Read The New Policeman for Free Online

places that every parent would have reason to worry about.”
    J.J.’s window slammed shut. Helen reached out and dropped another briquette onto the fire, sending up a little plume of sparks.
    “But there was another, less obvious reason that the priests, or some of them at least, hated our music. The Irish—the majority of us anyway—have been Catholic for hundreds of years. If you look at it simplistically, you could say that the priests wielded total control over our lives and our beliefs. But the truth wasn’t so simple.”
    “It never is,” said J.J.
    “It never is,” Helen repeated. “There were older,more primitive beliefs in Ireland that went back even further than the Church. They went back thousands, not hundreds of years. In some small ways they’re still with us today.”
    “Like what?” said J.J.
    “The fairy folk,” said Helen, “and all the stories and superstitions that surround them.”
    “But that’s not still with us,” said J.J. “Nobody believes in any of that these days.”
    Helen shrugged. “Maybe not. But remember what Anne Korff was talking about today? The forts? How the farmers won’t clear them from the land?”
    “They’re historical monuments, aren’t they?”
    “Perhaps that’s all it is now,” said Helen. “But I’m not sure. That one in our top meadow isn’t recorded anywhere. It doesn’t have any kind of preservation order on it. So will you bulldoze it when you take over the farm?”
    J.J. thought about it and found that he wouldn’t. Deep down, in a place in himself that he had never visited, he found that he was as superstitious about the fort as his mother was; as her mother and her grandparents would have been. He shook his head.
    “No,” said Helen. “And you don’t even believe in fairies. My mother did, you know. And in my grandparents’ time everyone did. People still saw them, or believed that they did. And loads of people claimed to have heard their music.”
    “But that’s crazy stuff,” said J.J.
    “Maybe,” said Helen. “Maybe not. In any event, the priests were of your opinion. It was more than crazy, according to them. It was dangerous and subversive. But they couldn’t knock those old beliefs out of people, no matter how hard they tried or what hellfire they threatened them with. The fairies and the country people just went too far back together. And the one thing that everyone agreed upon, whether they had heard it themselves or not, was that our music—our jigs and our reels and our hornpipes and our slow airs—was given to us by the fairies.”
    A cold little shiver trickled down J.J.’s spine. It wasn’t the first time he had heard the old association, but it was the first time it had touched him.
    “So,” Helen went on, “the priests could do nothing to stamp out the fairy beliefs. They had tried and failed for long enough. But there was one thing they might be able to get rid of, and that was the music. If they succeeded in that, there was a chance that the rest of the superstitions would follow of their own accord.
    “They weren’t all like that. There were some priestswho were very tolerant of the old traditions. There were even some who played a few tunes themselves. But there were others who broke up musical gatherings and dances wherever they found them and did their utmost to stamp out the music. Then, in 1935, the year this photo was taken, they added a new, powerful weapon to their armory. It was called the Public Dance Hall Act.”
    J.J. was losing interest. He got more than enough history at school. “What’s this got to do with your granddad?” he said.
    “I’m getting there,” said Helen. “Basically, until then most of the dances had been like our céilís. They were held in people’s houses or sometimes, in summer, at a crossroads. People paid to get into them, to cover the cost of the drink and the musicians. There might even have been a bit of profit in it for the house owner, though that was