we are lucky he came down from the other direction to the Hill of Tara.

Almost all of our other huge hostings of the people of Ireland are either sporting or Catholic and very different to Puck Fair for that reason. The only events which come anyway close are the few surviving horse fairs like Ballinasloe in October, the recent staging in Cahirmee, the June gathering at Spancilhill in Clare.

But there is nothing to touch Puck Fair for conveying what must have been the reality of the far yesterdays in Kerry and elsewhere. Move through it on the day of the horse fair especially and you know that men died here in the past when scores were settled, that women were traded as wives for the price of a mare, that knives were used for far more than cutting plug tobacco, that there were fierce drinkings, fights and celebrations all underneath the savage slitted eyes of King Puck.

The exact origins of the Puck Fair are now misted and murked by the centuries, but you don't need to be told that they go back away beyond the most of them.

I recall the first time I was there. I was a child with my father and uncle. They came down all the way from the North just to see what the famed Puck Fair was like.

I remember the first sight of King Puck towering against the sky, the thick burr of the Kerry accents all around me, the wild tinkers with their roundy caravans on the outskirts and their squealing horses and ponies.

And I remember clearly my uncle bought me green sweet gooseberries contained in the pouch of a greener cabbage leaf. And I remember the sweaty press of people and horses. And I remember being frightened on the street a lot of the time.

And an old lady being kicked by a horse she got too close to, white face and blood from her nose, and all the excitement that caused. They brought her away to the doctor on two planks, her hands trailing down on either side. We were told afterwards that she lived, but she looked dead when they were bringing her off.

And my uncle bought a small sharp sickle from one of the street dealers, and I was allowed carry it through the fair.

In an era when we are becoming ever more conformist Europeans (despite that No to the Lisbon Treaty), it somehow heartens me that Puck Fair survives and thrives.

I'm sure it is not PC at all nowadays in European terms. I'm sure the EU's health and safety regulations will take a fair battering over the weekend in terms of premises being overcrowded, for example.

I'm sure that hygiene regulations will be pushed sideways by some of the food vendors on the crammed streets. There will be after-hours drinking even above and beyond the allowed extra drinking time.

You can take it for granted too that the smoking laws will be flouted here and there, especially in the bars in the small hours of the morning. There might even be a bout of fisticuffs or two, maybe among the travelers, before it is all over. There usually is.

And for sure there will be a lot of craic in between. This is Kerry in midsummer after all.

And old King Puck will look down on it all.

I hope to get back safe . . . sometime!